Defining Globalism

(Third of a series). Globalism is the biggest idea in the world right now. The French call it Mondialisation, the Germans say Globalisiening and throughout much of Latin America, it's called globalizacion. WTO talks and demos are underway in Japan this week. Even though globalism has many humanist advocates, much of what we used to call the political left hates it. So do religious fundamentalists and extremists like the Taliban, who equate it with godlessness and blashphemy. I've been writing about it for years, and got more than 2,000 responses and e-mails about it from some columns here last week, but you know what? I still couldn't tell you exactly what it is. "It's the biggest evil facing the world," e-mailed JDRow. "It's the only hope the world really has," messaged a professor from Amherst. Neither could say what it was. Can you?

Sometimes things are easier to grasp by defining what they're not. The e-mail and posts last week were about equally divided (apart from the usual flaming yahoos) over whether globalism marks corporate evil or global modernization. Most were agreed that globalization isn't about buying computers and TV set. It's about what sociologists like Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics call living in a "runaway world," a period of enormous transformation, affecting almost every aspect of life from technology to how government functions to employment to personal values. Globalization is spreading all over the world, yet nobody is in charge of it, and there isn't even much consensus about what it is, an economic system or an ideology.

Generally speaking, globalization today is a Western idea (although other, earlier cultures took some shots at it), fueled most recently by technology's forging of a global economy. It's a powerful offshoot of capitalism and popular culture, yet it's being debated in almost every country, and it's become almost impossible to hear a major political speech that doesn't mention it.

The subject arouses strong emotions. Directly or not, globalism is at the root of the terrorist attacks on September 11, and the resulting conflict between the United States and Islamic fundamentalists, who are articulate and open about their hatred of the changes sweeping their cultures. Every business is obsessed with it.

It's getting hard to find academics and other members of the intelligentsia who don't mistrust it, equating it, somewhat justifiably, with corporatism and the rise of the multinationals. Surely, there are more reasons to mistrust the multinational corporations who advance globalization than I could possibly list here.

But globalization is an elusive notion. Skeptics argue that it's a highly exploitive western force and profit center that represents business as usual for corporatists exploiting new worker pools and marketing possibilities, and for despoiling the rest of the environment.

Some economists argue that globalization is an old idea, similar to the way world economies operated centures ago, from the Romans to the Venetians. Those civilizations didn't have an e-economy and the Net, of course, and couldn't transfer cash all over the planet in seconds.

And there are clear differences. Globalization seems to erode the longtime primacy of the nation-state, already undercut by networked computing, which changes the potency of boundaries and enables people, businesses and banks to talk directly to one another rather than through surrogates. It also undermines dogmas, both political and religious, some of which greatly fear environments that permit the free flow of ideas. It's hard to preach a monotheistic view of the world if all sorts of ideas are available to your kids online and via TV, music and film. And the new global electronic economy -- involving fund managers, banks, corporations and millions of individual investors -- can transfer vast sums of capital from one part of the world to another in seconds, quickly stabilizing or de-stabilizing economies, as has happened recently in Asia.

Electronic information has also fueled globalism and its consequences. The World Trade Center attacks were a global, not a local event. When Nelson Mandela was released from a South African jail, he was watched by the entire world. So is the American bombing campaign against the Taliban. This kind of internationally-transmitted imagery doesn't just provide external information, but affects the internal politics and reality of our lives -- our family and religious values, our perceptions about the world. When hundreds of teenagers stormed the Berlin Wall and began to tear it down, the first thing many of them did was run to music stores and buy the videos they'd been secretly -- and illegally -- watching on MTV. And "Baywatch" remains the most popular show in Iran, to the despair of the religious leaders running the country.

Primitive cultures like the one running Afghanistan don't accept the inevitability of globalism. Most other governments do, perhaps the primary reason the Arab world isn't actively resisting the much-resented United States in its new war. Countries that don't want to join in may end up like Afghanistan, beset by tribal conflicts, cut off from capital development and economic opportunity. Would investment from multi-nationals help or harm a country like Afghanistan, where one kid after another says in TV interviews that the only available job opportunities involve shooting people?

Whether it's a good witch or not, globalism is much too big and pervasive an idea to go away. For all the media hysteria about bio-terrorism and other dangers, it seems probable that the United States will ultimately destroy the Taliban government, and the first such conflict of the 21st century will be over. What isn't as clear is whether this will mark the beginning of a war or the end. Or whether anybody will ever come up with a widely-accepted definition of what globalization really is.

Comments

GLOBALIZATION ON WHOSE TERMS?

[andres32a]

The main problem with Globalism is that everyone has their own idea of what it means. And most people tend to use the word as something that names what they like or dislike. In consequence, most people have an inmediate, non-analitical, and almost violent reaction towards the word "GLOBALIZATION". (At least JonKatz seems to...)

There is something that can be said about Globalism... Dont trust anyones definition on that word, specially when their definition is full of generalizations...

