Scale was defined at the beginning of the chapter as the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole. Geographers are especially concerned with contrasts between the local scale and the global scale.

Scale is an increasingly important concept in geography because of globalization, which is a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something worldwide in scope. Globalization means that the scale of the world is shrinking—not literally in size, of course, but in the ability of a person, an object, or an idea to interact with a person, an object, or an idea in another place.

At the same time, geographers recognize the increasing importance of the local scale. In the face of globalization, groups of people are preserving and reviving distinctive cultural characteristics and implementing distinctive economic practices.

Scale & Cultural Change

Geographers observe that increasingly uniform cultural preferences produce uniform “global” landscapes of material artifacts and cultural values. Fast-food restaurants, service stations, and retail chains deliberately create a visual appearance that varies among locations as little as possible. That way, customers know what to expect, regardless of where in the world they happen to be.

Underlying the uniform cultural landscape is globalization of cultural beliefs and forms, especially religion and language. Africans, in particular, have moved away from traditional religions and have adopted Christianity or Islam, religions shared with hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Globalization requires a form of common communication, and the English language is increasingly playing that role.

As more people become aware of elements of global culture and aspire to possess them, local cultural beliefs, forms, and traits may be practiced less often. The survival of a local culture’s unique characteristics may be threatened by interaction with such social customs as wearing jeans and Nike shoes, consuming Coca-Cola and McDonald’s hamburgers, and communicating using cell phones and computers.

Yet despite globalization, cultural differences among places not only persist but actually flourish in many places. Global standardization of products does not mean that everyone wants to buy the same things. The communications revolution that promotes globalization of culture also permits preservation of cultural diversity. TV, for example, was once limited to a handful of channels displaying one set of cultural values. With the distribution of programming through cable, satellite, and Internet, people now can choose from hundreds of programs in many languages.

With the globalization of communications, people in two distant places can watch the same TV program. At the same time, with the fragmentation of the broadcasting market, two people in the same house can watch different programs. Groups of people on every continent may aspire to wear jeans, but they might live in a situation where it is prohibited by cultural values or economic realities.

Scale & Economic Change

A few people living in very remote regions of the world may be able to provide all of their daily necessities. But most economic activities undertaken in one region are influenced by interaction with decision-makers located elsewhere. The choice of crop is influenced by demand and prices set in global markets. The factory is located to facilitate bringing in raw materials and shipping out products to the markets.

Globalization of the economy has been led primarily by transnational corporations, sometimes called multinational corporations. A transnational corporation conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters and principal shareholders are located. Examples include Ford

Global Economy: Ford Motor Company Sales and Vehicle Assembly Plants

(a) Sales and vehicle assembly plants. (b) Corporate logo on a dealer in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Global Economy: Mcdonald’s

(a) Number of restaurants per country. (b) Corporate logo, Fukuyama, Japan.

Every place in the world is part of the global economy, but globalization has led to more specialization at the local level. Each place plays a distinctive role, based on its local assets, as assessed by transnational corporations. A locality may be especially suitable for a transnational corporation to conduct research, to develop new engineering systems, to extract raw materials, to produce parts, to store finished products, to sell them, or to manage operations. In a global economy, transnational corporations remain competitive by correctly identifying the optimal location for each of these activities. Factories are closed in some locations and opened in others.

Changes in production have led to a spatial division of labor in which a region’s workers specialize in particular tasks. Transnationals decide where to produce things in response to characteristics of the local labor force, such as level of skills, prevailing wage rates, and attitudes toward unions. Transnationals may close factories in locations with high wage rates and strong labor unions. Particular production tasks are clustered in specific geographic areas.