Lectures 10 & 11 (2009)

In the ‘Fourth World War’ we get a glimpse into the alter-globalisation movement, a movement in which there is the belief that there are different ways of understanding and approaching globalisation, not from the interests of global corporations but from the interests of ordinary people.  Today, we are going to look at some of these different understandings of alternatives that exist within this very diverse movement or ‘movement of movements’.

We have seen in previous lectures how dominant discourses of globalisation produce the belief that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to corporate globalisation or neoliberalism.  Activists from within the alter-globalisation movement have in response argued that There Must Be An Alternative (THEMBA), and have proceeded to enact and/or fight for alternatives to various processes of neoliberalisation.

While these alternatives have been pursued along the different lines outlined in the last lecture in which the different traditions of struggle were categorised, certain new forms of politics have emerged and begun to characterise the ways in which alternatives have come to be pursued in and by new social movements.  In particular, direct action, referring to forms of political action in which people (bodies) directly take on representatives or symbols of the enemy and Power, has come to characterise resistance at both a local and a global level.  Resistance has also increasingly come to take on a global character, and linkages, primarily through networks, have grown between different locally organised groups of activists.

Different instances of localised resistance – gave birth to new forms of organising and thinking about politics – e.g. Zapatistas (last lecture); Argentina – in 2001 people from all classes said ‘Let them all go’, that is, ‘Let all the politicians go’, and began experimenting with different forms of self-organisation – neighbourhood assemblies; movements of the unemployed taking occupation of unused factories; movements of the landless occupying unused land; blockades of highways; non-hierarchical forms of organising – also in the US and Canada (affinity groups); non-representational forms of collective organisation – critiques of electoral democracy and the party form.

At a global level, direct action and other forms of protests were also taking the form of more frequent mass convergences of activists from around the world around major meetings of the world’s political and economic superpowers e.g. the IMF, World Bank, G8 and UN gatherings.  Seattle, Washington, Genoa, Quebec.  Again, putting the body in the path of Power, refusing to accept control, demanding that there is an alternative.  Again, diversity of tactics.

2001 – World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland – parts of the alter-globalisation movement (in particular those from that category called ‘old left’) began to talk with the Workers’ Party in Brazil, which had just won the national elections with Lula as President, about hosting an alternative gathering of all those forces struggling against neoliberalism in the world.  The World Social Forum (WSF) was born.  In 2001, over 100 000 activists from all over the world converged on the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil for the first WSF.  With the slogan ‘Another world is possible’, the WSF brought together a number of diverse political traditions and different groups of people fighting very different effects of neoliberalism to discuss ‘alternatives’, to share experiences, strategies, tactics – proactive, creative.  In the WSF we find represented all the different categories of movements we have spoken about before.  It is therefore a very contested space in which a number of different imaginings of alternatives to neoliberalism exist side by side.  Most recently there has been heated debate between anarchist and autonomist groupings, and ‘the old left’ about whether the WSF should be moving towards the production of a single alternative around which struggles can orientate.  It has, however, been a space in and through which different networks and campaigns have coalesced e.g. the anti-war campaigns.

The WSF was represented as the polar opposite to the WEF in 2001, with President Lula boycotting Davos and participating in sessions in Porto Alegre.  Since 2001, the WSF has continued, taking place in Brazil again, India and Kenya (2007).  It has, however, changed over the years.  It remains, however, a contested and diverse space.  While we are unable in this course to go into much detail about the WSF, it is important to understand it as a space in which alternatives to neoliberalism are imagined, struggled for, and made.  It is also a space in and through which the global interconnectedness between groups resisting the effects of neoliberalism has happened and continued to happen.  It is one example of the network form that comes to characterise this period of globalisation.

How does South Africa fit into this global movement?  Since 1999, we have already seen the emergence of new social movements in South Africa:

-         Concerned Citizens’ Forum (CCF) – Durban

-         Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) – Gauteng

-         Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) – Cape Town

-         Landless People’s Movement (LPM)

-         Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)

Expand on histories of each.

Exhibiting new forms of organising (direct action e.g. reconnections; outside of the party form; critical of the state form) – in resistance against effects of neoliberal policies – expand through examples – willing buyer, willing seller in land reform; cost recovery in basic service delivery.  Except for TAC, critical of and antagonistic to the ANC Alliance.

Also, resistance and critiques grew from within the Alliance (SACP and COSATU and its affiliates), and from within organised civil society i.e. non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community based organisations, generally under the umbrella of the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO).

In August 2001, the South African government hosted its first international UN conference, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), in Durban.  Movements and NGOs came together under the banner of the Durban Social Forum (DSF), proclaimed to protest the celebration of the South African government’s neoliberal policies in the form of GEAR as the continuation of racism and to draw attention to the unequal nature of the UN system.  One of the slogans of the DSF was ‘GEAR=racism’.  On 31 August 2001 over 20 000 people came out into the streets in a DSF march in which SANGOCO and new social movements spoke outside of the ANC Alliance against the neoliberal path adopted by it.

In 2002, another international UN conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) would be hosted by the South African government, in Sandton, Johannesburg.  Again, civil society would get organised.  But, between the WCAR and WSSD many divisions emerged between SANGOCO and new social movements, and an independent formation, the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) would emerge as a space through which new social movements would organise a march of over 20 000 from Alexandra township to Sandton on 31 August 2002, to once again protest the continued imposition of unequal and unsustainable development produced by neoliberalism or corporate globalisation.  It is also significant that the South African state increased its security functions in the run-up to the WSSD, wanting to prevent the kind of shame brought to it in Durban in 2001.  In the weeks before the summit, movements in Johannesburg, in particular the APF and LPM, had undertaken various marches against forced removals, evictions and cut offs.  Marches had been declared illegal and people had been arrested, leading to further protests and further arrests.  A candlelight march from Wits on one of the evenings, led by prominent figures in the global movement, such as Naomi Klein, to protest the repression, was teargassed and firebombed by police just five metres off the campus.  South Africa instantly became a site in the emerging narratives about globalisation and resistance to it.

During both the WCAR and WSSD, global networks were drawn on and built.  Indymedia is again an example of how linkages within the movement have been built.  Indymedia South Africa was set up during the WCAR and subsequently continued after the WSSD.  During both conferences it provided an independent space for the production of media from within movements and the meeting of activists from all over the world.

There have also been other experiences of global linkages and connections through connections that have been made along lines of similar political influence e.g. activists from the AEC in Cape Town were able to set up an exchange of activists with activists from a neighbourhood assembly in Buenos Argentina through meetings that happened in the WSF in Porto Alegre in 2003.  Other networks have provided support during times of repression e.g. bail for activists facing charges for illegal reconnections.

We can see, then, that South Africa reflects all the diversity of the growing global movement, and contributes to this diversity.

We have looked at a particular period in the evolution of the alter-globalisation movement and new social movements in South Africa, a period in which much was celebrated and written about them, as we have already discussed.  However, the many movements making up the global movement have undergone various changes and experienced changes with regard to the contexts in and from which they fight.  Some of the South African movements no longer exist e.g. the CCF, and the LPM (exists only in Gauteng now, not nationally), while others have changed in form and in terms of the issues they address e.g. the APF.  While we do not have the time in this course to pursue this discussion in any detail, it is important to acknowledge here that the process of globalisation is an ongoing, contested and changing one, in which struggle both changes the course of events and is changed by them.

Lectures 8 & 9 (2009)

The film ‘The Fourth World War’ is one narrative of resistance to neoliberalism or corporate globalisation from within what has come to be known as the alter-globalisation or anti-globalisation movement.  While the term ‘anti-globalisation movement’ has gained popularity in the mainstream media and academia, many activists from within the movement have begun to use the word ‘alter-globalisation’ to signify an other or alternative form of globalisation, to reflect both a critique of corporate globalisation and a belief in the possibility for a different kind of globalisation.  Use of the latter term would also signify a belief that the increasing interconnectedness at a global level has had both positive and negative results, the positives lying primarily in the growth of connections between and amongst those fighting the effects of neoliberal policies or corporate globalisation.  The development of technology and the emergence of global activist networks would also be celebrated as positive outcomes of globalisation.

