Nowa Huta and its Struggle in Globalization

In one of my earlier blog posts, I had mentioned a city in Poland called Nowa Huta. I promised that I would discuss this in further detail. How does this relate to globalization, one might ask? Well, during the Cold War, most of the Soviet Union's actions were followed by the world, as people constantly worried about the enemy using the nuclear bomb and starting a nuclear war. This tension effected the entire world and set an uneasiness for a long period of time. The rivalries caused each country to pour lots of money into multiple projects and thus attempt to improve their societies. This can be seen in the Great Space Race, for one. What did the Soviet Union pour its money into? Why, developing its communist ideals of creating a single individual that all people were meant to mimic, but of course! This is where the little city of Nowa Huta comes in.

Above you can see a map of Poland (provided by Google Maps), and Point A is Nowa Huta. Nowa Huta is one portion of the well-known tourist city of Kraków. While it existed well before the Communist era, Stalin "gifted" the development of Nowa Huta to Kraków. Kraków was a highly artistic and cultural city, and such activities allowed individuality in a society that did not permit individual thought. Or well, they preferred people to follow their every whim, but people still went around it. Nowa Huta represented the ideal Communist town. It was set up surrounding the idea of work. Every person was easily capable of making their way to their job industrial job in the town. In fact, the town had the perfect layout: a semicircle so that most things were equidistant from one another and easy to find and access. Below shows the town's constructed layout.

The government provided every family the perfect and necessary apartment. These apartments were often cheaply built and had identical furniture and other accessories. Nowa Huta fought capitalism in every sense, because supposedly everyone had the same things and the same opportunities. However, this perfect industrial town did not prove the desired efficiency. At the time, in comparison to the world, its products resulted from backwards thinking. The Soviet Union refused to analyze or acknowledge the failure of its ideal Communist town. The steel mill employed 34.000 people; it was easily the biggest steel mill in Europe. The results did not reflect its size. In comparison to the United States, the size of the plant and the number of people employed proved to be less efficient. The steel mill wasted a tremendous amount of energy and manpower.

Stubbornness effected not only Nowa Huta, but all of Poland, as its industry growth reflected the poor political rule of the country. Because Stalin refused to admit that the United States produced more efficient industrial plants, the Soviet Union and all satellite countries suffered. Many of these countries only recently had a chance to catch up with the rest of the world, while others still struggle. Here, we see how this constant comparison amongst nations, this globalization of ideas and understanding that one country can easily effect another, can greatly alter the future of any nation, whether for the better or worse. While the poor performance of Nowa Huta resulted from Communist decisions, these decisions occurred as a manner to fight what they thought was wrong: Capitalism.

Well, that's my spiel for the blog post! I hope you enjoyed it as a specific example of economic and political globalization from the Eastern European section of our world. :)

Citation: Poland in Europe in the 20th Century Lecture, Fall 2011

MUSIC IS UNIVERSAL

Hey, this is Frances here :D
Howdy patnas?
I am only kidding, slightly.
Bare with me, I tend to have really long sentences. It gets pretty crazy. I just have too many thoughts happening at once!

This weekend I went on an awesome trip to Memphis called "Rockin' The Boat in Memphis," where I was able to visit Graceland as well as Sun Studio, Stax Records, and Rock N Soul Museum. It was really amazing to learn where many of the prominent artists got their influences from. The amount of information I learned was overwhelming! I can't even begin to try to recite to you all the awesome facts I learned. What I loved the most was being able to stand where history was made. I could just feel the energy in the room that was present at another point in time.

This experience made me think of just how much music is globalized. There were people from foreign countries who were also familiar with the American artists such as Elvis Presley and Ray Charles. I found that to be so cool, that music is universal, and has the same effect on all different kinds of people.  For example, personally, my favorite type of music is Canadian music, mostly. It is just something in the way their artists sing that brings joy to my ears. However, I could tell when listening to the songs that some of the songs have American influence. Deutschland, known as Germany for those who Spricht Deutsch Nichts!, has songs that have singers who sing Deutsch+ English, which I believe is due to the globalization of music. Even if you look at the top 40 charts of different countries, you could see that there are American pop songs on there. This concerns me a bit because sometimes it makes me think that globalizing music takes away from different cultures.

I am a person who is really interested in learning about and appreciating diverse cultures, so for something like music, which does not impede the progressing of a culture, I almost feel as if a part of me is against allowing global influence to affect culturally specific music. I do not mean  that people from other countries should not even  enjoy music from other countries because that would be hypocritical. Instead, I mean it as in people should preserve their culture's specific styles at least a little bit.  To be honest, I am one of those kids who lost knowledge and stopped living in accordance with my native culture because I assimilated too much to my adopted country.  So now, I feel like I can never really have a strong sense of identity of where I fit in the world, since I do not really feel completely Kenyan or American.  But through the music that my parents played around the house when I was growing up, I think I was able to preserve at least some knowledge of the culture. Music is just powerful like that :)

I hope I make sense, if I don't sorry! Sleep-deprived college kid here.

Toodles :D

Here's a cool video where someone explains their view of the globalization of music through history. This is such a cool topic! I am surprised I did not think of incorporating it to our project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=497ZptG_k8M

On an extremely unrelated note, I just want to share this song. It just randomly popped in my head, but it is on the topic of music :D And, if you read the comments on this video, some of them are not in English! Music really travels. For instance, one commenter wrote that he or she is from Brazil and  plans to get a tattoo of the symbol of this band because that is how much he or she loves them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuFI5KSPAt4&ob=av2e

Globalization in Children's Literature

There are dozens of ways that I could write about the relationship between education and globalization. Today, I'm going to focus on the globalization of a unique segment of education: the college student. The value of study abroad has been whirling around my mind lately as I happily plan and prepare to spend a semester abroad in Denmark. 


