GLOBALIZATION AND URBANIZATION DIFFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
Generally, human existence cannot do without some forms of changes been it natural or artificial over time. Changes is something or phenomenon that is constant in it occurrence, as a result man in his activities bye and large strive to develop himself and his environment in order to meet up with the challenges of change that are bound to happened.
Globalization and Urbanization are some of these challenges that occur as a result of man activities in both the natural and artificial set up. Which to a large extent pose some challenges on man activities either positively or negatively? Most of the literature on urbanization and globalization has so far been focused on the cities of developed countries that have had their economic bases greatly enhanced by globalization, namely, New York, London and Tokyo (Sassen, 1991).
There have been very little systematic studies of urbanization in less developed countries where the benefits of globalization are less obvious or are absent despite two decades of donor-mandated economic reform programmes by developing countries in an effort to integrate them better to the world economy. Even less known is about the effect of globalization on the relationships between capital cities that serve as the nerve center of global accumulation and the hundreds of small towns and provincial capitals that have been untouched by economic globalization in a meaningful way. This paper will examine with critical issues the differences that exist between globalization and urbanization
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN URBANIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION
We will like to clearly distinguish or draw a land mark between the concept of urbanization and globalization under the following sub-themes:
a. Historical perspective,
b. Conceptual clarifications,
c. Characteristics features,
d. Challenges and
e. Benefits
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Globalization: The concept of globalization in an abstract sense i.e unpopular, originated around 1500. In parts of Western Europe, a long-term crisis of feudalism which gave way to technological innovation and the rise of market institutions advances in production and incentives for long-distance trade stimulated Europeans to reach other parts of the globe. In the 15th century, Portugal's Company of Guinea was one of the first chartered commercial companies established by Europeans in other continent during the Age of Discovery, whose task was to deal with the spices and to fix the prices of the goods. During the "long sixteenth century," Europeans thus established an occupational and geographic division of labor in which capital-intensive production was reserved for core countries while peripheral areas provided low-skill labor and raw materials. At any one time, a particular state could have hegemonic influence as the technological and military leader, but no single state could dominate the system: it is a world economy in which states are bound to compete. While the Europeans started with only small advantages, they exploited these to reshape the world in their capitalist image. The world as a whole is now devoted to endless accumulation and profit-seeking on the basis of exchange in a market that treats goods and labor alike as commodities.
Globalization in a wider context began shortly before the turn of the 16th century, with two Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula - the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Castile. Portugal's global explorations in the 16th century, especially, linked continents, economies and cultures to a massive extent. Portugal's exploration and trade with most of the coast of Africa, Eastern South America, and Southern and Eastern Asia, was the first major trade based form of globalization which made a wave of global trade, colonization, and enculturation reached all corners of the world.
Global integration continued through the expansion of European trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Portuguese and Spanish Empires colonized the Americas, followed eventually by France and England. Globalization has had a tremendous impact on cultures, particularly indigenous cultures, around the world. In the 17th century, globalization became a business phenomenon when the British East India Company (founded in 1600), which is often described as the first multinational corporation, was established, as well as the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602) and the Portuguese East India Company (founded in 1628). Because of the high risks involved with international trade, the British East India Company became the first company in the world to share risk and enable joint ownership of companies through the issuance of shares of stock: an important driver for globalization.
Globalization was achieved by the British Empire (the largest empire in history) due to its sheer size and power. British ideals and culture were imposed on other nations during this period.
The 19th century is sometimes called "The First Era of Globalization." It was a period characterized by rapid growth in international trade and investment between the European imperial powers, their colonies, and, later, the United States.
It was in this period that areas of sub-Saharan Africa and the Island Pacific were incorporated into the world system. The "First Era of Globalization" began to break down at the beginning of the 20th century with the first World War. Said John Maynard Keynes
Globalization is the process, completed in the twentieth century, by which the capitalist world-system spreads across the actual globe. Since that world-system has maintained some of its main features over several centuries, globalization does not constitute a new phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the capitalist world economy is in crisis; therefore, according to the theory's leading proponent, the current "ideological celebration of so-called globalization is in reality the swan song of our historical system" (I. Wallerstein, Utopistics, 1998: 32).
