Photo Essay Madison, WI

8/10/2019 Photo Essay Madison, WI

1/6

Sara WardenInternational Studies 101October 5, 2014

The Spreading Of Globalization

Today, Madison, Wisconsin is recognized for its capitol building, its busy city as a

college town and its ability to provide the largest producer-only farmers market in the

United States. But 100 years ago Madison was booming with manufacturing

businesses; like the Badger State Shoe Company. Over many decades Madison has

shifted from a manufacturing based city to a service sector economic base. Like many

other areas in the world, Madison underwent and is still undergoing an economic

restructuring. Along with economic restructuring Madison is being transformed by

interconnections through out the world being connected by trains, barges, and planes.

One can say Madison has Globalized over the years, but how, and why? Madisons east

isthmus has transformed substantially over the years and by looking at Globalization

one can see the changes Madison has made over the past century.

Everyones sense of place will be different. People will interpret, experience, and

see theirs differently than others. The location might be the same, but the time and

reaction may be different. Having a sense of place means having a sense of

connection. Ones connection to the city, to the person standing next to them, to the

world, or to their community all depends on how someone defines their own sense of

place. A sense of place can provide stability and a source of unproblematical

identity (Massey). But can one connect a sense of place with the changing time-space

compression? Time-space compression is broken into two parts; time and space. Time

relates to how people and places are moving and proceeding forward while space

relates to how people and places counterbalance and react. Similar to a sense of

place, no person has the same feeling or meaning of time-space compression. Time-

Space differs on class, race, religion, location, and all other social factors. Some social

classes give time-space while others receive. The givers are in the ones in control who

are sending emails, flying half way across the world for conferences, making phone

calls, and running transnational companies. The receivers are the ones sitting in an


2/6

American coffee shop, using their laptop made in Japan, drinking coffee from Tanzania,

in a China made coffee cup. Time-space compression refers to the set of processes that

cause the relative distances between places to contract, effectively making such places

grow closer (Warf 2014).

Industrialization started in the 18th century. It replaced farming and

agriculture with manufacturing and service activity. One of the biggest movements

towards industrialization happened by Henry Ford in the 1920s. Henry Ford introduced

Fordism. Fordism refers to principles and ideas of mass production of uniform foods and

a market for this, rigid technologies like the assembly line, unvarying work routines, and

increasing productivity through economies of scale, deskilling and intensification (Ritzer

2000). The de-qualifying inherent in the Fordist approach meant a change in the

workers bargaining power. Workers lost their skills and with the introduction of Fordism

they lost their bargaining power. Post-Fordism refers to the social and economic model

which slowly emerged during the technological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. With

increased social speed, it led to Post-Fordism and more flexible capitalism. The

distinctive characteristics of it are as follows: declining interest in mass products,

growing interest in customized products, consumers willing to pay more for high quality

and easily noticeable goods, shorter production runs, flexible production, flexible

management, more capable workers with greater autonomy and responsibility, andgreater differentiation in society and the workplace (Ritzer 2000). Along with Post-

Fordism, we have moved towards deindustrialization. It is argued that the production of

goods, like furniture and aluminum, has shifted to more services, like fast food and

clinics. There has also been an increase in new technologies and in knowledge and

information processing, while scientists, technicians and professionals are growing in

number and importance (Kazi 2011). This means that creative knowledge workers will

take over routinized workers. The postindustrial organization is characterized by

flattening in hierarchy, blurring of boundaries between organizations, an organization

structure that is more integrated and less specialized, lack of rules to govern behavior,

selection of employees based on their potential for creativity, and customized work and

products. Post-Fordism shook the world economic system, now called an integrated

economic global system. Those regions with high labor costs and old technology


3/6

experience deindustrialization as new technologies can be more cheaply developed

elsewhere.

Madisons east isthmus has transformed from Fordism to Post-Fordism and

industrialization to deindustrialization. Over the past century it has been observed for its

movement of industrialization to dendustrialization, economic restructuring, and how it

has shared interconnections through out the world. The Badger State Shoe Company

was built in 1910 and was located on the corner of East Dayton Street and North Blount

Street. It used

Fordism as its

main

manufacturing

strategy and

employed around

250 people

producing more

than 2000 pairs of

shoes per day. As

the company

grew, it needed tolook for ways to

expand out of Madison. In 1910, the

Chicago and Northwestern Railway

built a depot building in Madison on

the corner of South Blair Street and

Wilson Street. This train depot was located just over a quarter of a mile aways from the

Badger State Shoe Company. With access to transportation, Madisons shoe company

was able to ship shoes to Chicago, which then shipped the shoes over seas to other

countries around the world. If the shoe company was still around today, its

interconnections would be spread far. New technology would enable faster

communication, faster production and easier access to other parts of the world. Today,

This is the Badger State Shoe Company. Thispicture is able to show the many levels of thebuilding and how each level incorporated a newand different part of the company.


4/6

we are living in an era of Post-Fordism and companies now look for the most

inexpensive places to produce goods and services.

The global south is now the main producer of goods. Countries in the globalsouth, like Asia, can produce at a lower cost and can employ workers at a lower cost

and because of these main reasons companies have moved production to the south.

When comparing Madison to Asia one can discover how different they are from each

other. In Asia, some workers earn $0.45 per hour while in America there is a minimum

wage of $7.25. Instead of having manufacturers in Madison export goods, things are

being imported because the price of manufacturing is so much lower in Asia. Objects

being sold in the stores on State Street or in the east isthmus are from Thailand, China,

Japan. And those objects have parts from India, Mexico, or Africa. Companies are

always looking for the place where raw material and labor is cheaper.

Globalization has transformed the world in ways of communication and

transportation. Communication and transportation is becoming more assessable,

allowing one to find new and easier ways of creating or doing something faster.

Above is a side view of the Railway station. In the lower right corner youcan see the railroad tracks which were used to transport goods to otherarts of America.


5/6

Madisons east isthmus has followed the patterns and has expanded outward past

industrialization and Fordism. Madison has been connected through out the world by

exporting services and importing products from China, Japan, and Africa. All parts of the

world take place in Globalization, but every place contributes in their own way.


6/6

Bibliography

Clegg, S. Foucault, Power and Organizations. In McKinlay, A. & Starkey, K. (eds.). (2000).

Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of

Self. London: Sage Publications. 1998.

Deetz, S. Discursive Formations, Strategized Subordination and Self-surveillance. In McKinlay,

A. & Starkey, K. (eds.). (2000). Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From

Panopticon to Technologies of Self. London: Sage Publications. 1998.

Massey, Doreen. A Place in the World?: Places, Cultures and Globalization. Oxford: Oxford

University Press in Association with the Open University. 1995.

Ritzer, G. The McDonaldization of Society. California: Pine Forge Press. 2000.

Rose, N. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. New York: Routledge. 1990.

Thomas, F. One Market Under God. London: Seeker & Warburg. 2000.

Documents

Photo Essay Madison, WI