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Editorial, volume 9, number 5, 1999
Globalisation is one of those portmanteau terms that users define according to their own ideological perspectives, and thus invest with their own meanings. It is popularly used to refer to the increased internationalisation of economic activities, along with the spread of a global culture, the so-called McDonaldisation of society (Ritzer 1997). Scholarly definitions, however, focus on specific forms of international relations, ones that involve the 'deepening', rather than just the 'widening' of international linkages (EADI 1998: 32). For some, globalisation is a range of interrelated and multidimensional processes that defy one single and precise definition, but which are best understood through their deleterious social impacts: mass poverty and marginalisation alongside unprecedented personal wealth on a scale that is morally, and should be politically, intolerable (it has indeed been called economic genocide); a disjuncture between the power of fly-by-night wheeler-dealing private capital and the political machinery (national and international) to make this power accountable; and the increasing commodisation (for private gain rather than for public service) of even the most basic human rights - clean water, food, housing, education, healthcare, information, and so on (George 1999). Riccardo Petrella of the Lisbon Group distils this into the six new commandments: the necessity to become a global player (globalisation); the obligation to be innovative (new technologies); the compulsion to be a winner (competitiveness); the drive to open up markets (liberalisation); the exclusion of any role for the state (deregulation); and the high praise of private property and its entailing command (privatisation) (EADI 1998: 126). UNDP (1996: 57-65) casts the choices facing the world political economy as 'job-less growth - or job creating', 'voiceless growth - or participatory', 'ruthless growth - or egalitarian', 'rootless growth - or enriching culture', 'futureless growth - or sustainable development'.
For individuals (including most development professionals) who soar way above the poverty line in their respective societies, the picture is a mixed and confusing one. It is tempting to be swept away by the hard sell of globalisation. New communication systems and cheap electronic goods, for example, are and genuinely feel like invaluable advances, even to the most technophobic or dyed-in-the-wool Luddite. One has to keep pinching oneself to remember that millions of people have never even made a telephone call or sent a letter. The complex dependencies these gizmos create become apparent only when they break down or are made redundant by yet more advanced technologies. Yes, the affluent are mildly worried about genetically modified foodstuffs, about the conditions in which consumer items like clothes, sports gear, and cosmetics are produced, about environmental pollution (too many cars on the road), the use of the Internet in facilitating paedophile rings, sex tourism, and so-called hate websites, the international trade in arms and narcotics, the rise of religious fundamentalism or of ethnic hatred, and so on. But it is somewhat difficult to piece all these issues together into a coherent analysis, as opposed to simply blaming globalisation for everything, especially if one is enjoying so many material gains at the same time. It is harder still to translate this analysis into a comprehensive political agenda to challenge the TINA (There Is No Alternative) orthodoxy; much less to inspire effective social action that can weave local and global concerns into an overall tapestry. Globalisation is reaching into the lives of individuals everywhere, be they assembly-plant workers on the US-Mexican border, rice-farmers in India, teleworkers in Malaysia, or senior WTO officials in Geneva; it is shaping our intimate aspirations and our sense of what matters in life. Yet, the capacity of ordinary people to understand and engage critically with what it all means is desperately limited. A post-modern fragmentation into single-issue and identity politics has taken place just when a broad-based alternative to contemporary capitalism is most needed. As CNNs billionaire owner Ted Turner says in UNDPs 1999 Human Development Report: It is as if globalisation is in fast forward, and the worlds ability to react to it is in slow motion (as cited in Elliot 1999).
