Kundnani, Arun. (2007). London & Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.
Kundnani's case study of multiculturalism in Britain provides keen insight into evaluating multiculturalism policies within the North American context. Kundnani argues that the discourses of globalization and the war on terror have brought British multiculturalism under attack as fostering separatism. Central to this attack, however, is not multiculturalism itself, but integration policies inscribed in it. Kundnani notes that this attach singled out young Muslims after 9/11 and demanded them to subsume their cultural differences within Britishness in the process of their integration. According to Kundnani, this demand for 'integration' is in fact 'assimilation' because it is grounded in the idea that Muslims are inherently at odd with modern values and thus needed to be forcibly integrated.
Kundnani contests that this 'bogus integrationism' along with the state's drive for 'community cohesion' signaled the death of multiculturalism and the rise of managed migration as immigration policy: regulating the supply of disposable migrant workers into the country while recruiting skilled workers abroad to supplement national shortage.
Through managed migration together with community cohesion, Kundnani maintains, a state is emerging that "fuses absolute powers and absolute fear, in order to create absolute conformity" (p. 8). Arguing that universal human rights are undermined as a consequence of this conformity, Kundnani calls for fresh debate on multiculturalism.
Showing posts with label global. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Selling Diversity
Abu-Laban, Yasmeen., & Gabriel, Christina. (2002). Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Chapter 1. Diversity, Globalization and Public Policy in Canada. (11-35)
The authors finds the notion of selling diversity in three public policies--immigration, multiculturalism and employment. They note that multicultural policy, first articulated by the federal government of Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1971, has been a major means of official recognition of ethnic minorities in the Canadian nation. Recently, however, as they observe, policy-makers akin to neoliberal globalization, which emphasizes global markets and Canadian economic competitiveness, tend to turn certain notions of diversity pertaining to economic competitiveness into a selling point while muting diversity as a commitment to social justice and respect.
The authors affirm that the movement of peoples across national borders is one of the most evident forms of globalization today and a major source of greater diversity. Pointing out the lag of public policies that deal with the diversity, authors argue that some of the richest contributions to policy studies come from feminist scholarship in that while looking into thegendered/differential impact of policies on men and women, they open up space for a critical treatment of other forms of exclusion and marginalization. Yet, they rightly point out that gender analysis of Canadian public policy has not sufficiently interrogated the consequences of policy for ethnic minority and racialized women.
Chapter 4. Multiculturalism and Nation-Building (105-128)
In this chapter, the authors examine the Canadian state's multiculturalism historically. The Prime Minister Trudeau's announcement of a policy of multiculturalism is generally perceived as a state's response to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, Aboriginal claim and third force from other ethnic groups. As the authors point out, it is interesting to note that Trudeau stood for a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework. The authors argue that this framework early on bears witness to the continued domination of British and to a lesser extent French-origin groups in Canada.
Between 1971 and 1993, the authors state that multiculturalism focused on the cultural maintenance of diverse ethnic heritage such that "song and dance" were much highlighted. They observe a burgeoning linkage between multiculturalism and business interests in the 1980s, as seen in the slogan, "Multiculturalism Means Business", in a conference organized by the Progessive Conservatives in Toronto in 1986. From then on, the Canadian state has made a strong tie between multiculturalism and its international business. The authors argue that now the policy of multiculturalism, which began as a domestic policy, is becoming a selling product with a strong affinity to neo-liberal ideals.
The authors note another type of criticism along with this neo-liberal impetus. Reform Party, in particular, hinged on their advocacy of individual rights and the formal equality of people and provinces--this party also refused a special recognition of Quebec in Canada on the basis of the equality of each province. They argue, according to the authors, that the preservation of cultural background is a matter of personal choice and the state should promote minorities to integrate into the national culture, thus calling for an end to funding of multicultural support.
This conservative and neo-liberal criticism continued after 1993 and the authors note that business value was much stressed while funding for multiculturalism were severely being cut. In particular the authors note popular criticism, particularly in English-Speaking Canada in this period. They draw on the division of private and public spheres in the criticism. They state:
Along with the argument that Canadian multiculturalism weakens national unity, criticisms have centered around the idea that, while the expression of minority languages and culture are acceptable in the private sphere, the state should have no part in upholding them in the public sphere. (p. 106)
The authors argue that the notion of private means the household on the one hand and market and business on the other hand. Thus, multiculturalism as a policy means business to the Canadian state. They write:
While multiculturalism has faced significant cutbacks at the federal government level, at the same time policy-makers have marshalled a globalization discourse to defend multiculturalism policy. Here, policy-makers maintain that "diversity" benefits Canada's international trade and global competitiveness. (p. 106)
Interestingly the authors connect the division of private and public spheres in the dispute on multiculturalism with an implication of gender in multiculturalism. The authors observe the tendency that in the policy discussion, minority/immigrant women are often portrayed within their ethnocultural community, rather than within the structures of racism, sexism and exclusion in Canada. This tendency is tied to the argument for multiculturalism confined to the private sphere. The authors argue: specially for those in favor of multiculturalism only in the private sector, the realm of culture, such as food, language, and customs, is typically associated with women. Positioned in this way, women are more excluded from the realm of the public spheres of politics and work.