‘The Fourth World War’ was made by two activists from New York, Rick Rowley and Jacqui Soohen, who threaded into a single narrative footage collected by themselves and others from struggles in Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Palestine, and Iraq.  They have lived in or visited many of the places that feature in the film.  They were in South Africa in 2002 during and after the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and were present in Cape Town during the struggles of the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) documented in the film.  They come from a particular tradition of struggle within the movement in which a critique of the mainstream media and representation under neoliberalism has emerged.  This critique and alternative to the mainstream media is represented in particular by the Indymedia (or Independent Media) network.  Indymedia emerged in 1999 during the anti-WTO protests in Seattle when activists outraged by the representation of protests and protesters in the mainstream media set up their own network to produce their own stories and disseminate information about the protests.  Making use of the internet, video, audio and print technology, the network has since grown globally – see http://indymedia.org The guiding philosophy of the network is the enabling of the unmediated production of stories and knowledge, that is, the belief that people are able to tell their own stories without the mediation of the news.  Rick and Jacqui, coming from this network and tradition, tell us that they are presenting us with one story of corporate globalisation and resistance against it.  They are not, then, setting out to give us an objective account of neoliberalism.  Instead, they speak from within various struggles against corporate globalisation and the power of the USA, and give us one understanding that has emerged from within this alter-globalisation movement of what the alternative to neoliberalism is.  This understanding falls broadly within those traditions that would be called autonomist and anarchist.  These traditions are critical of the state form and the reach of the market and speak of alternatives in terms of autonomy from the state and the market.

The film draws quite heavily from and builds on the autonomous thinking of the Zapatistas, a self-organised community of indigenous people in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico.  Under the leadership of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the Zapatistas have held land and lived in community against and outside the command of the Mexican state since 1994.  In the film, we hear their ‘leader’ (masked), Subcommandante Marcos, speak out against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), adopted in 1994, to open up trade barriers between North America, Canada and Mexico in the interests of corporate capital.  While the EZLN was established to defend the autonomous community’s territories from attack by the Mexican army, the Zaptistas have put forward new ways of thinking about organising and living – in non-hierarchical ways that depend on social relations of equality outside of the state and the market.  Read the article by Subcommandante Marcos in your course pack.  It shows very clearly the influence of Zapatista philosophy on the making of the film:

-         the pervasiveness of war in all forms – war in its traditional forms (Iraq and Palestine) and in new forms; the end of the Cold War (the third world war) has been followed by the fourth world war (neoliberalism) – felt in everyday life, in the violence of institutions and structures, in the relations between neighbours; on the body – numbing us to the depth of things; us seeing only surfaces; forcing each of us to assume a position in these wars; neoliberalism as this/these war/s.

-         the enemy not easily defined – known and felt in many forms;

-         resistance outside of the traditional forms (e.g. the party) – in the streets; against Power; ‘The time to dialogue with power has ended’; refusal, disobedience.

-         the alternative as made by us, in struggle – Zapatista slogan – ‘Walking we ask questions’ – the belief that there is no predetermined solution to the problems we are confronting, but that the answer/s lie in our coming together in struggle against them.  ‘The story that remains is the story that will be written by us.’  Also the belief that we come to know each other (outside of the relations through which neoliberalism produces us) in struggle and to build new social relations in and through struggle.  ‘Life is a struggle’ – woman occupying land in the film – the belief that we struggle for and make the life we live in the here and now, and not prepare for some perfect future that might still come.

-         Self reliance – not relying on the state, but making demands of it and/or turning one’s back on it.  [Explore each through discussion].

-         ‘I am the other’; wearing the mask as symbol of each of us becoming the other in struggle, that is, in recognition of our common but different experience of neoliberalism and our decision to refuse it, to fight against it, and to build outside of and against it.

The film draws the different experiences of corporate globalisation into the single narrative as framed by the above themes – discuss through the examples – South Korea (1996), Argentina (2001) – ‘Let them all go’, etc.

There are other political traditions and approaches to change that make up the alter-globalisation movement.  These can be categorise, very broadly, in the following manner:

-         The ‘Old Left’ or traditional left parties, organisations, coalitions, and other groupings – formations that tend to be guided by a single over-arching ideology or philosophy e.g. various strains of socialism.  Examples here would include the Third World Network (with Samir Amin), and the Workers’ Party of Brazil.  Alternatives in these spaces would be imagined in terms of the struggle to change the role and powers of nation states through, for example, the strengthening of representative organs (e.g. political parties) of the working class in order to seize state power and effect change, and the strengthening of links between developing nation-states against the interests of the developed capitalist world.  The successes of working class organisations and representatives in countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia would be celebrated here as examples of alternatives to neoliberalism in the making.  Contestation of the UN system and the dominance of the USA in institutions like the IMF and World Bank would also be prioritised here.

-         Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international donor organisations – such formations tend to prioritise alternatives that are possible within existing global and local juridical and economic frameworks.  Strategies for changes include lobbying and advocacy work, in particular working within the human rights frameworks established through the UN system.  In the main, these organisations see themselves as ‘empowering’ ordinary people through funding, capacity building, training and education, and legal assistance.  In most cases, this category of formations encourage and facilitate engagement with the state by citizens, working from the belief that a state should be held accountable to its citizens, and that they can provide assistance to the state in its delivery to its citizens.

Each of these traditions/approaches (autonomist and anarchist; ‘old left’; and NGO and donor) can be found in new social movements – those taking up environmental issues, basic services, gay rights, women’s rights, access to land, education, health.  New social movements, and the alter-globalisation movement, are characterised by a diversity of ideologies, tactics, and strategies.

[Much of the lecture involved debate and discussion of the film, as well as a review of the upcoming test.]

Lecture 7 (2009)

The film ‘The Fourth World War’ – http://www.bignoisefilms.com/films/features/89-fourth-world-war

Lecture 6 (2009)

In trying to understand and describe the transition in SA from apartheid to electoral democracy, it is important not to fall into what Gillian Hart has described as ‘the impact model’ for discussing globalisation.  While we may speak of the entry of neoliberal policies into SA, we also need to understand the process of neoliberalisation in SA as one that is shaped by the aspirations and desires of its citizens.  Resistance, understood not just as a reaction to an effect of a neoliberal policy, but also as a continued fight for the realisation of a commitment or desire constituted in the struggle for liberation, is key in allowing us to attempt such an analysis.

A glimpse into different spheres of life in SA post-1996 and the adoption of GEAR allows us to understand the experience of neoliberalism in SA in this manner:

• Labour – Struggles that resulted in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) and Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) unfolded in the context of neoliberal policies coming to shape labour markets, labour relations, and the nature of work.  The BCEA, for example, allows for individual agreements to be entered into between workers and employers that permit working conditions and wages below the minimal standards prescribed by the law.  In this way, the legal framework has supported the growing flexibilisation of labour, characterised by a growth in casual, contract, part-time, and seasonal forms of work, that allow for lower wages to be paid and employers to take no responsibility for protections like medical aid and pensions.  The article in your course pack by Roseline Nyman goes into this area in a lot more detail.  She also shows how GEAR’s targets with regard to job creation have not been met.  This aspect of neoliberalism will be explored in greater detail in the last theme of the course with Paul Stewart.

• Cuts in social spending – An example here would be the introduction of the Child Support Grant (CSG) – Until 1996, government paid out a State Maintenance Grant (SMG) to non-African mothers earning below a certain monthly income with children under the age of eighteen.  The SMG was made up of R430 (for the parent) and R135 (for the child).  After the introduction of GEAR, the SMG was scrapped, and the existing pot of money ‘redistributed’ to include African children through a CSG of R70 for every child under the age of 6 born to parents earning below a certain monthly income (with this amount being increased to R100 after civil society pressure).  Today the CSG is R260 for socio-economically disadvantaged children under 15 years of age.  This is still less than the SMG.  This is also an example that refutes the claim that government has made in recent years that it has increased its social spending and thus moved away from a neoliberal approach.  Rather, its small increases of spending can be shown to be far too low to make up for the cuts made in the first few years of GEAR’s implementation.

• Education – The higher education sector has suffered considerably, in particular since 1998 when national government cut its subsidies to institutions of higher learning, keeping within its neoliberal logic of maintaining a tight fiscus and prioritising national needs.  This has resulted in universities having to reorganise (‘restructure’) themselves like businesses, generating their own income, and managing tight budgets.  Examples – introduction of upfront student payments, increases in student fees, outsourcing of certain ‘non-core’ functions of the university e.g. catering and cleaning, cutting of academic support programmes, casualisation of academic labour.

