CHALLENGING GLOBALIZATION

4 CHALLENGING GLOBALIZATION

6 The strength of the third wave scholarship, therefore, is the

recognition that powerful discursive and ideological constructions

8 have played a role in shaping ideas of globalization. The argument

9 therefore follows that in identifying these power relations we are

10 able to build a basis upon which dominant (in particular neo-liberal

1 economic) ideas of globalization can be resisted and challenged.

2 Challenging globalization, argue Chin and Mittleman (1997), needs

3 to be located within an analysis of the role of power in shaping what

4 we think we ‘know’ about globalization. Central to this focus on

5 resistance therefore, is a refutation of the hyperglobalization or

6 business globalization literature whereby an overtly economistic view

7 of globalization is presented as a route to prosperity and progress.

Intellectual challenges to mainstream globalization discourse,

9 often employ an argument that identifies globalization with neo-

20 liberalism (Gills 2000: 4). In this view globalization is presented as

a commitment to neo-liberal capitalism pursued in the interests of

2 the powerful (the richer nations and classes of people) at the expense

3 of the weak and the poor. Such challenges can be backed with the

4 presentation of statistics on the widening of global poverty. For

5 example, the United Nation’s 2003 Human Development Report says

6 that during the booming 1990s, 54 poor countries actually got poorer

7 in terms of how they measured on the Human Development Index

8 (a bundle of measures that includes things like infant mortality rates,

9 levels of educational attainment and access to clean water) (UNDP

30 2003). So despite the claim of the neo-liberals that globalization is

1 a force for prosperity and progress, many people around the world

2 remain sceptical about the extent to which a global economic system

3 built upon neo-liberal capitalist principles can bring benefits to all

4 peoples of the world.

5 The most obvious manifestation of these concerns is in the so-

6 called anti-globalization movement (see Box 7.1) which is a term

7 that is often given to the loose networks of campaigners who have

sought to protest about the negative consequences of economic

152 R ECONFIGURING WORLD POLITICS

B O X 7 . 1 T H E A N T I - G L O B A L I Z AT I O N M O V E M E N T

A discussion of resistances to globalization would be incomplete without looking at the so-called ‘anti-globalization’ movement. This is a term that is often applied to the groups and networks of campaigners who seek to challenge the dominance of neo- liberal economic ideas in global politics and what they see as a multinational corporate driven global capitalism. The term ‘anti- globalization’ is rather misleading – after all the movement is often viewed as a product of globalization; making use of the technological innovations in transport and communication technologies to network and spread their messages and ideas around the world. Given the problematic nature of the term anti- globalization, then, you will probably also come across terms such as the anti-capitalist movement, the global resistance movement and the global justice movement – among other labels. For writers such as Richard Falk (2000), the emergence of these anti-corporate globalization protesters is representative of a ‘globalization from below’. Others utilize ideas of ‘global civil society’ to explain the various networks of anti-globalization activists.

The emergence of an anti-globalization movement is over- whelmingly linked to the 1999 ‘Battle for Seattle’ in which vast networks of protestors convened on the city of Seattle to protest at a meeting of the WTO. The protests brought together a wide array of different kinds of groups, organizations and individuals – steelworkers, students, trade unions, environmentalists, women’s groups, anarchists, local citizens and many others in protest at what they saw to be the injustice of an emerging neo-liberal economic global order. WTO, G8, IMF and World Economic Forum meetings have been the particular target of these campaigns because they are viewed as representative of the institutions that shore up a global economic system based upon neo-liberal economic principles. While the various groups involved in these protests are very diverse, at some level they all share a concern that a neo-liberal economic system does not deliver progress and prosperity but inequality and injustice.

Public intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein (the author of the influential book No Logo, 2001) are often linked

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to an anti-globalization movement. Also associated with it is the

1994 Zapatista rebellion in the Chiapas region of Mexico. The

rebellion which took place on the same date as the signing of

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which

established a free trade zone between Canada, the United States

and Mexico is also often depicted as part of a globalized politics

of resistance to institutions (such as NAFTA) that are viewed as

8 supporting neo-liberalism.

