The Impact of Globalization on Everyday Life

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“Those from below are not those who get to write history, even though they are the ones making it” (Ainger Internet). This may have been the thought in the minds of 20,000 Thais on January 25, 1997. They represented a portion of the population that had been negatively affected by big dam projects, small farmers that were struggling to live the life their family has led for centuries, or fisher-folk that find it harder everyday to fish in the polluted waters of a developing nation. Feeling left out of the Tiger Economy, this “Assembly of the Poor” marched up to the Government House in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, and camped in the streets for ninety-nine days. With their camp stretching over one kilometer down Nakhom Pathom Road, they survived off of illegally grown vegetables from the banks of the city’s river. Katharine Ainger, author of the New Internationalist article “To Open a Crack in History”, expresses how concerned these villagers were with the current economic growth in Thailand and its effect on agriculture, stating, “They declared…the collapse of agricultural society forces people out of their communities to cheaply sell their labor in the city” (Internet).

What is motivating these poverty stricken people of Thailand to perform such a demonstration? Perhaps there is more at work here than the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. What people in Thailand and developing nations around the globe are experiencing is something far more profound than economic changes, and it is happening on two fronts. First, there is a loss of traditions and changes in values, found anywhere from the fast food restaurants of Japan to the Mexican factories (maquiladoras, as they are called). Secondly, th...

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