For United States students, spending a semester or summer in another country is a huge, and extremely hyped, opportunity. American colleges woo prospective students by touting their highly ranked or affordable study abroad programs. Juniors and seniors see a lot of advertisements like this one:

Once we pick our college or university, we see a lot of advertisements like these on our campuses:

If you had the chance to read last week's great blogpost on Nowa Huta, you probably noticed that Nell, one of the members of this research project on globalization, studied abroad last semester. She is one of approximately 260,000 American students who study abroad every year, according to the Institute of International Education. 


Outside of the United States, studying abroad takes on a different flavor; while U.S. students are the most likely to spend a semester studying in a different country and graduate from an American school, students in non-North American countries are most likely to spend four years studying abroad and receive a degree from a completely different state than they grew up in. 


We've come to the conclusion that hundreds of thousands of college students every year choose to globalize their education, and that universities take pride in offering this opportunity. But why?


Traveling to a foreign nation to receive high quality education is an idea  that goes back centuries into human history. Studying abroad for the sake of the cultural experience, however, is something relatively new. The Institute of International Education was created in 1919, and the University of Delaware established the first semester-long study abroad program in 1920. You may notice that these dates line up with the end of the first world war. This is no coincidence. There is a noble hope that by sending their young, bright students to interact with citizens of other places and understand other cultures, these individuals will build up the global community and promote peace. In the words of the IIE, "Peace and prosperity around the world depend on increasing the capacity of people to think and work on a global and intercultural basis." Spending a semester living and learning in a foreign land, by no doubt, facilitates this.


The value of study abroad has been whirling around my mind lately as I happily plan and prepare to spend a semester abroad in Denmark. 

Britain and India

Hello all!
 Xaralambos Here, to talk about the effects of Globalization through trade. Sorry about the delay -- Things have been pretty hectic lately. While i talked about globalization's effect in ancient times, I'm going to focus on a comparatively more recent era -- around and after the Industrial Revolution. This is a particularly interesting era to observe the effects of Globalization, as  we see globalization start to more and more resemble modern day trade, as the advent of increasingly efficient machines increased the fabrication of goods. An increase in overall population also helped to keep demand for these goods high. The British are a good group to look at during this time period, as they had established colonies throughout the world by this point, and as such, their culture was exposed to the cultures  of many groups of people, among which were the Chinese, the Indian, and eventually, most of South Africa.
Let's Examine the effects of the British control in India. As is known, the East India Company was founded in 1600, after the fall of the Spanish armada, when english merchants finally felt able to sail and trade further. The Company remained present in India as just another trading post, something that many other countries -- Portugal, France, etc.-- had already established. In 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, it was effectively established as having control over the regions in india, and was appointed the official revenue collector. It continued to annex portions of India, eventually gaining control of what is known as British India.The establishment of such control over parts of India changed affected many parts of traditional Indian culture, and vice versa. One of the first undertakings was the expansion of the available army. Since most of the available Soldiers were from Bengal, and ha had fought against the british in The Battle of Plassey, the East India Company was forced to search further west for available soldiers. These Soldiers, Known as Sepoys (Indian Soldiers working for a European force), eventually came to make up about 80% of the Bengal army. however, as the Soldiers, like most of the Indian population, made use of the caste system, the East India Company had to adjust many of their practices, as to not inadvertently deliver an insult. As such, soldiers Dined in different areas depending on their caste, and overseas service, which was normally required, was made optional, as the Sepoys felt such service would be insulting. In time, the British Officially Recognized many Hindu festivals and celebrations. Though it was not spread beyond India, there were marked changes in the army during this time. the influence of the British was also apparent in the way the subject of education was addressed. Officially, there were three goals in approaching the issue: To provide Native Indians with knowledge of their own culture, to increase general knowledge in India, and to Use the acquired knowledge in Government. In the support of this policy, Many Administrators founded the Madrasa `Aliya, an Institution that specialized in the study of Arabic and Persian languages, as well as Islamic law. As a result, after a few years, the population gained the notion that rulers of a country had a duty to preserve that countries culture, as well as their own. Other administrators Decided that if overall Knowledge in India was furthured, then there would be less dissension among the population. The Asiatick Society was founded to support and promote the study of Asian culture, and in 1791, the Benares Sanskrit College was founded. Yet other Administrators decided that, if they were familiar with the customs and Language of the people, they would be better administrators. Many other administrators, later termed Anglicists, held the belief that instruction should impart common western knowledge upon the people. English eventually became the language of instruction, and Persian was eventually removed as the official language. These various establishments all were influential, and some later played a large role in the development of the Modern Indian language, as well as the eventual Bengal Renaissance. Finally, the East India Company rule led to the development of many railways in India. However, as the technology was still new, the experts in the design of the railways needed to be brought in from England. These experts rarely knew the language. moreover, they were unfamiliar with the land, and needed to take much care with their designs, and there were no workers adequately skilled already organized. As such, the construction was painfully slow, and moved sporadically. However, the Finished railways were built such that they were way above that era's standards. Though they didn't entirely complete all the systems they set out to, they laid the foundations properly. In fact, long after the East India Company lost it's rule, the various railroads eventually composed the fourth largest railway system in the world.