Conclusion

At the end of the day, this example shows the complexity of globalization processes. It is not as simple as machines destroying craftsmanship or the workers of Southern countries taking up Nothern jobs. Rather, as Christmas balls craftsmanship was destroyed globally by mechanization, it came to experience a renewal both in the North and the South in the 1990's turning point. This resurgence was also caused by a change in customers taste, which, according to the producers, returned to place high to value hand-crafted work. This social change profited both Firozabad and Meisenthal. Of course, the changes in the flows of goods and capital from India to Europe - as India was between the late 19th and early 20th century flooded with European glass products and can now export to Europe - show a reconfiguration of exchanges in favour of the southern countries. But, here again, things are more complex than anything as simple as an eventual revenge of the South. Firozabad's fiercist competitor is China, which is flooding Firozabad's market with cheaper but also better quality chandeliers, tableware, decoration items, while the Chinese glass industry already nearly destroyed the crafts glass beads industry from the neighboring town of Purdil Nagar - where non industrial bangles and beads are still made in clay furnaces - by copying the designs and producing them in automated factories.