Research Log 4

Kenen, Peter. "The Benefits and Risk of Financial Globalization." 179.

Peter B Kenen explores the benefits and risk of a world economically globalized. He shows what are the mistakes that governments have done that contributed to many financial crisis in our modern era and the ways to be followed for a successful integration of the world’s economy.
Our best example of almost fully integrated economy is the Euro Zone. They share a common currency, no requirement of visas to cross each other boarders and a central government called the European Union (although every country has their own central government). The benefits of this union were clarified before the accord was taken. Economist believed that the integration would promote commerce through the decreasing of shipping costs among members, more number of merges of European companies consequently strengthening their business against other business from foreign economies and so on.
However the financial unification also has its adverse side. In a union such as the European, a crush in a single member economy could cause a domino effect which other members become susceptible to a crush of their economies as well. The European Union is the world’s experiment regarding a future completely globalization and since our planet is becoming everyday much more globalized the mistakes and benefits of this experiment should be carefully analyzed so we can be ready and not surprised in future events
Kenen wisely describes the subject “It is also worth noting that the gains from financial integration have not been as large or widespread as many economists expected when they confronted the data. A remarkable paper by four economists, Kenneth Rogoff and three of his former colleagues at the International Monetary Fund (Kose et al. 2006), has surveyed the very large body of research on the gains from integration—whether and to which extent it has fostered economic growth in the developing countries. To some significant extent that large body of research is flawed analytically. Much of it, for example, relies on overly simplistic measures of the degree to which countries restrict international capital flows, and much of it also fails to distinguish between the effects of capital controls and of other institutional features of the countries under study”
I will probably focus big part of my research paper in the financial globalization as well. First of all I am a finance major, and I have been reading about the subject every single day of my life in the past 3 years. Second, the world economics is the driver of our today’s world, if the economy does bad, everything else does bad as well. The gas gets too expensive, the value of your house drops considerably, that new car becomes only a dream, and it becomes hard to pay your kids college tuition. So for great world unification we need a great unified economy, in which policy takers and householders think on the same direction, to avoid generalized collapses in the world economy.

Research Log 3

"World Unification?." Now Puublic. N.p., 07/02.2009. Web. 24 Oct 2011. .

The author chronologically explains the progress of the world unification. He gives many examples of events that allowed a world more unified and also ideas that emerged more than a millennium ago and effectively contributed to states unification, evolving from the old political style based in a tribal government to the world that we know today.
The ideas of unification mentioned by the author are practically the same that I mentioned in my issue paper: wars are in the opposite side of world unification, in the very begin of the path that takes the men to a closer world. He cites Hugo’s Grotius book The Laws of War and Peace as a view of the effects of war in the people’s union; however, the American civil war revealed a flaw in the system proposed by Hugo according to the author of the article.
He shows another factor that our class readings did not make me realize: the human’s greed. The explanation of this factor contributing to the distance of people is the looking for power and luxury. People do not know how to handle power it becomes a reason to see the other as inferiors, consequently a view of people not being equal do not results in a world unified. Those in the power decide who will be the lord and who will be the slave.
It is also explored, although briefly, the power that the unification creates. The Roman Empire is a good example in which they unified one third of the planet and became the one of the most powerful empires that we have ever heard about. In fact, the extensive lands conquered and the bigger variety of resources acquired after those conquers could be linked to the success of the Roman Empire, although it is relevant to discuss the impact caused by the people’s unification in the process of domination performed by the Romans.
Lastly, the religion indifferences are another major issue that does not help in the world unification. We will not be able to achieve the ultimate level of unification if events such as the holocaust against the Jewish people, hate between Islam and Christianity continue to happen in the future. Independently of the fact that religious hate commonly leads to conflicts, at least a mutual respect should be present as a an essential factor for a “closer” world.
World’s citizenship is a delicate issue that it can be seen from many different perspectives as well as the the benefits of it. I feel more comfortable to talk about this theme after finding more historically examples of the process of unification that the world has been living in the past centuries. The article “World Unification?” will add great information in my final research paper and every information found by me about the subject is very valuable since I realize that not that many citizens discuss the subject deeply as other themes.

Research Log 2

Engber, Daniel. "What's a world passport?." Slate.com. N.p., 24/03/2006. Web. 16 Oct 2011. .