The authors observe a similar tension among feminist scholarship, as Okin view that minority women are harmed by multiculturalism, which sustains group rights. In a response to such argument, the authors call for careful dialogue and exchange between men and women within ethnocultural communities as well as the broader Canadian society. The authors quote Sherene Razack's argument on this subject. Razack criticizes that few of feminist scholars have engaged in respectful First/Third dialogue and instead seen Third Women only as subjects, "exotic other females in need of their benevolent protection".
Chapter 1. Diversity, Globalization and Public Policy in Canada. (11-35)
The authors finds the notion of selling diversity in three public policies--immigration, multiculturalism and employment. They note that multicultural policy, first articulated by the federal government of Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1971, has been a major means of official recognition of ethnic minorities in the Canadian nation. Recently, however, as they observe, policy-makers akin to neoliberal globalization, which emphasizes global markets and Canadian economic competitiveness, tend to turn certain notions of diversity pertaining to economic competitiveness into a selling point while muting diversity as a commitment to social justice and respect.
The authors affirm that the movement of peoples across national borders is one of the most evident forms of globalization today and a major source of greater diversity. Pointing out the lag of public policies that deal with the diversity, authors argue that some of the richest contributions to policy studies come from feminist scholarship in that while looking into thegendered/differential impact of policies on men and women, they open up space for a critical treatment of other forms of exclusion and marginalization. Yet, they rightly point out that gender analysis of Canadian public policy has not sufficiently interrogated the consequences of policy for ethnic minority and racialized women.
Chapter 4. Multiculturalism and Nation-Building (105-128)
In this chapter, the authors examine the Canadian state's multiculturalism historically. The Prime Minister Trudeau's announcement of a policy of multiculturalism is generally perceived as a state's response to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, Aboriginal claim and third force from other ethnic groups. As the authors point out, it is interesting to note that Trudeau stood for a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework. The authors argue that this framework early on bears witness to the continued domination of British and to a lesser extent French-origin groups in Canada.
Between 1971 and 1993, the authors state that multiculturalism focused on the cultural maintenance of diverse ethnic heritage such that "song and dance" were much highlighted. They observe a burgeoning linkage between multiculturalism and business interests in the 1980s, as seen in the slogan, "Multiculturalism Means Business", in a conference organized by the Progessive Conservatives in Toronto in 1986. From then on, the Canadian state has made a strong tie between multiculturalism and its international business. The authors argue that now the policy of multiculturalism, which began as a domestic policy, is becoming a selling product with a strong affinity to neo-liberal ideals.
The authors note another type of criticism along with this neo-liberal impetus. Reform Party, in particular, hinged on their advocacy of individual rights and the formal equality of people and provinces--this party also refused a special recognition of Quebec in Canada on the basis of the equality of each province. They argue, according to the authors, that the preservation of cultural background is a matter of personal choice and the state should promote minorities to integrate into the national culture, thus calling for an end to funding of multicultural support.
This conservative and neo-liberal criticism continued after 1993 and the authors note that business value was much stressed while funding for multiculturalism were severely being cut. In particular the authors note popular criticism, particularly in English-Speaking Canada in this period. They draw on the division of private and public spheres in the criticism. They state:
Along with the argument that Canadian multiculturalism weakens national unity, criticisms have centered around the idea that, while the expression of minority languages and culture are acceptable in the private sphere, the state should have no part in upholding them in the public sphere. (p. 106)
The authors argue that the notion of private means the household on the one hand and market and business on the other hand. Thus, multiculturalism as a policy means business to the Canadian state. They write:
While multiculturalism has faced significant cutbacks at the federal government level, at the same time policy-makers have marshalled a globalization discourse to defend multiculturalism policy. Here, policy-makers maintain that "diversity" benefits Canada's international trade and global competitiveness. (p. 106)
Interestingly the authors connect the division of private and public spheres in the dispute on multiculturalism with an implication of gender in multiculturalism. The authors observe the tendency that in the policy discussion, minority/immigrant women are often portrayed within their ethnocultural community, rather than within the structures of racism, sexism and exclusion in Canada. This tendency is tied to the argument for multiculturalism confined to the private sphere. The authors argue: specially for those in favor of multiculturalism only in the private sector, the realm of culture, such as food, language, and customs, is typically associated with women. Positioned in this way, women are more excluded from the realm of the public spheres of politics and work.
