W3 / Anna Carel

World affairs are related to governments and their decision-making, their power and therefore governments enforce their decision and so world affairs follows from them. For example, since Donald Trump is the president of the United States, a lot of serious world affairs were born following his decision as a president.

On another hand, world affairs can be an external event, uncontrollable for governments, who are not powerful but victims in this situation. For example, the refugee’s migration into Europe is external from Europe but they must deal with it and find solutions to house people. Another example is the numerous terrorist attacks in Europe, where countries are victims and struggle to fix the issue.

Lots of media and especially magazines deliver globalization news all over the world. Those world news help world citizens to be aware of what is happening in the world in its global complexity.

From “The Economist” magazines we have read during the course, the main world affairs that are present are Donal Trump running power in United States, North Korea nuclear weapons threats and the world alliances, ISIS terrorist attacks in Europe and the Islamophobia movement, Civil war hitting Middle East and especially Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and the Refugee’s issue in Europe, natural disasters and government’s policies.

On the second plan, we usually can read about Ecology in our daily life and how to be eco-friendly all around the world.

Globalization is the way to link every local events in the world and to bring up each of them to an international level. Globalizing world’s event creates a link between citizens of different countries, and each citizen of the world has access to a globalized information on the media, newspaper, radio… Now it is up to everyone to be interested in it!

World affairs are a transnational and transcultural integration of human through borders. World affairs “increase connectivity and increase glob consciousness” (Robertson and White).

World affairs can be political, economic or cultural, as the Globalization is defined too. Let’s take an example of each one, to see the global impact in the world, and how global a local event can be.

Political world affair

White House officials declared few months ago that Trump wanted to renegotiate Paris Climate agreement before to join it. French President Macron said on the 19th of September that nothing will change. He added that United States will always have the opportunity to join again this agreement if they want. This agreement deals with sustainable development and how companies and citizens can be more eco-friendly every day. The objective of this agreement is to create worldwide rules and then to globalize one unique value all around the world. This is globalization thought politics decision. Here globalization is seen as a common human value and behaviour that links every citizens of the earth.

Economic world affair

On The Economist magazine, I have found an article that deals with women more likely underpaid. This is a good example of a globalization issue in our today’s working world. It joins all women from all countries in the world, and concerns every government’s wage policy. This is a serious issue that is still not solved in the globalized world. As a matter of fact, women are more likely to be less paid than the average, or men… But I think that, even if the road is long, globalization will help to put an end to this phenomenon, as it has already helped a lot.

Cultural world affair

I found a very cultural and global topic on BBC website which deals with the amount of money people spend on their holidays, and especially why people spend so much money at this moment. This is a cultural worldwide phenomenon that strengthen the idea of a globalized world where people act the same. As an example, 74% of American people admitted falling into debt after holidays. I think it is a very global phenomenon, as it represent rare moments in one year of hard work. People save money to spend it on this special and unique moment, rather than spending it all year and have no savings to arrange a trip.

Furthermore, I think that globalization follows from world affairs, because nowadays there are politic, economic and social affairs and alliances that exist between countries from all over the world. So it helped to build a globalized world’s affairs, and bring all local affairs to an international unique one. International affairs created relations between citizens and globalized information.

As well, I think world affairs follow from globalization, because government’s decisions-making have created links between countries since years, and countries are very connected since few years. We cannot talk about world affairs without globalization at the beginning.

World affairs are the homogenization of the current activities in different countries, which bring to a global affair. I think world affairs are part of globalization and that media is, for example, a tool of world affairs to proliferate globalization worldwide. This is a virtuous circle.