I
I always
get the feeling that globalization in reverse is something that we have never
seen before. Certainly, it's something that Americans, Canadians, and Europeans
who didn't live through the Second World War have never seen before. The
Americans who fought in Vietnam, and the veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom
would, however, have an idea of what is to come. I also have an idea of what's
to come.
And,
what is to come? What is globalization in reverse going to
look like? What entitles me to say that I have seen what is to come?
What have I seen? I have seen what a military unit can do to a civilian unit:
to a family. That is what I have seen. That is what I feel entitles me to say I
know what is coming.
Ever
since I have seen what I saw, that is to say, the aftermath of the interaction
of a military unit with a civilian unit - I have been preoccupied with defense
on such a scale of the family unit. I always wish that I could have not let
that military unit through the gate of my princedom. If I could have prevented the
breach, the aftermath which followed would never have occurred. My sense of
security afforded by my kingdom would never have been stolen from me.
So, what
is to come? Is what is to come not what I have just described? What is
coming is the taking of this sense of security afforded by the Kingdom
of the American, and Canadian dream.
I have
been reading a great article entitled ‘The Geopolitics of the United States:
the Inevitable Empire’. The article is basically a summary of the
relationship between the geography, economics and politics of the United
States. It begins with the fundamental geography of the North American
continent, and how history, namely, the colonization of the North American
continent by the French, English, and Spanish began to increasingly shape
the trajectory of the North American continent to the present day, and
potentially into the future.
For some
reason I had the thought (especially with regard to American expansion during
the 1990s following the implosion of the Soviet Union) of how the
globalization narrative was fundamentally constructed by Kenichi Ohmae, and
other thinkers at Harvard, Yale etc. They basically articulated the
possibilities which are now available to the American elite to capitalize
on developments in Europe, namely, the implosion of the Soviet Union, and its
global consequences.
What
struck me with regard to globalization, and in hindsight as to how it operated
(namely, how it opened up the world to the free, and unobstructed flow of
American capital) was the experience of the Empire which predated it, namely, the
British Empire. What I'm trying to say is, I think that the experience of
the British (and British history especially British imperial history) informed
the thinking of Kenichi Ohmae, and other elite thinkers as to some of the
drawbacks of the historical experience relating to the rise, and fall of
British Empire. Economically, the British Empire extracted profit, and capital
from weaker powers around the world. It was as Ellen Wood describes an ‘empire
of capital’.
These
elite thinkers within the American academy drew on the British experience in India in particular. Especially, on how costly it had been for the
British government to maintain an Imperial presence in that nautically distant
yet tantalizingly rich market. I got the feeling that they were thinking about
how to avoid a repeat of this quagmire in which the British became entangled.
That is to say, ‘how do we go about exploiting the opportunities now available
due the implosion of the Soviet Union, while not incurring the costs, which bogged
down the British historical experience?
The globalization narrative is
the perfect answer. Construct a narrative wherein you paint the nation-state as
a thing of the past. Shamelessly promote the rise of corporate players, and
basically what you're doing the whole time is through your narrative,
and namely of globalization, and the inevitability of globalization
you are attacking the narrative for increased nationalization, and nationalist
economic policies.
Fundamentally,
what this means for the global business model which went into operation during
the 1990s was that investors did not want high taxes levied on their
investments. They did not want to pay the interest in order for them to operate
in countries such as China, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan,
South Korea, Vietnam, India, and basically every other cultural nation across
the globe. They wanted to go in with their investment, and have that investment
pay dividends while minimizing as much as possible the taxes charged on those
dividends.
Basically,
they were earning an income from their operations in the developing world as
noted above. That is to say, North American investors were earning an
income from their investment capital (which we now refer to as foreign direct
investment [FDI]), and they didn't want to pay the income tax which only the
national government could legislate, and levy. So, specifically and
precisely they did not want such legislation enacted. And, how could
they ensure that this happened? How
could they ensure that legislation that would increase taxes on their income
would not be enacted? The answer was to ensure that a cabal of cronies consolidates
power in that nation. The elite of the developing world followed the orders of their
North American post-colonial masters to perfection. They ensured that such
nationalistic policies would never be tabled, let alone enacted.
This is
part of the genius of the globalization narrative because it asserted that
globalization (that is to say the increased irrelevance of the nation-state)
was inevitable, and that global capitalism was also
inevitable. This is almost as foolish as saying that global terror, and global
terrorism is inevitable therefore there's no point in trying to fight
it. There is no difference between the flaws inherent in either argument.