• Health – the replacement of comprehensive primary health care with selective primary health care; introduction of notions of ‘partnership’ in which patients become ‘clients’ and health professionals become ‘service providers’.

• Basic Services – encouragement of payment for basic services like water, electricity and housing (‘commodification’); the management of the delivery of basic services by the private sector, in the case of Johannesburg, a French TNC, Suez Lyonnaise Des Eaux.

Resistance – to GEAR and to specific policies within the GEAR framework, in particular privatisation in different economic sectors – from within the Alliance – COSATU, SASCO – but these have largely been contained through the operations of the Alliance.

In the main, resistance has come from outside of the Alliance to specific effects of neoliberal policies, in the delivery of basic services, in land reform, and in health.  After 1996, as payment for services began to be enforced in communities that could not afford to pay, whole communities started to be cut off from water and electricity.  In 1997, communities in Eldorado Park began to protest against cut offs, followed by communities on the East Rand and all over the country.  By 1999, people were coming together in the formation of new social movements – e.g. the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF) in Durban, the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, and the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in Johannesburg.  The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) was formed in struggles of people against forced removals, evictions, and for land, and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in struggles for improved treatment for HIV positive people.  The significance and character of these struggles will be taken up in our last few lectures.

Lecture 5 (2009)

In the last lecture we started speaking about the theory of neoliberalism.  Today we are going to look more closely at what is meant by neoliberalism.  This is because neoliberalism is often used when speaking about globalisation.  In some instances it is referred to as ‘corporate globalisation’, meaning the global interconnectedness that emerges in the interests of transnational corporations.  In general, it refers to a set of political and economic principles that correspond with that period of increasing global interconnectedness that has been called globalisation.  Please note that most of today’s lecture provides the background detail that will allow for the rest of the course to be more meaningful to you.  You will not be expected to know the detail of the origins of neoliberalism globally or in South Africa.  However, you should have a general sense of what neoliberalism is and how it has been experienced globally and in South Africa.

According to David Harvey:

“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.  The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.  The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money.  It must also set up those military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.  Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary.  But beyond these tasks the state should not venture.  State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit.”  (Harvey, 2005: 2)

Some of the defining features of neoliberalism are:

-         Extension of the hand and logic of the market (profit) into all spheres of life; changed/reduced role for the state

-         Individualism – Thatcher – “There is no more society, just individuals”; later added ‘and their families’

-         cuts in social spending (health, welfare and education)

-         cuts in the public service

-         entrepreneurialism

-         privatisation

-         flexibilisation of labour

-         growth first, everything else will follow – ‘trickle-down’ economics

-         export orientation of markets

-         trade liberalisation (reduction/removal of tariffs – WTO, 1994, effects on textile and footwear industries in SA; Export Processing Zones – EPZs)

-         tax cuts for big business

[Background (Not Examinable) – The first experiment with the implementation of neoliberal policies happened in Chile in 1973, after the coup led by Pinochet against Allende, backed by local business elites supported by the CIA, US corporations, and US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, when a group of economists based at the University of Chicago, studying under Milton Friedman, were invited to assist with the reconstruction of the Chilean economy.  The ‘Chicago boys’, as they came to be known, had been developing a set of political and economic principles that came to be known as neoliberalism.  They encouraged the new Chilean regime to accept a loan from the IMF that came with a set of policy positions that Chile would have to adopt – a neoliberal structural adjustment programme (SAP).  By the 1970s, the post-war accumulation strategies of the rest of the developed world (Keyensianism/embedded liberalism) were also floundering.  The Bretton Woods system was in disarray, and in 1971 the system of fixed exchange rates was abandoned; inflation was soaring; there was high unemployment; and the world economy was said to be experiencing a ‘crisis of over-accumulation’.  Chile provided the experiment to which was looked for a solution.  David Harvey also adds that in 1973 oil producing countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi) began to pose a threat to the power of the west in the wake of the OPEC hike in the price of oil.  Under military threat, the Saudis started to recycle their petro-dollars through New York investment banks, leading to an over-accumulation of capital in US markets, in turn resulting in a search for new areas of investment, an added incentive to adopt neoliberal policies.  The US, through the IMF and WB, began to open up these markets through encouraging SAPs to impose neoliberal policies on newly independent and developing economies.  In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in Britain and in 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President in USA.  These are two figures who are attributed with championing the implementation of neoliberal policies.]

Harvey speaks of ‘neoliberalisation’ – the practice of implementing neoliberalism – to emphasise the heterogeneous and contingent nature of the experience of neoliberalism.  This simply means that the implementation of the theory of neoliberalism happens in different ways in different places, and should therefore be understood in this manner.

So we could summarise neoliberalism as a way of opening up new markets, and facilitating the removal of state controls over the market at a global level, as well as of promoting an ethic of individualism and entrepreneurship in all aspects of life – that operates at the level of the economic, political, cultural and social.

But for any theory or set of practices to take root in the world, there is a need for their acceptance and naturalisation in society.

David Harvey states:

“For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit.  If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question.  The founding figures of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom as fundamental, as ‘the central values of civilisation’.  In so doing, they chose wisely, for these are indeed compelling and seductive ideals.  These values, they held, were threatened not only by fascism, dictatorships, and communism, but by all forms of state intervention that substituted collective judgements for those individuals free to choose.” (Harvey, 2005:5)

We will come back to explore these discourses of individualism and freedom that come to uphold neoliberal practices through the example of South Africa in later lectures.

[Background to SA – Not Examinable - Stephen Gelb has argued that, as in developed capitalist countries, post-second world war, in SA the white population thrived economically, with strong social welfare protections and secure jobs for whites; the opposite was true for black people.  Apartheid bolstered a system of ‘racial Fordism’, with the economy being based on two strategies – import substitution and cheap African labour.  This was successful at first, partly due to the fixed price of gold.  But in 1971 the fixed exchange rate system was dropped, with the result that the gold price began to fluctuate; the market for local goods became saturated; there was an increase in the price of imported capital goods required for local manufacturing as a result of the global crisis; inflation rose; unemployment increased.  The apartheid government faced a ‘balance of payments’ crisis (it could not afford to pay its debts to foreign banks e.g. Swiss and German banks) and took a loan from the IMF in 1976.  The 1980s, then, saw the apartheid government implement a number of reforms, some of them neoliberal, including the introduction of the logic of privatisation in the provision of black housing and in the electrification of parts of Soweto.  Many argue that it was the apartheid economy’s inability to deal with the effects of the global crisis, growing local protest, the armed struggle, and economic sanctions that forced the apartheid government into negotiations with the ANC.  Hein Marais adds that changes in the alliance of political forces at a global level, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, meant that the liberation movement was constrained with regard to the possibilities for change open to it.  Many people argue that the ANC had no option but to give up the armed struggle, negotiate, and continue on the path of neoliberalism already embarked on by the apartheid government.  This was a point of debate within the liberation movement and continues to be a debate today.]

By all accounts, the South African transition was the result of and would come to be shaped by globalised relations and forces.

1994 – ANC came into electoral office on the basis of a widely canvassed manifesto/programme – the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the result of a wide-reaching consultative process within and outside of the Alliance (ANC, COSATU and SACP).  The RDP was sold as the means to ‘the better life for all’, and a concretisation of a means to realise some of the ideals of the Congress movement earlier set out in the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People in 1955, as a collective statement of the oppressed people of SA.

The RDP was based on four pillars:

-         creating opportunities for all South Africans to develop to their full potential;

-         boosting production and household income through job creation, productivity and efficiency, improving conditions of employment, and creating opportunities for all to sustain themselves through productive activity;

-         improving living conditions through better access to basic physical and social services, health care, and education and training for urban and rural communities, and

-         establishing a social security system and other safety nets to protect the poor, the disabled, the elderly and other vulnerable groups.  (Nyman, 2001).

The RDP also made a strong case for “people-driven development” in which citizens would contribute actively to decisions made about how their problems would be addressed.  The RDP therefore painted a picture of a ‘partnership’ to be developed between the newly democratic state and its citizens that emphasised the participation of citizens in decision-making rather than their passive acceptance of policies produced on their behalf.  This participatory approach of the RDP was not, however, to be realised.

