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Globalization is as old as
trans-Atlantic slavery and as new and fresh as green Chiquita bananas
from Nicaragua you bought at the St. Peters grocery or the “Hello, I am
Yerriswamy. May I help you?” instant message you receive from someone
based in India when you seek online customer service. An omnibus term
signifying many things, “globalization” may refer, depending on the
context, to an often confusing array of alphabet soup terms (IMF, WTO,
NAFTA, EU) and economic theories over the impact of the new global economy
on pocketbooks, human rights, culture and the environment. Globalization
is the stuff of politically partisan commentary and a source of anxiety
many people in America and abroad have about rapidly changing economic and
social relations.
Globalization first developed as a phenomenon for analysis in the field of
economics. It refers to the interconnectedness of economies and the flow
of capital and commodities across borders and between continents. More
recently, the term has been taken up by sociologists and cultural
theorists interested in the global flow of culture and its commodities.
Globalization is a general term with many dimensions and has political,
economic, socio-cultural and ecological ramifications. The process of
globalization has accelerated in the past generation with the advances in
computer technology, the dismantling of trade barriers and the expanding
political and economic power of multinational corporations. In this new
environment, people and corporations have created unprecedented
prosperity. Not coincidentally, this prosperity has been accompanied in
associated and parallel ways with an exacerbation of poverty and a
widening gulf between the economic classes worldwide.
In
his introduction to The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, Wayne
Ellwood summarizes the prevailing debate: “Economic globalization, the
expansion of trade in goods and services between countries, is said to be
the key to a more equal, more peaceful, less parochial world. For
generations the received wisdom has been that the free market is the
engine of human progress, based on the notion that open markets unleash
the true potential of human society and are the threshold to the free play
of ideas, the spread of universal human rights and the deep desire for
democratic government. Eventually, so the argument goes, global
integration and cross-cultural understanding will result in a borderless
world where political parochialisms are put aside in a new pact of shared
universal humanity” (10).
By
any measure, hundreds of millions of people in the world live in utter
poverty. Why this is so may be understood, at least in significant
measure, through the vocabulary of human rights discourse. “People wither
not just because they starve,” writes William Schulz, “but because they
have no voice with which to call for food; economies fail when they break
the political promises to make them work” (104).
When nations fail economically, they often turn to international lending
agencies, transacting agreements which, as the dour historical record
bears out, may exacerbate their problems. Geoffrey Robertson, a British
expert on human rights, explains: “The World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund […] have the power to make client states change their
policies, although the price they exact will often be to the detriment of
economic and social rights (usually, it will involve an insistence on free
market reforms, and often a dismantling of social security arrangements).
The international community has failed to establish any system by which
collective claims to economic and social rights can be heard and
determined, and which directs the aid necessary to satisfy them to states
on conditions that address their failings, e.g. requiring them to reduce
their military budgets or to take steps to combat political corruption”
(159). While international lending agencies are not in the business of
setting human rights goals as priorities, Robertson believes that
ultimately, “some adjudicatory body must be empowered to do so” (161).
Since context is the lifeblood of theory, and any discussion of
globalization needs concrete examples, narratives and points of historical
reference, a Fall 2003 issue of The Global Pages explored issues
and pressure points in the global economy with regard to Jamaica, a nation
which has chafed under the weight of national debt and long-lingering
effects of IMF “structural adjustment policies.” Director Stephanie
Black’s 2001 documentary Life and Debt spawned a conversation
between SCC’s Bruce Welz (Economics) and Michael Kuelker (English).
{Click here to link to their conversation}
Pointing to the immense wealth generated by the global economy,
conservatives generally resist any governance regime that might constrain
globalization by attention to other social values. More and freer
commerce, in their view, is the best route to social as well as economic
betterment. This line of reasoning is met by convincing counter-argument.
Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization devoted
to human rights, says in a 2001 report, “[A] world integrated on
commercial lines does not necessarily lead to human rights improvements.
In China, increased international trade has not lessened the government's
determination to snuff out any political opposition. In Sudan, oil revenue
made possible by international investment has allowed the government in
only two years nearly to double the defense budget for its highly abusive
war. In Central Asia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
international investment in oil and gas exploration and production has
only reaffirmed the new governments' resolve to cling to power at all
costs while their people plunge into poverty. In Sierra Leone and Angola,
international trade in diamonds has fueled deadly civil wars. The number
of migrant workers and trafficking victims has grown with international
commerce, yet abuses against them remain largely ignored. Experience shows
that global economic integration is no substitute for a firm parallel
commitment to defending human rights.”
Globalization brings the world’s peoples closer together with deep and
far-reaching consequences. With the events of the 11th of
September 2001, Americans experienced the onset of a new age in the
globalization of terrorism (although sporadic acts of violence on a
smaller scale have been taking place against American military targets and
personnel in the Middle East for two decades). It was not only that the
attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were planned in the
caves of Afghanistan. Since the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden and his network
have emerged as a transnational entity, an Islamic fundamentalist army
which is not dependent solely upon a nation-state; indeed, in Afghanistan,
and before that in Sudan, it was the wealthy bin Laden who aided a
government financially. Consequently, the American government’s
anti-terrorism measures have had to shift.
It
is in this context that SCC Professor of Philosophy Blanchard DeMerchent
analyzes this new phenomenon of globalization and religious fundamentalism
in an essay titled “Globalization and Religious Conflict.”
{Click here to link to the
article}
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An article by
Michael Kuelker
SCC English
Revised;
originally published in The Global Pages
Vol. 2, no. 2,
January 2002 |
