POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics

1
POLS 374 Foundations of Global Politics

• People and Globalization

2
People and Globalization

• Begin with a basic question What is
  globalization?

3
People and Globalization

• One definition, provided by authors, describes
  globalization in the following way
• Globalization is the closer integration of the
  countries and peoples of the world which has been
  brought about the enormous reduction of costs of
  transportation and communication, and the
  breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows
  of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and (to a
  lesser extent) people across borders (Joseph
  Stigletz).

4
People and Globalization

• Another definition Globalization is driven by
  changing modes of competition such that it
  compresses the time and space aspects of social
  relations. It is a market-induced, not a
  policy-led, process (James Mittelman)

5
People and Globalization

• The authors do not entirely disagree with either
  of these definitions, but they note that
  globalization has many engines, meaning, in
  part, that it is not driven solely economic or
  market processes.
• We know this, in part, because globalization
  occurred long before the market as we know it
  existed.

6
People and Globalization

• This is not to say that the market and
  globalization are not related. Of course they
  are. The are integrally related.
• The authors point out, for example, that market
  globalization constituted one of the most
  important developments in global politics in the
  late nineteenth century. This was, in fact, the
  only other period of hyperrapid incorporation in
  world history.

7
People and Globalization

• This hyperrapid incoporation took place in the
  context of capitalist expansion and was spurred
  by advances in transportation, communication, and
  command-and-control technologies.

8
People and Globalization

• Marx and Engels were so impressed by these
  developments that they coined the now famous
  phrase, all that is solid melts into air to
  describe the scale and rate of economic, social,
  and political change.

9
People and Globalization

• Importantly, this was also the period in which
  the basic structure of the contemporary world
  economy was determined. This was the period, in
  other words, when the Third World was created.
• What do the authors mean by this? How did
  globalization create the Third World?

10
People and Globalization

• Short answer Globalization shattered local
  cultures and rearranged the most basic social and
  political relations throughout much of the world.
• We can see, then, that even economic
  globalization is much, much more than an
  economic process it is also cultural, social,
  political, institutional, and ideological
  process.

11
People and Globalization

• From the authors view, it would probably be best
  to conceive of globalization as a set of complex,
  multifaceted, interconnected, and often times
  mutually reinforcing structures or regimes.

12
People and Globalization

• The structures and regimes about which the
  authors speak, it is important to recognize, do
  not arise by chance, nor are they impervious to
  agency.
• In fact, the authors suggest that agency can play
  an absolutely essential role in guiding the path
  of human history.

13
People and Globalization

• Consider the example they give in their chapter.
  They note that during a severe famine, which
  struck India 1876 to 1878, Britains viceroy (or
  governor) of India made decisions that had a
  profound impact on the Indian population and on
  Indian estimates of the dead range from 5.5 to
  12 million.
• The authors suggest that much of this massive
  suffering could have been averted if different
  agents had been in charge, or if different
  decisions had been made.

14
People and Globalization

• At the same time, it is equally important to
  understand that any agent during this period was
  operating within a system of structures and
  regimes that set the stage for massive suffering
  among colonial subjects.

15
People and Globalization

• One of the most important structures was built on
  British imperialism, which, as the authors define
  it, is a transnational system of structural
  violence built on rules and practices that confer
  advantageous access to resources on the imperial
  power, its agents, and its citizens, and
  corresponding disadvantages on local communities
  and their agents and citizens.

16
People and Globalization

• Heres a description of how the imperial
  structure worked Farmers werent growing food
  for their own communities any longer so much as
  they were for the market, the highest bidder
  For them even rising agrarian prices did not
  necessarily mean increasing incomes. Instead
  they tended to be a source of indebtedness
  rather than affording them the opportunity to
  accumulate surpluses.... Especially in years of
  bad harvests, and high prices, the petty
  producers were compelled to buy additional grain,
  and, worse, to go into debt. Then, in good years,
  when cereal prices were low, they found it hard
  to extricate themselves from previously
  accumulated debts. In short, free trade further
  impoverished the poorest stratum of society,
  ensuring a hand-to-mouth existence that
  preconditioned famine. (Brant Bingamon, A Hunger
  for Imperialism, http//www.texasobserver.org/sho
  wArticle.asp?ArticleID496)
• For more, go to The Origins of the Third World
  Markets, States, and Climate by Mike Davis
  (http//www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x519
  83)

