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Many of the articles I’ve read about globalization have the following phrase in them somewhere: “like it or not, globalization is here to stay”.Nobody’s ever really defined what exactly this “globalization” is, at least not to my persnickety satisfaction. So I guess it’s an accurate statement, as accurate as, “like it or not, some people are jerks”. What is globalization? Is it code for “Americanization”? Does it mean free trade? Does it mean a world made smaller by the Internet? I think it means all those things, to a degree. It’s the degree of globalization that creates such a debate.
Globalization isn’t really new. It used to go under the names imperialism and colonialism (“the sun never sets where? Pax Romana anyone?) It’s never been particularly democratic, which is where the “like it or not” part of it comes into the picture, especially by those who like the current globalization so much. Like it or not though, the Roman Empire fell, and all the colonial empires of the nineteenth century are gone, most of them didn’t even last 100 years. That other great empire of recent times, based on Soviet-style communism, didn’t do too well either.
I suspect that a globalization based on the world adopting the American way of life is doomed to failure, especially if it’s confined to copying our consumerism, with universal access to McDonalds and the Gap. For starters, both companies have branches in countries that are nasty human rights violators. Also, if the whole world lived like American suburbanites with their wasteful tract housing and dependence on gasoline powered cars, we’d be doomed to implode a lot sooner than the life expectancy of our sun guarantees us. Mother Earth cannot sustain an entire planet of soccer moms driving their kids to and from the mall.
Does globalization mean worldwide acceptance of the products churned out by the Hollywood dream machine? They’re distributed just about everywhere except for North Korea, and all the cheesy movies and tv shows are eagerly watched by certain segments of the population all around the world, mostly middle class young people. But interestingly, in just about each and every country with a sizable middle class, there’s a homegrown schlock culture market. India’s Bollywood actually produces more movies each year than Hollywood, while Japan has a huge (and practically impenetrable) pop-culture scene that morphs all the worst American junk it imports and turns it into something even junkier! And I’m sorry to report that Swedish hip-hop lacks soul, and Sweden fails totally in providing the social conditions that gave rise to rap in America’s ghettoes. In the global picture of things, domestic cultures actually are thriving, and will continue to, even if the quality of popular culture is low anywhere you go.
As some countries become more prosperous, they have money to waste, and since American movies and pop music and fast food have such well-organized distribution networks, it’s easy for middle class people to access it, and I read that in some cultures having a Big Mac provides a certain cachet (I read that about China, not France). The poor can benefit too. Thanks to lobbying by America’s tobacco companies, disaster and famine relief kits include emergency packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes! Very thoughtful, Uncle Sam.
Globalization in the form of imperialism and colonialism was strictly for the upper classes. My Baedeker guides from the early 1900s advised their ritzy readers that passports were nice to have, but not strictly necessary. Nowadays international travel is accessible to the world’s middle classes (don’t try to cross most national borders without a passport though). A lot of people are left out even with the growth of the middle class. For the hungry people in Ethiopia or Bangladesh, they may never get to answer the question: “Would you like fries with that?”
Capitalism has expanded the middle-classes, in some places better than others (but to be absolutely honest, most people in countries under the Soviet system had standards of living much higher than people living in third world countries, most of which are capitalist). So if free-market capitalism is such a worthy model, why do economies like Haiti or its next door neighbor the Dominican Republic exist? Ahem, it has something to do with modern-day forms of economic colonialism.
I’m not an economist, so I’ll skip a debate that betrays my ignorance on the benefits of free trade. Maybe it is a good idea to open up markets, although the question has to be answered: should the living standards of the advanced industrialized countries be lowered because their workforces must compete with people in developing countries who are desperate for any job, even one paying less than $1.00 a day? Perhaps those sweatshops which exploit child labor and have adults work 12 hours a day actually are better than people not having jobs at all, which is the argument of free-market globalizers. Without jobs they’d be more dependent on the American taxpayer to send them emergency rations and cigarettes. It’s an interesting phenomenon that multinational corporations particularly like to put their factories in low wage countries that have weak or non-existent labor movements. If they deign to open a new plant in an advanced industrialized country (like the US), they greatly prefer to plop it down in our very own Third World-like region: the American South. And a multinational corporation never met a dictator it didn’t mind dealing with.