There is debate over the extent to which ‘anti-globalization’

10 activities can really be labelled a ‘movement’ at all. After all it

constitutes a wide and diverse network of activists with quite

diverse, and often conflicting, goals (Eschle 2005). The emergence

of the World Social Forums from 2001 onwards has been one of

the most interesting developments in terms of global resistance

politics. These annual forums, which are linked to a number of

regional and local sub-forums, have provided a space for debating,

discussing issues relating to neo-liberal globalization and forging

822 strategies of resistance.

2 globalization and the dominance of neo-liberal economic institutions

3 such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. These institutions

4 are equated with shoring up an economic system that benefits the

5 wealthy at the expense of the poor. For example, for many years

6 the IMF and the World Bank have pursued policies of structural

7 adjustment that have forced states in the developing world to cut

8 welfare spending in favour of debt repayment and open up their

9 economies to market forces through policies of deregulation and

30 privatization. While the IMF and World Bank argue that these are

1 policies that will, ultimately, bring prosperity to developing nations,

2 critics have suggested that they have actually contributed to the

3 worsening levels of global inequality and poverty noted in the

4 Human Development Report. Of course, as we reflect in Box 7.1,

5 the idea of an anti-globalization movement is itself highly prob-

6 lematic and something of a contested concept.

7 We can therefore point to the emergence of some sort of global

social movement committed to challenging neo-liberal global capital

154 R ECONFIGURING WORLD POLITICS as part of the challenge to the discursive hegemony of ‘business

globalization’. Amoore et al. (1997) have suggested: Resistance groups should act to break down the myth, which is often

perpetrated by governments, that they are helpless in the face of globalization, and refuse to accept that their own hands are tied by the inevitable onrush of global economic forces.

(Amoore et al. 1997: 193) But more than this, we can also point to the role of academic

scholarship in helping to develop critiques of global capitalism. An important strand of scholarship that identifies globalization with inequality and injustice comes from feminism. Concerns have been raised for example about the impact of structural adjustment on women in the developing world (Rai 2002) and about the low wages and exploitative working conditions that largely female workforces experience in ‘global factories’ around the world (Elson and Pearson 1981). These exploitative working conditions are often a reflection of the widely held idea that women are mere ‘secondary’ workers – working to supplement a male ‘breadwinner’s’ wages. Many feminists suggest, therefore, that we need to think about how assumptions that women belong to an essentially ‘reproductive’ sphere underpin mainstream globalization discourses (Peterson 2003). It is perhaps unsurprising then, given the highly gendered effects of economic globalization, that women’s movements have played a significant role within the so-called anti-globalization movement.

Some third wave globalization scholars concerned with the politics of resistance have invoked a ‘historical perspective’ drawing upon the work of scholars such as Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi who, in the early to mid twentieth century, sought to conceptualize resistance to (global) capital (Chin and Mittleman 1997). Robert Cox, for example, drawing upon Gramsci’s work has written of the possibilities for counter-hegemonic resistance to a global capitalist hegemony (Cox 1983). Karl Polanyi’s notions of counter-movement invoke the idea that human society is ultimately unable to deal with the social dislocation caused by capitalist transformation and this inevitably leads to resistances as people move to protect themselves from the harsh effects of the global market economy (Polanyi 1957).

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1 What this discussion of resistance demonstrates is that globalization,

2 however we might understand it, raises important normative issues

3 for the student of IR. In particular questions of poverty (and to a

4 lesser extent, gender inequality) are now inextricably mixed up with

5 debates around globalization. This concern with the negative impacts

6 of globalization and the ethical dilemmas that globalization poses

for the world is largely the result of the fact that people have dared

8 to be critical of existing understandings of globalization. In the final

9 chapter of this book, we focus in more depth on the current ethical

10 and moral issues facing the world. This is a discussion that cannot

1 take place without taking into account the massive changes in world

2 politics that we associate with globalization. In this sense, while this

3 chapter has focused on how notions of globalization have changed

4 our understanding of global politics, Chapter 8 will consider how

5 normative theory and theorizing in IR has confronted the issue of

6 globalization (as well as other contemporary issues in world politics).