Sara Warden!

International Studies 101!

October 5, 2014!

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The Spreading Of Globalization!

Today, Madison, Wisconsin is recognized for its capitol building, its busy city as a
college town and its ability to provide the largest producer-only farmers market in the
United States. But 100 years ago Madison was booming with manufacturing
businesses; like the Badger State Shoe Company. Over many decades Madison has
shifted from a manufacturing based city to a service sector economic base. Like many
other areas in the world, Madison underwent and is still undergoing an economic
restructuring. Along with economic restructuring Madison is being transformed by
interconnections through out the world being connected by trains, barges, and planes.
One can say Madison has Globalized over the years, but how, and why? Madisons east
isthmus has transformed substantially over the years and by looking at Globalization
one can see the changes Madison has made over the past century. !
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Everyones sense of place will be different. People will interpret, experience, and

see theirs differently than others. The location might be the same, but the time and
reaction may be different. Having a sense of place means having a sense of
connection. Ones connection to the city, to the person standing next to them, to the
world, or to their community all depends on how someone defines their own sense of
place. A sense of place can provide stability and a source of unproblematical
identity (Massey). But can one connect a sense of place with the changing time-space
compression? Time-space compression is broken into two parts; time and space. Time
relates to how people and places are moving and proceeding forward while space
relates to how people and places counterbalance and react. Similar to a sense of
place, no person has the same feeling or meaning of time-space compression. TimeSpace differs on class, race, religion, location, and all other social factors. Some social
classes give time-space while others receive. The givers are in the ones in control who
are sending emails, flying half way across the world for conferences, making phone
calls, and running transnational companies. The receivers are the ones sitting in an

American coffee shop, using their laptop made in Japan, drinking coffee from Tanzania,
in a China made coffee cup. Time-space compression refers to the set of processes that
cause the relative distances between places to contract, effectively making such places
grow closer (Warf 2014).!
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Industrialization started in the 18th century. It replaced farming and

agriculture with manufacturing and service activity. One of the biggest movements
towards industrialization happened by Henry Ford in the 1920s. Henry Ford introduced
Fordism. Fordism refers to principles and ideas of mass production of uniform foods and
a market for this, rigid technologies like the assembly line, unvarying work routines, and
increasing productivity through economies of scale, deskilling and intensification (Ritzer
2000). The de-qualifying inherent in the Fordist approach meant a change in the
workers bargaining power. Workers lost their skills and with the introduction of Fordism
they lost their bargaining power. Post-Fordism refers to the social and economic model
which slowly emerged during the technological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. With
increased social speed, it led to Post-Fordism and more flexible capitalism. The
distinctive characteristics of it are as follows: declining interest in mass products,
growing interest in customized products, consumers willing to pay more for high quality
and easily noticeable goods, shorter production runs, flexible production, flexible
management, more capable workers with greater autonomy and responsibility, and
greater differentiation in society and the workplace (Ritzer 2000). Along with PostFordism, we have moved towards deindustrialization. It is argued that the production of
goods, like furniture and aluminum, has shifted to more services, like fast food and
clinics. There has also been an increase in new technologies and in knowledge and
information processing, while scientists, technicians and professionals are growing in
number and importance (Kazi 2011). This means that creative knowledge workers will
take over routinized workers. The postindustrial organization is characterized by
flattening in hierarchy, blurring of boundaries between organizations, an organization
structure that is more integrated and less specialized, lack of rules to govern behavior,
selection of employees based on their potential for creativity, and customized work and
products. Post-Fordism shook the world economic system, now called an integrated
economic global system. Those regions with high labor costs and old technology

experience deindustrialization as new technologies can be more cheaply developed

elsewhere. !
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Madisons east isthmus has transformed from Fordism to Post-Fordism and

industrialization to deindustrialization. Over the past century it has been observed for its
movement of industrialization to dendustrialization, economic restructuring, and how it
has shared interconnections through out the world. The Badger State Shoe Company
was built in 1910 and was located on the corner of East Dayton Street and North Blount
Street. It used
Fordism as its
main
manufacturing
strategy and
employed around
250 people
producing more
than 2000 pairs of
shoes per day. As
the company
grew, it needed to
look for ways to
This is the Badger State Shoe Company. This
picture is able to show the many levels of the
building and how each level incorporated a new
and different part of the company.

expand out of Madison. In 1910, the

Chicago and Northwestern Railway
built a depot building in Madison on
the corner of South Blair Street and

Wilson Street. This train depot was located just over a quarter of a mile aways from the
Badger State Shoe Company. With access to transportation, Madisons shoe company
was able to ship shoes to Chicago, which then shipped the shoes over seas to other
countries around the world. If the shoe company was still around today, its
interconnections would be spread far. New technology would enable faster
communication, faster production and easier access to other parts of the world. Today, !

we are living in an era of Post-Fordism and companies now look for the most
inexpensive places to produce goods and services.!
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Above is a side view of the Railway station. In the lower right corner you
can see the railroad tracks which were used to transport goods to other
parts of America.

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The global south is now the main producer of goods. Countries in the global

south, like Asia, can produce at a lower cost and can employ workers at a lower cost
and because of these main reasons companies have moved production to the south.
When comparing Madison to Asia one can discover how different they are from each
other. In Asia, some workers earn $0.45 per hour while in America there is a minimum
wage of $7.25. Instead of having manufacturers in Madison export goods, things are
being imported because the price of manufacturing is so much lower in Asia. Objects
being sold in the stores on State Street or in the east isthmus are from Thailand, China,
Japan. And those objects have parts from India, Mexico, or Africa. Companies are
always looking for the place where raw material and labor is cheaper.!
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Globalization has transformed the world in ways of communication and

transportation. Communication and transportation is becoming more assessable,

allowing one to find new and easier ways of creating or doing something faster.

Madisons east isthmus has followed the patterns and has expanded outward past
industrialization and Fordism. Madison has been connected through out the world by
exporting services and importing products from China, Japan, and Africa. All parts of the
world take place in Globalization, but every place contributes in their own way.!

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Bibliography !

Clegg, S. Foucault, Power and Organizations. In McKinlay, A. & Starkey, K. (eds.). (2000).!
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Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of!
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Self. London: Sage Publications. 1998.!

Deetz, S. Discursive Formations, Strategized Subordination and Self-surveillance. In McKinlay,!

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A. & Starkey, K. (eds.). (2000). Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From!
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Panopticon to Technologies of Self. London: Sage Publications. 1998.!

Massey, Doreen. A Place in the World?: Places, Cultures and Globalization. Oxford: Oxford!
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University Press in Association with the Open University. 1995.!

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Ritzer, G. The McDonaldization of Society. California: Pine Forge Press. 2000.!
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Rose, N. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. New York: Routledge. 1990.!
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Thomas, F. One Market Under God. London: Seeker & Warburg. 2000.!