One Last Topic...

     For the last blog entry we were asked to pick any concept that we have learned over the semester and discuss how the concept might apply to our personal, academic, or professional life. This might sound a lot like a previous post, but the concept that I chose was that of kinship. In class we talked about how kin could be defined in many different ways. We each made kinship diagrams to illustrate whom we thought of as “kin” to us. I would define kinship as not only immediate family (blood relatives), but also distant family, friends, classmates that you have befriended, people familiar to you in your community, and maybe even co-workers (I know that the people I worked with at my last job seemed like another family to me).

     What fascinated me about the whole “kinship” concept was that it could be considered a web. The web would ultimately make up who you believed to be your connections. If this web of connections included all of the different groups of people I listed above, my web would cover personal connections, academic connections, and professional connections.

     With the major I currently have, Geography, I hope to study abroad before I get my degree and to continue traveling after graduation. Kinship and its web of connections could play a significant roll in my travels. Meeting so many new people in such different places will not only grow the web of connections but also allow me to soak in multiple “cultures” and possibly view life in ways I had not ever thought of. These people in my web can teach me things I would not otherwise learn. They could provide good recommendations for possible careers, they could become close friends (even if they are on the other side of the world).

      I asked a friend of mine who she would consider to be in her kinship diagram...or who she would consider to be in her web of connections. Her answer was all of her Facebook friends. While she does have a large amount of friends online, there are plenty that she has never met in real life. Half these people on her friends list she doesn't even talk to. With that perspective I would not rely on an internet based connection to form my web of connections. I would rather have people on mine who I have met and talked to in real life, the people that would be the first to influence decisions I make or who I believe would support me in what I was doing.

     I believe that with immediate family, distant family, friends, community, and work-based relationships would make for a large group of people to help weave my web of connections. Because I have personally met the people on my web I think that they would influence my personal life. They would be there to talk to, there to share stories back and forth with. These people are whom I choose to associate with, so if I am surrounding myself by them at some point they will inevitably have an effect (be it good or bad) on my personal life.

Media in Globalization

      Globalization is all around me at any given place and time. If globalization can be defined as, “The intensifying flow of capital, goods, people (tourists, immigrants, and refugees), images, and ideas around the world” (Lavenda and Shultz pg189). In this current time and in the United States it is near impossible to go to a place that is not affected by globalization. So what I look at as affecting me the greatly when it comes to globalization would be media.

      There are advertisements on television and magazines that tell what I should eat, wear, listen to, places to visit, products to buy, who to vote for, etc. Starting from a young age not only children in the United States, but children around the world are shown advertisements which depict unrealistic pictures. The children strive to be like the people in the pictures, or have the products that are being sold.

     Another aspect of the media and globalization effecting me would be in advertising the products that are being sold in the stores that I shop in. The products being sold in stores here are not only from the United States, but they are more likely with globalization to be imported from other countries in the world that are involved in the global market. It is cheaper to have products be made overseas in other markets and then have them imported back here to be sold in stores. Some of the more prominent countries that make these products are China, India, Japan, some countries of the Middle East (this does not mean that products are not made in Europe, South America, Africa, and Australia as well).

     With tools such as the internet and live television the media can provide an instant connection that ties two very far (or they could be close as well) places in the world together. News from Japan could be streaming live on-line and on the television...and 50 years ago this would not have been possible. The media brings transnational and global markets together and provides ways to introduce them to new locations with new consumers.

      Even with just the media aspect of globalization greatly affects not only me but people across the world. It ties into products sold in stores, images that are presented to people from a young age onward, and provides an instant connection of news from different regions of the world. Having these connections be so instant and normal is something very different from life before global markets existed as they do now.