17
People and Globalization

• Of course, imperialism, as a structure/regime,
  cannot be separated from capitalism or the
  market. The authors clearly recognize this.
• As they put it, The most prominent structure
  facilitating globalization in the nineteenth
  century and today is the market, vast,
  interconnected, national, and transnational
  systems of rules and practices that govern
  capitalist relations of production and exchange.
  

18
People and Globalization

• The market, to repeat a point made several
  times already, is more than just a place where
  buying and selling takes place. It is an
  all-encompassing system of economic, social,
  political and social change.

19
People and Globalization

• On this point, lets return to the authors
  conceptualization of globalization. They describe
  it this way Globalization takes many pathways.
  It brings people and places closer to one another
  at a faster and faster rate, forcing both to
  adjust to the continual change demanded by its
  disruption of social space. Strangers come to new
  lands to exploit resources that formerly were out
  of reach people change jobs, locations, and
  identities repeatedly in a single lifetime.

20
People and Globalization

• This conceptualization helps us differentiate the
  type of globalization that is taking place today
  from the type of globalization that took place in
  the past. One of the key differences is the pace
  of change things are changing at a faster and
  faster rate, leading to a process of virtually
  continual change.
• A big reason for this is advances in technology.

21
People and Globalization

• On one level, the relationship between technology
  and globalization is fairly clear Advances in
  information and communications technology have
  given a larger and larger share of the worlds
  population access to genuinely global
  communication tools.

22
People and Globalization

• Anyone, anywhere, for example, can set up a web
  site that is accessible to anyone in the world.
  Virtually everyone has access to cell phones and
  other forms of information technology that were,
  only a few decades ago, available only to the
  richest citizens of the richest countries.

23
People and Globalization

• In addition, the spread of the Internet, DVDs,
  and satellites combined with older forms of
  technologyfilms, television, radio, etc.is
  slowly creating a globalized culture, in which
  we are all becoming neighbors.

24
People and Globalization

• We all know about the globalization of American
  culture. But consider, too, the globalization of
  Korean pop culture Today, throughout Asia,
  Korean popular entertainment has become a
  near-craze. One Korean mini-series, for instance,
  the Jewel in the Palace, has become one of the
  most watched shows in Japan, China, Taiwan, and
  other Asian countries its now being exported to
  several Arab and European countries.

25
People and Globalization

• One the one hand, the creation of a globalized
  culture may seem to be a good thing, and more
  generally, the democratization of technology
  make seem to be a basically positive development.
  It is creating what many people refer to as a
  global village. This is good, right?

26
People and Globalization

• But there is a flipside The closer people
  become, the more differences become accentuated,
  and the more differences become accentuated, the
  more they may lead to distrust, hostility, and
  even violence. This is especially likely when
  differences are seen as threats to the existing
  culture and the relations of power that rest upon
  that culture.

27
People and Globalization

• Bad Neighbors? Globalization has made Americans
  and Indians much closer through outsourcing.
  Has this led to more understanding, friendship,
  and harmony? According to one recent article, the
  answer is clearly no

28
People and Globalization

• (San Franciso Chronicle) Outsourcing outrage
  ?Indian call-center workers suffer abuse. Noida,
  India -- While irate calls are a mainstay of
  customer service work in any country, many Indian
  call-center workers say they regularly face
  particular abuse from Americans, whose tantrums
  are sometimes racist and often inspired by anger
  over outsourcing.This vitriol has fueled a
  "searing anger" among the Indian employees.
  Debalina Das, 22, a computer help-line agent in
  the city of Hyderabad in south India, punched the
  button last winter for a call from the United
  States.The caller greeted her with a torrent of
  racial and sexual slurs, accused her of "roaming
  about naked without food and clothes" and asked,
  "What do you know about computers? . Das, who
  quit the job after four months, said she learned
  to dislike Americans. "Rarely, there are people
  who are good," she said by e-mail, "but then
  others remind me that all they believe in is
  cursing, and they don't have respect for others."

