In The News

Scientists Use Cell Phone Records to Predict Spread of Malaria

Aaron Hoover December 18, 2009
Employing a method for epidemiology research from Europe, scientists at the University of Florida have used cell phones records to track the how malaria might spread in Zanzibar. Calls made by Zanzibar residents while travelling in Tanzania were recorded, showing a small group occasionally visits a region with a high rate of malarial infection. While individuals don’t infect one another with the...

Deglobalization

Daniel Gross December 14, 2009
As the world economic crisis unfolded, it revealed globalization’s most vulnerable element: trade. Though shrinking for the first time since World War II, world economic growth dipped only slightly compared with the precipitous drop in world trade. In response, state governments and international businesses began rethinking the supposed efficiency of globalization. Businesses are moving toward...

News of Globalization's Death Vastly Exaggerated

John Hancock, Robert Greenhill December 8, 2009
Despite the claims that the economic crisis would lead to increased protectionism and isolation, the opposite has occurred. There are three major reasons why globalization hasn’t suffered a major decline through this most recent crisis. First, international institutions have proved strong and effective: for example, the WTO's “trade courts” effectively settled disputes and the Bretton Woods...

How Do You Say "Pink Cadillac" in Mandarin?

Daniel Gross November 30, 2009
The American direct-sales firm Mary Kay is proving popular in China, as an aspirational and premium brand for China’s growing middle class. Mary Kay’s initial transition to China in the 1990s was difficult because the middle class was smaller then and direct-sales firms were viewed with suspicion. But as the Chinese economy developed, Mary Kay turned into a juggernaut with rapidly growing sales...

Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture

Ramzy Baroud November 23, 2009
Globalization is creating “cultural schizophrenia” in developing nations, which lack the ability to protect their traditional ways of life against the constant bombardment of a dazzling and well-packaged Western culture. The author, reflecting on his travels in the Muslim world − a Muslim family watching a barely-clad Beyonce on MTV or Turkish youths playing an American video game that involves...

China in Africa: Soft Power, Hard Results

Loro Horta November 13, 2009
The recent second China-Africa summit in Egypt and Beijing’s pledge of $10 billion in loans to the continent has brought into focus China’s growing investment in Africa, The responses have been diverse, not only from international observers, but also from individuals in the region. Building upon interviews from a broad range of Africans, Visiting Fellow at Nanyang Technological Unversity Loro...

The Post-Berlin Aftermath

Jean-Pierre Lehmann November 9, 2009
While the world celebrates the anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin wall, there are still numerous walls all over the world that need to be torn down. Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann argues that the world is divided between a rich class of global elites scattered around the world’s major urban centers, and a class of the “globally disenfranchised.” The divide between the two is...