globalisation

Tom Nairn, the eminent Scottish scholar of nationalism, has a provocative piece over on OurKingdom. He revisits Ernest Gellner's modernist theory of nations in which former "imperial" polities - dubbed "Megalomanias" - would give way to more limited, ethnically-delineated states, or "Ruritanias". The transition, for instance, from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the patchwork of states that included Gellner's native Czechoslovakia was that of a single megalomania to a number of ruritanias. So too would the devolution of the United Kingdom - and the rise of small states like Scotland and Wales - follow this trajectory. Nairn goes further, probing how the heartlands of former "megalomanias" are coping with the strains of contemporary globalisation, and in the process he takes a backhanded swipe at Barack Obama.

Globalisation has thus far been cramped and distorted by such left-overs. That is, the residual areas and populations of ex-Megalomanes forced to abandon Bigger-is-Better, but without (so far) discovering any coherent alternative. Ex-heartlands like "Spain" (Castile-Aragon), "England" (United Kingdom minus its archipelago peripheries), hexagonal "France" as distinct from the Bretons, Occitans and Savoiards, peninsular "Italy" (famously distinct from actual "Italians"), Federal-Russians deprived of some of their "other Russias", and Americans less concerned with leading and inspiring Mankind (along the lines favoured by Presidential candidate Obama). Over-addicted to Greatness, such light-house populations (and above all their intellectual elites) find (e.g.) ‘little Spain’, ‘little England’, ‘isolationist’ USA etc. uninspiring. [emphasis added]

The inclusion of America and Obama here is quite unfair. I'm not quite convinced in the first place that the US counts as a "megalomania" in the same way as its trans-Atlantic counterparts (Gellner and Nairn seem to operate with an understanding of the nation and the state mostly informed by the 20th century European experience). But even if we were to accept Gellner's and Nairn's taxonomy, it is incorrect and far too casual to think of Obama as simply some icon of the coasts, the ambassador of America's urbane "light-house populations".

Of course, Obama is incredibly popular in cosmopolitan America, and uniquely mistrusted in the deepest of American ruritanias, the Appalachians. But the very fact that the McCain campaign has already surrendered Michigan - one of the many post-industrial peripheries created by globalisation in the country - suggests that there is real "provincial" substance to Obama. He can win in ruritania. Neither Obama nor McCain exclusively embody the internationalist or isolationist tendencies of American politics. Nor do the hinterlands of America uniformly clamour for some anachronistic separation from the world. To assume otherwise is to fall into that trap - to which Europeans have proven dispiritingly vulnerable - of simplifying American politics and, worse, simplifying American people. 

Recently, I was talking with Kay Dilday – a contributing editor of openUSA – about the rise of Barack Obama. She said she still could not believe that he would make it. I said I thought he could and in part because he was an expression of the normalisation of America in the aftermath of its shaping control over globalisation. Now, it was becoming a country – still a very considerable one of course – like others. It was joining the world. Kay objected that on the contrary, no other country could make someone like Obama its leader. Implicitly, she was suggesting that were he to make it, it would be evidence of American exceptionalism.

I’m not holding Kay to her argument. I’m reproducing it because I guess lots of people think on these lines and it made me question why I think differently.

Of course, it is true that no other white country would make a black man its leader at the moment. But what other white democracies countries have had such significant numbers of blacks as part of their historic population? Isn’t the exception that the US had slavery and then Jim Crow? When its Nobel Laureate for literature and finest living writer is a black woman (Toni Morrison), its Secretary of State is black (Condoleezza Rice), and its previous Secretary of State (Colin Powell) was not only black, he had also been a hugely admired head of the armed forces – then what are we seeing??

I’m not trying to diminish the importance of an Obama presidency, or even his selection as the Democratic candidate. I’m trying to look at whether it means the US is out on a limb or getting closer to the trunk of humanity.

New Delhi this week played host to a summit of African leaders, lured to India by the promise of strengthened economic ties with the rising "Asian giant". The event was smaller than its counterpart two years earlier in Beijing, when China wined and dined fifty African countries. But the signal is clear: Indian ambitions are as global as Chinese ones. New Delhi knows it cannot afford to cede further "strategic space" to Beijing. And Africa, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acclaimed as the "land of awakening" and "our mother continent", is a growing arena for the contest of Asia's duelling realpolitiks.