29
People and Globalization

• On still another hand It is also worth noting
  that democratization of technology gives formerly
  powerless groups more power by allowing their
  voices to be heard and by allowing them to
  coordinate their actions in ways that were once
  very difficult.

30
People and Globalization

• Consider the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas
  technology played in key role in allowing the
  voice of the people of Chiapas to be heard by a
  worldwide audience. Some argue, in turn, that
  this compelled the Mexican government to
  negotiate with rather than simply destroy the
  rebels through violence.

A Zapatista woman learns to use a video camera.
The Mayans fought using technology instead of
violence.
31
People and Globalization

• More broadly, the Arab world, to some extent, has
  been united by the development of Arab news
  services, such as Al Jazeera, which provide an
  alternative to a medium once completely dominated
  by the West.

An Al Jazeera political cartoon.
32
People and Globalization

• All of this can be seen in a generally positive
  light, but, again, it is important to emphasize
  that the process can lead to, as the authors
  nicely put it, the narcissism of little
  differences, whereby even formally trivial
  distinctions can morph into major problems.

33
People and Globalization

• The problem, to repeat, is this Cultural
  pressures combined with a sense that strangers
  are invading our space and taking our stuff make
  contemporary interpersonal and international
  relationships more rather than less contentious,
  even among peoples who have lived side by side
  for centuries.

34
People and Globalization

• The potentially destructive aspects of
  globalization, in fact, should be of great
  concern to all of us. This potential is made all
  the more probable because of the underlying
  amorality of globalization.
• What do the authors mean by this? Is
  globalization inherently amoral? (Discuss)

35
People and Globalization

• The amorality of globalization is premised on the
  fact that it is a largely unpoliced and
  unregulated (or de-regulated) process. As we are
  often told, globalization is all about efficiency
  and productivity. Its all about letting
  technology and markets and firms and people
  decide how things should be done.

36
People and Globalization

• But when a process as profound and deeply
  significant as globalization is allowed to
  proceed in such a manner, it is only natural to
  expect that questions of justice, morality,
  ethics, and values will be marginalized, if not
  completely ignored.
• And this is exactly what is happening, at least
  according the authors.

37
People and Globalization

• One example of this is deracination, a term
  that refers to the results of transplanting
  people from familiar surroundings to strange new
  environments.

38
People and Globalization

• Deracination detaches such persons from the
  familiar social structures that used to protect
  them, connect them to family and friends, supply
  their needs and desires, and constrain their
  behavior it places them in new structures that
  endanger their lives and shape their choices and
  behaviors differently.

39
People and Globalization

• It is important to understand, too, that
  deracination itself is largely a product of
  globalizing forces People uproot themselves, in
  large part, because they have little choice.
• In the name of efficiency, local communities are
  destroyed because they are not well positioned in
  the global economy. If people dont have jobs,
  cannot earn a living, they have to move to alien
  environments.

40
People and Globalization

• Needless to say, this can create a breeding
  ground for all sorts of discontent, aggression,
  and ultimately violence. One need only look at
  the recent riots in France to get a sense of
  this.

41
People and Globalization

• The authors argue that contemporary terrorism is
  also a reflection of this process terrorist
  organizations use deracination to gain access to
  bodies and minds they can deploy in their
  strategic conflicts.
• In addition, globalization aids terrorism because
  it makes possible the creation of relatively
  unstructured, geographically mobile networks of
  people willing to take action to achieve a common
  goal.

42
People and Globalization

• Some see this as a positive development, and,
  certainly, it can be there are plenty of groups
  who use these unstructured global networks to
  achieve positive goals
• But these networks are available to everyone and
  anyone from social activists, to global
  corporations, to immigrant workers, to terrorist
  organizations, thieves, and drug lords.