This issue of Development in Practice looks at the social impact of globalisation from a range of contrasting perspectives. In a hard-hitting account of social mobilisation for economic rights in the USA, Cheri Honkala et al. outline the links between growing poverty and unemployment in the North, welfare reform, and changes in the world economy. From the other end of the telescope, in countries that have experienced a growth in export-sector employment, Leith Dunn and Hilary Abell focus on the Caribbean and Mexico respectively in showing how the social and political costs of this growth are being paid by the developing countries themselves (for example by educating and maintaining the workforce, foregone revenue through corporate tax-breaks, and long-term environmental damage) and subsidised by exploitative, unjust, and unhealthy working conditions for the largely female employees. The gender dimensions of globalisation are further explored by Maiythrayi Krishnaraj, who perceives greater alienation and stress affecting women who are encouraged to join the western consumer culture, but who must increasingly take whatever jobs they can simply so that their families can make ends meet. Julius K. Nyerere argues that universal social standards are impossible without equality between nations, and that this equality cannot by definition be achieved through the unfettered play of market forces. As a result, social standards are used as a proxy for protectionist measures by the industrialised countries against those which cannot afford to attain them. Radhika Gajjala challenges the view that electronic communication is the democratic leveller its proponents claim. Michael L. Tan suggests that its radical potential is tempered both because only the very privileged few have access to new information technology outside the industrialised countries and the capital cities of the South; and a through critical awareness of how such technologies act as the Trojan Horse of cultural colonisation by the North. As he observes, there is something unsettling about his feeling at home in an Amsterdam hotel because the CNN announcers are the same familiar faces he knows from watching from his real home in Manila. Claudio Schuftan calls for social equity to be the barometer against which to measure the quality of international relations and public policy. However, Eric Neumayer urges developing countries to argue their case by engaging with, rather than turning their backs on, the proposed Millennium Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the WTO.
Privatisation and public sector reform are both part of the liberalisation and good governance agenda associated with the Washington Consensus. However, debates on the subject have often become mired in unhelpful ideological conflicts of the four legs good, two legs bad variety. If the aim is to provide reasonable public services to all citizens in an efficient and accountable fashion, then simply turning these over into private (profit-seeking) hands will not do. David Hall shows how the privatisation of major services, such as water and public construction works, has encouraged corrupt tendering practices. Efforts to stamp out such corruption by organisations like the World Bank and the OECD are, he argues, undermined by their insistence on privatisation as the only way forward, while the corruption itself is often fuelled by the active or implicit collusion of governments and other official bodies. Mike Waghorne describes the creative ways in which public service unions have engaged with such reforms without sacrificing the principles of ensuring the best possible level of provision and decent working conditions, while also keeping debate about public services firmly in the public domain.
It is ironic that just as a rights-based (as opposed to a needs-based) development discourse is gaining ground, the forces of economic globalisation are unravelling certain agreed and de facto rights, particularly concerning labour standards; and undermining the autonomy of elected governments to determine their own national economic policies. At the same time, despite the new discourse, aid agencies increasingly find themselves dispensing old-fashioned charity to those whose rights have been trampled upon, rather than catalysing the efforts of the down-trodden themselves to bring about sustainable change. There is, however, a lot of money to be had in performing high-profile hand-outs, and Stephen Commins implies that some NGOs are in fact content to be ladles in the global soup-kitchen; a subject addressed in a recent conference reported on by H. Roy Trivedy. Describing the uneasy post-war settlement in Eastern Slavonia, Judith Large shows how yards of bureaucratic red tape can obliterate rights and dignity just as effectively as can the application of physical force, and is both less visible on the international stage and, once in place, less amenable to external intervention. As Sinisa Malesevic (ACCENTS) observes, the difficult balancing act between globalism and nationalism that is shaping Eastern Europe and other regions in transition has provided the ideological backdrop both to re-affirm peoples long-suppressed cultural identity, but also to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty and barbarism in its name.
It would be reassuring to think that, since globalisation evidently brings advantages as well as dangers, the challenge is simply to pick out the good bits and just leave the rest. However, as the papers here show, the only way to do this is by discounting the fact that the same phenomenon is good for some at the expense of others: one persons cheap pair of denim jeans is anothers exposure to incurable lung disease in the factory where they were made. One undeniably good thing to come out of globalisation is that it puts our economic interdependence on the table. The question is that of recognising and engaging with our common humanity.
Deborah Eade
Oxfam GB
References
EADI (1998) Globalisation, Competiveness and Human Security: Challenges for Development Policy and Institutional Change, Proceedings of the 8th EADI General Conference, Geneva: EADI.
Elliot, Larry (1999) A world driven by blind greed, Guardian Weekly, 15-21 July 1999.
George, Susan (1999) State sovereignty under threat: globalising designs of the WTO, Le Monde Diplomatique (published in the Guardian Weekly) 15-21 July 1999.
Ritzer, George (1997) The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions, London: Sage.
UNDP (1996) Human Development Report 1996, Oxford: OUP.
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