This article tells the history of the world passport. Every nation has its own passport that gives the holder an identification of his identity and nationality; however, an organization based in Washington has been issues world passports, meaning that you are a citizen of world and can have free access to all the countries in the earth. Therefore, that does not work as its creators planned.
The world passport is issued by the World Service Authority, a non-profit organization founded 1953 by Garry Davis, an activist and also the world’s passport creator. Garry has been more than 20 times imprisoned for trying to cross national borders only carrying his world passport. He states that “free travel is a fundamental human right and that world peace is only possible with the creation of a world government in opposition to the system of national-states” (Davis). All his romanticism and ideology has produced some progress in the process of a world citizenship, although it is a very modest advancement. It is truth that individuals holding Mr. Davis passport have been successful in crossing the borders of 150 countries at least in one occasion, therefore only 5 of those countries officially accepts it as a legal form of identification.
The world passport does look like a regular, national passport, except it is issued in seven different languages. If you want to get yours, a fee of $45 should be paid with an expiration term of 3 years. It wouldn’t be recognized by countries such as Great Britain and Japan but you would be able to get your entrance allowed in countries such as Ecuador and Tanzania.
It is a quite interesting fact that Garry Davis is a former World War II bomber pilot. As mentioned before (in the issue essay) the world citizenship has the wars as it opposite. A man that saw the horror of a war, specially a war between so many different nations, probably awakened the idea of having a united world after experiencing the disgrace of people killing each other only because they were from different nationality, race or religion. Hence, the feeling of wanting to see all people united inspired Garry in his project of creating an organization that was going to fight for people’s freedom, starting through the creation of the world passport.
I researched about the world government on the internet and randomly found Engber’s article. I want some examples of people, organizations or even states that fight for the world’s citizenship so I can build a research paper more solid and rich in information. I hope this is the first of many more examples that I will have to add to my final paper. Weather I have or not enough examples an emphasis in interviews with common people, the ones that do not publicly manifest their desires of freedom will also be part of my paper so I can give a better idea to the reader about the progress and people’s opinion whether supporting or not the world citizenship.

Research Log 1

Myers, John. To benefit the world by whatever means possible’: adolescents’ constructed meanings for global citizenship. 36. British Educational Research Journal, 2010. 483.


John Mayers article is a report on a research leaded by him in which 77 students are the sample of an experiment that has as its finality to indentify patterns of student’s thoughts about global citizenship and its complexities; how students understand the relationship of national and global citizenship. Mayers used data collected from online discussion boars, written essays and 20 interviews.
It is said that the focus of the research was not in the acceptance or not of a global citizenship but on the meaning of this topic to all the students studied. It is pointed that all the researches done before did not examine the relationship between adolescents and the global citizenship; everything written by many scholars are related to the adolescents increasing responsibilities in this globalised world but not in how this generation of adolescents interact with this theme. I like how the author puts the globalization as a challenger to the national citizenship, and he indentifies one of the challenges as the increase of individuals taking on global affiliations that extend beyond a single nation. It is obviously noticeable that in the today’s world we are much closer to each other than we were 100 years ago. As I said in my issue paper the technology has put us much closer, and after the Great War 2 the world pass through a re-organization process in which the creation of the United Nations, for example, was one of the main global affiliations mentioned by Mayers.
It is also mentioned in the article that the global citizenship process is sometimes covered by the education provided in the schools when we are still young. The fixation in a national patriotism builds individuals that will have a pre-concept about anything that comes from beyond the national frontiers. It is not the case of some countries such as England and Canada which they have the global citizenship as part of the school curriculum. This makes me believe that the world citizenship process is irreversible even though some cultures refuse it drastically. For example generation Y, the same generation studied by Mayers, shows strong signs that they will be carrying the global unification flag. Adolescents have a more opened mind than their parents and grandparents, and the contact that they have today with different cultures is greater than ever, especially because of the creation of internet and development of airplanes.
I chose this article because it talks exactly about the theme I picked for my research paper which is the World Citizenship. The article explores this theme in a more specific form, it does not covers the relationship of all the population with the global citizenship but specifically the adolescents that are the future of our world and the main responsible for a possible world unification in the near future.