43
People and Globalization

• The basic problem, therefore, is not with the
  networks per se, or the groups that use them to
  achieve violent or destructive ends. Instead, the
  problem is with the amorality of globalization.
• This, of course, raises the question Is there an
  alternative? Is there such a thing as moral
  globalization?

44
People and Globalization

• The authors dont answer this question directly,
  but they give us a hint about their position.
  They argue that the basic problem with
  globalization as it is unfolding today is that it
  premised on the principles of market
  fundamentalism, which itself is an essentially
  amoral idea.

45
People and Globalization

• What is market fundamentalism? What do the
  authors mean by this term? (NOTE Were going to
  discuss this concept in the last part of our
  course, so discussion today will be limited)

46
People and Globalization

• Market fundamentalism is premised on a set of
  core beliefs, which are encapsulated in the
  Washington Consensus.
• This is how one famous economist, Joseph
  Stigletz, describes the Washington Consensus
  The Washington Consensus policies were based on
  a simplistic model of the market economy, the
  competitive equilibrium model, in which Adam
  Smiths invisible hand works perfectly. Because
  in this model there is no need for
  governmentthat is, free, unfettered, liberal
  markets work perfectlythe Washington Consensus
  policies are sometimes referred to as
  neo-liberal, based market fundamentalism, a
  resuscitation of the laissez-faire policies that
  were popular in the nineteenth century.

47
People and Globalization

• The basic tenets of market fundamentalism can be
  boiled down to two things
• Liberalization (the removal of government
  participation, regulation, and oversight from
  financial markets, capital markets, and trade
  relations)
• Privatization (conversion of state-owned or
  managed activities to private ownership and
  management premised on the belief that private
  enterprise is inherently superior to any
  state-controlled or managed activity)

48
People and Globalization

• Why is any of this amoral? (Discuss)
• Its amoral because neither tenet recognizes,
  much less pays serious heed to, basic questions
  of justice, human needs or human suffering, or
  rights. Indeed, market fundamentalists, in
  important ways, are positively hostile to rights
  they believe, for example, they workers should
  not have a right to organize and/or engage in
  collective action, because doing so interferes
  with the market process.

49
People and Globalization

• Is there a counter-argument?
• The counter-argument is that liberalization and
  privatization will create a more efficient,
  prosperous and productive society, which will, in
  turn, alleviate human suffering, fulfill human
  needs, and ensure justice, rights, and democracy
  for all.
• This is not an entirely implausible argument. The
  critics, however, remained unconvinced.

50
People and Globalization

• Part of the reason they remain unconvinced, it
  should be noted, is not because they are
  anti-capitalist or anti-market rather, it is
  because market fundamentalists assert that there
  is no middle ground Either markets are free or
  they are not, and an unfree market is
  necessarily less efficient, less productive and,
  therefore, undesirable and bad.

51
People and Globalization

• If it was just a question of ideological
  disagreement, moreover, the issue would not be as
  important. Unfortunately, market fundamentalists
  hold powerful positions in the most powerful
  economies. They occupy the commanding heights
  of powerful structures, and their ideas have a
  profound impact on the world and on international
  and global politics.

52
People and Globalization

• This is the problem (to critics), because it
  gives the power to define and reshape the most
  important structures of global politics to a
  relatively small group of actors. It gives these
  actors, in other words, disproportionate control
  over the processes of globalization, and this is
  precisely why globalization engenders so much
  hostility, distrust, resistance and violence.
• This is also a reason why globalization may
  ultimately lead to a very destructive future.

53
People and Globalization

• The authors, however, are not complete
  pessimists. They believe that every complex,
  multidimensional process has all sorts of
  contradictory tendencies and constantly creates
  new paths and new opportunities. The present era
  of globalization, for example, has empowered a
  fuller range of actors or agents then has
  probably ever existed in human history.

54
People and Globalization

• It has also created new structures, new regimes,
  and new institutions and while these structures,
  regimes and institutions may be largely
  controlled by the same dominant actors as always,
  they can be changed.
• This raises the questionone dealt with by the
  authors throughout their bookof how change is
  likely to come about. To the authors, the answer
  is the same through a mobilized and vibrant
  civil society.