On the
other hand, as elegantly put forth by John Tomlinson in his idea of global
unicity the idea that we’re moving towords a one global world is in
desperate need of discussion.
What I mean to say is that everywhere in the media is proclaimed the
idea that we’re now in an age of globalization where no one can deny that
we all live on one sphere, namely, the earth.
The media takes this for granted, and often begs the question when it
reports anything relevant to the idea of globalization. In other words, it takes globalization:
political globalization, economic globalization, and cultural globalization for
granted. It begs the question in its day-to-day operations.
John
Tomlinson, on the other hand, does not beg the question, and he attends to the
issue in meticulous detail. He
references the work of Roland Robertson who foresaw the increasing religious
fundamentalism, traditional idealism, nostalgia for a return to the golden age,
and increased call for economic protection, and nationalism not as the
failure of globalization, but rather as an acute awareness of it. In other words, these increasing phenomena
such as Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in
America is not evidence that globalization is failing. Can it not also equally
be seen as evidence that globalization is the fact. These phenomena can be seen also
that individuals are turning to these comfort ideas in reaction to the
facts of globalization namely increasing connectivity.
I
include this discussion in the document entitled globalization in reverse
because I myself have been quick to see increasing violence, and the specter of
peak energy, peak resource, the increasing radicalization of Islam, Christian
conservatism, and economic protectionism as signs of the collapse of
globalization. That is why I began this as a discourse on ‘globalization in
reverse’. Obviously, I would not have
painstakingly labored under this idea had I read Dr. Tomlinson’s book when it
was published in 1999.
Indeed,
after reading Tomlinson, and Robertson I feel enlightened. Indeed, I feel like
a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I am not the only one
who had entertained these terrible fears, and anxieties. So, does this mean
that globalization is indeed inevitable?
My overwhelming worry was that I was seeing the last days of the global
economy. I lived daily with the anxiety, like a monkey on my back that the
period of economic globalization was coming to an end. Was I myself one of
these people whom because of increased consciousness of globalization was
retreating into the comfort of traditionalism, and fundamentalism? Now, these are very interesting
questions.
Dr.
Tomlinson argues persuasively that “The way in which cultural actions become
globally consequential is the prime sense in which culture matters for
globalization.” “Deterritorialization is the major cultural impact of global
connectivity [globalization]”, he notes. Dr. Tomlinson defines ‘deterritorialization’
as ‘the way in which “complex connectivity weakens the ties of
culture to place” and “a phenomenon involving the simultaneous
penetration of local worlds by distant forces, and the dislodging of everyday
meanings from their anchors in the local environment.” In short, these are
the main ways, and precisely why culture matters for
globalization, and why globalization matters for culture.
Needless
to say, these are very complex concepts. But, through them Dr. Tomlinson overwhelmingly
succeeds in articulating the notoriously evasive realities which are
mercilessly shaping the world. Culture is engaging with globalization.
Globalization is influencing culture. With Globalization and Culture,
Dr. Tomlinson has equipped students of globalization with the theoretical tools
to resolve with great precision the ways in which culture, and globalization are
affecting each other. The concepts defined by Dr. Tomlinson have
wide-ranging applications right across the social sciences, and are neglected
by global actors at their peril. Global Islamic Jihad as prosecuted globally by
Al Qaida, and the Taliban are rooted in Islamic culture and civilization. It is
a harsh, and ugly reminder of the importance of Dr. Tomlinson’s insights. The
facts of culture are ignored at our peril.
II
To
say that John Tomlinson has had made an impression on me with Globalization
and Culture is an understatement. I’ve been procrastinating ever since I
began reading Tomlinson’s great work in detail. A globalizing world was for far
too long something that I didn’t
understand, and which I therefore feared. My sophistication, nuanced
understanding, I owe to Tomlinson. I have been resting on his intellectual
shoulders so far, but now I make an attempt to articulate my understanding of
Tomlinson’s writings.
First,
it should be recorded in the interests of full disclosure that I was born in a
Tamil family during the post-colonial
adjustment of British India. There are parts of me that would like to assert
that I was therefore born into a pure Tamil culture. The main thrust of
this assertion relies on the purity of Tamil as my mother tongue, and
the mother tongues of my family, and countrymen. However, this assertion should
be taken alongside the fact that the English language, British culture, and
Christian religion had been in wide circulation, and which had been established
in all the capitals of British India.