Sticking to the official line, Singh refused to brook the notion that China and India are squaring up for a "Great Game" in Africa. "We are not in any race or competition with China or any other country," he insisted at the summit's closing press conference. "The desire of India and Africa to work together is not new." In at least one respect, Singh is correct. India's history of supporting anti-colonial movements and its prominent role in the Non-Aligned Movement do instil a political ballast and pre-history to India's relations with African nations that China lacks. While Chinese commentators invoke the Middle Kingdom's ancient 15^th century ties to Africa through the voyages of Zheng He, India boasts a contemporary 20^th century history of support of and involvement in struggles across Africa.

Nevertheless, the focus of this week's conference was very much on the bottom line. No analyst looking at India's dealings with Africa can help but gauge them against China's. Trade between China and Africa far outstrips that between the latter and India: $73.3 billion to India's paltry $30 billion. The massive industrial zone of the Pearl River Delta teems with African distributors sourcing goods back across the Indian Ocean. Chinese companies and workers scour the breadth of Africa, braving hotspots like Sudan, Nigeria and Ogaden in Ethiopia in their quest for resources and construction contracts.

As much as India also hungers for markets and resources, Singh was meticulous in glossing the deals cemented at the summit with the sheen of good intentions. "We share a colonial past," he said. "We don't seek to impose any pattern in Africa... India wishes to see the 21st century as the century of Asia and Africa with the people of the two continents working together to promote inclusive globalisation."

Since embarking on a program of systematic liberalising reform, Indian ties with Africa were undermined by a re-orientation towards Europe and the United States. Keen not to lose further ground, India has now pledged to strengthen economic ties with the continent. New Delhi announced a preferential duty-free scheme for the world's fifty least developed countries (34 of them in Africa), shredding over 94% of India's notoriously arcane tariffs.

India has inflated its line of credit to Africa from $2.15 billion to over $9.7 billion. Much of that extra capital will go to building technology training centres, electrical grids, railways and other projects designed to boost the continent's physical and professional infrastructure. New Delhi is placing heavy emphasis on building technological and human capacity. Drawing on India's reputation for IT excellence and know-how, the African Union is using a $1 billion of Indian funds to set up the Pan-African E-network Project to develop internet infrastructure across the continent, particularly in the arena of promoting "telemedicine" and "tele-education" programs.

Cooperative ambitions extend from the lofty plane of the fibre-optic to the soil. The majority of Indians and Africans still till the earth, and development programs will have to include serious efforts to make their agricultural sectors more efficient and productive. Indian and African leaders both recognise the potential of their countries to be the "granaries of the world", particularly at a time of growing food crisis.

While African leaders were drawn to New Delhi for its new found wealth, the challenges shared by both India and Africa - with their vast underbellies of poverty and lack - make Indian involvement in the continent more credible. Alpha Oumar Konare, the former president of the African Union, urged India not to treat Africa as a "mere market for raw materials, purchased at low prices with no advantage to us... We want to deal with equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit... We want to deal with other countries on an equal footing." With its commitment to democracy and human rights, India will face particular scrutiny in Africa as it tries to chart a principled course in stormy seas.

With forests of skyscrapers rising in Shanghai, fantastical contents emerging off the coast of Dubai, and fibre-optic arteries pumping knowledge from the heart of India's IT boom, it is difficult not to be impressed by the pace of transformation across Asia. Tremendous change is afoot in much of the region, greased in places by growing oil revenues and elsewhere by decade-old programs of liberal reform that now seem to be bearing fruit. This goes beyond the putative "Asian giants" of India and China; with many smaller countries also sharing in the economic success, a whole continent seems to be on the rise.

In the glow of heady financial statistics, many analysts see an epochal shift of power from the west to Asia. Some scholars, like the Singaporean diplomat and writer Kishore Mahbubani (author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East), have described the pendulum swing in civilisational terms. "Asian values" of harmony, commitment to education, and stability all speed the east's ascendancy (and the west's decline).

Others, like Clyde Prestowitz (author of Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East) reaffirm their faith in liberalisation in Asia's example. With stagnation and protectionist moods gripping many western countries, capitalist success stories in the east restore belief in the ultimate logic of the free market.

