Global Challenges, Local Responses, and the Role of Anthropology

1
Global Challenges, Local Responses, and the Role
of Anthropology

• Part II

2
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• A new form of expansive international capitalism
  has emerged since the mid-1990s.
• Operating under the banner of globalization, it
  builds on earlier cultural structures of
  worldwide trade networks, and it is the successor
  to a system of colonialism in which a handful of
  powerful, mainly European, capitalist states
  ruled and exploited foreign nations inhabiting
  distant territories.
• Power plays a major role in coordinating and
  regulating collective behavior toward imposing or
  maintaining law and order within, and beyond, a
  particular community or society.

3
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• Structural power power that organizes and
  orchestrates the systemic interaction within and
  among societies, directing economic and political
  forces on the one hand and ideological forces
  that shape public ideas, values, and beliefs on
  the other
• It focuses attention on the systematic
  interaction between the global forces directing
  the worlds changing economies and political
  institutions on the one and hand those that shape
  public ideas, values, and beliefs on the other

4
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• Hard power coercive power that is backed up by
  economies and military forces.
• Soft power co-optive power that presses others
  through attraction and persuasion to change their
  ideas, beliefs, values and behavior
• The U.S. is the global leader in military
  expenditure, spending more than 420 billion in
  2005, followed by China (62 billion), Russia
  (62 billion), Britain (51 billion), Japan (45
  billion) and Germany (30 billion).

5
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• In addition to military might, hard power
  involves the use of economic strength as a
  political instrument of coercion or intimidation
  in the global structuring process.
• As the worlds largest economy and leading
  exporter, the United States has long pushed for
  free trade for its corporations doing business on
  a global scale.

6
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• Specializing in short-term loans to assist poor
  or developing countries, the IMFs financial
  resources weigh in at about 300 billion.
• The five wealthiest countries in the world (U.S.,
  Japan, Germany, France and Britain) control 40
  of this global fund and dominate its executive
  board.
• The IMFs structural power is evident not only in
  which development projects and policies it
  chooses to give financial support, but also in
  its surveillance practices, which involve
  monitoring borrowers economic and financial
  developments.

7
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• Like IMF, the World Bank is largely controlled by
  a handful or powerful capitalist states.
• Operating under geopolitical constraints, these
  global banking institutions strategically direct
  capital flows to projects in certain parts of the
  world, financially supporting some governments
  and withholding capital from others.
• Both IMF and the World Bank have been accused of
  being insensitive to the political and cultural
  consequences of the projects they support.

8
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• Globalization wreaks havoc in many traditional
  cultures and disrupts long-established social
  organizations everywhere.
• By the early 21st century, the global trend of
  economic inequality is becoming clear The poor
  are becoming poorer, and the rich are becoming
  richer.

9
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• One of the major tasks of soft power is to
  package and sell the general idea of
  globalization as something positive and
  progressive (as freedom, free trade, free
  market) and to frame or brand anything that
  opposes capitalism in negative terms.
• Structural power and its associated concepts of
  hard and soft power enable us to better
  understand the wider field of force in which
  local communities throughout the world are now
  compelled to operate.

10
Structural Power in the Age of Globalization

• No matter how effectively a dominant state or
  corporation combines its hard and soft power,
  globalization does run into opposition
• While it is true that states and big corporations
  have expanded their power and influence through
  electronic communication technologies, it is also
  true that these same technologies present
  opportunities to individuals and groups that have
  traditionally been powerless
• Together with radio and television, the Internet
  is now the dominant means of mass communication
  around the world.

11
Problems of Structural Violence

• Based on their capacity to harness, direct, and
  distribute global resources and energy flows,
  heavily armed states, megacorporations, and very
  wealthy elites are using their coercive and
  co-optive powers to structure or rearrange the
  emerging world system and direct global processes
  to their own competitive advantage.
• Structural violence physical and/or
  psychological harm (including repression,
  environmental destruction, poverty, hunger,
  illness, and premature death) caused by
  impersonal, exploitative, and unjust social,
  political, and economic systems.

12
Problems of Structural Violence

• Every day millions of people around the world
  face
• famine
• ecological disasters
• health problems
• political instability
• violence rooted in development programs of
  profit-making maneuvers directed by powerful
  states of global corporations.

13
Problems of Structural Violence

• Although human rights abuses are nothing new,
  globalization has enormously expanded and
  intensified structural violence.
• In 1960 the average income for the twenty
  wealthiest countries it the world was fifteen
  times that of the twenty poorest.
• Today it is thirty times higher.

14
Problems of Structural Violence

• More remarkable is the fact that the worlds 225
  riches individuals have a combined wealth equal
  to the annual income of the poorest 47 of the
  entire world population.
• The poorest 80 of the human population make do
  with 14 of all goods and services in the world.
  
• Meanwhile, the richest 20 enjoy 86.

15
Overpopulation and Poverty

• Although controlling population growth does not
  by itself make the other problems go away, it is
  unlikely those other problems can be solved
  unless population growth is stopped or even
  reversed.
• For a population to hold steady, there must be a
  balance between birthrates and death rates.
• Replacement reproduction the point at which
  birthrates and death rates are in equilibrium
  people producing only enough offspring to replace
  themselves when they die.