Moving
on from this initial disclosure, my main reason for writing out my
understanding of Tomlinson’s ideas is to crystalize exactly what it is that I
have extracted from the mind of Tomlinson. In particular, I am intrigued by his
ideas concerning globalization, and hybrid cultures. He calls this hybridization.
With this idea he is drawing attention to, and precisely framing the phenomena
which is usually treated within academia, and intellectual circles as merely immigration
and naturalization. Tomlinson addresses the phenomena in much more detail,
and approaches the phenomena with the use of the refined vocabulary, and
nomenclature of cultural studies.
To be
blunt, I’ve felt intuitively that there was much, much more that needed
to be said for immigration than just ‘the American melting-pot’ or ‘the
Canadian patchwork quilt’. The mystery obfuscating a transparent understanding
of the complexities of the phenomena termed ‘immigration’ is embodied in the
following question. Is the culture of Felix Inparajah – a first generation
Tamil immigrant more similar to, or more different from
the culture of Felicity Alexander – a second or third generation English
immigrant?
A
powerful issue which intersects the phenomena is that of cultural hegemony. In
particular, that of British culture, and language. It’s almost taken completely
for granted that by British culture we mean modernity and capitalism. If
we put Felix under a microscope we would see that the question which haunts him
is that which turns on whether he has been assimilated by this modern
British capitalistic culture, or whether he is cleverly, and heroically holding
out. We would see that he cherishes the idea that he has mastered the English
language, and literature not because he is in awe of it, but rather because “A
wise warrior knows his Enemy better than he knows Himself.”
From
another angle, we are equally privy to the insight that Felix mellowly, and not
without a large measure of embarrassment concedes that his culture is
definitely not identical to the Tamil culture of his countrymen in India.
Infuriatingly, he realizes
simultaneously that his culture is also definitely not identical
to the culture of his fellow Canadians.
Problems emerge when you get
into the maddeningly complex dynamics through which these individuals, and their
cultures interact to manifest the social milieus which inhabit the physical and
temporal space. The psycho-social product which emanates in these localities
from such complex combinations become a force in their own right with the
potential to feedback, and influence the very causes which produced them in the
first place.
Individuals,
and their cultures interact in complex yet precise ways. Individuals take
refuge in their culture in unique ways which in themselves go towards defining
the culture itself. Indian boys for instance have a unique culture of honouring
their mothers which is marked among a more general love of boys for their
mothers. This general love is heightened in Indian culture, and manifests as
described.
~
I have probably studied, and
reflected on social issues, societal analysis, social change, culture, and
identity as much as a graduate student on the subject. Then, why do I feel –
despite being surrounded by an alien culture – that the fundamental essentials
of the human condition are the same? Is seeing parallels, and similarity
between the culture of Canada, and that of India - instead of contrast - a
result of my own dual cultural identity. I am not what John Tomlinson
calls for the sake of argument a cultural pure-bred, but rather a
cultural hybrid. I coined a word for this internal contradiction many years
ago when I created my first YouTube account with the username ‘culturalmut’.
Anyway,
despite all these events in the history of my experience with dual cultural
identity, I feel not a cultural fullness, but instead a vacuum! This makes
no sense whatsoever. Conventional wisdom would suggest that I be over-flowing
with culture, since I am steeped in not only one, but two cultures! Yes, that
is what one would think, and probably the reason why I feel so odd about my
situation. I see so-called cultural pure-breds walking about oblivious,
anonymous, and as far as the eye can tell, culturally identical to the cultural
background of Canada. I try my best to emulate this care-free, and
happy-go-lucky demeanour as I too walk about in Canada. But, here in these
pages, in the company of esteemed intellectuals I disclose fully to you that it
is a charade put on by me, to try and fit in – to be anonymous.
Inside,
I am bristling with anxiety, and the inescapable reality of having to be
this cultural hybrid, that at the end of the day resents that these cultural pure-breds
can fit in so easily whilst it is so hard for me. It doesn’t escape me that
this is my Life. That realization is at the very heart of my feelings of
resentment…and revenge. I despise that I have to try so hard, and
expend so much of my energy and resources just to fit in. And
this is not just some vain, or narcissistic characteristic. We all very well
know that success in Canadian society is marked by one’s capacity to carry
one’s self off with an air of social grace. Those who do this, excel. Those who
cannot fit in – stick out – and languish under the indifferent heel of cultural
hegemony of which they feel they are not a part.
