Resisting the Globalizing Spirit

By Akinbola E. Akinwumi
  

Karl Marx once made a vigilant observation that global capital "creates a world after its own image." Although his submission is as startling today as it was when originally delivered over a century ago, the phrase is even more instructive when we consider it in the light of two important facts. One: that hardly anyone now denies the dominance, authority and importance ascribed to globalization. Two: that globalization (à la capitalism) is an unrelentingly unevening force. Indeed, many aspects of globalization have been questioned – and rightly so – around the world: its sweeping reach, the structures it assumes, as well as its "meaning," and even its "authenticity" in a broad and complex global system. Some of these will be considered below. 

Even the strongest adherents and theorists of globalization can find themselves smoothly outsmarted by the extensiveness of this phenomenon that has many faces, and ridiculed by the largely ineffective tools developed for studying it. 

No wonder Joseph Stiglitz of the World Bank, once a forceful cheerleader of capitalism, took a speedy detour not too long ago and began questioning the reigning ideology of neo-liberal-powered globalization and its penchant for undemocratic action. Though many doubt there is benefit to be derived from a deep skepticism of the globalizing "McWorldist" experience, a new type of argument is being touted by sharp and obdurate pundits. 

There’s no problem with globalization as it has created opportunities, these voices say. In fact, the inequalities, injustices and inhumane conditions that move in tow with capitalist globalization are really not real. However, rather than act blissfully ignorant of the sufferings brought about by social injustice, a truly humane economic system must shift its focus from growth to development, from economy to society. 

Beneath its cool demeanor, globalization has wrecked much havoc. Obviously representing far more than technological breakthroughs in communication, it has fostered a separation between an imaginary "us" and an equally imaginary "them." It assumes everything can be explained under the rubric of the market. 

Globalization is largely and implicitly hegemonic. It has been instrumental in the imposition of power relations that have brought misfortune to the world’s most vulnerable. 

From one dimension globalization brings with it the feminization of poverty, as its economic orientation is grossly in favor of men. Worth considering is the fact that in the global economy women make up less than one percent of the 4,000 top executives of Fortune 500 companies; are marginalized in the area of strategic assignments traditionally dominated by men and are assigned lesser roles for being "weak," and "ignorant." Whoever labeled it a man’s world? The forces of global capital? It is uncontestable. No doubt the angst expressed by most women around the world is justifiable, and this reflected by the desperate call to break out into the light. Not a few women presently grope in the murk of oppressive gender relationships championed and backed up by globalized masculinist theories. It is worth heeding Suzanne LaFollette’s point that "it is impossible for a sex or a class to have economic freedom until everybody has it, and until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody." 

Similarly, multinational corporations have gained enormous power across global space. The rise in free trade areas (FTAs) and export processing zones (EPZs) has continued to perpetuate inequalities even in poor but resource-rich countries – from Mexico to Malaysia and the Philippines. Further, women, who constitute a huge chunk of workers in the new international economy, have to endure extreme working conditions in maquiladora-style factories to receive wages of less than $1 per hour. In the same vein, the global age of the internet has allowed the exploitation of the bodies of women in as far apart places as Latvia, Moldova or Peru by a thriving multi-billion dollar porn industry. 

In an important book titled More Equal than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century Godfrey Hodgson makes an important point that in the US inequality – of income, health care, education, etc. – has consistently overrun equality over the last two decades. Conservatism, he says, has made a shipwreck of all that was achieved during the New Deal. More money goes to those who have had more than their fair share of it while even more is taken from those who rightfully need it. The 1990s were particularly significant, as free market capitalism took the economy by the horns and solidified America’s status as a society of spurious equality – all talk little action. How else could it be that whilst the total net worth of the 400 richest persons is put at about $995 billion by Forbes magazine many have no place to lay their heads? 

Yet, there are some patterns. Firstly, while economic globalization may be a dominant aspect, its impact on the socio-cultural realm is characteristically geographically intense, hence no part of the globe is spared. Secondly, a priority seems to be associated with techno-scientific modernization. 

In any case, it is not this prioritization that is the culprit. Whether we know it, like it or agree with it or not, we are products of systematic but ingrained processes of a strong and wicked bourgeois culture. And this is how it works: get them, con them (in not too obvious ways), then push them into the training room of the brainwashed, programmed to self-destruct, albeit at an appointed time, while smothered by coaxing toys that serve as an anesthetic to immediate pain. 

In an age of the magic wheels of "free" trade, liberalization, "McDonaldization," "CNN-ization," "Hollywoodization" we are pushed to ask: what is globalization? 