16
Overpopulation and Poverty

• Despite progress in population control, the
  number of humans on earth continues to grow
  overall.
• The problems severity becomes clear when it is
  realized that the present world population of
  more than 6 billion people can be sustained only
  by using up non-renewable resources such as oil,
  which is like living off income-producing
  capital.

17
Hunger and Obesity

• Today, over a quarter of the worlds countries to
  not produce enough food to feed their populations
  and cannot afford to import what is needed.
• About 1 billion people in the world are
  undernourished.
• Some 6 million children aged 5and under die every
  year due to hunger, and those who survive often
  suffer from physical and mental impairment.

18
Hunger and Obesity

• While millions of people in some parts of the
  world are starving, many millions of others are
  overeating
• The obesity epidemic is not due solely to
  excessive eating and lack of physical activity.
• The highest rates of obesity in the world now
  exist among the Pacific Islanders living in
  places such as Samoa and Fiji.

19
Hunger and Obesity

• As for hunger cases, about 10 of them can be
  traced to specific events droughts or floods, as
  well as various social, economic, and political
  disruptions, including warfare.
• During the 20th century 44 million people died
  due to human-made famine.

20
Hunger and Obesity

• U.S. style farming has additional problems,
  including energy inefficiency.
• For every calorie produced, at least 8 (some say
  as many as 20) calories go into its production
  and distribution.
• By contrast, an Asian wet-rice framer using
  traditional methods produces 300 calories for
  each 1 expended.

21
Hunger and Obesity

• North American agriculture is wasteful of other
  resources as well About 30 pounds of fertile
  topsoil are ruined for every pound of food
  produced.
• Toxic substances from chemical nutrients and
  pesticides pile up in unexpected places,
  poisoning ground and surface waters killing
  fish, birds, and other useful forms of life
  upsetting natural ecological cycles and causing
  major public health problems.

22
Hunger and Obesity

• Confronted with such economic forces in the
  global arena, small farmers in poor countries
  find themselves in serious trouble when trying to
  sell their products on markets open to subsidized
  agricultural corporations dumping mass-produced
  and often genetically engineered crops and other
  farm products.
• Such is the fate of many Maya Indians today

23
Pollution

• Industrial activities are producing highly toxic
  waste at unprecedented rates, and factory
  emissions are poisoning the air.
• For instance, aluminum contamination is high
  enough on 17 of the worlds farmland to be toxic
  to plants, and has been linked to senile
  dementia, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons diseases,
  three major health problems in industrial
  countries.
• Added to this is the problem of global warming,
  the greenhouse effect, caused primarily by the
  burning of fossil fuels.

24
Pollution

• Structural violence also manifests itself in the
  shifting of manufacturing and hazardous waste
  disposal from developed to developing countries.
  
• Seeking cheaper ways to get rid of the wastes,
  toxic traders began shipping hazardous waste to
  Eastern Europe and especially to poor and
  underdeveloped countries in Western Africa.

25
The Culture of Discontent

• For the past several decades, the worlds poor
  countries have been sold on the idea they should
  and actually can enjoy as standard of living
  comparable to that of the rich countries.
• The problem involves not just population growth
  outstripping available natural resources, but
  also un-equal access to decent jobs, housing,
  sanitation, health care, leisure and adequate
  police and fire protection.
• This culture of discontent is not limited to
  people living in poor and overpopulated
  countries.

26
The Culture of Discontent

• The short-sighted emphasis on consumerism and
  individual self-interest so characteristic of the
  worlds affluent countries needs to be abandoned
  in favor of a more balanced social and
  environmental ethic.
• Such values include a worldview that sees
  humanity as part of the natural world rather than
  superior to it.
• Included, too is a sense of social responsibility
  that recognizes that no individual, people, or
  state has the right to expropriate resources at
  he expense of others.
• Awareness is needed of how important supportive
  ties are for individuals, such as seen in kinship
  or other associations in the worlds traditional
  societies.

27
Question

• One of the consequences of the development of
  global culture has been _______________.
• the disappearance of differences between people
• reduction in the possibility of war
• a resurgence of separatist movements
• the replacement of traditional cultures by more
  adaptive, modern cultures
• reduction in the number of anthropologists

28
Answer C

• One of the consequences of the development of
  global culture has been a resurgence of
  separatist movements.

29
Question

• An Asian wet rice farmer might choose not to
  adopt North American techniques of intensive
  agriculture because _______________.
• he cannot afford to buy the chemical products
  typically used in this type of agriculture
• the North American method requires at least 8
  calories of energy to be expended for every
  calorie produced, whereas the wet rice farmer
  produces 300 calories for every calorie he
  invests
• the North American method produces toxic
  substances that destroy delicate ecological
  balances
• the North American method, while successful for a
  short period of time, is sowing the seed of its
  own destruction
• all of the above

30
Answer E

• An Asian wet rice farmer might choose not to
  adopt North American techniques of intensive
  agriculture because all of the above.

31
Question

• The worldwide spread of such products as Pepsi is
  taken by some as a sign that a _______________
  world culture is developing.
• Standardized
• Heterogeneous
• Homogeneous
• Motley
• Varied

32
Answer C

• The worldwide spread of such products as Pepsi is
  taken by some as a sign that a homogenous world
  culture is developing.

33
Question

• Coercive power that is backed up by economic and
  military force is called _______________.
• structural violence
• imposed force
• coercion
• hard power
• soft power

34
Answer D

• Coercive power that is backed up by economic and
  military force is called hard power.