Rarely has there been as neat a fit between a book’s subject and its author’s biography as in "Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization" by Nayan Chanda. It’s easy to see why the subject fascinates Chanda; he’s a self-proclaimed Francophile(崇拜法国的人) of South Asian origin, who studied French in Calcutta, then took courses on China in Paris, ran a magazine in Hong Kong and ended up launching an online journal devoted to globalization at a venerable Ivy League institution. And in this engaging ysis, he answers such intriguing questions as" How did the coffee bean, first grown only in Ethiopia, end up in our coffee cups after a journey through Java and Colombia"
In examining these specific questions -- and larger ones about how the world is interconnected m Chanda does not emphasize his own experiences. But when appropriate, he effectively uses small, personal details to cut very big social, economic, cultural and sometimes biological processes down to size. He shows how close scrutiny of the iPod he gave his son as a birthday present can reveal much about the multinational origins of such objects. It was officially touted as" designed" by an American company and "assembled in China"; he found that it actually contained component parts and software with ties to India, Japan, South Korea and Scotland. And he marvels at the speed with which it traveled from Shanghai to New haven via Alaska and Indiana, as well as at his ability to track its progress thanks to bar codes.
The debate over globalization has grown so polarized that many readers are probably itching to know whether Chanda belongs in the" pro" or" anti" camp. One theme of "Bound Together" is that thinking in these terms doesn’t make sense. Those who gather at what are somewhat misleadingly called" anti- globalization" rallies, after all, don’t oppose all the ways the world is shrinking. And their campaigns make use of many technologies (notably the Internet) that are crucial to 21st-century-style globalization.
Indeed, Chanda’s stand on the subject might be called that of a cautiously optimistic fatalist. He asserts that the only reasonable response to globalization is twofold: accept that the world is not going to stop shrinking and figure out ways to maximize the positive and minimize the negative effects. He acknowledges the downsides of globalization (social inequities, the spread of new diseases and so on), yet argues that in many ways being "bound together" ever more tightly can ultimately be a good thing, benefiting more and more individuals and groups.
This is a book filled with fascinating information. Even readers who disagree with his claims will come away with a host of new facts to draw upon. They will also learn a lot about the history and deployment of the term globalization, to which Chanda devotes an excellent chapter. In addition, many will never look at an iPod in quite the same way again.
We can learn from the last paragraph that ______.