Chapter 24: Accelerating Global Interaction

In the beginning of the article, it starts off talking about the topic of Barbie and Ken. Barbie is meant to be the image of the perfect female body and Ken, the perfect male partner. Yet, they are both unmarried and set an odd example of what a couple should be like to the Muslim community. Compared to Americanized visions of what children should play with at a young age, Iranians have their own vision of Barbie and Ken, Sara and Dara. They are both eight year old twins who seek guidance from their parents in times of need and help finding love. This message is very different from the one that Barbie and Ken tend to express. Sara and Dara reflect the cultural values of the Muslim community, while Barbie and Ken tend to come into play with the Western culture media.

There have been factors have come into play when it comes to global interaction. There are four major processes that helped countries that were beginning to rise: world economy, global feminism, religions with modernity, humankind's enormous impact on the environment. After the World Wars, Cold War, and Great Depression occurred in the world, the economical stand point was at an all time low. Systems such as "Bretton Woods system" helped promote relatively free trade, technology helped the economy by products being produced and sold, this helped decrease the employment rate all over the world. Migrating laborers provided an inexpensive source of labor for their adopted countries. With the United States and Britain coming a halt in power, it gave Asian and African countries a time to catch up. Asian countries such as China and Japan, helped a lot with producing technology, toys, and transportation, they in partnership with the United States were also able to upstage them in their own game.

People started to take resources like fossil fuels and coal in the nineteenth century and oil in the twentieth. These new sources of energy made it possible for modern science and technology increased the production of goods and services. The growth of the population normally didn't change the environment on a large scale level, but since the growing number of the poor and the growing number of the rich consuming resources was creating a dent in the environment around them. The human remaking of the environment also greatly increased the population of cattle, pigs, chickens, rats, and dandelions. The major set back in this was the act that air pollution was starting to become a problem. The release of chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons thinned the ozone layer, which protects the earth from excessive ultraviolet radiation. This reminds me of what we are currently going through in terms of global warming.