The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change, 2nd Edition

Globalization and Development: Recurring Themes

Amy Bellone Hite, J. Timmons Roberts, and Nitsan Chorev

One week in April 2013 brought home how global forces of change affect our lives, and how important it is to understand development and the international system to know how we might respond.

• A huge factory in Bangladesh producing cheap goods for the global market collapsed, killing over 1,100 people and injuring 2,500 others. The Rana Plaza workers were earning under US$50 per month sewing garments for giant firms like Walmart, J. C. Penney, Dress Barn, and Primark.
• Two ethnic Chechen immigrants who came to the United States from Dagestan, a region long oppressed by Russian occupation, placed homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding over 200 spectators.
• Tensions between China and Japan over islands between them impeded economic growth for both countries, a tremor felt around the world since they are both important customers, lenders, and investors.
• The six-month anniversary for victims of Superstorm Sandy was the filing deadline for federal disaster assistance in the eastern United States. Estimates of damage had risen to over 70 billion US dollars, an amount only surpassed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. These kinds of extreme events are expected more often with climatic change induced by human beings.
• Negotiations in Bonn, Germany sought to craft an international response to climate change, by small groupings of countries ...