Resisting Globalization Maggie Nelsen

Resisting Globalization and Other Reflections

                The Arundhati Roy reading brought up some of the present challenges which face India, and many other countries across the globe. The main focus was the social effects of corporate globalization on the population. The rise of major multinational companies appear to be exploiting areas all over the world, co-opting or seemingly bypassing the government as they swoop into countries to extract either resources or labor.  Roy exemplifies that something is severely wrong with the system when she cites India’s serious surplus in grain and other agricultural products, yet somehow the excess food is stored in government warehouses until it perishes, instead of reaching the millions of staving Indians below the poverty line. It is shocking to hear such a phenomenon occurring, and definitely makes one wonder as Roy does, “Who is [globalization] for? …Is corporate globalization about ‘the eradication of world poverty’ or is it a mutant variety of colonialism?”(Roy, 5-6). International bodies, the United States and other western countries are often pushing developing nations towards certain economic policies or subsidizing certain sectors of nation’s economy, which ultimately hurt the poor of those nations: “Developed countries like the US…are using the WTO to pressure countries like India to drop agricultural subsidies in order to make the market more ‘competitive’”(Roy, 6). This is why Roy refers to the phenomenon as modern day colonialism. Reading this excerpt from Roy’s piece demonstrated to me Western arrogance and ignorance all in one; clearly the west is only thinking about the bigger, global economic picture when insisting on these policies—hardly doing their homework on how such policies will affect the local population. This is at the core of what angers Roy and myself the most I believe. Americans and the like will insist that with strong democratic institutions, civil society and so forth, globalization can bring these countries the benefits which it has for the developed power houses. But  Roy reminds readers of the implausibility of such a ‘paradise’ where all these safety-nets were in place for the people; Roy thereby refers to this western argument as ‘globalization with a face’. However, the governments of developing nations are no less guilty. Although they may be somewhat coerced into many trade agreements with the West and MNCs in order to receive loans and aid, ultimately they leave vast sectors of their population at a total loss for upward mobility in the name of globalization and economic development—as determined by the western world economic structure: “In India, the times are full of talk of ‘free market’, reforms, deregulation, and the dismantling of the ‘license-raj’—all in the name of encouraging entrepreneurship and discouraging corruption. Yet when the state obliterates the flourishing market…few comment on the irony”(Roy, 9). When those in power are hypocritical, it’s no wonder writers like Roy produce work that is fundamentally cynical and incredibly critical of the current situation; indeed she ends her piece with: “the only thing worth globalizing is dissent”. I wonder what Roy’s commentary would be about the Arab Spring? As the title indicates it did have a ripple effect across the region, mass protests finally demanding more from their government—is this the change and protest Roy is supportive of? Seems to be.

                This was a good reading to end the semester with because it brought us back full circle to what we began the semester with, the dominance of MNCs and how their introduction into a community can rule over a town’s livelihood and limit a community’s potential for economic growth. For me, gaining in depth knowledge about multinational corporations, international economic bodies and other independent western nations and learning how interconnected they are to the economies of developing nations, really demonstrated to me how much poverty and social angst is derived from the hegemonic powers global structure which every other nation is struggling to become a part of. This semester’s readers also demonstrated to be that media is in fact much more cross-cultural than I realized, and therefore just as influential in effecting the lives of multiple populations, whether it be Fijian girls or aspiring pageant Indian girls. I think maybe the most important concept I’ve come to begin to understand is our discussions of cultural authenticity and the crucial importance of local context when discussing “other” culture’s customs or problems. The Crazy Like Us chapters and the Death by Culture readings really put forth the powerful point that there can be universal issues, but that does not equate that there is a universal solution. The veil in France versus the Veil in a Middle Eastern country is another good example that one phenomenon of controversy cannot play out the same way in another culture of country—the local social history and political set-up vastly determines how issues become a problem and how they are dealt with. Ironically, quite often the importance of localized, in-country understanding is integral to a study globalizing patterns—as we saw with sex tourism in Jamaica and Havana. While this course explored a variety of subjects perpetuating, effected by or related to globalization, I am now recognizing these key themes which are embedded in most of these phenomenon; these themes need careful scrutiny as the world continues to shrink—for better or worse.