In 1996, government announced the adoption of GEAR – the Growth, Employment & Redistribution Strategy, a macro-economic policy framework that had been drafted by a team of fifteen economists and representatives of the World Bank, Development Bank of South Africa and government.  There was no consultation with civil society, and GEAR was introduced as ‘non-negotiable’ by Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, and President Nelson Mandela.  Civil society organisations, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), called GEAR neoliberal, and organised protests against it.  The article by Roseline Nyman, in your course pack, outlines some of the arguments and demands made by the union movement against GEAR.

GEAR proposed the following:

-         competitiveness in the export market

-         the promotion of small and medium sized businesses to create jobs

-         export led growth

-         the introduction of flexible labour policies e.g. casualisation, part-time jobs, and seasonal jobs

-         a reduction in the size of the public service and its restructuring

-         a prioritisation of national debt repayment

-         a gradual reduction of exchange control

-         a reduction in tariffs

-         a reduction in corporate and individual tax

-         tax exemption for approved business projects

-         different forms of privatisation:

• a cut in government expenditure in areas that can be taken over by the private sector (e.g. the delivery of basic services)
• a sale of ‘non-strategic’ state assets
• the creation of private-public-partnerships (PPPs) in transport and telecommunications

(adapted from Nyman, 2001)

GEAR also set itself a number of targets.  It stated that the adoption of the above proposals would result in the creation of 400 000 jobs by the year 2000 and 6% growth rate by the year 2000.

While the popular argument in SA civil society is, as is made by Nyman, that the ANC government ‘sold out’ its people in its move from the RDP to GEAR, some theorists (Gelb, Bundy) point to the fact that the RDP, while redistributive in some aspects (e.g. delivery of basic services), nevertheless prioritises an export-driven growth path through which ‘development’ may be funded and thus facilitated.

Others argue that the pressures brought to bear on the post-apartheid government by international forces such as the IMF and World Bank gave it no alternative but to adopt its own ‘homegrown structural adjustment programme’ in the form of GEAR.  While GEAR did not proceed out of the signing of any structural adjustment agreement, a loan was taken from the IMF in 1993 by the joint governing structure set up to determine the nature of the elections and the process of transition (the Transitional Executive Council – TEC), and advice was taken from the IMF and World Bank in the drafting of GEAR.

The question of the alternative to neoliberalism has been raised most starkly in protests from groups and communities fighting against its various effects.  This is what we begin to explore in the next lecture.

Lecture 4 (2009)

-         Another theorist who offers us a critique and an alternative approach to the dominant discourse of globalisation is James Ferguson.  While he writes from the discipline of anthropology, the criticisms he makes of fellow anthropologists offer us in sociology a means of grappling with how to theorise modernity and globalisation from Southern Africa and Africa.  Starting from a critique of contemporary anthropologists for failing to contribute to the growing discourse on globalisation and ‘the global’ through their fixation on local experiences and cultural difference, resulting in a meaningless cultural relativism, Ferguson argues that their main fault lies in their separation of cultural experience from socio-economic experience, and thus their failure to acknowledge how cultural experience and production is so closely linked with socio-economic inequality in the world.  This, for Ferguson, results in the failure of a very important concept contributed by anthropologists, that of ‘alternative modernities’, being mobilised in discussions and characterisations of globalisation.  While Ferguson acknowledges the value of an approach that begins with an understanding that there are different understandings and experiences of modernity in the world, he argues that it is just as important to understand how modernity as imagined and represented by the west also figures in particular places outside of the west, as symbols of progress and individual success.  His greater task, however, is to show how globalisation may be understood (read) and written (narrated) in ways that do not homogenise experience/s.  He speaks of the need to write against the ‘convergence narratives’ on globalisation.

-          In the reading prescribed for this course, Ferguson argues that the representation of ‘Africa’ in the dominant discourse of globalisation neglects its heterogeneity as a place with different people and different experiences.  Firstly, he argues that Africa, as a place with over 800 million people, is generally left out of mainstream writings about globalisation.  And, then when it is referred to it is portrayed as a place of lack, backwardness, ‘a dark hole’ (quoting Castells).   There is also the suggestion that globalisation acts on Africa, with all parts of Africa being changed by the arrival of McDonalds, Coca Cola and other forms of western culture.  Ferguson argues, instead, that we need to understand the experience of ‘the global’ in Africa as uneven and different according to particular place, and proceeds to refute all homogenising claims made about globalisation’s effects on Africa through examples.  One example given is the ways in which capital moves.  Ferguson illustrates how, rather than capital flowing smoothly through Africa, as suggested by the dominant discourse of globalisation, capital hops and skips from point to point and over vast areas in Africa as it finds those locations most suitable for the making of profits and the expansion of capitalism.  He also argues that different places and people in Africa contribute to the way in which ‘the global’ is being made.  He states that the arrival of Coca Cola in India in no way marked the end of Indian culture.  Rather there is a process of incorporation of new forms and ways into ‘the local’ through global networks and exchanges, and contribution towards ‘the global’ from ‘the local’.  Ferguson borrows from Hannerz to speak of a process of ‘creolisation’ in which there is a mix and two-way borrowing between different locales through global connections, and so the production of global ways of being and relating socially, culturally, politically and economically.  Examples – hip-hop; ‘world music’; fusion food; African artefacts in clothing on New York fashion ramps.  In this way globalisation is not something that acts on something called Africa, but global processes and relations are to be understood as being the product of complex interactions between ‘the local’ and ‘the global’, with different communities and individuals in Africa contributing towards the shaping of these global processes and being shaped in turn by them.

-         Gillian Hart – In the title of her book, ‘Disabling Globalisation’, Hart implies both that globalisation is a discourse and process that is disabling, and that globalisation can be disabled or dislodged.  She argues that dominant discourses of globalisation can be described as conforming to an ‘impact model’, with ‘global forces’ described as acting on ‘the local’, setting up the binaries of global/;local; active/passive; dynamic/static; economics/culture; time/space, that can be mapped onto each other.  Hart argues that it is analyses based on such impact models that have been used to promote the mantra that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) to those political and economic policies characterising globalisation that have been called neoliberal; Instead, she puts forward an alternative methodology for the study of society today, one in which she calls for us to acknowledge the ‘multiple trajectories of meaning’ that contribute to the makings of place and space today = power-laden processes and practices of producing the world and its truths by which we each live.  Hart speaks of ‘globalised places’ rather than ‘the local’ or ‘the global’.  Her own research into life in Ladysmith-Ezakheni and Newcastle-Madadeni and its connections with life in Taiwan is then offered as an example of this methodology.

-         Globalisation as a disabling discourse – neglects agency; neglects questions of subjectivity; neglects resistance.

Hart and Ferguson encourage us to read and write globalisation differently – acknowledging the ‘subjugated knowledges’ that contribute to its shaping.  And, to acknowledge the central place of power/power relations in the determination of how our multiple trajectories of meaning play themselves out in an increasingly globalised world today.

Lecture 3 (2009)

-         Summary of last lecture – ‘globalisation’ is a term given to the growing interconnectedness of the world in political, social, cultural and economic terms; a process of spatial and temporal change since the end of the 1970s-beginning of the 1980s, related by some as a result of the development of capitalism; and a ‘discourse’ – an understanding of which will help us through the readings set for today’s lectures – James Ferguson and Gillian Hart (see course pack).

-         Look at a map of Southern Africa – a two-dimensional representation of the geographical territory referred to as ‘Southern Africa’; Google Maps and Google Earth employ technologies that allow for 3-dimensional representations that reproduce reality and allow for a very different understanding of and relationship to space and place today.

The area understood to be ‘Southern Africa’ is represented differently in history and politics by different individuals and groupings.  The UN understands Southern Africa to be made up of just 5 countries (South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia) whereas the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is made up of 15 countries (the above five and Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Madagascar.  This composition of SADC is, however, constantly in flux as member states are excluded based on their political and economic actions e.g. Madagascar was recently excluded for some time during a period in which a coup toppled the elected government.  Without going into the detail, this small example shows how geographical boundaries understood to be ‘natural’ are not fixed, but actually relate to political and economic determinations based on the interests of various global and regional interests.  This also highlights the ways in which representation is not always objective, but plays a role in constructing how we see the world, what is ‘the truth’, what constitutes certain categories and meanings.  This brings us to another set of writings about globalisation that speak to this understanding of representation, that is, that critique globalisation from the understanding that it constitutes a particular discourse about the world.

