I may have missed it, but the G word globalisation, seems to have
been notable by its scarcity (scare-city?) in all of this. 2 reasons
for its presence here. One because even crit geographers must
however radical be also pragmatic somewhat, G isnt going to go
away tomorrow, however much some of us would like it to, and two
because it permeates through its subsidiary effects so much of
what has been said on this debate.
G'sation is terribly seductive in that econs of scale buying power
etc etc give so many people seemingly cheap goods. What the
shopper doesnt see is the externalised costs, the cutbacks in govt
spending, the work pressure, the redundancies deskilling
envirinmental cutbacks, loss of tax power by govts on co'ys, and
on well paid chief executives, non-democrativ pressures on govts to
do other than they were elected for, incresased use of transport,
more env damage, pressure like New Deal on the unemployed,
more govt surveillance to keep"order" i.e. an order favourable to
sweatshop prodn at min wages for large co'ys, who thah can sell
cheap and still make astronomical profits.
Just to mention a few of the secondary, tertiary, quaternary etc
effects of the G process.
But its here and we like it, every time we go for 2p off a can of soup
or whatever, I'm sure even many from crit geog feel good when
seeing discounts like this....until the discount comes from the
product YOU are manking, off your wages or terms and conditions
of employment. And just becuase the product of many on crit geog
will be education, not cans of soup, doesn't mean you won't be
affected - look at MNC's pressures downwards on govt tax rates,
and cutbacks in govt spending on pensions, benefits, public
services, yes and higher edn too. Still at least we're netter off than
the many minority groups being bulldozed by less devpt states as
these states are desperate too for the crumbs from the MNC's
operations abroad.
So we can probably go on forever about Marx, left ideology,
oppression of minorities across the world, poverty and regressive
taxation in the UK, but lets have a look at the cause of this - at
least the cause of a great deal of it, Globalisation, ....not just its
symptoms as we have been doing. Or maybe thats too hopeless
as, like Frankenstein, we, the global consumers, have created
something we can't stop, don't know how to deal with, and are not
even sure we want to rein it in. Not whilst we can get 2p off our
cans of soup, anyway.
Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds
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