Globalization

Globalization is a declarationof war upon all other cultures. And in culture wars, there is no exemption of civilians, there are no innocent bystanders. Why should it be expected that ancient and rooted civilizations are going to accept this peripheralisationwithout a struggle? The answer to that is that globalization carries an implicit promise that it will relieve poverty and offer security—perhaps the most ancient of human dreams. Because of the power of global capitalism to create wealth, it is assumed that this priority must sweep aside all other human preoccupations, including all existing institutions, interpretations and searches for meaning in the world.

It is disingenuous to assume that economy, society and culture operate in separate spheres. This suggests that, one, exposed to the globalizing imperative, no aspect of social life, customary practice, traditionalbehaviour will remain the same.

There have been, broadly, two principal responses in the world, which we may call the fatalistic and the resistant. It is significant that among the most fatalistic have been the leaders of G-7, Ex-President Clinton said globalization is a fact not a policy choice Tony Blair said it is inevitable and irreversible. It may be considered paradoxical that the leaders of the most dynamic and expanding economies in the world offer such a passive, unchallenging view of what are, after all, human-made arrangements. These are among the richest and most proactive regimes, which can wage endless war on the great abstraction, that is terror, topple regimes and lay down one WTO law for the poor and another for themselves. Is their helplessness in the presence of these mighty economic and cultural powers?

There are two aspects to resistance. One is the reassertion of local identities—even if local actually means spread over very large parts of the world. The reclaiming of the local is often focused in the field of culture—music, songs and dance. This suggests an attempt to guaranteeit from the effects of economic integration; a kind of cordon sanitaria set up around a dwindling culture. Some people believe it is possible to get the best of both world—they accept the economic advantages of globalization and seek to maintain something of great value—language, tradition and custom. This is the relatively response. The other has become only too familiar: the violent reaction, the hatred of both economic and cultural globalization which may not merely perceive, but feel in the very core of their cognition, as an inseparable violation of identity. The resentment of many Muslims toward the U.S and Israel, the defensiveposturing of Vindu fundamentalism, opposed both to Islam and Christianity, are the most vivid dramatizationsof this.