Anti-Globalization

FIRST INVESTIGATED by Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan in 1964 and then further explored during the 1970s, globalization is the process by which world populations become increasingly interconnected, both culturally and economically. Proponents consider it a positive process in the long run, though short-term globalization can cause dire effects in specific populations. Anti-globalization is globalization's antithesis: The globalization process from the left-wing perspective is often perceived as alienating, as creating standardization throughout the globe and reinforcing economic inequalities between developed and underdeveloped countries.

Advanced capitalism, enhanced by technological developments such as the internet and electronic business transactions, is seen as stretching social, political, and economic activities across the borders of communities, nations, and continents. The process of globalization increases the stream of trade, investment, migration, and cultural communication. Global connections and circulation of goods, ideas, capital, and people have deepened the impact of distant events on everyday life. Thus, globalization entails two related phenomena: the development of a global economy and the rise of a global culture.

Critics of globalization point out that the new global economy involves a discrepancy between a huge displacement of production workers, often to developing countries where labor is cheaper, child labor can be exploited, and workers’ rights may be nonexistent. Big corporations assign the material tasks of producing their goods to third world contractors whose only aim is to send back the order on time and preferably under budget, no matter how many underpaid hours their workers put in. Meanwhile the corporations’ headquarters, where all the marketing strategies and the commercial directives are issued and where the well-paid jobs are, firmly remain in the West. Far left anti-globalization forces have theorized that large corporations, which are [Page 29]accountable only to their shareholders, are perceived to have replaced governments and effectively become global entities unto themselves. This condition has been called “corporate rule.” In her anti-global manifesto No Logo (2000), Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein exposes the “unbranded points of origin of brand-name goods,” stressing the exploitative nature of transnational corporations, the leading actors in the globalization process:

“The travels of Nike sneakers have been traced back to the abusive sweatshops of Vietnam, Barbie dolls’ little outfits back to the child laborers of Sumatra, Starbuck's lattes back to the sun-scorched coffee fields of Guatemala, and Shell's oil back to the polluted and impoverished villages of the Niger Delta.” In addition, while supporters of neoliberal global economics claim that lifting trade barriers and tariffs will necessarily favor poorer countries, critics counter that weaker economies are not yet ready to compete with the more industrialized countries. Labor movements and trade unions are particularly concerned that economic globalization will increasingly shift manufacturing jobs from advanced countries to economies where labor is cheap. According to the perverse logic of capital, corporations have engaged in a competition to seek out the cheapest production location.

Yet, as Klein points out, “the triumph of economic globalization has inspired a wave of techno-savvy investigative activists who are as globally mined as the corporations they track.” Since the mid-1990s, the number of public investigations in corporate crime has increased exponentially, so much so that American Studies Professor Andrew Ross dubbed the period between 1995–96 as “The Year of the Sweatshop.” Corporations involved in this massive exposure of exploitative labor practices included Gap, Wal-Mart, Guess, Nike, Mattel, and Disney.

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