Ch 24 pg. 747-755

         The world’s environment and the globalization of environmentalism have led to a challenging global modernity on cultural or spiritual grounds, burgeoning environmental movements.  There were three other factors that affected the human impact on earth’s ecological systems.  One was the mathematical explosion, ability of humankind to tap the energy potential of fossil fuels, and economic growth.  These three factors were the foundations for the immense environmental transformations of the twentieth century.  When humans remade the environment, it also increased the population of cattle, pigs, chickens, rats, and dandelions.  The most critical and intractable environmental transformation was global warming.  Although there is high debate about global warming existing all the signs are there.  With melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, extreme hurricanes, species extinctions, and other ecological threats is hard evidence proving global warming exists.  Environmentalists started up in the nineteenth century as Romantic poets.  The “wilderness idea” aimed to preserve untouched areas from human disruption.  It was not until the second half of the twentieth century did environmentalist achieve worldwide awareness and acceptance.
          In Europe, the Club of Rome warned of resource exhaustion and the collapse of industrial society in the face of unrelenting economic growth.  Other places throughout Europe warned their countries of the disasters that would follow if global pollution continued.  The less fortunate are the least sympathetic to this epidemic because they were concerned about food security, health, and basic survival than with the rights of nature or wilderness protection.  Western environmentalists often called on individuals to change their values by turning away from materialism toward an appreciation of the intricate and fragile web of life that sustains us.  I believe global warming is a serious topic that should not be taken lightly no matter where a person stands on the social scale.  Everyone contributes to the world’s pollution and it’s important to care for the world that we all live on.  I feel people forget that we are merely guests and need to learn how to be more respectful to the host.

Ch 24 pg. 740- 747

          Religion is, again, an on going factor that continues to influence the world.   In the most recent century religion has played a more powerful role than expected.  Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam had long functioned as transregional cultures, spreading further then any initially thought they would.  In more current times, religious pluralism characterized the world's societies.  Fundamentalism is one response to how traditions in new areas has been modernized.  Fundamentalism is a term derived from the United States, where religious conservatives in the early twentieth century were outraged by critical and "scientific" approaches to the Bible.  Throughout the entire world today, it is impossible for someone to start a new religion that would appear threatening to another.  Fundamentalism represented a religious response, characterized by one scholar as "embattled forms of spirituality...experienced as a cosmic war between forces of good and evil." In the beginning they wanted to separate themselves from the secular world in their own churches and schools.

          The most prominent of the fundamentalism that emerged in the late twentieth century was Islam.  Unfortunately, the image of Islam has been permanently engraved into America's mind with the image of Osama bin Laden and the destruction of the World Trade Center.  By the mid-1990s, bin Laden had found a safe haven in Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from which he and other leaders of al-Qaeda planned their now infamous attack on the World Trade Center and other various targets.  Even though this horrible event took place, there has been an effort in the Muslim community to create a new religious and political order on the teaching of Islam.  By the 1970s, political independence had given rise to major states in Egypt, Iran, Algeria, and other places.  These places sought after the Western and secular policies of nationalism, socialism, and economic development.  This was the context in which the idea of a new Islam alternative to Western models of modernity began to take shape.  That effort to return to Islamic principles was labeled "jihad," an ancient and evocative religious term that refers to struggle or striving to please God.  

Ch 24 pg 723-734

Global interaction and the Transformation of the world Economy took place in the second half of the twentieth century.  After WWI and the Great Depression international trade, investment, and labor migration dropped sharply as major states turned inward.  Technology also contributed to the acceleration of economic globalization with shipping and air services dramatically lowering transportation costs.  Also having powerful international lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed such free-market and pro-business conditions sent the globe in a positive direction until some places weren’t able to pay off their loans.  After WW11 occurred the nation made a point to not let the economy fall like it once had and instead strived for reglobalization.  World trade was a main contributor to keeping the economy a float.

There are three different forms of capital movement.  The first is foreign direct investment. This is when one country will open up a business or factory in a country other then his or her country.  The second is the short-term movement of capital.  This is when investors buy foreign stocks then sell them quickly.  The third is the personal funds of individuals like credit cards.  Currently there are millions or people who travel the world to find jobs because the country they live in is outsourcing their companies which forces the average citizen to venture out to find a job.  These flows of migrating laborers often represent a major source of income and provide inexpensive source of labor for their adopted countries.  For corporations to be outsourcing their labor workers and taking advantage or their determination and will to work is a depressing.  America is the main culprit for abusing their power to build where they please resulting in their ability to pretty much run the world.  Even though, ironically enough America is the one suffering from the biggest debt.

Ch23

The twentieth century witnessed the demise of many empires such as the Austrian, Ottoman empires, and the Russian empires following the collapse of World War I.  After World War II, the German, Japan, African, and Asian empires ended.  Though, Africa and Asian movements for independence shared with the ideal of national self-determination.  Belief in national self-determination gained a global following in the twentieth century.  The idea that only legitimate government is self-government was not so widespread at the beginning of the century.  At the international level, the world wars had weakened Europe, while discrediting any sense of European moral superiority.  Both the United States and the Soviet Union generally opposed the older European colonial empires.  All of this soon contributed to the global illegitimacy that was encouraging to Africans and Asians seeking political independence.  The early twentieth century in Asia and the mid-twentieth century in Africa, a second or third generation of Western-educated elites had risen throughout the colonial world.  Many groups such as veterans of war, young partially educated people, those with no jobs, small-scale traders; all have reason to believe that independence held great promise.  It was now possible to imagine retaining profitable economic interests in Asia and Africa without the expense and bother of formal colonial government.

            The British never assimilated into Indian society because their acute sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness kept them apart.  In India, cultural identities were primarily local and infinitely varied, rooted in differences of family, caste, village, language, region, tribe, and religious practice.  The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian National Congress (INC).  Initially, the INC did not seek to overthrow British rule because they hoped to gain greater inclusion within the political, military, and business life of British India.  During the first two decades of the twentieth century the INC remained largely an elite organization.  Ghandi and the INC or Congress Party leadership had to contend with a wide range of movements.  Though after intense disagreement the two finally agreed to partition as the British declared their intention to leave India after World War II.

The freedom struggle in South Africa took a different direction than it had in India.  This is incredibly different from how independence was won in Africa.  In Africa the rule was delayed until 1994, while India, lacking any such community, had achieved independence almost a half century earlier.  The South Africa situation was the overwhelming prominence of race, expressed most clearly in the policy that wanted to separate blacks from whites.  The Black Consciousness movement was at the center of an explosion of protest in 1976 in a sprawling, segregated, impoverished black neighborhood called Soweto.  It was race, ethnicity, and ideology that generate dissension and sometimes violence that divided South Africa, rather than religion in India.