Bac Anglais : Les 4 Notions: espaces et échanges, lieux et formes de pouvoir, Mythes et Héros et l'idée de progrès

SPACES AND EXCHANGES

I'm going to talk about the notion Spaces and exchanges. To begin with, I'd like to give a definition of exchange. An exchange is the act of giving or receiving something in substitution for something else. In today’s modern-day world these exchanges can take several forms: economic – work exchanges, exchange of goods, trading across borders, cultural – exchange of ideas, information, education, movement of people – immigration, student exchanges, gap years… Our modern-day world is changing quickly and seems to be a smaller place due to improvements in technology and communication. Information exchange has become easier thanks to the internet and international trade has enabled us to expand our markets for goods and services that might not have been available to us. These different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have transformed and characterized our modern-day world – sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

So, How those last decades improvements have affected the society we live in ?

Firstly, the article name "Black Britons" from the Guardian shows the dark side of the recent immigration in Britain. This paper deals with the integration of people of African and Caribbean heritage in Britain since the Second World War… To begin with, their ties with their country of origin were still strong… There followed a period when they felt more black than British but nowadays they feel no distinction between their ethnicity and their nationality… However, in the meantime, many British people feel closer to their region or to Europe, so ties between the countries of the union are weakening… In fact, the strongest defenders of the union in the future may turn out to be black Britons who have no long-standing regional roots… So the immigration rather than creating connections between the different cultures is just tearing apart Great Britain and this type of issue isn't local. The text "Welcome to the 21st century" is an extract from Gavin Elser's bester seller A scandalous man. It shows an example of how globalization is hurting the workers because of the delocalization of manufactures in foreign countries mainly Asian ones. In this extract, Harry a translator is helping out a multinational corporation represented by a cynical lawyer to buy a sizeable slice of Czech economy which has led to the loss of thousands of jobs in Czech republic. And this kind of issues is causing a substantial increase of the joblessness rate which leads in protests and even riots. Also, we can see that globalization does not promote an equitable way all countries, and Western countries exchange the wealth among themselves. It results in more harmful trade from southern country who try to integrate the process. Thus Mauritania has become the "dustbin" of the world, hosting daily tons of waste. This earned to its capital city Nouachokk the nickname of dirtiest city in the world.

But let's not forget that this evolution also has a bright side. "Challenges" an extract from Vikram Seth novel is a fitting example. On this text, an Indian lad from a poor background has won a scholarship for a prestigious public school in England and it's an opportunity for him to improve his quality life because maybe if he would've stayed in his home country studying there he won't be able to reach any of his life’s goal.

To put it in a nutshell, the last year’s improvements have affected our society in both a positive and a negative way. It may causes joblessness mostly in the occidental part of the world and some tensions that exist between the ethnic groups cohabiting together but globalization is extremely useful as it brings multiculturalism and economic development.

Idea of progress

The Idea of Progress is the idea that advances in technology, science, and social organization can produce an improvement in the human condition. However, the idea of progress is still debated between those who consider that it’s beneficial and those for whom it’s harmful. Now, I propose we look at a question : « Should we fear progress ? »

First of all, progress brings concrete benefits. Let’s take a look at India to illustrate that. India has become one of the most renowned IT hubs in the world. Two of India’s major cities, Hyderabad and Bangalore, have made a name for themselves based largely on their IT companies’ presence. Today, India has emerged as one of the most promising IT export countries. No city exemplifies India's growth potential better than Bangalore. The city, appropriately called the 'science and technology capital of India,' houses some of the leading institutions in the world such as the Indian Institute of Science, Indian Space Research Organization , and a range of corporations engaged in Information Technology, Biotechnology, Life Sciences, Engineering and Machine Tools. No wonder then, that some of the biggest multinational corporations like Google or Apple have set up research laboratories in Bangalore. This technological progress has enabled India to create tens of thousands jobs. Moreover, Indians citizens who made their study abroad come back more often in India because they find the necessary opportunities and a good enough standard of living. Another example of the positive side of progress is that any citizen around the world can now record events that they think are important with their mobile phone or iPad. Such devices have empowered citizens who are now also able to broadcast the events they witness, sell their pictures or films to TV channels or post them on social networks for example. Thanks to the ubiquitous mobile phone, some citizens now act as amateur reporters. we see that in the document empowered citizens, and that reflect perfectly how technological progress leads to social progress.

On the other hand, progress may have many dangers and setbacks. For example, the Bangladeshi economist Muhamad Yunus won the nobel peace prize thanks to the concept he developed : the microfinance and its micro credits that consists in granting small loans to people who can’t get loans from traditional banks because they are too poor. This system has enabled many Indian people and particularly Dalit women to start their own enterprise. The microcredit was designed to help to give poor people some income and control over their lives, but now the average debt for a Dalit woman in some India’s villages is a thousand pounds and they are so poor that the money borrowed simply helps them to survive from day-to-day as we saw

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