Professor Dolan made me think a lot about the challenges, which are often overlooked, that are associated with political institutions. Initially, it is quick to assume that political institutions are actually helpful in reducing inequalities across countries. I myself thought this was the case until I took International Politics with Professor Dolan my freshman year here at Wesleyan. Very similar to her lecture last Friday, her class emphasized the idea that international organizations carry numerous challenges that, in conjunction with globalization, could result in negative effects in countries. A great example of this is the International Monetary Funds (IMF) which offers loans to countries (which certainly could help struggling nations to some degree), but which also attach conditions such as the following: policy reforms that borrowers must implement and excess government spending which burdens the poor. This example comes to show that we can’t assume that institutions that are initially set up to mitigate international concerns are perfect models that have little to no issues associated with them.
I also found it interesting how the reading assigned prior to Dolan’s lecture, Chapter 2 of “Understanding the Context of Globalization,” and Dolan’s lecture connected cultural/historical factors to globalization. Specifically, a key theme across the two is the idea that globalization must be understood in the context of colonization, Western domination, and US hegemony. I think that the best way to address issues associated with globalization at the international level is to use what I learned about in one of my economic courses: a macro-level perspective. Although something like the Americanization of the world’s cultures should be examined through an economic point of view, the purpose of a ‘macro-level perspective’ is to focus on other factors that impact the issue as well: US dominance, cultural imperialism, etc. When we take a well rounded approach when analyzing issues, it is less likely that we make biases (as learners) or poor decisions (as decision-makers) when dealing with countries or groups of people from different cultures and who carry different ideas.
One idea from the reading and Professor Dolan’s lecture that I think connects very well to a course objective for Intro to Global Engagement is the following: people from different parts of the world can connect to each other through a history of colonization. This idea affirms that history plays a vital role in intercultural communication and could help bridge the gap between countries/groups so that they could more effectively communicate with one another when attempting to resolve challenges associated with globalization. I think that this idea fits in very well with our course objective to understand how the forces of globalization facilitate and/or hinder our ability to effectively and appropriately interact with culturally different “others.” Considering globalization has primarily negatively impacted historically marginalized groups and developing countries, finding similarities in histories could help us better interact with culturally different others when discussing potential solutions to issues brought by globalization.
