The Impact of Globalization on Highwood, Illinois

     Although one may not expect a city of only 5,000 residents located on the North shore of Chicago to show much evidence of international influence, the history of Highwood, Illinois has a rich multicultural heritage that is reflected in its mix of foreign-born and immigrant-descended residents and their restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses which have put Highwood's economic success level on par with that of the mostly white and Jewish communities around it.

     In 2000, the population of Highwood was 4,143. It is located in southeastern Lake County, 28 miles north of downtown Chicago. The City of Highwood is connected to all cities on the shore of Lake Michigan from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Chicago by the Metra / Union Pacific North Line. It is bordered by Lake Forest to the northwest, Fort Sheridan to the northeast, and Highland Park to the south.

     Highwood was founded in the 1880s by Swedish settlers. Phone service in Highwood began in the 1930s, and cars became available in the 1940s, though they were difficult to afford during the war.

     Today, 38.6% of Highwood residents are foreign-born and 38.2% are Hispanics of any race. Italian immigration to the city began in the early years of the 1900s decade, peaked during World War II, decreased dramatically in the late 1940s, and rose again in the 1960s. Highwood has been importing pasta, olive oil, cookies, candy, and panatone from Italy since before the 1930s. The city hosts the annual Highwood Days in August, which began as an Italian cultural celebration in the 1980s.

     The economic blending between Highwood and the affluent, predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Highland Park has become more apparent since World War II through the 1960s, when Highwood experienced a business renaissance as several dozen taverns were replaces by better buildings occupied by restaurants. Since then, Highwood has seen an increase in white residents and property values. Over the last five to seven years, several antique stores and art galleries have opened.

     In the mid-1950s, Highwood's numerous Italian-owned landscaping companies, of which today there are at least five, began hiring Mexican immigrants. The influx of Mexican immigrants to Highwood has spread to Highland Park and Lake Forest. There is also a significant Mexican population in North Chicago, ten miles north of Highwood.

     Most Highwood residents work within the city, although train service to Kenosha and Chicago is readily available as it goes straight through the center of the town, which is less than one square mile in area. In the 1930s, many people living in Highwood worked as housekeepers and gardeners for residents of Lake Forest, Highland Park, and Lake Bluff. Today the most common occupations are landscaping, carpentry, stone masonry, electrician work, food service, plumbing, and family businesses such as auto body shops.

Today, downtown Highwood has many Mexican- and Italian-owned grocery stores and restaurants. There are two Mexican-owned grocery stores, called “mini-supers,” including one that cooks food to order. There are currently three Italian-owned grocery stores - one of which is a butcher shop that has been in business for 35 years – another is a bakery, and two of them make food to order or to go.

     There are three or four Mexican-owned restaurants, which mostly employ Mexican cooks, busboys, and wait staff. There are at least nine Italian-owned restaurants, some of which employ Mexican cooks and busboys. The wait staff, hosts, and bartenders at restaurants and bars in Highwood are mostly Italian or white.

     The Walgreen's store in Highwood offers specialty items that most other Walgreen's would not have, such as Mexican candy, pastries made by Mexico-based company Bimbo, and El Milagro tortilla chips. Walgreen's was built after Highwood's main pharmacy and convenience store, Laegler's Pharmacy, closed after about a hundred years of operation. The owner, William Laegler, became a pharmacist at Walgreen's. In Laegler's place is an upscale Italian-owned restaurant called Miramar.

     Gabe Viti, the owner of Miramar – and Froggy's, which serves French cuisine – opened a Mexican restaurant called Pancho Viti, but it was unsuccessful and closed after several years. There is also a Chinese restaurant and a Greek restaurant called Yianni's Opa, which closed last year after about ten years of operation.

     North Shore Estates is a 200,000 square-foot, 252-unit apartment property comprised of three four-story midrise apartment buildings located on the northern edge of Highwood's business district. It houses several hundred, perhaps a thousand residents. Since the early 1980s, the building has been known to be overcrowded and there are numerous health and safety concerns. What to do about the building has been a topic of concern in City Hall for the past few years. The building may be sold, but citizens have voiced their concern for the health of the residents as this would displace about 20% of Highwood's work force.