-         ‘Discourse’ – Michel Foucault – a set of knowledges produced that enact certain truths and ways of being in the world through their naturalisation.

“Ways of constituting knowledge, together with social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them.  Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning.  They constitute the ‘nature’ of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern “(Weedon, 1987, p.108)

- Foucault speaks about how certain sets of knowledge are valorised over others in society, with power relations coming to determine which sets of knowledge become ‘dominant discourses’ and which remain ‘subjugated knowledges’, that is those sets of knowledge that are given value in society and those that are submerged, hidden, or denied value through recognition in the mainstream.  The process through which meaning is made in the world, and which meanings gain value over others, is thus understood as one imbued with power, and thus contested.  Examples to explore – What are the different discourses in society on rape?  What are the different discourses on development?

-          ‘Globalisation’, as spoken about by theorists like Giddens, Harvey, Castells, etc. has been critiqued as ‘the dominant discourse of globalisation’ by theorists who put forward alternative ways of understanding and speaking about the global interconnectedness we have experienced since the end of the 1970s.

-         Wallerstein –

“The 1990s have been deluged with a discourse about globalisation.  We are told by virtually everyone that we are now living, and for the first time, in an era of globalisation.  We are told that globalisation has changed everything: the sovereignty of states has declined; everyone’s ability to resist the rules of the market has disappeared; our possibility of cultural autonomy has been virtually annulled; and the stability of all our identities has come into serious question.  This state of presumed globalisation has been celebrated by some, and bemoaned by others.  This discourse is in fact a gigantic misreading of current reality – a deception imposed upon us by powerful groups, and even worse one that we have imposed upon ourselves, often despairingly.  It is a discourse that leads us to ignore the real issues before us, and to misunderstand the historical crisis within which we find ourselves.  We do indeed stand at a moment of transformation.  But this is not that of an already established newly globalised world with clear rules.  Rather we are located in an age of transition, transition not merely of a few backward countries who need to catch up with the spirit of globalisation, but a transition in which the entire capitalist world system will be transformed into something else.  The future, far from being inevitable and one to which there is no alternative, is being determined in this transition that has an extremely uncertain outcome.”

Wallerstein argues that the dominant discourse of globalisation produces the conditions and relations in society in which there is the general belief and proliferation of the view that there is nor alternative to capitalism and its most recent form, neoliberalism – the alternative way of naming this period referred to as globalisation by a number of theorists (including Wallerstein and David Harvey) that will be explored in greater detail later in this lecture and in future lectures.  Wallerstein makes his critique of the dominant discourse of globalisation in order to assert that there is an alternative to neoliberalism, or the continued development of capitalism, through a regrouping of nation-states in the developing world along the lines of socialism, and their realignment within the world system of nation-states to oppose and challenge the hegemony of the developed world, in particular the USA.

-         Dani Nabudere argues that the dominant discourse of globalisation denies the existence of inequality, and that we should understand the growing interconnectedness of the world in terms of the ‘globalisation of inequality’; He argues that globalisation includes the spread of ideologies and cultures of the west in an uneven manner, one determined by the needs of a changing capitalist system; For Nabudere, and others (including Wallerstein), colonialism is an important period in the development of capitalism at a global level that precedes the period referred to as ‘globalisation’.  For them, placing colonialism at the centre of an understanding of globalisation allows one to account for the ways in which inequality has been reproduced at a global level.  Nabudere goes on to argue that the discourse of ‘development’ becomes the means through which the unequal relations between colonising and colonised nations entrenched by colonialism are perpetuated post-independence in the form of ‘developing nations’ and ‘the developed nations’, and through the enforcement of certain economic and political policy changes in the form of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) imposed in the form of conditions attached to loans granted for ‘development’ to developing nations by the IMF and WB (refer to Sam Kariuki’s notes to refresh your memories, and for definitions of the various concepts and institutions referred to above).

-         Dani Nabudere and Gillian Hart – look at how ‘development’ as a discourse allowed for the globalising of changing capitalist policies and ideologies as the economies of Europe and the US fell into crises – neoliberalism and structural adjustment (to be looked at in detail through the experience of SA in the next lecture).  Others, like Harvey and Wallerstein, also offer accounts of this process of globalisation, seen by them largely to be driven by economic changes and the internal demands of the capitalist system.  Previous periods of expansion in global interconnections and technological development are shown to be responses to particular capitalist crises, crisis being understood as endemic to capitalism.  Particular mention is made of the period following the end of the Second World War, in which special attention was given to post-war reconstruction at a global level through the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions (the International Monetary Fund and World Bank), in an attempt to prevent the emergence of the socio-economic and political conditions that had resulted in the war in the first place – conditions characteristic of a capitalist crisis (the Great Depression of the 1930s).  While the role of these institutions in their early years was the fostering of what Harvey calls ‘embedded liberalism’ in the developed capitalist world, by the end of the 1970s, they were expanding the reach of ‘neoliberalism’ from the developed to the developing world.  ‘Embedded liberalism’ refers to the kinds of policies Harvey describes as fostering a contract between labour and capital through a social welfare state and the adoption of Keynesian policies, allowing for the protection of the rights of the individual and private enterprise, however, embedded within a set of protections for the less fortunate in society.  At the end of the 1970s, capitalism, was, however, in a crisis of over-accumulation – inflation was increasing, as was unemployment, yet economic growth was decreasing – there was a need for new ways of governing the economy and people in order to allow the capitalist system to recover from this crisis.  New markets for investment, lower production costs (cheaper labour, cheaper raw materials), lower distribution costs, and new ways of governing/ruling, would have to be found across borders of all kinds.

‘Neoliberalism’ would be the name given to the set of political and economic changes brought about in response to the crisis of the 1970s.  It would be exported to the developing world through SAPs imposed through loans offered by the IMF and WB.  This will be explored in greater detail in two lectures time.

For now, some of the defining policies and characteristics of neoliberalism include:

• The encouragement of export-oriented growth;
• Trade liberalisation e.g. lifting of exchange controls, removal of import and export duties, ‘free zones’ or ‘economic processing zones’ (EPZs).
• Flexibilisation of labour – the introduction of cheaper, less protected or unprotected, less stable forms of work in the form of casual, contract, part-time, seasonal and ‘youth’ work.
• Privatisation – making into business ventures the delivery of those resources previously held in common e.g. water and other basic services; the sale of state assets; the outsourcing of certain functions of the state to the private sector.
• Individualism and entrepreneurship.
• The pervasive logic and hand of the market.

We will flesh out this discussion on neoliberalism in the lecture following the next.  For now, you should have enough of an understanding to allow you to proceed with the readings set for this week.

Lecture 2 (2009)

-         Globalisation is spoken about in different ways by different theorists.  What follows is just a glimpse into some theorists’ arguments here, largely those theorists who occupy the mainstream, that is, who are taught in sociology and who have gained popularity in academia and the media.

-         McGrew in Modernity & Its Futures – groups different theorists into those with single or multi-causal explanations and descriptions:

• Single – Castells – stage of informational capitalism; capitalist development and the accompanying advancement of technology; emergence of the network form of organisation – inclusion and exclusion from global networks; Wallerstein – capitalist crisis as the cause of global interconnectedness, going back to before the period identified as globalisation; Rosenau – technological development; Gilpin – political-military relations
• Multi – Giddens – modernity (understood as characterised by the nation-state, industrialism and capitalism) produces the conditions of and for globalisation, characterised by changes in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres of life.

