Globalization: The Backlash

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Globalization The Backlash

• October 19, 2005
• PSC 300.301

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Today

• Brief Discussion
• The Backlash
• Critique
• Alternatives

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Backlash What is it?

• Opposition to globalization (What does it look
  like?)
• Resistance by groups
• Disparate groups (labor)
• Crime (
• Spasmodic action (Seattle, World Bank, etc)
• No action (eg Rainforest)
• Political action
• Populist appeals (eg India)
• Appeal to fundamentalism (eg Israel, Nigeria,
  Kenya)
• Dictatorship (eg Egypt, act with the private
  sector)
• (Permanent) Retreat
• Subsidy
• Re-regulatory action (Malaysia)

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Backlash What are the causes?

• Inability to transform
• HR capacity (eg Rwanda 78 illiterate)
• Different worldviews
• Freedom vs insecurity (eg
• Individual vs collective (eg US vs Muslim,
  Hinduism)
• Objection to injustice
• Complete dispossession (eg Brazilian loggers,
  Indigenous peoples, technology on industrial
  workers)
• Absence of safety nets (eg India)
• Class inequalities (eg South Africa)
• Theft (eg Kenya)

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Backlash Causes

• Powershift
• Activation of losers (eg US labor)
• Insecurity
• Transition/change breeds uncertainly (eg Norway)
• Cultural/economic invasion (eg White
  Supremacists,
• Social contract broken
• Social rights (UN Social Economic Rights) (eg
  US pensioners, communist countries)
• Confluence of factors
• Economic and cultural backlash covergence
• (eg working class middle class collaboration)

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Backlash International Actors

• International level Sites of action
• Private sector World Economic Forum (proG)
• Davos, Switzerland
• Transnational actors World Social Forum (antiG)
• Porto Allegre, Brazil
• (Kenya this year for the first time)
• Governments World Trade Organization, G-8 (proG)
• Various venues

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Backlash Domestic Actors

• Labor peasants
• Loss of jobs
• Loss of livelihoods
• Inability to reintegrate (re-tool)
• Middle lower classes
• Cultural dispossession
• Class change
• State
• Ruling party opponents

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New Bureaucracy Hierarchy
Globalists
Communitarians
Direction of Flow of Authority
The Rest
Communitarians
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Backlash Solutions/Alternatives

• Possibilities
• Social transformation Appropriate HR training
• Inter-disciplinarity
• Multi-tasking
• Languages discipline
• Flexijobs
• (eg Singapore, South Korea, India, China, US)
• Adjustment Juggle
• Hybridity
• Rationalist by day, fundamentalist by night?
• (eg Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, France, etc)

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Backlash Solutions/Alternatives

• Retreat
• Permanently (eg Cuba, supremacists, )
• Temporarily (eg Malaysia)
• Safety Nets
• Local projects/programs (eg livelihood projects)
• Informal economies (eg micro-banks)
• EPZs/Maquiladora (eg Mexico, Philippines)
• Labor exportation (eg Philippines domestic
  workers in US)

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Summary

• The Backlash
• What is it?
• What are its causes?
• Who are the actors what are their venues?
• What does the new bureaucracy look like?
• What are the solutions/possibilities for action?

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Discussion Questions

• Do we agree with Friedman about the Backlash?
• Assumptions (opposition to globalization)
• Group/regional coverage
• Knowledge system
• What is the American culture?
• Any comparison with 9/11 (Social Constructivism)
• Re-framing the issue compare
• What options do the small countries have?
• Historic bloc (IPE)