Having said that it can be argued either way if Multinationals have hijacked or not globalism. But you see, this is totally relative to the multinational at hand.

Investors from different countries tend to behave in different ways, frequently reflecting the different kinds of capitalist systems they come from. The most striking differences among foreign direct investors in the U.S. economy are found between West European and Japanese entities. Investments by the former are heavily concentrated in manufacturing and R investments by the latter are more evenly split between manufacturing and R&D facilities on the one hand and distribution networks on the other.

The bottom line is that international organizations today are fundamentally political, not legal or judicial, entities and will remain so into the policy-relevant future. Their staffs, moreover, will long be composed of foreign nationals dedicated to pursuing their own countries' interests. These organizations are certainly capable of fostering significant degrees of international cooperation in the technology field and others, but as is the case with issues involving globalization, interdependence, and cooperation, member states will constantly struggle to secure the best possible terms of cooperation. National representatives will continue to battle over questions such as: Who pays? Who benefits? Who benefits the most? Who is in charge?

You can't except organizations that are created for the purpose of making money (and the goverments sponsored by them) to behave otherwise. What you can hope for is that competition created by "globalization" will give consumers better products and that the free flow of technology and information within the "global village" will give people more an more choices.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

Rich Cook.

Who's the most global?

[tcd004]

I work for a magazine called foreign policy. Late last year we did a very interesting set of rankings that rated how "global" different countries are. We worked with AT Kearney to develop a system to measure and compare things like, # of secure interent hosts, amount of foreign direct investment, # of long distance telephone calls. The results of the study were interesting and suprinsing. This year we'll be publsishing the same report in January.

You had me, then you lost me

[jenniedo]

I understand the point Jon Katz is trying to make, and to be perfectly honest, I don't even disagree with it. But he'd make that point a lot better if he didn't try to pretend he knows something about Germany while making it. First of all, it's 'Globalisierung', not 'Globalisiening'. Second, "hundreds of teenagers" did not "storm the Berlin Wall and bring it down" -- if you'd taken a mean age of the folks dancing and drinking on and around the Wall on November 9th, 1989, they'd probably have been somewhere in their mid-to-late twenties. Third, these "teenagers" did not all run first thing to music stores and buy videos on the morning of November 10th when the shops opened in West Berlin -- most people went instead for things like bananas and kiwifruits. And fourth, even those who *did* run to music stores weren't gung-ho about buying "the videos they'd been secretly watching on MTV". MTV is an American channel which even twelve years later is only available on cable television in the now-unified Germany, and certainly was not watched by *East* Germans *before* the fall of the Wall. Mr. Katz, you're a very good writer. You really are. But I'd like to see you use a little more of your brain and research skills behind that rhetoric instead of making things up on the spot just for the sake of being able to embroider detail onto your arguments. -J

The Global Corporation

[Alien54]

It's global govenment -- meaning the whole globe. With global government, the world doesn't have to contend with democracy causing problems for commerce.

We need to look at this as seen from outside of the USA.

In this column in the Indian Online Magazine Tehelka, Swami Agnivesh warns the West that it would be dangerous to attempt a global, unilateral regime of the sort envisaged by the World Trade Organisation without a corresponding willingness to give up its parochial mindset. As he notes 'the Western commitment to equality remains suspect to the rest of us because they have not upheld this, in any real sense, in dealing with our societies. In its transactions with non-Western societies, the West has operated on the privileges and profits of inequality."

He warns the West that it would be dangerous to attempt a global, unilateral regime of the sort envisaged by the World Trade Organisation without a corresponding willingness to give up its parochial mindset.

The whole article is insightful, but rather unsettling to a usian who has never been out of country.

The idea that somehow the USA is better than everyone elsemight even have some truth in it, but too often it breeds a certain contempt and disrect.

In a similar area, look at Microsoft. They argue they have the best in the world, but this does not always promote respect from users of other technologies.

And so it is probably for the better that the US does not become the equivalent of Microsoft in the nations of earth.

Re:I haven't been able to nail it down

[joss]

> but whatever their message is it isn't getting out. Protestors in seattle just looked like hooligans.

Yes. Entirely true. Everything from CNN to West Wing protrayed them as a bunch of clueless whining disorganised morons. But, do you remember seeing an interview with any of the protestors' spokesmen on mainstream media, or did you just see a bunch of studio jockeys vaguely paraphrasing what they were unhappy about. Did you actually see any air time given to someone explaining what they were unhappy about and what they were trying to achieve ?

The media always portrays it as: look at these silly people, they don't understand the benefits of free trade.

Consider the possibility that the people who went to all the trouble of travelling to Seattle, risking arrest, etc, have actually looked into these issues rather more carefully than the average couch potato. Then the media invites all "regular folks" to feel contempt and scorn for these ignorant fools.

So, your impression is perfectly understandable, but you have probably only heard one side of the story. Or, more accurately, you have heard various conflicting opinions on one side of the story. To get another side, try here:

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/jan2000albert. ht m