But
here is wisdom: how, precisely, do I know if he does not suffer the
same? Is he envious of my apparent cultural fullness? Is he secretly ashamed of
his flavourless white-bread culture? Does he long for whatever it is he
thinks that I have? There is in truth no way of knowing unless I am made
privy to his medical files.
~
What drew me to the
study of globalization and culture was my interest, and anxiety about the
future. In globalization and cultural studies I feel close to the answers I
seek. I am drawn to globalization and cultural studies because both
globalization, and culture are the objects under investigation. Within
the milieu of the unreflective pace of life in the twenty-first century the
contrast between globalization, and culture is captured to perfection by
the figure of a woman covered from head-to-toe in a black burq’a, wheeling a
carry-on luggage behind her through the boutique lined departures terminal at
Abu Dhabi International Airport.
What’s
going on here? What’s going to win: globalization? or culture? Is it a zero-sum
game, or the hybridization of the worlds’ cultures? These questions, and
anxieties are what drew me to this subject. But I can disclose more. I am also
a speculator, and cautious investor. Therefore, I am very much interested in
where, and how I should invest my capital. Is American Imperialism –
especially in the Persian Gulf – doomed to fail? Or, will it be Islamic
fundamentalism that is assimilated into global modernity? The vocabulary,
nomenclature, and theoretical tools of globalization, and cultural studies
gives me the means with which to peer into the future, and illuminate the ocean
of darkness into which I sail.
For a
long time I was resigned to my fate. I had fallen into the rut of believing
that my circumstances in the year 2006 would pretty much be the construct, and
confines of the rest of my life. When I came into the office in the morning, the
caffeine of the morning coffee still sharp in my mind, I would sit at my desk,
and in the calm before the storm I would pour out my feelings onto the crisp
white screen.
Sometimes,
in the afternoons after a trip to the bank, or to make a delivery somewhere, I
would again find the office at rest. Perhaps, the business community too were
at rest in their office lairs digesting their lunch. I would then have an
afternoon tea, and start writing with the wind. Those morning, and afternoon
journals were daily reports of pains, aches, anxieties, intense feelings,
interpersonal relationship issues, interoffice issues, political frustrations,
and musings. They were almost always dark, tired, apocalyptic, and portentous.
It was like I almost really wanted nuclear war to break out, and just put an
end to my misery.
Globalization,
and its developments were very much on the news agenda as was the ongoing US
Occupation of Iraq, and Afghanistan. Conspiracy theories flew wild. Everyone
had an trenchant opinion tying the almost unbelievable news stories into
something their consciences could comprehend. How else can a reasonably
intelligent, and compassionate human being digest reports showing Iraqi
soldiers, men, women, and children dying daily every month? And how could the
mothers, and fathers of the thousands of US and NATO soldiers paying the
ultimate price cope with their grief, disbelief, and stupendous ignorance?
Yet,
this was daily life for the people of the United States, UK, Canada, and the
people of Iraq. Amidst all of it, we somehow retained the peace-of-mind to be
courterous to our fellow urbanites, be flexible with our parents, supple with
our siblings, and merry with our friends. Parties took place, we drove to, and
from the office without going berserk on murderous episodes of road rage, and
indulged ourselves with a good book, or movie, and imagined a better world.
Such are the oil and vinegar contrasts of our human lives on this blue planet.
But
like I said, I had resigned myself to this fate. Using the information on the
internet, and my direct business intelligence I put together a theory of my own,
and wrote the ending of how all these things would play out.
~
Again, I come to you in some
discomfort to report on the effect John Tomlinson’s Globalization and
Culture has…is having on me. It is not easy to read, and once having read,
to comprehend, and be on the same page as Dr. Tomlinson. I have to re-read
certain passages which I detect are very important, and even strain my
intellect to see in it what Dr. Tomlinson is profoundly saying. When I struggle
and finally see eye-to-eye with Dr. Tomlinson, I feel a great burden fall off
my shoulders. The level of catharsis is indescribable, almost narcotic in the
sedation it causes.
I
don’t know what to say, I don’t even feel like writing this as there are so
many more pleasurable activities I could be engaging in. So, I won’t beat
around the bush. It’s hard to put the bliss Dr. Tomlinson’s insights induces
into words. But, this is definitely a big part of it. I often feel alone with
my thoughts, as if I am the only one who feels them, and the only one who
struggles so to articulate what he feels. When I delve into the mind of Dr.
