Globalization: Tame It or Scrap It? : Mapping the Alternatives of the Anti-Globalization Movement (Global Issues) - Softcover

Buckman, Greg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184277381X ISBN 13: 9781842773819

Verlag: Bloomsbury 3PL, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

'Globalization is irreversible and irresistible.'
Tony Blair

This book gives the lie to that claim. Economic globalization has never been an inevitable part of human history. It is eminently reversible and hugely resistible.

Greg Buckman argues there are two broad approaches within the anti-globalization movement. One, perhaps the most widely supported and influential strand today, calls the Fair Trade and Back to Bretton Woods school. This argues for immediate reforms of the world's trading system, capital markets, and global institutions, notably the World Bank, IMF and WTO. The other, the Localization school, takes a more root and branch position and argues for the abolition of these institutions and outright reversal of globalization. Buckman explains the details of each school's outlook and proposals, their weaknesses, where they disagree, their common ground, and where they might come together in campaigns.
This book gives the lie to the claim that globalization is 'irreversible and irresistible'. Greg Buckman argues there are two broad approaches within the anti-globalization movement, explaining the details of each school's outlook, their weaknesses, where they disagree, their common ground, and where they might come together in campaigns.

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Greg Buckman is former national finance manager for The Wilderness Society of Australia and currently Treasurer of the Australian Greens and has been co-editor of their magazine, Green. He has undertaken much economic research, particularly on issues concerning globalization, forestry and energy. His long involvement with the environment movement goes back to the successful international fight to save the Franklin River in Tasmania, Australia in the early 1980s.

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Globalization

Tame It or Scrap It?

By Greg Buckman

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2004 Greg Buckman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84277-381-9

Contents

PART I The Evolution and Consequences of Economic Globalization, 
CHAPTER 1 Introduction, 3, 
CHAPTER 2 The Evolution of the Global Supermarket (A History of World Trade), 6, 
CHAPTER 3 The Evolution of the Global Bank (A History of World Capital Flows), 18, 
CHAPTER 4 The Engines of Globalization Transnational corporations, 36, 
CHAPTER 5 Rich versus Poor in the Global Economy, 68, 
CHAPTER 6 Rich-country Double Standards, 96, 
PART II The Policy Alternatives of the Anti-Globalization Movement, 
CHAPTER 7 The Anti-globalization Movement, 107, 
CHAPTER 8 The Fair Trade/Back to Bretton Woods School Trade, 124, 
CHAPTER 9 The Localization School, 150, 
CHAPTER 10 Globaphobes versus Globaphiles, 166, 
CHAPTER 11 Deficiencies of Both Schools, 180, 
CHAPTER 12 The Policy Future of the Anti-globalization Movement, 194, 
CHAPTER 13 Conclusion, 207, 
Useful Globalization Websites, 213, 
Suggested Reading, 217, 
Index, 220, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Every era has its defining influences. In the post-Second World War decades of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s it was technology. The world then was either awestruck or horrified by Sputnik, the moon landing, the Aswan Dam, the 'green' (fertilizer) revolution, the Thalidomide scare, the birth-control pill and mainframe computers.

In the 1980s, the 1990s and the present decade, the defining influence is money — particularly global money. We've become familiar with the Nasdaq and the Dow Jones indexes. Everyone knows what Enron is. Most of us have a pretty good idea what the latest national exchange rate is or what the daily spot prices for oil and gold are. We've seen the Asian 'meltdown' of 1997, the Argentinian collapse of 2002 and the post-September ii stock-market gyrations played out on our television screens. There's no escaping the all-pervading influence of economic globalization. We are all caught up in it now.

This book holds a mirror to the face of economic globalization. It charts the rise and negative consequences of economic globalization and profiles the policy responses of the anti-globalization movement, which, like the Nasdaq and Dow Jones indexes, has become ubiquitous, particularly since the 'Battle for Seattle' protests of 1999.

The anti-globalization movement is a very broad church which takes in activists concerned with nonviolence, feminism, poverty, the rights of indigenous people, the rights of the unemployed, preservation of the environment and responsible media, to name just a few issues. This book concentrates exclusively on economic globalization. Economic globalization is necessarily connected to all the myriad issues covered by the anti-globalization movement but it deserves specific attention. It is the dominant influence behind many of the world's present-day ills and needs to be examined in its own right. This does not mean the other issues covered by the anti-globalization movement are not important; they are important, but for the purposes of understanding and reasoned response it is necessary to pull the globalization machine apart and specifically examine its economic parts.

Many would have you believe that economic globalization is the product of an inevitable rightward swing in politics over the past few decades. Others say it is the predictable consequence of the march of technology. Many in the anti-globalization movement say it is the product of the irrepressible greed of transnational corporations. In reality it is the result of all these things, and more. It is the convergence of many haphazard and planned influences. As a result this book tries to avoid pigeon-holing economic globalization, and its origins, into neat boxes, and instead tries to take a holistic overview of its various defining influences and consequences.

Like economic globalization in general, the anti-globalization movement has evolved haphazardly with resulting significant internal policy differences on economic globalization. But increasingly there is common ground, common purpose and common hope that economic globalization can be redesigned in a sustainable way. The first half of this book (Chapters 2 to 6) examines what economic globalization is, how it has emerged and what its consequences have been. The second half of the book (Chapters 7 to 13) presents an overview of the anti-globalization movement, paying particular attention to its policy alternatives to economic globalization. It focuses on the radical and more mainstream policy schools within the movement and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each school's policies, as well as the areas of agreement and disagreement between them.

In 1998 British prime minister Tony Blair said 'globalization is irreversible and irresistible'. This book gives the lie to that claim. Economic globalization has never been an inevitable part of human evolution and is therefore eminently reversible and hugely resistible. This book attempts to give hope to those dedicated to resisting and reversing it — not a naive hope but one based on real and viable alternatives.

CHAPTER 2

The Evolution of the Global Supermarket (A History of World Trade)

Today's global trade network is very much a product of history, a history that at times has been convoluted and unpredictable. To understand economic globalization you have to understand its origins and where it has come from.

You could get involved in a long and complex debate about when, exactly, economic globalization began. You could argue it began as early as two thousand years ago when the Silk Road was established between the Mediterranean and China. Or you could argue it began when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492. Historian Robbie Robertson claims there have been three major 'waves' of globalization. He says the first wave began with Columbus's voyage in 1492, and that of Vasco da Gama in 1497, and ended before the Industrial Revolution (which began in the eighteenth century). He says the second wave went from the Industrial Revolution through to the start of the Second World War. His third wave went from the Second World War through to the present day. Many regional trade networks existed around the world before the start of the first wave, but Robertson says the European conquest of the Americas, during the first wave, gave it wealth that allowed it to engage with those regional trade networks for the first time (although trade in the first wave of globalization was mainly only concerned with luxury items). This chapter and the next chapter mainly look at Robertson's second and third waves of globalization.

The British invention of the steam engine kicked off both the Industrial Revolution and the second wave of globalization. The steam engine allowed two things to happen for the first time that were vital to the growth of economic globalization. It allowed countries to produce large surpluses of produce and it allowed those surpluses to be transported over vast distances.

It is oversimplifying things, however, to ascribe all of the birth of the second wave of economic globalization to the Industrial Revolution. Independent of the Industrial Revolution had been the creation and refinement of an international payments system that started in the fourteenth century. This progressed to the development of 'forward exchange systems' in the seventeenth and eighteenth...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bloomsbury 3PL
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 184277381X
• ISBN 13: 9781842773819
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 250
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland