Globalization: inevitable and alterable
By Barb Howe
Nayan Chanda doesn't want you to worry about globalization. It's not about world-wide cutthroat capitalism, rampant consumerism or a race to the bottom for wage-slaves. No, says Mr. Chanda, journalist and editor at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and author of a new book on the subject, BOUND TOGETHER How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization. Instead, he says, globalization is about an ancient desire that is practically embedded in the very essence of humanity.
Before you stifle the gag reflex at this cloying sentimentality let’s give Mr. Chanda some credit. He’s right in a sense: globalization is nothing new. But that is hardly an original contribution to the discussion. Scholars studying the phenomena have been saying that at least since the 1990s and some like International Relations theorist Robert Keohane argue that they've been saying it since the 1970s. Most scholars of globalization agree that even in terms of volume, the world has seen other periods of history with as much or more international trade. But while we’ve heard these arguments before, it’s interesting to examine the political implications of such claims to the inevitability of the current form of globalization.
Ancient and inevitable things cannot be changed, controlled or directed in any way by human beings. The pull of the tides, the rising and setting of the sun, the change of the seasons, these things are ancient and inevitable, but neoliberal economic globalization? Well, that’s a charge worth examining more closely because for pundits like Mr. Chanda, economic globalization may be about primordial human desire but for most of us it has a much more tangible effect on our lives. It’s about losing jobs to those overseas so desperately poor they will work for astoundingly little money and few or no benefits. It’s about multi-national corporations externalizing the costs of production onto the people (in the form of wage-and-benefits cuts etc.) and the environment (in the form of loose regulations and fewer bothersome health codes) in poor third world countries while internalizing profits (more money for them). It’s about sweatshops and child labor. Neoliberal economic globalization, in short, is about money and profit. Period. Who benefits from our believing that such a system is ancient and inevitable?
The fact of the matter is that the term “globalization” is wide and ambiguous. We would speak more accurately of globalizations with an 's' because there are many different kinds. The globalization of capitalism of which Mr. Chanda speaks, is just one form. There is also technological globalization as technology spreads around the world and cultural globalization a phenomena embodied in what sociologist George Ritzer calls the "McDonaldization" of the world. The global justice movement, a diverse, nebulous global reaction against the damaging and hurtful effects of economic globalization mentioned above, is another. Some would say that international human rights agreements such as the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention among others, embody a universal respect (at least on paper) for human dignity and worth, and thus constitute still another form of what we might call positive globalization.
The age-old argument that something is natural and therefore cannot and should not be resisted, directed or controlled in any way is fallacious. Whenever anyone uses this argument, it's usually with the intent to deflect critiques. We should turn that notion on its head. Anything human beings make, human beings can change. Globalization, economic, or otherwise, is a human creation and while in a certain sense globalizations may be inevitable that does not mean that they are unalterable. We have a choice of which one or ones we want to see predominate. Do you want the McDonaldization of the world or do you want to globalize social and economic justice and human rights? The choice is ours.
Don't believe them when they tell you that you can do nothing. Despite what people like Mr. Chanda tell you, this is our world, and it’s people like you and me who really shape globalization. Maybe one of us should write a book called Bound Together: How students, teachers, workers and everyday people shape the globalized world.