Tomlinson, I don’t feel alone anymore. I feel that I am in his company. And
when I focus my intellect to grasp his thoughts, and am rewarded, the joy is
ummm…incommunicable.
Modernity,
and in the end - global modernity - is likely to be threatened existentially by
an aspect of its very self. Modern culture is marked by a culture of
intellectual cultivation. It is thinking before you leap. It’s conscious, not
unconscious, and it is self-conscious, and cautious. It is thus always
peculiarly frail, especially when placed side-by-side with its much more robust
and vigorous cousin – impulsiveness. Modernity is pre-occupied by essence of
its very being with defining itself, as it makes sense of the world by
enumerating, and defining all the things in it. Therefore, modernity is a labour
intensive culture.
~
I am
procrastinating. I should be working, but I am resting on the intellectual
shoulders of Dr. Tomlinson. Maybe I am still trying to assimilate his writings.
I comprehended them at last after several strained readings. But obviously if I
could as effortlessly articulate such ideas – as he can – I would not be
procrastinating.
What’s
it about? Well, it’s about modernity, globalization, and culture. I might as
well be speaking Chinese because yes, it’s true, these words are in fact
complex concepts that are themselves frustrating to define. In very fact, there
is a contemporary academic debate as to precisely how they should be
defined. So, no wonder then that I struggle to articulate concepts constructed
with them as the building blocks.
But, are
scholars like Dr. Tomlinson unnecessarily complicating something that is
actually a lot simpler? The answer is no. Or, rather the answer is as
complicated as the collage that one is confronted with at any international
airport, or cosmopolitan metropolis. Our biology goes flat out, and stares
gawking, mouth open, to even grasp a visceral sensation of what is occurring at
breakneck pace around us. Even two such open-mouthed gawkers might be feeling
the same thing when confronted with the global milieu, but now try putting it
into words…Perhaps now one can understand the necessity for the level of
theoretical sophistication demanded by the study of modernity, globalization,
and culture.
But, Dr.
Tomlinson goes much, much, further than this. He manages to articulate
not only that visceral sensation that one feels in the moment, but also
the anxieties that come into view when one is rudely awakened to the spectre of
globalization in its worldly, and institutional forms. For example, “Dear
Americans, and Canadians: India and China are not waiting for you to come
to terms with globalization. While you are working to understand
globalization, the Indians and Chinese are capitalizing on globalization in
manifold ways.”
~
Better
health is less conducive to sustained intellectual work. I know I should finish
my work on Globalization and Culture, but I’m still procrastinating. The
last session left me with a pretty profound comprehension of Anthony Giddens’
so called ‘strong version’ of the ‘internal logic’ of global spread of
modernity. It was explained to me by Dr. Tomlinson. I put down the book, and I
was speechless. I have been procrastinating now for about two days since this
episode. My justification is that I am still processing, and intellectually
digesting the significance of Giddens’ strong version of globalizations inner
logic.
I am
dismal again, so therefore, back to academics. So. Does Giddens’ incisive
observations of the increasing commodification of time in the nineteenth
century validate his ‘weak version’ of the inevitability of globalization? Is
‘Globalization’ as Dr. Tomlinson asks of Giddens’ theory ‘a consequence of
modernity’? More intrinsically, is the mechanization of time, and as Dr.
Tomlinson observes the ‘emancipation of time from place’ the quintessential
enabler of modernism, and modernity?
In
laymen’s terms, is what separates a modern man from a common man, the different
rhythms by which each sets his internal clock? Is the modern man governed by
the beats of global awareness, while the common man moves to the tempo of local
time which he can see, touch, and feel?
~
I am
beginning to master the art of understanding globalization. Dr. Tomlinson’s Globalization
and Culture has been instrumental to my progress. I am beginning to
stabilize the image of it, and precisely resolve it in all its detail. I began
this discourse because of my basic ambiguity when confronting globalization. I
would even struggle to define the term, let alone articulate my understanding
of it. But, the only reason I wanted to understand it was because I feared it.
My
anxiety and fear of it, and fear of what it was bringing was my call to action.
