Book on Globalization reviewed

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From Australian CP newspaper:

Un-hyping globalisation

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  Global Nation, Australia and the Politics of Globalisation, by John Wiseman,
Cambridge University Press, 1998. Reviewed by Patricia Ranald, Senior Research 
Fellow,
Public Sector Research Centre, UNSW.

Amid all the hype about globalisation, it is refreshing to read a book which is 
a well
written and non-jargonistic introduction to the complexities of the topic. 
Wiseman
describes effects of globalisation on daily life, presents and account of 
theoretical
debates surrounding it, and analyses aspects of its impact on Australia's 
economic and
political development. Finally he outlines some options for strategic responses 
to
globalisation by social movements.

The introduction outlines the purpose of the book. There are real economic, 
political
and cultural processes which are increasing the interdependence of local and 
national
regions and increase the speed at which "distant actions have local effects" 
(p14).
These processes need to be analysed and understood.

But the rhetoric of globalisation is used, Wiseman argues, as a powerful and
simplistic justification for neo-liberal policies, to absolve governments from 
the
responsibility of policy choices which they have made, and to convince us that 
there
are no alternatives.

The book seeks to explore the options for responses to globalisation, since 
"radical
engagement in an ongoing process of questioning is surely preferable to 
pragmatic
acceptance or cynical pessimism." (p24)

The introduction is followed by a fictionalised case study which personalises 
the
daily impact of globalisation. It links a child's consumption of a Barbie doll 
with
the global production chain which makes it.

This moves from the pressures on an overworked Melbourne data processor to buy 
the
doll for her daughter, to the bleak lives of production workers in Chinese and 
Mexican
export processing zones. It visits the well-paid but precarious American 
contract
designers driven by global competition, and the European and Australian 
advertising
and marketing mangers who reap some of the highest rewards from Barbie's 
success as a
global consumer icon.

Finally it returns to Melbourne to the child's aunt who uses the internet to 
explore
and subvert this iconic image.

This effectively presents the issues before the survey of theoretical 
literature in
chapter 2.

This survey draws on work by Anthony Giddens, David Held, Ajun Appadurai and 
others,
to sketch the landscape of economic, social, cultural and environmental 
relationships
of globalisation.

It also provides a rough guide to the different political perspectives on
globalisation. Champions of globalisation like Keniche Ohmae sing the praises of
access by consumers to global markets and predict the demise of the nation 
state.

"Ambivalent supporters and progressive competitors" develop strategies which 
attempt
to maximise the competitiveness of particular regional and national economies 
in the
global economy.

Some social democratic governments attempt to humanise the processes of 
globalisation
which result in growing inequality by redistributing some of the fruits of 
growth if
it is achieved to compensate the disadvantaged.

Conservative sceptics include right-wing nationalist and racist figures like 
Pauline
Hanson.

Critics from the left like Robert Cox stress the growing economic inequality and
erosion of democratic accountability caused by the dominance of transnational
corporations and the transfer of regulatory powers from national governments to
international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and 
the
World Trade Organisation. Wiseman situates himself broadly in the latter group.

Chapter 3 traces the intensification of globalisation processes which have 
occurred in
the post-war period, while stressing some continuities with trends in the 
development
of capitalist markets over several hundred years.

Globalisation is not all new, but technological change and closer transnational
economic integration through the activities of multinational corporations have
intensified its impacts at the end of the twentieth century.

Chapters 4-8 analyse the impact of globalisation on Australia, with specific 
chapters
on the media and the environment. They trace the internationalisation of the
Australian economy in the 1980s under the Labor government which began with the
floating of the dollar.

Labor attempted to combine a strategy of national competitiveness with some
redistributive and social justice policies, particularly legislative reform for
indigenous peoples' land rights. But social justice goals were undermined by 
growing
inequality and unemployment as new technology and offshore moves by Australian
companies decimated jobs in many manufacturing areas.

The decentralisation of industrial bargaining and wage fixing, privatisation and
competition policy, contributed to inequality and declining access to basic 
services.

The Howard government's more hardline free-market strategies of wholesale labour
market deregulation, drastic social expenditure cuts and privatisation, 
combined with
reductions in legislated indigenous land rights, will worsen these trends.

Chapters 9 and 10 explore the possibilities of alternative responses and 
strategies to
globalisation.

Globalisation involves "a range of contradictory and contested processes that 
provide
new possibilities, as well as threats, to communities concerned with promoting
relationships of diversity, solidarity and sustainability" (p116). Alternatives 
are
based on rejection of competitive individualism and the "reclaiming of the
significance of interdependence and cooperation" (p120).

Wiseman argues that strategies to achieve these alternatives must be based on
democratic social movements and located at the local, national, regional and 
global
levels. He uses the concept of global citizenship to argue for fairer relations 
of
production and new forms of democratic governance at all geographic levels.

At global and regional levels, this means challenging and democratising global 
and
regional trading arrangements and developing new forms of regulation of 
transnational
capital, ranging from Tobin taxes on currency trading and curbs on the mobility 
of
speculative capital, to enforceable labour rights and environmental standards.

At national and local levels, it means measures like social and environmental
accounting, coordinated regional development policies, and local investment by
superannuation funds.

While clearly rejecting nationalistic responses, Wiseman argues that the nation 
state
still matters: there must be a re-assertion of democratic accountability at 
national
and local levels as well as the development of new forms of democratic 
structures at
transnational levels. z