Urbanization: in its own historical perspective is more related to natural evolvement of human existence and growth in relation to population of people in a given geographical location. In the work of Jason (2006) “the results of our work show the existing models for the origin of ancient cities may in fact be flawed, urbanism does not appears to have originated with a single powerful ruler or political entity, instead it was the organic outgrowth of many groups coming together.” He further expresses that, to understand patterns of population growth in the earliest urban areas, archaeologists at Tell Brak, located in northern Mesopotamia, in what is today called northern Iraq and northern Syria.
The emergence of the city from the village was made possible by the improvements in plant cultivation and stock-breeding that came with Neolithic culture; in particular, the cultivation of the hard grains that could be produced in abundance and kept over from year to year without spoiling. With the surplus of manpower available as Neolithic man escaped from a subsistence economy, it was possible to draw a larger number of people into other forms of work and service: administration, the mechanical arts, warfare, systematic thought, and religion. So the once-scattered population of Neolithic times, dwelling in hamlets of from ten to fifty houses was concentrated into cities ruled and regimented on a different plan (Childe, 1954).
These early cities bore many marks of their village origins, for they were still in essence agricultural towns this early association of urban growth with food production governed the relation of the city to its neighboring land far longer that many observers now realize. This means that one of the chief determinants of large-scale urbanization has been nearness to fertile agricultural land. One of the outstanding facts about urbanization is that, while the urban population of the globe in 1930 numbered around 415,000,000 souls, or about a fifth of the total population, the remaining fourfifths still lived under conditions approximating that of the Neolithic economy [Sorre, 1952].
In the first stage of urbanization measured with the number and size of cities varied with the amount and productivity of the agricultural land available. Cities were confined mainly to the valleys and flood plains, like the Nile, the Fertile Crescent, the Indus and the Hwang Ho. Increase of population in any one city was therefore limited. The second stage of urbanization began with the development of large-scale river and sea transport and the introduction of roads for chariots and carts. In this new economy the village and the country town maintained the environmental balance of the first stage; but, with the production of grain and oil in surpluses that permitted export, a specialization in agriculture set in and, along with this, a specialization in trade and industry, supplementing the religious and political specialization that dominated the first stage. Both these forms of specialization enabled the city to expand in population beyond the limits of its agricultural hinterland; and, in certain cases, notably in Greek city of Megalopolis, the population in smaller centers was deliberately removed to a single big center ---a conscious reproduction of a process that was taking place less deliberately in other cities. At this stage the city grew by draining away its resources and manpower from the countryside without returning any equivalent goods. Along with this went a destructive use of natural resources for industrial purposes, with increased concentration on mining and smelting.
The third stage of urbanization does not make its appearance until the nineteenth century, and it is only now beginning to reach its full expansion, performance, and influence. If the first stage is one of urban balance and cooperation, and the second is one of partial urban dominance within a still mainly agricultural framework, behind both is an economy that was forced to address the largest part of its manpower toward cultivating the land and improving the whole landscape for human use. The actual amount of land dedicated to urban uses was limited, if only because the population was also limited. This entire situation has altered radically during the last three centuries by reason of a series of related changes. The first is that world population has been growing steadily since the seventeenth century, when the beginning of reasonable statistical estimates, or at least tolerable guesses, can first be made. According to (Woytinskys, 1953)
Thanks to World War II, the idea of building such towns on a great scale, to drain off population from the overcrowded urban centers, took hold. This resulted in the New Towns Act of 1947, which provided for the creation of a series of new towns, fourteen in all, in Britain. This open pattern of town-building, with the towns themselves dispersed through the countryside and surrounded by permanent rural reserves, does a minimum damage to the basic ecological fabric. To the extent that their low residential density, of twelve to fourteen houses per acre, gives individual small gardens to almost every family, these towns not merely maintain a balanced micro-environment but actually grow garden produce whose value is higher than that produced when the land was used for extensive farming or grazing [Block, 1954].
CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATIONS ON BOTH GLOBALIZATION AND URBANIZATION
Globalization: The phenomenon of globalization has many dimensions and it means different things to different people and in different academic disciplines. Economists see it as global capitalism; cultural studies sees it as a form of cultural hybridization (Robertson, 1996); and political scientists see it as a process by which the nation-state is forced to surrender its sovereignty to regional and international political institutions (Strange, 1996). At the very fundamental level, what we mean when we use the term globalization is an increase in worldwide interconnectedness.
Aliyu (2000 in Irmiya)
"Globalization," except in a superficial, journalistic sense, therefore has little meaning and analytical utility in general terms. It is precisely the kind of totalizing or universalizing construct being called into question by postmodern modes of social enquiry (Simon 1996). As the contributions in King (1991) reveal clearly, globalization even has very different meanings in the cultural arena for various academic disciplines. However, some sociologists view globalization in two perspectives-first as a process and second as a product.
The first perspective, globalization as a process-is the process that is fuel by the onslaught of market capitalism throughout the world and accompanying advances in electronic communication and transportation technologies (Allen & Hammett, 1988).
Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute defines globalization as "the diminution or elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result." Globalization is often used to refer to economic globalization, that is, integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.
Second perspective as a product-is seen an the product of the developed emergence which had already created its structure in business such as e-commerce, ICT, corporate hegemony and capitalism
Urbanization on the other side, according to the 2005 Revision of the UN Urbanization is the increase of the population in cities compared to the overall population of a region, country or the world as a whole. Also urbanization refers to a process in which an increasing proportion of an entire population lives in cities and the suburbs of cities. Historically, it has been closely connected with industrialization.
However, industrialization is a situation when more and more inanimate sources of energy were used to enhance human productivity, surpluses increased in both agriculture and industry. Larger and larger proportions of a population could live in cities. Economic forces were such that cities became the ideal places to locate factories and their workers.
Dungwom (2003 in Irmiya 2009) defined urbanization as the progressive concentration of population in towns and cities through different process.
These definitions above the clarity of the two concepts as one deal with market economy in relations to price control and the one talk about the population of people in a given area or the nature of habitation of people in a given region.
Characteristics Features of Both Globalization and Urbanization
Globalization:
A striking feature of globalization is the very fact of social change expressed in a “multiplicity of transitions” occurring simultaneously at several and in some cases mutually contradictory levels. These multiplicities of changes occur in different ways for different economies, different cities and different agents within them. The effects, which can either be positive or negative, are manifest in a wide array of contexts—from the social and cultural to the economic, environmental and political. While one section of humanity is growing and developing as a result of integration to global markets, the other wallows in increasing despondency and despair, including in those parts of the world that are believed to have benefited enormously from economic globalization. This chapter examines how economic globalization affects countries and regions within countries differently depending on a range of factors, including the level of integration of the local economy into the global economy, the national and local policy context and degree of decentralization of power; the influence of different institutions in each country and locality and demographic characteristics. The chapter specifically looks at how uneven globalization reinforces preexisting social and economic differences within African cities.