-         I would like to use these distinctions to allow us to think through and categorise the different features and causes of globalisation that are identified across theorists:

• Political – changing role of the nation-state, with the strict boundaries between ‘the economic’ and ‘the political’ blurring here; increasing role and influence of the United Nations (UN) system, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) & World Bank (WB), and economic powers like the USA (Giddens, Wallerstein); end of the Cold War and the realignment of political forces at a global level (Giddens, Gilpin, Wallerstein); changing modes of governing & theories of power (Foucault – studied in second year); new social movements and new political forms (to be discussed in the latter part of this part of the course).
• Economic – global crisis – how a crisis that began with the problems being experienced by US and European banks has come to affect every one of us in every part of the globe; global stock market – electronic money and the global control of the flow and exchange of material wealth; global systems of trade – regulated by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which SA joined in 1994, resulting in severed job losses in the textile and footwear industries in the coming years as the rules of trade previously protecting local manufacturers came to be lifted in the interests of a global, export-orientated market – to be looked at in detail when we discuss the experience of globalisation in SA; labour flexibility – example of Levi’s (cf. course pack); neoliberalism (to come back to in later lectures through the example of SA).
• Social – expand through examples on how the experience of social engagement and social relations are increasingly changing because of technological developments and are increasingly characterised by global relations and processes – facebook, skype, satellite tv; global citizens; celebrity; reality tv; gender – while Giddens makes the argument that the position of women and gender equality have been addressed in the period of globalisation, other theorists and researchers would argue that greater inequality and socio-economic hardship has been the result of globalisation for many people in the world, and that women, especially poor women, have been the ‘shock absorbers’ of globalisation – example of women on the global assembly line – see course pack; example of Wits cleaners.
• Cultural – ‘the postmodern’ (Frederic Jameson – the postmodern as the cultural logic of late capitalism) – While this is not something we will have the time to focus on in this course, it is important nevertheless to acknowledge the emergence of a debate within these discussions about globalisation, related to the characterisation of the period of late capitalism as that of ‘postmodernity’ or ‘postmodernism’ as a new epoch replacing modernity.  While some sociologists have argued that there are a recognisable number of changes within this period from the 1980s onwards, requiring us to proclaim a new epoch as ‘the postmodern’ or ‘postmodernity’ (including the disappearance of a belief in totalising theories or ‘grand narratives’ like Marxism, a play with the fixedness in meaning and giving meaning or representing, and contestations of teleological notions of progress), other theorists, in particular those who would argue against all-encompassing narratives, would resist such moves, asserting instead that these were features of ‘late modernity’ or corresponding to certain cultural changes at a particular stage of capitalist development (Jameson and David Harvey);

-         revival of ‘the local’ – how particular groups respond to threats to their local identities, cultures and religions by reasserting and sharpening their differences;

-         ‘westernisation’ vs ‘creolisation’ (will return to through James Ferguson and Gillian Hart in next lecture); consumer culture – how aspirations are determined by a global market and culture industry – example, the ‘idols industry’.  Expand through discussion of other examples – blue jean culture through the marketing of the Levi’s brand; the ‘Coca Cola generation’ – problematise this notion through discussion.

-         Giddens offers us yet another way of categorising the different conceptualisations of and responses to globalisation – radicals and sceptics – starting his 1999 lecture (see course pack) with a story about a friend who visits an African family and is surprised by the fact she spends the evening watching a not yet widely released American film, Giddens aligns himself with those he calls ‘radicals’ by implying that no place in the world has not been touched by the culture of ‘the west’.  For Giddens, those who argue that all parts of the globe are now connected and that describe a set of changed economic, political, social and cultural features at a global level since the 1980s are correct and could be called ‘the radicals’ as they hold the view that social, political and economic relations have been profoundly altered since the beginning of the 1980s through growing global interconnectedness.  He describes those who are critical of this view ‘the sceptics’, that is, those who are sceptical that this period of change necessitates being called and described as ‘globalisation’.  He gives Immanuel Wallerstein, here, as a sceptic.  We could use the lens of ‘radicals’ vs ‘sceptics’ to describe those points of view described above.

-         At the end of his speech, contained in the course pack, Giddens makes use of the term ‘runaway world’, implying that globalisation and its consequences have created a world that we as people no longer have any control or sense of control over.  Explore through discussion.  The question of whether we have control over our individual and collective lives as human beings in this period of globalisation will be something we will try to answer as we proceed through this course.

-         What does this particular way of speaking about the world mean for sociology, the social sciences and the study of society today?

• ‘National’ vs ‘global’/‘international’ levels of focus and study
• Bounded totalities vs unbounded potentialities
• ‘Global’ vs ‘local’ visions and lenses

These questions will be explored in our next two lectures in more detail, and throughout the course.  We will return to them in our final lecture to try to answer them.

It might seem as though we have just thrown around a number of buzz words to describe this concept ‘globalisation’, and if you are still feeling uncertain about its meaning or have nagging questions about it, that is good.  Next lecture we will be looking at theorists who argue that this way of naming our current experience of society should be understood in terms of its operation as a ‘discourse’ (after Michel Foucault), and offer an alternative understanding of what we have been calling ‘globalisation’ thus far.

Lecture Overview

Lectures 1 & 2 (Week 4 – Aug 3-7)

-          Introduction to course

-          Definition of globalisation

-          Features of globalisation (political, economic, cultural and social)

-          Theories of globalisation I (Giddens, Harvey, Rosenau, Gilpin)

Readings: pages 3-55 of course pack

Lectures 3 & 4 (Week 4 – Aug 3-7)

-          Understanding globalisation as ‘a discourse’ (after Foucault)

-          Critiques of the dominant discourse of globalisation (Ferguson & Hart)

-          Globalisation as discourse and process of contestation

-          Introduction to neoliberalism

Readings: pages 56-72; 89-92 of course pack

Lectures 5 & 6 (Week 5 – Aug 14)

-          Understanding globalisation in the South African context

-          From RDP to GEAR

-          Struggles against neoliberalism in South Africa

Readings: pages 93-109 of course pack

Lectures 7 & 8 (Week 6 – Aug 17-21)

-          ‘The Fourth World War’ – film screening

Lectures 9 & 10 (Week 6 – Aug 17-21)

-          Discussion of film

-          Recap of features of globalisation and neoliberalism raised by the film

-          Introduction to global struggles against neoliberalism

Readings: pages 151-163; 117-150 of course pack

Lectures 11 & 12 (Week 7 – Aug 24-28)

-          Is there an alternative to globalisation?

-          An overview of global struggles and movements against globalisation or neoliberalism.

Reading: pages 110-116 of course pack

CLASS TEST – AUG 28th

Lecture 1 (2009)

Introduction to Course

This is an introductory course that attempts to give you an overview of the main theoretical positions, discussions and debates that have unfolded in academia, and society more broadly, about ‘globalisation’.  We try to understand how globalisation is understood and spoken about as a concept and as a process, a contested concept and a contested process.

Many of the ideas and concepts that are introduced in this part of the course will be taken up in greater detail in the next two parts to follow.

-         Lectures – must be understood as laying the context and framework for reading and for work to be done in tutorial assignments; they cannot repeat and explain in detail all that every article in the reading pack says; rather, they try to organise arguments from the readings according to a particular logic through which you can approach your own reading.  Your own reading is therefore as important in your learning process as your attendance of lectures, and individual reading and lectures should be seen as complementary.  See lecture overview.  It is also important to note that these lecture notes provide just an overview of the issues that should be followed through all components of the course, that is individual reading, lectures and tutorials.

-         Tutorials – guide you through two important sets of readings in the course; the assignments should be seen as related to each other.

-         Test – proper preparation for and participation in tutorials should be sufficient for you to be ready for the test.

-         Exam – the exam will cover one additional set of readings and discussions that the tutorials will not cover, that related to the anti/alter globalisation movement.

-         Reading & writing – It is important to relate your experience of the classroom and written texts to lived experience; to try to write in the form of argument; to see the world as a text and attempt to read it in a sociological manner.

‘Globalisation’

-         What does it mean to come from somewhere today?  Many of you come from places outside of South Africa.  We would not, however, be able to tell this difference without asking where each of you comes from.  We’re all wearing the same kind of clothing, speaking the same language and participating in the same quest for knowledge through the space of the university.  Expand with examples – a day in the life of the ‘global citizen’ – water supply, money transactions, choice of clothing label, music, determination of status and access to ‘in groups’, etc.  What some would call a global culture, a global village, one world.  At the same time there are still markers of difference e.g. accents and traditional clothing, but even these markers are no longer fixed in their meaning/s – e.g. accents being shaped by MTV, traditional clothing becoming high fashion items all over the world, Bollywood’s influence on fashion and music.

-         ‘Globalisation’ – a term/concept that has been used and gained popularity since the end of the 1970s, beginning of the 1980s; to highlight the growing/increasing interconnectedness of the world; explained in the main as the interconnectivity between nation-states, fuelled by technological and economic developments; also as a profound re-ordering of the ways in which we experience the world as subjects; and as a period of challenges to Enlightenment notions of totalising theories, reason and science, progress and development.