It was an uphill struggle. But, finally I reached a plateau where I could rest,
and take in the vista of the place from which I began my journey. How I arrived
at this resting place is described in Chapter I. I was enlightened. I realized
that all the things I feared as signs of an impending global collapse – 9/11, ,
2001 US Invasion of Afghanistan, 2003
USII, Peal Oil, the WCP, 2008 NAMC – could also quite reasonable seen, perhaps,
retrospectively, of the struggle of a global civilization trying to be born.
In
Chapter 1 I articulated the place from which I began as follows:
I include this discussion in the document entitled
globalization in reverse because I myself have been quick to see increasing
violence, and the specter of peak energy, peak resource, the increasing
radicalization of Islam, Christian conservatism, and economic protectionism as
signs of the collapse of globalization. That is why I began this as a discourse
on ‘globalization in reverse’.
But now
I am beginning to be able to more precisely articulate the changes in how I
view globalization. I had ambiguously subscribed to the theory as articulated
by Francis Fukuyama in 1992 that globalization spelt the ‘end of history’,
because – simply put – it was the global spread of modernity, and its horsemen:
capitalism (Mediciism), industrialism, and cosmopolitanism.
Dr.
Tomlinson enbrackets this bundle of anxieties in a single argument entitled
‘Modernity as a Historical Period’. It is the bundle of arguments spearheaded
by Fukuyama, and his colleagues that globalization was ‘the end of history’.
The problem for adherents to this ideology was the daily attacks upon this
crystal palace by the vagaries of a so-called globalizing world heading
inexorable towards its logical end-point: global modernity. As ever, Dr.
Tomlinson captures the essence in poetic fashion, “The ‘modern era’ has not
seemed sufficient (enough) to grasp the last decade of the twentieth century
(the 90’s) without some sort of qualification.” It’s undeniable, the daily
realities of the favelas in Rio, the persistence of African-American
underachievement, the persistence of European American ‘corner shop boy’
delinquency’ etc. was an embarrassment causing enraging face-saving by academic
adherents to the so called ‘end of history’.
As
Tomlinson points out of course, this argument is vulnerable to the critique
that it is tautological. In other words, Fukuyama and the hyperglobalizers are
in fact begging the question. A critic might ask them what exactly makes
Mediciism, or industrialism, or even the nation-state modern? Weren’t the Roman
Patricians essentially capitalists? Weren’t the Egyptians, and Chola Tamils
industrialists (bad question)? Wasn’t Rome a city-state? What makes modern
capitalism, industrialism, and democracy ‘modern’ and classical capitalism,
industrialism, and democracy not?
~
Tomlinson
writes, “Giddens describes ‘disembedding’ as ‘the lifting out’ of social
relations from local contexts of interaction.” “Giddens discusses two types of
‘mechanism’ which lift out social relations from their embeddedness in locales.”
The first of these mechanisms are “’symbolic tokens’” which “are media of
exchange which have standard value, and are thus interchangeable across
a plurality of contexts. Money is Giddens’ obvious example: money is a means of
‘lifting out’ social relationships from the time-space determination of
physical locales.”
This
subject matter is utterly unromantic, and reminds me of Marx’ comment, “wading
through economic filth.” But, it’s a ‘mechanism’ which is certainly in
existence, which is probably why the resistance to it is so difficult. It’s
what we already know, and take for granted. Why are these things so neglected
in scholarship? I guess that’s why they call economics the dismal science.
Anyway,
what interests me about this ‘mechanism’ of ‘symbolic tokenism’ a.k.a. ‘money’
has to do with liquidity in the global economy, and the post-2008 reality of
belt tightening, and the consequent freezing up, solidification, drying up,
desiccation, what have you, of money in the global economy. That is, what I’m
trying to get at is this: if money, and the symbolic tokenism disembeds social relations from local culture, then
will the desiccation of the global economy be a force re-embedding social
relations into local culture? Will the prodigal child have to come back
home, and marry his uncle’s daughter?
Anyway,
this mechanism, unromantically articulated by Giddens is the very mechanism I
have always suspected as the cause for the uprooting of my life from the
culture of my childhood, to the culture I now find myself in Canada.
~
The
main problem with the periodization of globalization or looking at it as a
historical period, and indeed, as the historical period i.e. ‘the end of all
historical periods’ is as follows. “Multiplying environmental risks, threats of
nuclear Armageddon, the anarchy of the global capitalist market, the sheer
unruly expansiveness of cultural practices across national cultural
‘boundaries’ – all these escape the sort of grand plan that may be associated
with modernity as a ‘project’”(Tomlinson, 1999:46).
