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Photo by Stan Paul
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Anthony Giddens, adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair, said there's enormous confusion about globalization. |
Blair adviser: the truth about globalization
BY Ajay Singh
Today Staff Writer
When acclaimed sociologist Anthony Giddens began debating globalization with his colleagues in the late 1980s, hardly anyone outside academia appeared to be interested in the issue. Not even Tony Blair, who became Britain’s prime minister and a passionate proponent of globalization a decade later, seemed to care.
How times have changed.
“Now you can’t stop people from talking about globalization,” said Giddens, who lectured Nov. 7 at the Faculty Center. Titled “Globalization: State of the Debate,” the talk was sponsored by the School of Public Affairs, the UCLA International Institute and the British Consulate General in Los Angeles, among others.
Some 250 faculty, staff, students and others came to hear Giddens, an adviser to Blair and a former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Labeled by the British press as “Blair’s favorite intellectual,” Giddens, who sits in the House of Lords for the Labor Party, formulated a so-called “third way” philosophy of neo-libertarian governance based on his 1998 book, “The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy.”
Although globalization is “the most significant driving force of our age,” said Giddens, there’s much confusion about what it is. The term, first used in academic circles in the 1980s, refers to the “increasing interdependence of world society” and sparked discussion that evolved through three stages.
During the first stage, the debate was confined to the ivory tower, prompting skeptics to ask whether globalization exists at all. The second stage was in the 1990s, when globalization became a media buzzword, generating a “very strong emotional resonance,” especially in anti-globalization movements, Giddens said.
We are currently in the debate’s third stage, marked by a partial rapprochement between the proponents and foes of globalization. “Globalization is reshaping the very tissue of our lives, and it doesn’t make sense to say you’re against it,” the sociologist pointed out. “Globalization’s opponents now say they’re for ‘global social justice,’ and even the World Bank says you can’t have economic development without social justice.”
Still, globalization is widely and erroneously seen as an economic phenomenon, identified withworld markets, while the vital contribution of political, cultural and social factors aren’t appreciated enough, Giddens said.
“If there’s one element driving globalization, it’s communications,” said Giddens, pointing out that modern money markets cannot function without it. Further, global communications is also helping spread democracy by making citizens more informed and active.
Another misconception is that globalization is often identified with Americanization or with the West. “Just because the West is so powerful doesn’t mean globalization is driven by it,” Giddens said, citing India as an example of a nation whose low-cost software and outsourcing services are a vital part of global communications.
Known for his down-to-earth manner, Giddens spoke extempore, mostly from the aisles,shirtsleeves rolled up, microphone in hand. “That’s not a male fertility symbol,” he joked at one point, referring to the satellite dish, globalization’s most visible and iconic sign worldwide.
As a potent geopolitical force, globalization affects the sovereignty of nation states by encouraging the resurgence of local cultures and creating new socioeconomic regions across nations, Giddens said. In addition, globalization has spawned “new-style terrorism” — highly dangerous and relatively unrestrained violence based on global communication networks and technologies.
Giddens warned that, for all its promise, globalization brings with it a range of emotional fears rooted in problems and risks that remain poorly understood.
“As I see it, there’s a kind of battle for the soul of the world going on,” he said. “Will cosmopolitanism win out over nativism? That is what we don’t know."
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