AMSCO 9.7 Resistance to Globalization Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 9.7, Resistance to Globalization (p. 688-695), covers the variety of ways people and governments pushed back against economic and cultural globalization from 1900 to the present. This is Unit 9 material (1900 to present), and the big question is simple: globalization made goods, money, and ideas move faster than ever, so why did so many people resist it? The chapter's answer comes in several flavors: anti-WTO and anti-IMF protests, exposés of dangerous working conditions like the Rana Plaza collapse, environmental criticism, sovereignty movements like Brexit, and government control of social media in countries like China and Saudi Arabia.

The throughline to remember for the AP exam: responses to globalization took many forms, from grassroots protest movements demanding fair trade and human rights to states building their own walled-off versions of the internet.

Timeline of key events in the resistance to globalization. Image courtesy of Samhitha.

The Roots of Globalization and Anti-Globalization

After World War II, a wave of international organizations built the modern global economy, and the anti-globalization movement grew up in reaction to them.

• Between 1947 and the early 1990s, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the European Economic Union, Mercosur in South America, and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) all formed to strengthen economies and expand prosperity.
• Falling tariff rates made it easier for goods to cross national borders, accelerating global trade.
• In 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) took over GATT's operations. The WTO makes rules covering more than 90 percent of international trade.
• The WTO's closed board meetings fed a perception that it cared about profit, not people's welfare.

The "Battle of Seattle" (1999)

When the WTO met in Seattle in 1999 to plan trade negotiations for the new millennium, more than 40,000 protesters showed up and shut the meeting down.

• The crowd was a coalition of special interest groups: labor unions, family farmers, student groups, and environmentalists.
• Anti-WTO demonstrations spread to dozens of other countries.
• Many people consider Seattle the beginning of the anti-globalization movement, and it was one of the first social movements coordinated through the internet.
• The protests did not weaken the WTO much. China joined in 2001, expanding the organization's territorial and economic reach.

Why Resist Globalization?

The core complaint was a knowledge gap. Consumers buying products with a few clicks often had no idea who made those products or what the real short-term and long-term costs were. A string of scandals exposed those hidden costs.

Harsh Working Conditions

• Much of the chocolate sold in the early 21st century traced back to child labor in West Africa. The biggest chocolate companies missed deadlines in 2005, 2008, and 2010 to certify their suppliers were child-labor free. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated more than 2 million children were doing dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions.
• Conditions in Western nations could be harsh too. In 2019, Amazon warehouse employees described pressure so intense that workers risked being fired for taking a bathroom break. Amazon employed more than 600,000 people at the time, plus another 100,000 during the holidays.
• In 2013, the Rana Plaza factory, an eight-story building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed. More than 1,000 people died and another 2,500 were injured, most of them female garment workers making clothing for Western companies. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner, called it "a symbol of our failure as a nation" and proposed an international minimum wage.

Environmental Damage

• Shipping products vast distances burns fuel, increasing greenhouse gases and worsening the climate emergency.
• In the early 21st century, Brazil cleared thousands of square miles of rainforest each year for cattle farms. The meat became one of Brazil's most valuable exports.
• Globalization's defenders push back with examples like Costa Rica, where ecotourism turns natural wonders into profit without destroying them. For more on the environmental side of this period, see the AMSCO 9.3 Technology and the Environment notes.

Threats to National Sovereignty

Resistance didn't come only from the left. Many conservative groups distrusted globalization because it seemed to override national self-rule.

• The clearest example is Brexit. In 2016, 52 percent of British voters chose to leave the European Union, then a 28-country political and economic organization that Britain had helped found in 1993.
• Conservative British politicians argued the EU interfered with Britain's right to govern itself, and many Brexit supporters said the EU forced Britain to accept too many immigrants.
• Prime Minister Theresa May couldn't craft an exit deal acceptable to her own party, let alone the other 27 EU nations. She resigned in 2019.
• Brexit critics warned that leaving would be economically disastrous for an island nation dependent on imports.

A useful pattern to notice: liberal critics worried globalization harmed workers, children, and the environment; conservative critics worried it harmed national sovereignty. Same target, different reasons.

Economic Resistance

Critics argued that international institutions stacked the deck in favor of large corporations and rich nations.

• Big corporations and transnational businesses could work through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and WTO; small local businesses could not. Small businesses couldn't cross national borders, extract the natural resources they needed, or tap the wide variety of labor sources big firms used.
• In response, some businesses, especially restaurants, committed to selling locally grown or locally made products.
• The World Bank, a UN-affiliated organization whose mission is improving member states' economic development, drew similar distrust. In 1988, about 20,000 people protested IMF and World Bank meetings in West Berlin, arguing the agencies favored richer nations over poorer ones.
• In 2001 and 2002, anti-IMF and anti-World Bank protests hit 23 countries, including many of the world's poorest.
• The World Bank reformed its structure and governance in 2014, but critics maintained the richest nations still controlled it. The AMSCO 9.8 notes on global institutions cover the World Bank and similar organizations in more depth.

What Anti-Globalists Want

The movement grew into a broader social movement focused on four goals:

• Human rights, the basic freedoms every person has, like freedom from slavery and freedom to express opinions
• Fair trade, a system ensuring the person who provided a good or service receives reasonable payment for it
• Sustainable development, business that makes a profit without preventing future generations from meeting their own needs
• Debt relief or debt restructuring, so countries that owe huge sums to the IMF don't risk economic breakdown

Anti-Globalization and Social Media

Activists used the internet to spread anti-globalization ideas to nearly every country on Earth, but some governments fought back by controlling social media itself.

China: Banning and Replacing

• In 2009, more than 1,000 rioters clashed with police in Urumqi, China, amid tensions between the Han ethnic majority and the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
• Chinese authorities blamed Twitter and Facebook for fueling the unrest and banned both platforms.
• The government introduced Weibo as a substitute. It streams posts while tracking and blocking "sensitive" content, and it has become a vehicle of negotiation between the Chinese government and its citizens. Weibo is the textbook example of a locally developed social media platform created as a response to globalization, so it's worth knowing cold.

Saudi Arabia: Allowing but Controlling

• Some governments permit social media but shape its content. Critics contend Saudi officials use Twitter and Facebook to harass and intimidate citizens.
• Women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif put it bluntly: "If the same tools we joined for our liberation are being used to oppress us and undermine us, and used to spread fake news and hate, I'm out of these platforms."

The chapter's closing point: economic and cultural interconnection threatens some people's and governments' sense of autonomy and identity, and that tension drives resistance. This is the flip side of the cultural spread covered in the AMSCO 9.6 Globalized Culture notes.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these chapter notes with the 9.7 Resistance to Globalization After 1900 course study guide, which frames the same content the way the exam tests it. You can browse every chapter summary on the AMSCO Notes hub, and the next chapter, AMSCO 9.8 on global institutions, picks up with the World Bank and the UN.

To check yourself, run some AP World multiple choice practice on Unit 9, then try writing about responses to globalization with FRQ practice and instant scoring. The key terms glossary is handy for quick definition lookups while you review.