Another apartment complex north of North Shore Estates along Sheridan Road is the nearby Hotel Moraine, which has closed and is planned to be torn down and replaced by a condominium with retail space on the bottom floor, although logistical and population-density issues slow its development.

     Across Sheridan Road from northern Highwood is the south end of the U.S. Army base Fort Sheridan. Fort Sheridan and Highwood belong to North Shore School District 112, which today includes Oak Terrace Elementary and Indian Trail School, which teach kindergarten through fifth grade, and Elm Place Middle School, which teaches sixth through eighth grade. Students attend high school in neighboring Highland Park. St. James Catholic School, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade, has been open for at least 75 years. It has been developed since its construction, adding new classrooms and converting old classrooms into rental spaces for events.

     After about a hundred years of operation, Oak Terrace School was rebuilt as Oak Terrace Elementary in 1999 and 2000 and has since become a dual language magnet school, owing to the increase in Mexican immigration to Highwood. Fifty-two point one percent of Highwood residents over 5 years old speak a language other than English at home. For each grade, the school offers one English-only class and one or several dual Spanish and English classes. As the grades advance, Spanish and English use in the classroom is blended. Kindergarten dual Spanish and English classes begin with Spanish immersion.

     Recently, there has been an increase in the number of white students enrolled at Oak Terrace Elementary, the dual-language elementary school, as non-Spanish-speaking residents have become aware and have realized the need for their children to be aware of the Spanish language. Some residents believe that Oak Terrace's emphasis on dual language skills causes the content to be covered less in-depth. Sherwood School in Highland Park also offers dual language classes. Residents are free to choose which of Highwood's elementary schools their children attend.

     In a study of Highwood, Illinois, one can find evidence of influence from Mexico, China, and most of Western Europe including Italy, France, and Sweden. It has been active in trade with Italy for at least 75 years. Residents celebrate their Italian heritage on an annual basis, and Hispanic heritage is reflected in one of its educational institutions, each contributing to the prevalence of multilingual people in the area. Highwood's status as a diverse immigrant neighborhood has shaped its distinct identity among cities on the North Shore for over one hundred years.

Written in February 2008 for a course on geography,

Edited in July 2014

Dennis Altman's "Global Sex" from a Sociological Perspective

     According to Global Sex author Dennis Altman, there have been arguments that globalization is not a new phenomenon; that it began, some say, as long ago as the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. 

     Throughout history, as travel and communication became easier, the world became more connected and ideas spread more quickly. The difference is that these days, Altman quotes David Held as saying, “What is new about the modern global system is the chronic intensification of patterns of interconnectedness mediated by such phenomena as the modern communications industry and new information technology… through… technological, organizational, administrative and legal [dimensions of interconnectedness].” Faster modes of transportation such as trains and airplanes, and faster modes of communication such as the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet, replaced and built on each other, allowing globalization to occur quickly.

     Globalization is rapidly becoming a reality and we are seeing the Americanization of the rest of the world. Altman mentions that people, art, and fashions often do not become popular until they are associated with something American, and that American films and the English language are widespread and popular. Globalization does not mean the eradication of local cultures because, Altman argues, other popular cultures besides the American culture flourish, such as African music, Mexican soap operas, Indian films, and “television in most countries is dominated by locally produced shows….” Cultures often retain their identities and customs even though they are influenced, or even taken over, by other cultures. Altman claims that “almost all of us remain linked to particular places, even if we may also feel part of communities which are not primarily defined by a shared space.”

     The three main socioeconomic factors that create the contexts in which sexual acts and identities occur, according to Dennis Altman, are the economic, the cultural, and the political.

     Altman exemplifies the effects of economy on sex by noting that as cultures trade with each other and there is more contact between the two peoples, they see the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. This can be seen in the case of the spread of syphilis from North America to Europe after Columbus’s contact with North America. Altman also mentions prostitution “Japan established brothels through east Asia to accommodate the expansion of Japanese business….” This shows how the development of the international economy and the expansion of trade have affected sexuality and affected people’s personal lives.

