Ken,
I agree with your points but I will make some additional qualifications based on my readings and understanding of globalization. With regard to autochthony, it is true that this is happening and in my view, it is similar to the way the human immune system reacts in defense of the human body when there is an external invasion or attempt to takeover.
However, just as with the human immune system, the fact that a community or society mounts a defense of its identity or in the case of human body, health, does not necessarily mean that the defense will succeed or even whether looking inward is necessarily the best strategy in the case of globalization. Moreover, in terms of development policy, one major insight from the literature is that countries are more likely to take institutional reform seriously when they realize that their freedom or autonomy is under threat from other nations because of their relative backwardness.
Germany, Japan, China, Mexico etc., are all cases in point. German reform in the 19th century did not become serious until Germany found herself under threat from Napoleon's conquest. Japan was inspired to reform because of Western invasion, as was China feeling concerned about losing her freedom because of Western interference. Many East Asian nations pursued economic development policies that were not consistent with the kind of free market capitalism that is being talked about today. The state played an active role and they protected some selected industries. Because the state institutions were disciplined and determined, they were able to develop viable industries behind state protection. Alice Amsden discusses this in detail in her book on South Korea, titled "Asia's Next Industrial Giant." And Robert Wade discusses such policies also in his book "Governing the Market." For me, these were eye-opening books. There is a certain degree of nationalism and a sense of national identity that informed the formulation and implementation of development policies in these countries. There was also discipline. I do not see such in many African countries.
My point here is that even if a nation decides in reaction to globalization and neoliberalism to pursue the path of autochthony, there is no guarantee of success if they do not have the necessary factors in place. East Asian countries for instance disciplined the consumption of their elites since they depressed the wages of their workers at one point.
In my view, the best way to deal with globalization is not just to withdraw because if a nation does that without other necessary things in place such as discipline, nationalism, effective state, other complimentary factors, they will just be left behind. Without moving to a state of export promotion, countries will not learn the discipline of adapting to global competition, taste and demand, which often compel domestic reforms. I saw this clearly in Malaysia.
Unlike Nigeria, the fact that Malaysia relatively opened up more than Nigeria and was willing to compete, institutional reform was pursuit more vigorously there than in Nigeria. Nigeria's economic policies compared to Malaysia's come across as Nigeria is a country that is made up of elites who do not feel the urgency of reform and they do things so slowly as if the whole world will wait for them. In Malaysia, I just spent one week watching their national news on TV when I was there in the late 1990s and I immediately felt that Malaysia is a nation that is aware that she is in a 100 meter race with other nations in the world and she needs to run fast and on the right lane. Nigeria shielded many industries from international competition which in and of itself is not bad but without discipline, and without a sense of nationalism and strong commitment to succeed, the state corporations just became a conduit for private primitive accumulation.
So some nations or communities become particularistic out of fear or feeling intimidated. Others strategically withdraw or engage in what some will call tactical withdrawal, only to emerge with greater strength later. In the current structure of the global economy, communities or nations that decide to just pursue autochthony, without some serious strategic plan, discipline and willingness to engage the world, they will just be left behind. Over time, they will become like an exotic community that people will travel to visit in order to get an anthropological experience of the past.
There are legitimate reasons for autochthony like there are for religious fundamentalism. The religious fundamentalist is someone who reacts to a world where he or she is always called upon to change some things about his or her faith, but no one tells the person where he or she is being headed to and the people are not sure whether the change is in their own interest since they are often not part of the decision making process. Consequently, they react by rejecting the new or external idea. So while we may not like fundamentalism, but there is a good sociological basis for that. As Peter Berger argues, if one decides not to change, after sometime, he or she will become irrelevant as the world will move on, whether for good or for bad. But on the other hand, if you just always just decide to change, you may end up being confused and losing your identity in the sense of not having some control over it. Every nation or community will have to figure out its path and it is not easy since within every society or community, there are also divergent interests.
More importantly, even if a community withdraws, it has no guarantee that it will survive. A good example of this is this reflection by Patrick Buchanan who realizes the limitation of the conservative ideology of having small town America living its own life that is not disrupted by liberal reforms. Well, the community can decide to pursue that path but the irony is that because of the unwillingness to understand the way globalization can impact a community whether they like or not, and the fact that conservatives uncritically embrace free market capitalism, their communities are not immune from the impact of globalization in spite of their desire for what looks like autochthony. Here is the reflection of Patrick Buchanan on this issue:
Unbridled capitalism is an awesome force that creates new factories, wealth and opportunities that go first to society's risk takers and holders of capital. But unbridled capitalism is also an awesome destructive force. It makes men and women obsolete as rapidly as it does the products they produce and the plants that employ them. And the people made obsolete and insecure are workers, employees, 'Reagan Democrats,' rooted people; conservative people who want to live their lives and raise their families in the same neighborhoods they grew up in. Unbridled capitalism tells them they cannot (Patrick Buchanan. 1998. "Schism Beyond Repair on the Right?" Washington Times, March 25.
Patrick Buchanan is deliberately cited for varied reasons, including the fact that he is a well-known conservative commentator and, at one time, even a presidential candidate in the Republican Party. The debate is not whether capitalism / globalization bring about some good things. That has never been in question. Even Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto praises the bourgeoisie for their creativity. He argues that within 100 years, they have accomplished what previous generations have not done in 1,000 years. Marx's critique of capitalism was moral and ethical, and here we find a conservative commentator doing the same thing even though the starting points of their analyses are different. Here is Marx in his own voice:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instrument of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society…Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from earlier ones…The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scare one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1967. The Communist Manifesto. London: Penguin Classics. pp. 222-223, 224-225.)
Finally, I agree that it is far easier for people to think in particularistic terms than about the human race. But anthropologically, we start as babies not even conscious of the different parts of our body, gradually we become fully aware of ourselves, then we connect with our family, which is a broader consciousness, then the relatives, clan, village or town, state, nation and given where we are now, a global consciousness. There is something teleological about this. One cannot evaluate the actual without having at least some idea of what the ideal is. So given where we are today, we cannot really in such a globalized world function effectively without a concept of the human race, as difficult as it may be to relate to.
Finally, how can we solve some of our global problems like poverty, climate change etc., if we fall back to our particularlistic identities? Africa is probably the least industrialized continent in the world but it is at greater risk of suffering the consequences of climate change. Why should someone not an African care about the problems of African? Lowland areas of the world will suffer more immediate consequences of climate change. Poverty maybe a problem in faraway Africa but some of its causes are far distant. So what makes someone cares for another person or problem that is far away. So as a description of where most people fall back, particularism is true, but if that is all that humanity is going to be doing, then that is terrible for it indicates we are experiencing a stunted growth in human consciousness. As Stiglitiz said, we need to work hard on political or other related forms of globalization that can help deal with the fast pace of economic globalization otherwise we cannot deal with the problems generated by globalization. It is, however, true that there is nothing automatic in a person or group developing the necessary level of consciousness even if there is need for it. But nations that cannot help their citizens develop the sense of shared humanity will just be setting themselves up for conflict
On my part, in many of my courses, I ask me students on the first day of classes to bring the answer to these two questions: what does it mean to be human and what do we owe each other for merely being human. That is the foundation of understanding society because if what it means to be human is described as having this or that or a believer of this or that, it is obvious that we are setting the world up for a fight.
Thank you.
Samuel
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment