• Globalization is perhaps the most potent source of cultural, economic, political and social change within states and between them in the world today. It can be thought of as a process by which countries come closer together through increasing contact, communication and trade to create a single global system in which developments in one part of the world become more likely to affect individuals and communities in other parts of the world. Globalization is not a new phenomenon in human experience, but its contemporary scale and reach are unprecedented. More than in the past, for example, economic crisis in the United States leaves no part of the world untouched because national financial markets and trading systems have grown highly interdependent.
  • Given that globalization is a complex set of processes that affect virtually all facets of our daily lives—the arts, culture, economics, politics, immigration, climate, health—the globalization studies major at Ohio State is interdisciplinary in character, encouraging students to adopt a multiplicity of humanistic, social scientific and scientific perspectives on the forms that globalization takes, the forces that shape them, their historical origins, and their impacts on all aspects of the lives of individuals and communities. These impacts range across culture and the arts through economic interdependence to climate change and disease management. The major will help students to understand better our increasingly multicultural society and will provide them with knowledge relevant to a wide variety of careers.