There are many possibilities: but none should be expected – at least in terms of a near-perfect answer – because globalization itself is tricky and slick and defies any easy packaging. In a certain sense globalization is what happens behind the "one world, global everyday life" facade, although like in the Marxian analysis there remains a class struggle and the stronger dog still eats the palatable dog. Its proponents would, however, not agree to such distasteful tagging for it reveals the reality only the counterfoil could unmask. 

There is a strong dimension of the globalization culture that must be resisted. This is not only for reasons of sustainability. Because, globalization has a sly way of stimulating ideological dissonance it is pretty easy, if not convenient, to turn the other cheek as a show of disgust with the growing clout of "anti-globalization" movements crisscrossing the globe – from Bangkok to Chicago, Doha to London, Melbourne to Wellington, and beyond. Clearly, unevenness is the defining character of economic globalization – convergence in one realm, however minuscule in its impact, usually means divergence in another. And this is the first basis of the global protests. 

If the truth be told, globalization’s seductive appeal certainly has another side. With its fast spreading wave of deterritorialization, heightened sense of alienation and depersonalization, this global force has brought with it many shivering ills. Affluence and inane pleasures is the watchword, the dicta of capitalist avarice. Even the corporate nature of the mass media and the way it treats human sensibilities as expendables is frightening. Chief of these are the gruesome realities of mechanical consumerism, changing household relations and broken social bonds, untamed desire, technological cruelties, environmental degradation, terrorism and political violence, ethnic conflicts, extreme concentrations of wealth and the corresponding polarization of opportunity in favor of the bourgeoisie class, national messiah complexes and complexities and non-participatory existence. The trend of global terrorism and political violence, for instance, is symptomatic of how tempestuous and sharpshooting the forces of globalization and belonging – when fused –could be. 

In light of this, it is important to assert that while globalization may have altered socio-cultural foundations, and tainted choices, there is a need more than ever to reenact within our value systems a thorough sense of "bounded rationality" in responding to the challenges posed by the new economic order. 

We should challenge the hegemony of the neo-liberal structure and the logic with which it operates. We also need to free ourselves from neutrality toward – and conformity with – an extreme globalist culture bent on allowing market values to continue shaping society and public institutions. However, this may require a dogged detachment from the alluring hold of material things now ubiquitous in our overtly prosperity-seeking world. To be sure, things have their rightful place and may not necessarily be evil, but the perverse cravings for them obviously violate the basic tenets of sustainable development and have deleterious effects on the worldwide crusade against greed, exploitation, and corruption. 

However, with the absence of a progressive financial architecture and with the globalizing economy fostering intolerable impoverishment in one society and high consumption in the other, there has to be a reawakening to development centered upon humans and their environment. 

A social-looking system has never been more apt a tool for aiding human freedom, and development and building a more inclusive, communitarian rather than individualistic world. 

As such our ethical objective should be to work from an outlook of re-education and awareness to engender a wise balance between economy and society, thinking and acting, one that will involve far-reaching control over the processes of change and the distribution of its gains thereof. This, certainly, is not an impossibility, but it would require firm resistance of the present approach. Clearly, the very foundations of globalization if not challenged cannot give way to alternative visions of the world order, politics, and global governance. The Zapatista movement has exemplified what it means to resist the globalizing spirit and its predilection for anti-people and anti-environment policies. Witness their reaction against NAFTA because of its inclination for creating wealth disparity and the victimization of indigenous people and exploitation of their resources. 

Can we accept the "sweet" fruit globalization and then gleefully spit out its sour pit afterwards? Truth is if we accept the theories of the capitalist world economy – the driving wheel of globalization – we simply cannot. Nevertheless, we must be prepared to face the possibilities of alternatives, even at the risk of being labeled myopic. Does every theory necessarily have to be a viewing mirror? Do we accept the contemporaneous and turn our backs against the truth of injustice as we become more indoctrinated with falsehood? The answers lie in the thinking. 

So, how globalized are you? Not surprisingly, the answer may not be comforting but this is not unexpected. However, whilst we grapple with the defects left in our minds by the simulations of capitalist power and the hegemonies of imperialist politics and economics bent on taking over society, we must find a way of washing ourselves under the plain but clean liquid of reality, however stagnated this may have become of late. If or when we do then we can begin to achieve some semblance of objectivity to redirect our steps out of this present mess. 

How do we resist the spirit of globalization and its contradictions without selling our souls in the process? Easy: Do not accept every fruit it offers you without questioning its motives. Surely, we cannot undo the past but we can begin to make decisions as to a future where there is an egalitarian culture, a neighborly fortitude, a live-and-let-live predisposition.


--Akinbola E. Akinwumi is an independent writer and researcher and he currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria where he writes from. He can be reached at [log in to unmask] This article originally appeared in the February 2005 print edition of Political Affairs. 



 

-- 
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10