The 20th and 21st centuries brought about huge global social and economic changes. Read on to learn about globalization and trade, the fight for racial and gender equality, religious development and internationalization as you prepare for the AP World History: Modern Exam. Show
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GlobalizationMore than ever before, the world in the twentieth century became interconnected through trade, cultural exchange, and political interaction on a mass scale. By century’s end, capitalism and free trade stood unrivaled as world-ordering systems. Western nations still dominated in the areas of finance, trade, culture, and technology. However, even this supremacy began to be challenged by rising regional powers like China and India, as well as cultural and technological powerhouses like Japan and South Korea. The ongoing problem of establishing international law and order did not end with the creation of the United Nations. Regional groups and treaty organizations, with echoes of the ancient tradition of defensive leagues and alliances between nations, do much to channel and direct global exchange. Trade OrganizationsTrade organizations are tasked with regulating trade and investment. The following are some post–World War II trade organizations that are important context for the Cold War and the post–World War II economy.
Regional OrganizationsRegional organizations have formed to protect local interests. Unlike economic associations, these groups often represent less powerful and formerly colonized areas in opposition to Western pressures.
Racial Equality EffortsIn 1900, W. E. B. Du Bois declared that “the world problem of the twentieth century is the prob- lem of the color line,” and his analysis has stood the test of time. The vast majority of inhabitants in colonies controlled by the white nations of Europe and America were people of color. They received varying degrees of civil and social rights, depending on class and situation, but in almost no cases were they held to be equal in status or ability to the white population. Added to this was the oppression of black and brown minority populations in white settler colonies in the Americas and Australasia. Much of the global fight for independence and national identity can be examined in a racial context, where racial inequality is overthrown along with imperialism. Some important examples of the struggle for racial equality include:
Changing Gender RolesBefore 1914, the Western world held few professional opportunities for women. Most educated women were relegated to childrearing, nursing, or teaching, while working-class women had long been employed in domestic work or light industry. The fight for female suffrage in the West saw its first successes in New Zealand, Australia, and Finland at the turn of the century. Women’s participation in the industrial and professional labor forces during World War I changed more minds. In most of Europe and the United States, women became voters between the 1920s and 1940s. In the prosperous 1920s, fashion and popular culture helped create a new image of the modern middle-class woman—free from some of the constraints of traditional gender roles. World War II further advanced women’s image as workers, citizens, and even soldiers, but peacetime saw a backlash as women were expected to return to homemaking and low-prestige, part-time jobs in the service economy. In less developed parts of the world, only the most adventurous or high-status women were visible in public life, even as industrialism and urbanization offered up more opportunities to work outside the home. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Western world experienced a sexual revolution, challenging traditional gender norms, marriage as an institution, and the nuclear family. Related factors included greater access to convenient birth control, liberalized divorce and property laws, countercultural rebellion, and the availability of more lucrative service-sector jobs. Since the 1970s, issues of accessible and affordable child care and equal pay for equal work have been debated but not fully resolved. The realms of politics, law, and medicine have become more open to women in the last half of the twentieth century, while successful female leaders, such as in Israel, India, and the U.K., have demonstrated that national-level politics is no longer an all-male domain. The experiences of Western societies should not be considered the sole benchmark to measure the twentieth century. Many communist societies instituted important legal reforms for women, such as the 1950 marriage law in China which granted free choice of partners. The Soviet Union also placed a great deal of emphasis on scientific research, which was facilitated by a push to recruit candidates for technical schools regardless of gender. Even in the postcommunist era, Russian women are far more involved than their Western counterparts in the field of scientific research. In both Eastern Europe and the rest of the former Soviet bloc, feminism in the Western sense of the term is sometimes seen as a foreign ideology, as the former communist world developed socially and politically along different lines than the West. In parts of the developing world, changes to gender roles have varied. However, many traditional customs still prevail there as in other largely rural and preindustrial areas. Religious DevelopmentTraditional religious devotion declined in much of the developed world during the twentieth century, leading to a rise in secular agnosticism and humanism, as well as liberal Christianity and Judaism. New forms of spirituality also developed from blending Eastern and Western traditions. Liberation theology in Latin America reinterpreted Catholicism as an aggressive social reform movement, to the disapproval of the Vatican. However, many communities of faith have turned to fundamentalist forms of religion as a result of globalization, reacting against the changes to traditional beliefs and customs. The shift toward fundamentalism has occurred in factions of all the major religions throughout the world. InternationalizationAs the world becomes more and more connected, distinctions and barriers between cultures have become blurred and weakened. Western entertainment companies (in particular movie and music producers) have spread worldwide, carrying Western cultural ideas along with them. American brands like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Kentucky Fried Chicken can be found in most parts of the world today. Western vendors of finance, technology, scholarship, business expertise, architecture, and engineering have helped spread ideas about individualism, consumption, self-fulfillment, and family roles to areas with sometimes radically different approaches to life. This trend has been characterized as cultural imperialism, replacing the political and physical imperialism of the past with something more insidious and invasive. Globalization, on the other hand, has enabled cultural diffusion to become multidirectional. Tour- ism, immigration, and the Internet have allowed consumers worldwide to have opportunities to appreciate arts, foods, and other cultural markers from around the world. Latin American soap operas, South Korean K-Pop, and Japanese anime are just some of the products in this global marketplace, popular not just in the West but elsewhere as well. Sports have also become more internationalized, with the Olympics and the World Cup competitions enjoying popularity in all regions of the world. In addition, the rise of social media has made it easier than ever for people all around the world to interact. What resulted from the growth of globalization in the 20th and 21st centuries?The situation which rose because of the growth of globalisation in the 20th and 21st century is the mixture of cross national cultures. Best example is the food industry where Asian restaurants serve foods based on Latin dishes and restaurants in US serving spicy dishes from countries like India.
How did globalization affect the 20th century?Impact Of Globalisation In The 20th Century
Reduced prices and greater accessibility improved the well-being of the lower classes in society, with Ford's assembly lines being a worldwide symbol of the economic boom of the 1920s. For most of the 20th century, however, mass production was confined to the national scale.
What is a major problem created by globalization?Globalization has led to a rise in global income inequality, not a reduction. Inequality between individuals across the world is the result of two competing forces: inequality between countries and inequality within countries.
What development has most influenced the spread of globalization in the 20th and 21st centuries?Hence, the advancements in transportation and communication technology has most influenced the spread of globalization in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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