Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
be most connected to New York City, as measured by the
fl ow of producer services. By tracking fl ows, the authors
found that Miami, not Los Angeles, is the U.S. city most
closely linked to Latin America and New York is the sec-
ond most globally linked city in the world (behind London
and ahead of Tokyo). Chicago is also a highly ranked
member of the global city network, coming in seventh.
The researchers found that New York and Chicago stand
apart from other world cities in that these American cit-
ies have greater domestic linkages than global cities in the
Pacifi c Rim or the European Union.
The linkages among global cities provide insights into
the spatial character of the networks that underlie globalized
processes. A multitude of globalized processes such as fi nan-
cial transactions and fl ows (represented here by banking/
fi nance and accounting) occur across the network of global
cities. Similarly, this network refl ects the fl ow of advertising
and marketing consultation services, which in turn refl ects
the fl ow of ideas through the media across the globe.
to Yemen to Iran to Syria and to Libya. Several factors
prompted the revolutions in the region. In Tunisia, a young
man named Hamada Ben
Amor took the stage name of El
Général and posted videos on YouTube and Facebook of
rap songs he wrote in protest of his president and the cor-
ruption rampant in his government (see chapter 4). During
protests in Egypt in spring 2011, El Général's anthems
caught hold and inspired Egyptians to protest, as well.
Social networks , especially Facebook and Twitter,
were credited with making revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt possible. First, through protest rap music and sec-
ondly by constructing and carrying out plans for protest.
In Egypt, a Google employee anonymously created a
Facebook page titled “We are all Khaled Said” in honor of a
young Egyptian businessman who was beaten and killed by
two police offi cers. The page garnered 473,000 supporters,
and it “helped spread the word about the demonstrations
in Egypt, which were ignited after a revolt in neighboring
Tunisia toppled the government there.” (Preston 2011, 1).
Rap or hip hop music were powerful commonalities
among protestors in large part because Islam, the pre-
dominant religion in the region, instructs followers to
learn the Arabic language (chapters 6 and 7). El Général's
raps, spoken in Arabic, were readily understood by Arabic
speakers around the region. In Arabic, El Général rapped,
“My president, your country is dead/ People eat garbage/
Look at what is happening/Misery everywhere/Nowhere
to sleep/I'm speaking for the people who suffer/Ground
under feet.” Another reason El Général's rap music dif-
fused quickly through North Africa and Southwest Asia
was its simplicity and its ability to be fi lmed and posted
with little production cost.
Castells claims that the age of information technology is
more revolutionary than either the advent of the printing
press or the Industrial Revolution. Do you agree with him?
Write an argument in support of your position, drawing on
your understanding of the role of changing geographical cir-
cumstances over the past several hundred years.
Participatory Development
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are nonprofi t
institutions outside of formal governance structures that
are established to promote particular social or humanitar-
ian ends. Each NGO is a social network, where people with
like interests communicate to achieve a goal. A sizeable
community of NGOs is concerned with development, and
in recent decades they have propagated a web of global net-
works in response to the top-down decision making (e.g.,
structural adjustment loans) coming from global organi-
zations dominated by the major state-tied development
institutions (e.g., the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund). As a result of their networks, NGOs have
considerable infl uence on the development landscape.
NGO development networks serve as a counter-
balance to the power of the major decision makers in the
world. The stated goal of many development-oriented
NGOs is to include the voices of the poor and those
directly affected by development, permitting them to
express their opinions and lifestyles. Some NGOs have
been criticized for falling far short of this goal, but devel-
opment networks now make it possible for NGOs in
HOW DO NETWORKS OPERATE
IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD?
The term network defi nes any number of interlink-
ages across the globe, whether transportation, educational,
fi nancial, or social. In this section we examine three types
of networks in the world today: those designed to promote
a social end
, those concerned with the development and
dissemination of information, and those that underlie eco-
nomic exchange. We consi
der both the global and local or
regional scales of activity for each type of network. Within
each type, nodes interact at a global scale, and individuals
have created their own local or regional networks, often in
response to the network operating at the glo
bal scale.
Networks with a Social Focus
In the spring awakening of 2011, Egyptians rose up to pro-
test government repression by President Hosni Mubarak,
who had ruled the country for 29 years. Protests rose
around North Africa and Southwest Asia, from Tun
isia
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