~
I
think I’m at a point where I can address the contradiction, or paradox between
the predictions implied by Dr. Francis Fukuyama’s, and Dr. Kenichi Ohmae’s
theories, and the historical facts which came to pass. Fukuyama talked about
globalization as being the ‘end of history’, with capitalism, industrialism,
and political modernity sweeping the globe, and culminating in a Global
Constitution, with the UN to administer it. Ohmae wrote in 1995 that, “The
modern nation-state itself has begun to crumble.” (Ohmae, 1995: 6). This is
what Dr. Kenichi Ohmae confidently proffered in 1995. If this prediction was
followed through to conclusion it might very well now be reflected in films
such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, or Surrogates:
hyperglobalized worlds. But, it is now 2012, and our anxieties about the future
are instead being projected onto films like, Children of Men, and Contagion.
What the fuck happened?
First
of all, my own ability to coherently articulate this arduous complex of
anxieties, and compulsions I owe to Dr. Tarak Barkawi who explained it to me in
Globalization and War. He wrote in 2006, “For Ohmae and others, often
called “hyperglobalizers”, the world was becoming borderless and was in the
process of liberating itself from the awkward and uncomfortable truth that
the…world divided into nation-states no longer works”(Barkawi, 2006:6). Writing
in 2006, and having lived to witness 9/11, the Patriot Act, the Department of
Homeland Security, Shock and Awe, and Operation Enduring Freedom, he observed,
“It would seem, however, that the world is not becoming borderless in the
way Ohmae predicted” (Barkawi, 2006:6).
Dr.
Barkawi’s departure point for a discussion of the failure of Fukuyama’s, and
Ohmae’s visions to come to pass is September 11, 2001. In this regard,
his explanation zooms in on the cultural dimension of globalization, or at
least on how culture has affected globalization.
~
I
have been procrastinating since arriving at the place noted above. What place
is that? That’s the question isn’t it. It’s the place where I am standing in
the middle dwarfed by gigantic projected moving images showing historical
documentary footage of the historical phenomena noted above: “9/11, the
Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, Shock and Awe, and Operation
Enduring Freedom.”
~
The
greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. The
greatest trick the United States ever pulled was convincing the world that US
Imperialism does not exist. What happened, and is happening from 1991 to
the present day in mid-2012 is not US Imperialism, we are told, it is ‘globalization’.
~
SCENARIO 1
|
↔
|
SCENARIO 2
|
Industrialization
|
↔
|
ruralization
|
Free markets
|
↔
|
Economic protectionism
|
State institutions
|
←→
|
Traditional institutions
|
Intensification
|
↔
|
Desiccation
|
Positive Global economic growth
|
←→
|
Negative Global Economic
Growth
|
Sustainable civilization
|
←→
|
Resource depletion
|
Alternate fuels/green energy
|
←→
|
Peal oil/Peak energy
|
GATT/WTO
|
↔
|
Impotence of
GATT/WTO
|
Yes,
I am in that place where I am at a loss to understand how state intervention is
increasing at a time when the economic parameters above appear to be pointing
to scenario 2, namely, the weakening of the state as per Kenichi Ohmae. Tarak
Barkawi wrote at a time when the above parameters looked like this:
SCENARIO 1
|
↔
|
SCENARIO 2
|
Industrialization
|
↔
|
ruralization
|
Free markets
|
←→
|
Economic protectionism
|
State institutions
|
←→
|
Traditional institutions
|
Intensification
|
↔
|
Desiccation
|
Positive Global economic growth
|
←→
|
Negative Global Economic
Growth
|
Sustainable civilization
|
←→
|
Resource depletion
|
Alternate fuels/green energy
|
←→
|
Peal oil/Peak energy
|
GATT/WTO
|
↔
|
Impotence of
GATT/WTO
|
That
is to say, he wrote when the economy was booming but yet, he attended to the
increasing intervention of the state following 9/11. Anyway, he writes,
“Something does seem to be happening to the state, if not its demise. To
understand where Ohmae went wrong and to recover the kernel of truth in his
approach, we must return briefly to a critique of the neoliberalism that
informed his worldview”(Barkawi, 2006:7). Like any reputable sociologist he
begins by critiquing terms and concepts which lay people take for granted, and
with which they beg the question.
