Spaces and Exchanges

Anglais Oral

Im going to talk about the notion of spaces and exchanges. Exchanges or flows can be a continuous movement or circulation, all types of exchanges (people, trade, media...) for example between poor and rich countries ; or also a general tendency, especially related to work. I will rely on 3 documents : Money by Benjamin Zephaniak, Feed the world by Bansky and Nighthawks from The Flat World by Thomas L. Friedman. The first document, Money, is a poem by Benjamin Zephaniak, a famous British dub-poet. This poem deals with the power of money and addresses to poor and uneducated people. In the first part, the author speak about the effects of money on people, he say that money make people feel superior, scornful and boastful. Rich people become vain, superficial, selfish, and greedy. On the contrary, he say poor people are rejected, put aside and feel inferior, depressed. So according to him money is the root of all evil : it triggers problems in society, people with money live an artificial life with wrong values. In the second part, he talks about the consequences in the 3rd world. He thinks that if money is shared equally, everyone can be happy because food is the most important thing to live and people should concentrate on the bare necessities. People from emerging countries are the first victims of peoples greed and the poet says that politicians and spies are responsible for the situation and conspire to make to poor poorer. In the last part, he talks about the reasons for this situation and say globalization and capitalism are the causes of these problems, there is an economic war between the North and the South. He uses words belonging to the lexical field of violence like kills, war, and shots. In conclusion, this poem says that they are too many differences between the poor and the rich because of money. In this situation they is no exchange between them. Money creates a two-tier society where the haves and the have-nots are opposed. However, money is originally meant to facilitate exchanges : the problem comes from the fact that money is currently kept by the minority. This poem raises the question of the use of money and the relation between people. Then, in the cartoon Feed the world by Banksy, we can see a couple of obese and wealthy Westerners dragged by a skinny black child. They may be on holidays in a poor emerging country : this picture alludes to mass tourism and especially to slum tourism. The rich couple is drawn with colors whereas the child and the cart are in grey, so we feel like the cartoonist wants to show that the couple isnt in the right environment and that they are riches in a poor land. He points to the double-edged problems of this tourism : it is beneficial for the economy but it favors child labor. The last document : Nighthawks is an extract from The Flat World ,which refers to globalization, by Thomas L. Friedman. It is a letter written by Bill Brody, an American former radiologist who is now the dean of a medicine university, to Friedman. The narrator explains a new trend in medicine : American radiologists outsource their work to India and to Australia. Since they use teleradiology, they can have their scans read by Indian or Australian doctors when they dont have enough staff. They resort to outsourcing when it is nighttime in the US (its then daytime in India and Australia), thats why Indian and Australian doctor are called nighthawks. It enable them to have a quicker diagnosis, moreover, doctors dont have to do night shifts (work at night) anymore, and then hospital can cut costs and save money. As for Australian and Indian doctors, they also have a fair share of those exchanges. Its a win-win relation. The narrator insists that its only good if every doctor has the same degree. This should lead to the standardization of education. In this text, globalization is shown quite positively since it enables everyone to have a better life. We usually have a negative image of this when rich companies take advantage of poor people in emerging countries and when they lower the living conditions. To conclude, we saw that money can trigger a lot of problems if it isnt used properly like an economic war between North and South, the greed of rich people enhance the poverty in the emerging countries. If tourism can boost the economy of these countries, it favors child labor so it is a double-edged solution. But globalization which is usually seen negatively can have some advantage like to lead the same standards in education across the world.