The Cost of Globalization

We spoke with Dr. Julian E. Kunnie about his latest book The Cost of Globalization: Dangers to the Earth and Its People. Julian E. Kunnie is a professor of religious, Latin American, Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Arizona. His articles have appeared in the African Studies Review, the Black Scholar, the Journal of African American History, the Journal of the African American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Pan African Studies, and other noted journals and publications. He has traveled extensively doing research, teaching, and lecturing around the world.

Over the past 25 years, numerous books have been written on the advantages and disadvantages of globalization. But the issues arising from rapid global integration have generally been treated in isolation by most academic works. This volume examines the many pitfalls of globalization from the perspective of impoverished and indigenous peoples, including the widening wealth gap, the struggle for restoration of dispossessed lands and cultural rights, global warming and ecological annihilation, and the experiences of women in underdeveloped regions who receive little benefit from their labor and are subject to violence. The United States’ growing prison industrial complex is discussed as an outgrowth of globalization practices that restrict economic mobility. The author concludes with a call for reassessing current ways of living and proposes recreating cultures of conservation and sustainable economies in harmony with the Earth.

Recorded and produced by Amanda Shauger. This piece originally was broadcast on May 24, 2015.