Globalization is geneally facilitated with use of ICT Information and Communication Technology which stands as the key factors for global systems such as internet, GSM phone, parcel post and much other poster agent transfer
Alubo (2009) identifies the following as the main features of globalization:
1. Interdependence and integration,
2. Collapse of commodity prices
3. Difficult to distinguished between national and international financial problems,
4. There is dominance in British Woods Institutions (BWI)
5. There are nations dependence
To Alubo, globalization is characterized with a high level of interdependence of nations to nations without necessarily taken into cognizance of the barriers of boundaries and restriction. Regulation of prices of commodity is not longer
Urbanization: however, urbanization has the following main feature
1. better infrastructure,
2. bigger market,
3. individualization
4. Industrialization
5. densely populated environment and
6. social welfare
Challenges of Globalization and Urbanization
Globalization:
Political disfranchisement: most of the country especially the third world countries are not succinctly having their fundamental sovereignty rather they are relegated to sub minor existence of species, neo-colonialism to the highest oder
Exploitation of foreign impoverished workers: The deterioration of protections for weaker nations by stronger industrialized powers has resulted in the exploitation of the people in those nations to become cheap labor. Due to the lack of protections, companies from powerful industrialized nations are able to offer workers enough salary to entice them to endure extremely long hours and unsafe working conditions, though economists question if consenting workers in a competitive employers' market can be decried as "exploitated". The abundance of cheap labor is giving the countries in power incentive not to rectify the inequality between nations. If these nations developed into industrialized nations, the army of cheap labor would slowly disappear alongside development. It is true that the workers are free to leave their jobs, but in many poorer countries, this would mean starvation for the worker, and possible even his/her family if their previous jobs were unavailable
Low productivity in the poorer countries: Most of the third world countries are sometimes at disadvantage side as most of their activities is based on agricultural products, although it is true that globalization encourages free trade among countries, there are also negative consequences because some countries try to save their national markets. The main export of poorer countries is usually agricultural goods. Larger countries often subsidise their farmers (like the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which lowers the market price for the poor farmer's crops compared to what it would be under free trade
Global inequality: globalization results to global inequality because it makes some countries to be at the receiving ends while some at the loosing ends. Global inequality was estimated at around 65 Gini points, whereas the new numbers indicate global inequality to be at 70 on the Gini scale. It is unsurprising that the level of international inequality is so high, as larger sample spaces almost always give a higher level of inequality. In December 2007, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic has called much previous empirical research on global poverty and inequality into question because, according to him, improved estimates of purchasing power parity indicate that developing countries are worse off than previously believed. Milanovic remarks that "literally hundreds of scholarly papers on convergence or divergence of countries’ incomes have been published in the last decade based on what we know now were faulty numbers."
Global conflicts, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States of America, is interrelated with globalization because it was primary source of the "war on terror", which had started the steady increase of the prices of oil and gas, due to the fact that most OPEC member countries were in the Arabian Peninsula.
Dumping of the locally manufactured product
Urbanization
Displacement of Nature because many elements supplied by nature, necessary for both health and mental balance, will be lacking as a result of urbanization
Destructive use of natural resources. These are used for industrial purposes, with increased concentration on mining and smelting in order to have a concentrated environment named city or urban.
Land degradation: since urbanization is more of development in the physical and basic infrastructures, so the possibility of derogating the land surface is very high.
Pollution: this as a results of industrial activities since the majority of the urban environment are dominated by at every angles of the urban centre industries and other intensive commercial activities
Problems of land for agricultural purposes, social problems and anti-social vices like criminal activities and adjustment behaviour of the inhabitants all these are yet another serious challenges of urbanization
Benefits of Globalization and Urbanization
Globalization:
Alubo (2009) summarizes the following as the major advantages of globalization:
1. Market liberalization,
2. Process of increasing economic, political, and social interdependence,
3. World without boundaries,
4. It has made trade from far possible and
5. It has turn the world into a global village
Urbanization:
1. It brings about industrialization
2. High standard of living of people
3. It create employment opportunity
4. It gives an international recognition
In conclusion, without much ado one will observe that globalization is more relative to internationalization-refers to importance of international trade, relations, treaties and other relative variables in persuading the prospective partners. While urbanization deals mostly with industrialization-the use of more animate sources of energy for the enhancement of human productivity
Globalization is equally a concept within human imagination and creativity while urbanization can be view as a natural phenomenon which evolves as a result of human activities.
Globalization is a concept often used or develops within the discipline of social sciences while urbanization can see in more of environmental sciences or studies.
Globalization is a close concept with capitalism which deals chiefly with the exploitation of human power and initiatives, financial resources but urbanization in its own context deals chiefly with exploitation of natural environment and it involve large portion of land.










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BY
MEDAYESE FELIX JIMOH
DEPARTMENT OF ARTS/SOCIAL SCIENCE
SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF JOS