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.

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~ by laaitie on August 11, 2009.