      According to Altman, “Sexual mores and values have constantly changed as societies have come in contact with outside influences….” He mentions an opinion, held by a person in Japan, that introducing the birth control pill into that country would “undermine Japanese social stability.” Altman notes that Ronald Ingelhart has observed that many countries have shifted toward “a more permissive view on abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and extramarital sex.” As outside influences permeate a local culture, that culture gets exposed to alternative attitudes on sexual behavior.

     Political issues relating to sex such as the legalization of gay marriage, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the push for anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation are discussed in government around the world, in places such as Namibia, South Africa, Fiji, and Mexico. Altman mentions the case in which “the Namibian high court… ruled that a homosexual relationship should enjoy legal equality.” He also connects the political regimes and relative wealth of Singapore and the Philippines to the size of their gay cultures.

     According to Dennis Altman, “growing affluence allows – and forces – new ways of organizing ‘private’ life… as sexuality is increasingly commodified.” He supports this claim with the example of how sexuality was affected by the expansion of Europe and Japan through imperialism. For example, syphilis spread after Columbus’s contact with North America. Also, Japan established brothels in the areas of east Asia that it conquered “to accommodate the expansion of Japanese business.” Altman also argues that the conquerors and the conquered began to affect each other in ways other than economically, but also in terms of sexuality. He gives the example of Josephine Baker, Carmen Miranda, Alicia Parla, and reggae music, which contributed to the stereotype relating African-Americans and Hispanics to sex, which affected sexuality among white Americans by creating in them an association between the exotic and the erotic. Also, he says that colonizing states contribute to the affluence of the conquered peoples, which sometimes causes the conquered peoples’ traditional family structures to break down.

Altman says “images of different sexualities are rapidly diffused across the world, often to be confronted by religious and nationalist movements.” In this age in which most cultures embrace modernity, there are a few that openly reject it – namely the Lubavitchers, the Amish, and the Taliban – who still have patriarchal attitudes toward women and children. Because the definition of modernity is constantly changing, the change in sexual attitudes can be seen in most cultures to be progressing still. For example, in Japan, a sort of sexual revolution has been taking place for several decades, and more women are questioning their roles as housewives and considering full-time jobs, are more likely “to reject arranged marriages, initiate divorces, and pursue cases of sexual harassment and rape.”

Altman says that “state regulation plays a crucial role in determining the possible forms of sexual expression.” He gives the example of reproductive laws in China and Ireland. China’s one-child policy, in one case, resulted in a woman who was pregnant for the second time to be deported and forced to have an abortion. That law also causes high rates of infanticide in China. Ireland’s strict laws on abortion cause Irish women to go to Britain in order to have reproductive freedom. In countries fortunate enough to have governments that allow people to vote so that the laws reflect popular values, problems like this are becoming less common. Countries such as the United States, Namibia, South Africa, Fiji, and Mexico have pushed for laws against discrimination by sexual orientation, and gay marriage is becoming legal in more countries.

     In chapter 4 of Global Sex, Altman says “the growing internationalization of trade in both sex and drugs has played a major role in the diffusion of HIV….” He goes on to say that it has been argued that “patterns of use of illicit drugs are becoming globalized and ‘standardized,’ leading to the rapid spread of HIV in countries in both Southeast Asia and South America where the U.S.-led ‘war on drugs’ has meant injecting practices have partly replaced traditional opium smoking.”

     Awareness of HIV/AIDS is also an effect of globalization, as evidenced by the popularity of American films about people with AIDS, and the use of the red ribbon and the AIDS quilt as symbols of awareness. Altman references the “considerable amount of literary and theatrical response to the [AIDS] epidemic” in Latin America as evidence of the awareness of the disease’s link to globalization. He notes that condom use has also spread throughout the world.

     Though, through contact between cultures, globalization has facilitated the spread of diseases such as AIDS and syphilis (as mentioned in the chapter on socioeconomic factors of sex), globalization also facilitates communication between cultures, allowing information on HIV/AIDS and awareness of the disease to spread as well.

This essay was originally written in October 2006 as a college essay.

For more entries on gender, sexuality, and L.G.B.T.Q. issues, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/justice-stephen-breyer-and-recognition.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/writing-of-michel-foucault-as-radical.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/personal-and-political-connotations-of.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-role-of-aswpl-and-christian.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-policies-for-2012-us-house.html