-         A name given to a set of trends or characteristics or features common to the period since the 1980s that is markedly different from other global connections that might have occurred in earlier periods of societal development.  Some theorists (e.g. Nabudere and Wallerstein) have argued that global connections have been emerging since much earlier in history than that period identified as ‘globalisation’, pointing to the Crusades, the slave trade, colonisation, the invention of the printing press, and so on as markers of earlier periods in which global interconnectivity were enhanced.  However, theorists such as Anthony Giddens, David Harvey and Immanuel Castells have argued that the period identified as globalisation is significantly different in that it exhibits a number of similar trends that do not conform to earlier periods in which it could also be argued that global interconnections were happening.  They argue that there have been profound re-orderings of those experiences that help us make sense of the world and our place in it since the 1980s – time, space, place, modes of communication and other forms of social interaction and engagement, and modes of representation.

-         How has our sense of place become global?  Example of hip-hop in the course pack – picture of girl playing hop-scotch on the Cape Flats in front of a wall with graffiti saying ‘West Side’ and with the face of Tupac Shakur – ways in which the imagery of rap and hip hop that depend very much on laying claim to particular places in the US have found resonance in places like SA and Brazil – expand through discussion – how new meaning/s are made through the appropriation of aspects of different cultures.  Example of the colonisation of inner cities by big brands – expand through discussion – how Johannesburg inner city could be called Cell-C territory – the recapturing of public space by billboards and advertising.

-         Space and time – Many theorists highlight the ways in which the development of technology, in particular satellite, digital and internet, have allowed for new meanings to be given to and made of space and time and the relationship between them.  Examples – the transfer of money to a Swiss bank account does not require one’s physical presence in Switzerland – Giddens would explain this through the concept of ‘time-space distanciation’ – the ‘disembeddedness’ of social relations from/in space and time, that is, one does not have to be physically present in order to enact a particular transaction in a different space to that which one inhabits/occupies, in the same time; presence and absence become much more definitive features of social relations, with new forms of technology allowing for one to be physically absent from a particular space, yet present in the time in which a particular action is made to happen.  The same example would be described by David Harvey in the way of the term ‘time-space compression’ – time and space being compressed in the immediate transfer of funds to the Swiss bank account without the need to travel in time and through space to Switzerland in order to deposit the funds; another example – call centre operators in India or Mauritius fielding sales for a company based in the US while its US-based operators are asleep, ensuring 24 hour production.  Harvey argues that the development of capitalism (and globalisation) is the result of a series of time-space compressions that emerge as responses to the crises that capitalism is forced into periodically, with the changes in the system identified as globalisation corresponding to a particular crisis and set of time-space compressions emerging in the 1970s.  This particular crisis, which many theorists have argued resulted in a particular form of capitalism, neoliberalism, emerging in response to it, will be explored in greater detail in lectures to follow.

-         Representation – development of technology, in particular, has led to new forms of representation – electronic art and music, digital art, online journals, blogging, etc.  This has had profound effects on the nature of cultural production, the mass media, television, advertising, business, ways of doing politics, and the ways in which we relate as social beings.  Examples to expand on through discussion – reality TV and its construction of homogeneity and ‘one truth/reality’ to be replicated globally; blogging as political, business and personal ‘brand development’ tool.

-         Communication – also as a result of the development of technology – e-mail, internet (social networking sites e.g. facebook), satellite, cellphones, etc. – changed the ways in which we interact and engage socially, enabling increasingly global connections and forms of mediation and communication in society.

-         All of the above occur through and lead to changes in many aspects of the everyday – point to and expand on examples in course pack – global assembly line; music industry; corner shop; Nike concept store; hip-hop – each a case study of globalisation.  Look at each and try to understand how it reflects some of the features that reflect globalisation as it has been described in these lectures.

-         If we look at each of these features or changes in the world that have been apprehended and described as globalisation, we could argue that they have been beneficial and/or detrimental to different groups of people and to the globe as a whole.  The question of what globalisation means for different groups in society today is one that we will be exploring in much greater detail through this course.  We have only just begun by highlighting some of the characteristics or features of globalisation, as it has been described by mainstream theorists in sociology and other academic disciplines, as well as in society more generally.

Lecture 1

Introduction to Course

This is an introductory course that attempts to give you an overview of the main theoretical positions, discussions and debates that have unfolded in academia, and society more broadly, about ‘globalisation’. We try to understand how globalisation is understood and spoken about as a concept and as a process, a contested concept and a contested process.

Many of the ideas and concepts that are introduced in this part of the course will be taken up in greater detail in the next two parts to follow.

- Lectures – must be understood as laying the context and framework for reading and for work to be done in tutorial assignments; they cannot repeat and explain in detail all that every article in the reading pack says; rather, they try to organise arguments from the readings according to a particular logic through which you can approach your own reading. Your own reading is therefore as important in your learning process as your attendance of lectures, and individual reading and lectures should be seen as complementary. See lecture overview. It is also important to note that these lecture notes provide just an overview of the issues that should be followed through all components of the course, that is individual reading, lectures and tutorials.

- Tutorials – guide you through two important sets of readings in the course; the assignments should be seen as related to each other.

- Test – proper preparation for and participation in tutorials should be sufficient for you to be ready for the test.

- Exam – the exam will cover one additional set of readings and discussions that the tutorials will not cover, that related to the anti/alter globalisation movement.

- Reading & writing – It is important to relate your experience of the classroom and written texts to lived experience; to try to write in the form of argument; to see the world as a text and attempt to read it in a sociological manner.

‘Globalisation’

- What does it mean to come from somewhere today? Many of you come from places outside of South Africa. We would not, however, be able to tell this difference without asking where each of you comes from. We’re all wearing the same kind of clothing, speaking the same language and participating in the same quest for knowledge through the space of the university. Expand with examples – a day in the life of the ‘global citizen’ – water supply, money transactions, choice of clothing label, music, determination of status and access to ‘in groups’, etc. What some would call a global culture, a global village, one world. At the same time there are still markers of difference e.g. accents and traditional clothing, but even these markers are no longer fixed in their meaning/s – e.g. accents being shaped by MTV, traditional clothing becoming high fashion items all over the world, Bollywood’s influence on fashion and music.

- ‘Globalisation’ – a term/concept that has been used and gained popularity since the end of the 1970s, beginning of the 1980s; to highlight the growing/increasing interconnectedness of the world; explained in the main as the interconnectivity between nation-states, fuelled by technological and economic developments; also as a profound re-ordering of the ways in which we experience the world as subjects; and as a period of challenges to Enlightenment notions of totalising theories, reason and science, progress and development.

- A name given to a set of trends or characteristics or features common to the period since the 1980s that is markedly different from other global connections that might have occurred in earlier periods of societal development. Some theorists (e.g. Nabudere and Wallerstein) have argued that global connections have been emerging since much earlier in history than that period identified as ‘globalisation’, pointing to the Crusades, the slave trade, colonisation, the invention of the printing press, and so on as markers of earlier periods in which global interconnectivity were enhanced. However, theorists such as Anthony Giddens, David Harvey and Immanuel Castells have argued that the period identified as globalisation is significantly different in that it exhibits a number of similar trends that do not conform to earlier periods in which it could also be argued that global interconnections were happening. They argue that there have been profound re-orderings of those experiences that help us make sense of the world and our place in it since the 1980s – time, space, place, modes of communication and other forms of social interaction and engagement, and modes of representation.

- How has our sense of place become global? Example of hip-hop in the course pack – picture of girl playing hop-scotch on the Cape Flats in front of a wall with graffiti saying ‘West Side’ and with the face of Tupac Shakur – ways in which the imagery of rap and hip hop that depend very much on laying claim to particular places in the US have found resonance in places like SA and Brazil – expand through discussion – how new meaning/s are made through the appropriation of aspects of different cultures. Example of the colonisation of inner cities by big brands – expand through discussion – how Johannesburg inner city could be called Cell-C territory – the recapturing of public space by billboards and advertising.

