CHAPTER 2 CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES
2.3 GLOBALISATION
It is difficult to define globalisation because it is a strongly contested term.
Proponents of globalisation, such as Antony Giddens (in Edge, 30 January 2000) tend to see it simply in terms of improvements in technology and communications, such that the world is getting smaller. They suggest that these technological advances are
beneficial to the world economy and offer great opportunity. Opponents of
globalisation tend to see it as a capitalist, that is, ‘market-based’, process that erodes the rights and well being of the less developed countries, whilst allowing the more developed countries to accumulate wealth. Opponents of globalisation frequently refer to it as the “disneyfication” of the world and equate it with increased disparities between the rich and the poor and increased social break-down as humans become alienated from themselves, each other and the environment in their struggle to make a living which leaves little time for them to care for themselves, their families and their communities. Critics also equate environmental degradation with globalisation, considering the extraction and pollution of the Earth’s resources to be a consequence of capitalism’s reliance on ever increasing economic growth. For example, a critic of globalisation, Bhaskar, (1993:162) states:
(…)when institutionalized and globalized, political power may take the form of
‘The New World Order’, economic power assumes the shape of the rapidly shifting structure of the global capitalist economy, moral-normative power is displaced by the sanctions of inter-national, intra-national or ethnic violence and discursive power is displayed by a homogenized ideological mediatization of ‘the news’ in a cultural matrix dominated by the co-existence of
Disneyfication/McDonaldization, poverty and waste.
In South Africa and Zimbabwe, there is ambivalence towards globalisation. For example, Robert Mugabe and his followers are vociferous critics of globalisation (Price, 2004a in Vol.2, Chap. 3), yet business and industry in these countries whole- heartedly embrace the capitalist (globalising) mode (Price, 2002 in Vol.2, Chap.2).
The trend in both countries, mirroring that of the world, is increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. However, in Zimbabwe the disparity has recently increased dramatically due to an unprecedented decline in economic performance and social indicators. Inflation is 1000%, more than half the population lives on less than U.S. $1 a day and average life expectancy has reduced from 61 years in 1990 to 33 years in 2007 (UNICEF, 24 January 2007).
However, more nuanced discussions of globalisation are provided by Habermas and Derrida (in Borradori, 2003) and I would like to briefly describe their different positions on the matter, which also touch on the issue of the ‘enlightenment’.
2.3.1 Habermas on globalisation and its relevance to his theory of communicative action
Habermas (in Borradori, 2003) is an advocate of modernity and the enlightenment project. He is therefore not automatically against globalisation, which he considers an aspect of modernity and the enlightenment. However, he agrees that globalisation as it is currently being played out in the world is beset with violence, of which perhaps the most illustrative example is the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre by Islamic fundamentalists. Habermas suspects that the reason for the violence is that globalisation has accelerated a defensive reaction to what he defines as “the violent uprooting of traditional ways of life” such that “the West in its entirety serves as a scapegoat for the Arab world’s own, very real experiences of loss” (p19). He suggests that the violence begins as distorted communication, leading to uncontrolled reciprocal mistrust and eventually a break-down in communication. The main
problem is that the groups which become polarized against each other thus also become alienated from each other through systematically distorted communication. In the end they do not recognise each other as participating members of a community (p19). However, Habermas believes that this distortion would not have happened if the process of globalisation was slower and more time could be given to transparent, non manipulative communication which would have allowed the different groups to better understand each other and to reach consensus.
To illustrate his point, Habermas argues that peaceful, well-to-do societies, which nevertheless contain structural violence (e.g. discrimination), do not ‘explode’ with the sort of violence we are witnessing between global factions, because daily life is structured by communicative practices that allow people to understand each other and in this way they implicitly agree on the rules of the culture, society and community within which they function (p64).
Habermas suggests that the solution to the current problems of globalisation are: that the Western coalition works on its self-representation such that developing countries stop perceiving it as imperialist; and that it gives substance to this marketising strategy with a real change in its consumerist, imperialist tendencies (p64). This
would then make it possible for all players to see each other as community members and they could then embark on the process of mutual perspective-taking in which they can develop an horizon of common background assumptions. This process should ideally result in intersubjectively shared interpretative consensus, as distinct from consensus due to simply adopting or converting each other’s positions (the former, Habermas claims, distinguishes his idea of ‘consensus’ from the neopragmatism of Rorty and MacIntyre)(p37). Habermas avoids criticisms that his position would be preservative (the dominant consensus of a community must prevail, which is it could be argued would reproduce the status quo) by insisting that each community find its set of moral convictions for it self and for its own time. Communicative action thus becomes emancipatory and avoids the conservatism of traditionalism because of its historicity. Furthermore, Habermas prevents such conservatism by insisting that communicative action employ irony (Cf.Vol.2, Chap 1.1), described by Finlay, (1990:79) as a strategic discursive distortion which disrupts or breaks with present habits of discursivity.
2.3.2 Derrida and globalisation
Unlike Habermas, for whom globalisation simply needs to be reformed, Derrida (in Borradori, 2003:121) considers that modernity, and its globalisation process, contains an inherent flaw that he calls an autoimmune condition, implying the spontaneous suicide of the defence mechanism supposed to protect the organism from external aggression. Derrida further elaborates that globalisation is a contradictory process, for two reasons. First, it does not take place in the places and at the moment it is said to take place. Second, everywhere that it takes place without taking place, it is for better and for worse.
2.3.2.1 Globalisation is not taking place
By making this claim, Derrida is drawing attention to the fact that, despite pro- globalisation commentators claims that globalisation levels the playing field and equality of opportunity through teletechnologies, there has never before been such global inequality, for example in the form of poverty, malnutrition, ecological disaster
and epidemics. Furthermore, technological inequality counters claims for the
equalising potential of globalisation, since only 5% of the world’s people have access to the internet. For Derrida, only certain countries, and in these countries, only certain classes, are benefiting from globalisation (p122). Thus globalisation is:
a simulacrum, a rhetorical artifice or weapon that dissimulates a growing imbalance, a new opacity, a garrulous and hypermediatized noncomunication, a tremendous accumulation of wealth, means of production, teletechnologies, and sophisticated military weapons, and the appropriation of all these powers by a small number of states or international corporations.
(p123).
From this point of view, globalisation is not taking place.
2.3.2.2 Where it is believed globalisation is taking place, it is for better and for worse
Globalisation is advantageous in that discourses, knowledge and models can be transmitted faster, therefore democratisation has more of a chance, democratic developments in Eastern Europe owe much to increased telecommunication and non governmental organisations are more numerous and better known. Furthermore, there is perhaps reason to celebrate the potential to become a world citizen, but this is a mixed advantage and associated with the disadvantages, since to be a part of a state is to be a part of its repressive tendencies as well as it protection. Derrida reminds us of the aporia of the state as at once remedy and poison (p124). I would offer an example of this in terms of international trade in developing countries: the fact of globalisation makes it possible for developing countries to participate in international trade, but at the same time, their participation is curtailed by trade restrictions which prejudice their success.
Globalisation is also disadvantageous because it allows perversions of technological advances (mastery of living beings, e-mail, internet, mobile phones) into weapons of mass destruction, and allows these perversions to be transmitted widely all the more speedily. For example, between the two war leaders ‘bin Laden’ and ‘Bush’, the process of disseminating propaganda is greatly accelerated.
Therefore, Derrida would suggest that what is useful about globalisation is also what is damaging about it (p124).
2.4 THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION