Globalization and its Implications

by Benjamin Todd

General Kurtz muttered “the horror…the horror” at the end of Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novel Heart of Darkness. Widely regarded as a literary masterpiece, Joseph Conrad’s novel tells the story of Marlow sailing up the Congo River to find the lost General Kurtz. Heart of Darkness is set against the backdrop of what was then the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, the unrest, brutality, exploitation, and “horror” that Conrad describes in his novel are unfortunately not a thing of the past. Modern day DRC is still the scene of unrest and civil war with various armed groups fighting the government and each other. Unlike the Congo of Conrad’s day, the current violence is between ethnic groups, political factions, and nations, and is fueled by modern weapons and financed by the exploitation of the DRC‘s natural resources. This paper explores the relationship of conflict commodities, global markets, and the DRC‘s continuing civil war. In particular, the author focuses on the Columbite-Tantalum (coltan) boom the DRC experienced between 1999 and 2000.

by Eleanor Cambridge

Trade policies that accelerate the globalization of goods and services also increase the international migration of college-educated people from less-developed nations to industrialized nations. This “brain drain,” or loss of human capital, impairs the progress of less-developed nations and impedes their ability to compete in the global marketplace. For developing nations seeking to integrate into the global market, neoliberal reforms that require a reduction of government spending on education and a redirection of remaining education spending to the primary grades correlate to a reduction in brain drain.