“The
free market as we know it” he begins “is not ‘natural’ but made through
political action” (Barkawi, 2006:8). “Like all ideology, neoliberalism is bad
history”, he continues. “It fails to understand the social, political, and
historical origins of the free market it celebrates”( Barkawi, 2006:8).
Above
I wrote, “I am in that place where I am at a loss to understand how state
intervention is increasing at a time when the economic parameters above appear
to be pointing to the likelihood where the state should be weakening.” Well, I
can confide that I am no longer truly at a loss. I am now at that place – the
starting point- where I can begin to understand why state intervention is
increasing at a time when the sociometrics tell me that it should be weakening.
~
Giddens’
concept of ‘disembedding’ is basically the unearthing, the exhuming of the
psychobiological human precursor to civility, and culture: trust. It is
the unleashing of this psychobiological precursor to feeling at ease – trust –
a taking for granted of certain normative expectations of stability from the
local to the regional, and I suppose taken to conclusion: the global. Lord
Anthony Giddens, Dr. John Tomlinson, and I are on the same page, and on the
same plane, as can gathered from Dr. Tomlinson’s kindred articulation of our
mutual fears, “What haunts modernity is the risk for the catastrophic failure
of the systems in which we have increasingly invested the above-noted trust.”
~
Finally,
the following is my opinion as to how to perceive the increasing manifestation
of the apparent paradoxes mentioned above.
What
is US domestic capital, or simply, US capital? Ellen Wood’s Empire of
Capital (2003) proffers some intriguing insights with regard to the
workings of US capitalism from the 1970s onwards. Her contributions to the
discourse of the global consequences of US hegemony after the disintegration of
the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991 are illuminating. “The Bretton Woods
system was abandoned in the early 1970s, to be replaced by other principles of economic
order”(Wood, 2003:132). “This was the beginning of the long downturn, which
affected all western economies, and the US in particular”, she continues. “The
global economy was made to carry the burden of that decline. After the heady
decades of sustained growth, and increasing productivity during the long boom
(the 50s, and 60s), the US economy entered a long period of stagnation, and
declining profitability…not least because its former military adversaries,
Japan and Germany, had become extremely effective economic competitors”, she
writes.
“The
problem now was how to displace the crisis, in space and in
time”, she asserts. These are extremely complex insights, if only because
they would be tedious to prove. But, she seems up the task. She departs, “What
followed was the period we call globalization, the internationalization of
capital, its free and rapid movement, and the most predatory
financial speculation around the globe…The US used its
control of financial and commercial networks to postpone
the day of reckoning for its own domestic capital. She writes that
the ‘US postponed the day of reckoning for its own domestic capital’ by
“enabling it (the US) to shift the burden elsewhere.” How did the US enable the
‘shifting of the burden elsewhere’? The US accomplished this by, “easing the
movements of excess capital to seek profits wherever they were to be found, in
an orgy of financial speculation.” [All emphasis mine]
But,
that doesn’t answer the question of how players in the US economic, and
political elite achieved this. How did the US economic, and political
elite ‘ease the movements of excess capital’? She answers the question in her
own time, “Conditions were imposed on developing economies to
suit these new needs (the need to ‘ease the movements of excess capital’). In
what came to be called the ‘Washington Consensus’, and through
the medium of IMF and World Bank, the US economic,
and political elite demanded ‘structural adjustment’ and a variety of measures
which would have the effect of making these economies even more
vulnerable to the pressures (appetites) of the US.”
At
last she concretely alludes to the buzz word that is the go-to poster child for
the ‘inevitability’ of global comparative advantage, and economic globalization:
China. She writes, ‘The IMF, and the Bank demanded ‘structural adjustment’, for
instance, an emphasis on production for export, and the removal
of import controls’. Now, I understood this as IMF advisors travelling
to Hong Kong, and Shanghai in 1992 and telling them, “In order to qualify for
our loans, and before we release the funds into your fingers you have to
promise that you are going to use the loan proceeds to build textile factories,
and infrastructure that can efficiently, and punctually meet our needs. Got it?
Also, you need to repeal all your import laws limiting how, where and when we
can import FDI. Got it?”
That
is to say, development would happen, but only if IMF, and World
Bank approved the development loans. Therefore, the US economic, and
political elite would have a say in how the developing
nations would in fact develop. Their development would be under the strict
control of the US elite. The US economic,
and political elite would know precisely how the developing
nations would develop. If the developing nations deviated from the
promises they made on their loan agreements, they would be in breach, and
further disbursements of funding would not be released.