Both these views come together in Roger Cohen's recent column in the New York Times, "The Baton Passes to Asia". Gloomy about the slump in the American economy, Cohen grandiosely heralds "the end of the era of the white man". "The West's moment", he says, "is passing. Money and might are increasingly elsewhere. America's little dose of socialism from Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson might stave off the worst but cannot halt the trend." He then trots out the familiar statistics that accompany such prognostications - there are 450 million cellphones in China; 300 million Indians will move into cities in the next 20 years; by 2030, the Indian and Chinese economies will sit only behind the United States in terms of size.

But the difference, he insists, is not simply statistical.

It's about the mind. Come to Asia and fear drains away. It's replaced by confidence and a burning desire to succeed. Asian business leaders are rock stars. The culture of education and achievement is fierce. China is bent on beating the U.S.A.

What you feel in Asia, said Claude Smadja, a prominent global strategist, is "a burst of energy, of new dreams, and the end of the era of Western domination and the white man."

Some of the above is, of course, indisputable. The mood of the business elites in India, China and elsewhere in Asia is indeed bullish and optimistic, in marked contrast to the anxiety in Wall Street and the City. While European and north American strategists plot the revival of their economies, their Asian counterparts just want the good times to keep on rolling.

At the same time, Cohen and Co. miss much of the larger picture of what's happening in "the East" by looking simply from the top, simply through business. He glowingly describes "Asians and Arabs spending their way" through Dubai's glitzy airport. This is the view of the airport lounge, the sleek hotel, the limousine, the conference centre. Not only is it limited, it's predetermined to see what it wants to see.

Asia's problems remain as great as its prospects. Without recapitulating the Berkeley economist Pranab Bardhan's masterful critique of Chinese and Indian superpower aspirations, the depth of change in India and China and elsewhere is easily overstated. The rate of poverty reduction in India has actually slowed in the last decade; China has lost tens of millions of manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s; staggering gulfs of inequality widen in both countries. India's crippling paucity of infrastructure and of at least the inklings of social safety net remain its major stumbling blocks; in the long-run, the unimaginative authoritarianism of the Chinese system may ensure instability, rather than stability; even the astronomical prosperity of the Gulf rests on the unsustainable and problematic lucre of oil.

Beyond these material limitations, there is a willful simplicity in the portrayal of Asia (and Asians) that seems to borrow from the hackneyed stereotypes of "model Asians" - single-minded, ambitious, over-achieving, automaton-like. Commentary on the transformations afoot in the east needs more flesh than the dry bones of statistics. Asian countries are as messy, as lively as any other country. They deserve probing interrogation and analysis, not Roger Cohen's vacuous attempts at provocation.

by Jessica Reed  

As I walked back towards the tube station from the screening of Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, I found myself in low spirits.

It was not the movie’s unarguably valid political stances ("fast food industries make a mockery of health concerns and afflict our culture and ethics"), its overall half hearted tone, or even pop star Avril Lavigne's insipid cameo which triggered my blues. Truth be told, I was vaguely depressed by the increasing sense of apathy and deja-vu which i developed as the narrative lines evolved.

I am perhaps growing into a cynical and disillusioned movie goer; that or Linklater missed the window of opportunity (1999-2004?) in which his movie could have been a punchy, highly political and cutting-edge movie. Had “Fast Food Nation” been released at the same time as Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine or Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize me, it makes little doubt that a work of fiction (amidst plenty of documentaries and other admirable journalism efforts) would have been welcomed with more interest than in a post-democrats’ victory context, where thundering rants and angry manifestos seem to have lost all impact on their targeted demographics.

Maybe this is where the problem lies: Fast food nation didn’t enrage me, nor did it teach me anything new about the collateral damages produced by the West’s accelerated culture. The myriads of plot lines (illegal immigration, drug and sexual abuse, activism and morale) end up harming the film’s coherence; many powerful arguments are picked up only to be conveniently forgotten too early. The final abattoir scene, in all its silent and bloody glory, may come as a shock to carnivores who are forced to contemplate their dietary carnage. It also makes meat-eaters feel responsible for the illegal workers’ grim fate, giving the movie a didactic tone which I could have done without. However it validates one of the film’s centrepiece, a line by rogue fast-food restaurant owner Harry Rydell, brilliantly played by Bruce Willis: "most people don't like to be told what's best for them."