- Space and time – Many theorists highlight the ways in which the development of technology, in particular satellite, digital and internet, have allowed for new meanings to be given to and made of space and time and the relationship between them. Examples – the transfer of money to a Swiss bank account does not require one’s physical presence in Switzerland – Giddens would explain this through the concept of ‘time-space distanciation’ – the ‘disembeddedness’ of social relations from/in space and time, that is, one does not have to be physically present in order to enact a particular transaction in a different space to that which one inhabits/occupies, in the same time; presence and absence become much more definitive features of social relations, with new forms of technology allowing for one to be physically absent from a particular space, yet present in the time in which a particular action is made to happen. The same example would be described by David Harvey in the way of the term ‘time-space compression’ – time and space being compressed in the immediate transfer of funds to the Swiss bank account without the need to travel in time and through space to Switzerland in order to deposit the funds; another example – call centre operators in India or Mauritius fielding sales for a company based in the US while its US-based operators are asleep, ensuring 24 hour production. Harvey argues that the development of capitalism (and globalisation) is the result of a series of time-space compressions that emerge as responses to the crises that capitalism is forced into periodically, with the changes in the system identified as globalisation corresponding to a particular crisis and set of time-space compressions emerging in the 1970s. This particular crisis, which many theorists have argued resulted in a particular form of capitalism, neoliberalism, emerging in response to it, will be explored in greater detail in lectures to follow.

- Representation – development of technology, in particular, has led to new forms of representation – electronic art and music, digital art, online journals, blogging, etc. This has had profound effects on the nature of cultural production, the mass media, television, advertising, business, ways of doing politics, and the ways in which we relate as social beings. Examples to expand on through discussion – reality TV and its construction of homogeneity and ‘one truth/reality’ to be replicated globally; blogging as political, business and personal ‘brand development’ tool.

- Communication – also as a result of the development of technology – e-mail, internet (social networking sites e.g. facebook), satellite, cellphones, etc. – changed the ways in which we interact and engage socially, enabling increasingly global connections and forms of mediation and communication in society.

- All of the above occur through and lead to changes in many aspects of the everyday – point to and expand on examples in course pack – global assembly line; music industry; corner shop; Nike concept store; hip-hop – each a case study of globalisation. Look at each and try to understand how it reflects some of the features that reflect globalisation as it has been described in these lectures.

- If we look at each of these features or changes in the world that have been apprehended and described as globalisation, we could argue that they have been beneficial and/or detrimental to different groups of people and to the globe as a whole. The question of what globalisation means for different groups in society today is one that we will be exploring in much greater detail through this course. We have only just begun by highlighting some of the characteristics or features of globalisation, as it has been described by mainstream theorists in sociology and other academic disciplines, as well as in society more generally. After the break we will explore what some of the more well known theorists have had to say about globalisation in greater detail.

Lecture 2

- Globalisation is spoken about in different ways by different theorists. What follows is just a glimpse into some theorists’ arguments here, largely those theorists who occupy the mainstream, that is, who are taught in sociology and who have gained popularity in academia and the media.

- McGrew in Modernity & Its Futures – groups different theorists into those with single or multi-causal explanations and descriptions:

o Single – Castells – stage of informational capitalism; capitalist development and the accompanying advancement of technology; emergence of the network form of organisation – inclusion and exclusion from global networks; Wallerstein – capitalist crisis as the cause of global interconnectedness, going back to before the period identified as globalisation; Rosenau – technological development; Gilpin – political-military relations

o Multi – Giddens – modernity (understood as characterised by the nation-state, industrialism and capitalism) produces the conditions of and for globalisation, characterised by changes in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres of life.

- I would like to use these distinctions to allow us to think through and categorise the different features and causes of globalisation that are identified across theorists:

o Political – changing role of the nation-state, with the strict boundaries between ‘the economic’ and ‘the political’ blurring here; increasing role and influence of the United Nations (UN) system, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) & World Bank (WB), and economic powers like the USA (Giddens, Wallerstein); end of the Cold War and the realignment of political forces at a global level (Giddens, Gilpin, Wallerstein); changing modes of governing & theories of power (Foucault – studied in second year); new social movements and new political forms (to be discussed in the latter part of this part of the course).

o Economic – global crisis – how a crisis that began with the problems being experienced by US and European banks has come to affect every one of us in every part of the globe; global stock market – electronic money and the global control of the flow and exchange of material wealth; global systems of trade – regulated by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which SA joined in 1994, resulting in severed job losses in the textile and footwear industries in the coming years as the rules of trade previously protecting local manufacturers came to be lifted in the interests of a global, export-orientated market – to be looked at in detail when we discuss the experience of globalisation in SA; labour flexibility – example of Levi’s (cf. course pack); neoliberalism (to come back to in later lectures through the example of SA).

o Social – expand through examples on how the experience of social engagement and social relations are increasingly changing because of technological developments and are increasingly characterised by global relations and processes – facebook, skype, satellite tv; global citizens; celebrity; reality tv; gender – while Giddens makes the argument that the position of women and gender equality have been addressed in the period of globalisation, other theorists and researchers would argue that greater inequality and socio-economic hardship has been the result of globalisation for many people in the world, and that women, especially poor women, have been the ‘shock absorbers’ of globalisation – example of women on the global assembly line – see course pack; example of Wits cleaners.

o Cultural – ‘the postmodern’ (Frederic Jameson – the postmodern as the cultural logic of late capitalism) – While this is not something we will have the time to focus on in this course, it is important nevertheless to acknowledge the emergence of a debate within these discussions about globalisation, related to the characterisation of the period of late capitalism as that of ‘postmodernity’ or ‘postmodernism’ as a new epoch replacing modernity. While some sociologists have argued that there are a recognisable number of changes within this period from the 1980s onwards, requiring us to proclaim a new epoch as ‘the postmodern’ or ‘postmodernity’ (including the disappearance of a belief in totalising theories or ‘grand narratives’ like Marxism, a play with the fixedness in meaning and giving meaning or representing, and contestations of teleological notions of progress), other theorists, in particular those who would argue against all-encompassing narratives, would resist such moves, asserting instead that these were features of ‘late modernity’ or corresponding to certain cultural changes at a particular stage of capitalist development (Jameson and David Harvey);

- revival of ‘the local’ – how particular groups respond to threats to their local identities, cultures and religions by reasserting and sharpening their differences;

- ‘westernisation’ vs ‘creolisation’ (will return to through James Ferguson and Gillian Hart in next lecture); consumer culture – how aspirations are determined by a global market and culture industry – example, the ‘idols industry’. Expand through discussion of other examples – blue jean culture through the marketing of the Levi’s brand; the ‘Coca Cola generation’ – problematise this notion through discussion.

- Giddens offers us yet another way of categorising the different conceptualisations of and responses to globalisation – radicals and sceptics – starting his 1999 lecture (see course pack) with a story about a friend who visits an African family and is surprised by the fact she spends the evening watching a not yet widely released American film, Giddens aligns himself with those he calls ‘radicals’ by implying that no place in the world has not been touched by the culture of ‘the west’. For Giddens, those who argue that all parts of the globe are now connected and that describe a set of changed economic, political, social and cultural features at a global level since the 1980s are correct and could be called ‘the radicals’ as they hold the view that social, political and economic relations have been profoundly altered since the beginning of the 1980s through growing global interconnectedness. He describes those who are critical of this view ‘the sceptics’, that is, those who are sceptical that this period of change necessitates being called and described as ‘globalisation’. He gives Immanuel Wallerstein, here, as a sceptic. We could use the lens of ‘radicals’ vs ‘sceptics’ to describe those points of view described above.

- At the end of his speech, contained in the course pack, Giddens makes use of the term ‘runaway world’, implying that globalisation and its consequences have created a world that we as people no longer have any control or sense of control over. Explore through discussion. The question of whether we have control over our individual and collective lives as human beings in this period of globalisation will be something we will try to answer as we proceed through this course.

- What does this particular way of speaking about the world mean for sociology, the social sciences and the study of society today?

o ‘National’ vs ‘global’/‘international’ levels of focus and study

o Bounded totalities vs unbounded potentialities

o ‘Global’ vs ‘local’ visions and lenses

These questions will be explored in our next two lectures in more detail, and throughout the course. We will return to them in our final lecture to try to answer them.

It might seem as though we have just thrown around a number of buzz words to describe this concept ‘globalisation’, and if you are still feeling uncertain about its meaning or have nagging questions about it, that is good. Next week we will be looking at theorists who argue that this way of naming our current experience of society should be understood in terms of its operation as a ‘discourse’ (after Michel Foucault), and offer an alternative understanding of what we have been calling ‘globalisation’ thus far.