I sort of like the idea of globalizing democracy, but unfortunately the real powers in economic globalization don’t really go in for it. They’re large multinational companies that are answerable to shareholders only. Ever been to a shareholders meeting? They’re just like meetings of the old Soviet parliament. The real power is elsewhere and the motto of the powerholders is the “Golden Rule”: he who has the gold, rules. Then there is the World Trade Organization. The creators of this organization “forgot” to make it democratic and transparent (i.e. they shouldn’t meet in secret or behind closed doors and then tell the rest of us what they’ve decided about our economic futures). Sorry to side with Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan, but the WTO has the ability to impose its policies on sovereign countries, without appeal, all in the name of free markets. By way of comparison, the UN doesn’t have that power politically.
The Internet is a really important means of bringing the world into closer contact. Well, actually, it will be a long time before every person has a laptop computer in their suburban houses all over the world. As it is now, in a country like India there’s only one telephone for every 60 people, less than 2% of households. In the advanced industrialized countries the Internet really is changing everyday life, although the US is the guinea pig as to whether an Internet-based economy will improve our lives, or just make it more complicated (like in the 1960s, when predictions were made that computers would create a paperless world and we’d all have more free time!)
Although a recent survey found that 60% of the world’s websites are in English,which makes sense since it’s the international language of business and the world’s educated population, the percentage in other languages is growing rapidly. One very interesting development is how the web connects people in ways that are very specialized, often creating a resurgence of languages and cultures that without the web were withering on the vine (Irish language sites are an example, and recently I came across the radio and television website for Rumantsch, one of the languages of Switzerland with under 100,000 speakers. What I’ve discovered is that those who say the Internet will make us all more alike culturally have a certain agenda: they like the idea of a homogeneous culture worldwide and would prefer it be in English (because often, they’re unilingual). And it’s true that at least in America, most people focus on American brandnames: the familiar USAToday, the American television networks and CNN. You could use the Internet with such a narrow persepective and not even realize that a whole world of information is available beyond what AOL pushes. Many wouldn’t even think of looking at the BBC or anything else foreign, even if it’s in English. The great “secret” of the Internet though is that it provides instant access to the whole world with its infinite variety of perspectives and cultural diversity. Even though the web is becoming more and more commercialized, all the other information will still be there. The Internet is beyond capitalism or any other system’s control (China and Singapore are discovering that people are dissenting online). The Internet is democratic with a very nice small “d”: there’s very little to stop any person who has access to a computer (or even something like WebTV), can contribute knowledge for the whole world to see.
The Internet as a tool of worldwide cultural development and enrichment is my favorite part of globalization. Instead of making us all alike, it gives us the option to explore differences and learn new things. If indeed globalization is here to stay, like it or not, it’s useful to think of what we can learn about each other and from one another. We all could benefit from more of that. Of course, I’ve seen chat groups where Serbs insult Albanians and vice versa in the most uncivilized manner. And there’s a lot of degrading porn on the web too. It’s just a reflection of mankind at its best and worst. Fortunately, in the virtual world of the Internet, differences that lead to conflict result in flame wars, not real wars. That in itself is an advancement of civilization.
All the other chatter about globalization: we’ll see what happens. What I’d like to see would be democratic and grass-roots groups worldwide using a tool like the web to band and to take action to counterbalance some of the negative trends of today’s brand of globalization. In a disorganized way, that’s what happened with the protesting groups at the WTO meeting in Seattle. That’s how movements can begin throughout history: with a little rabble-rousing. The Revolutions of 1848, the decades of unrest in organizing unions during the industrial revolution, the middle class reform movements of the Progressive Era led to some wonderful things: the rise of political parties representing the interests of ordinary people (particularly the social democratic and labor parties of Europe), universal suffrage, the creation of the welfare state, and later the appearance of the Greens and enviromentalism. The horrors of the twentieth century, including World War I and World War II weren’t the fault of ordinary people demanding their human rights and the chance to live in peace and dignity. Lust for global conquest--a bastard sibling of globalization caused those events. Throughout history it seems, globalization in whatever guise has been a mixed bag, like it or not. (May 10, 2000)
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