The authors observe a similar tension among feminist scholarship, as Okin view that minority women are harmed by multiculturalism, which sustains group rights. In a response to such argument, the authors call for careful dialogue and exchange between men and women within ethnocultural communities as well as the broader Canadian society. The authors quote Sherene Razack's argument on this subject. Razack criticizes that few of feminist scholars have engaged in respectful First/Third dialogue and instead seen Third Women only as subjects, "exotic other females in need of their benevolent protection".
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Location of Culture
Bhabha, Homi. (2004). London and New York: Routledge Classics. (First published in 1994)
Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition (ix-xxv)
Bhabha's interest focus on the hybrid forms of life that the marginalized produce amid the situation where their cultural integrity is negated through the ignorance of their differences. He distinguishes two discourses of globalization. In this criticism of the predominant discourse, global cosmopolitanism, he asserts that it focuses on neo-liberal forms of governance and free-market forces of competition. He states:
A global cosmopolitanism of this sort readily celebrates a world of plural cultures and peoples located at the periphery, so long as they produce healthy profit margins within metropolitan societies. States that participate in such multicultural[sic] multiculturalism affirm their commitment to 'diversity', at home and abroad, so long as the demography of diversity consists largely of educated economic migrants--computer engineers, medical technicians, and entrepreneurs, rather than refugees, political exiles, or the poor. (p. xiv)
Instead, Bhabha calls attention to globalization that deals with difference within, such as problems of diversity and redistribution at the local level and the rights and representations of minorities in the regional domain. From this view, he suggests the term vernacular cosmopolitanism, which measures global progress from minorities perspective and their claims to freedom and equality are marked by a right to difference in equality. He states:
The vernacular cosmopolitan takes the view that the commitment to a 'right to difference in equality' as a process of constituting emergent groups and affiliations has less to do with the affirmation or authentication of origins and 'identities,' and more to do with political practices and ethical choices. (p. xvii)
Bhabha sharply criticizes Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. The Article declares the rights of minority to preserve their cultural inheritance. (The current statement is as follows) "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits." Bhabha contests that this statement neglects inter-cultural affiliation across minority communities. He states:
Article 27 emphasizes the need for minorities to 'preserve' their cultural identities, rather than to affiliate across emergent minority communities. For all its good intentions, such rights neglect the 'inter-cultural' political existence and ethical imperative...(p. xxii)
[The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the sentence, "All human beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms." But it is quite intriguing that Arendt once wrote, "we are not born equal, but become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights" (The Origin of Totalitarianism, p. 297) Although the two approaches aim at the same goal of preserving human rights, Arendt emphasizes the need for struggle to achieve the goal, thus allows us to see the inveterate power differentials in our society.]
Introduction (p. 1-27)
Bhabha delineates an innovative theoretical approach as thinking beyond narratives of initial subjectivities and focus on processes produced in the articulation of cultural differences. He calls them"in-between" spaces. With respect to cultural engagement, Bhabha states:
The social articulation of difference, from minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation...The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definition of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress. (p. 3)
Bhabha explains postcoloniality: (1) it focuses on the persistent 'neo-colonial' conditions within the 'new' world order and the multinational division of labor, and (2) it look at cultures 'otherwise than modern'. He describes this phrase, "Such cultures of a postcolonial contra-modernity may be contingent to modernity, discontinuous or in contention with it, resistant to its oppressive, assimilationist technologies; but they also deploy the cultural hybridity of their borderline conditions to 'translate', and therefore reinscribe, the social imaginary of both metropolis and modernity" (p. 9).
Under the postcolonial condition, Bhabha introduces the concept of unhomeliness, meaning the recess of the domestic space or simply displacement. He assert that it is inherent to inter-cultural rites and becomes historically the most intricate invasion, blurring the borders between home and world as well as private and public. [THIS REMINDS ME OF ARENDT'S ARGUMENT OF THE PRESERVATION OF PRIVATE DOMAIN]
Chapter 1. The Commitment to Theory (28-56)
Bhabha emphasizes the political commitment of a theory. Opposing to singularity, he states that hegemony requires iteration and alterity to be effectively produce politicized populations. Within this context, he argues that theoretical statements should be made through negotiation and recognition of heterogeneity, where hybrid forms of knowledge can be produced. He writes:
A knowledge can only become political through an agnostic process: dissensus, alterity and otherness are the discursive conditions for the circulation and recognition of a politicized subject and a public 'truth'. (p. 34)
He maintains that in the negotiation between politics and knowledge, theories cannot be a metanarrative claiming generality and should not lag the time and space of politics.
Bhabha notes that cultural diversity, the recognition of pre-given cultural contents and customs, gives rise to liberal notion of multiculturalism.
His perspective on the relationship between cultural meaning and language is worth to look at. [Is it similar to poststructuralism?] In his view, the act of cultural enunciation [making known] is crossed by the difference of writing. Refusing a traditional emphasis on the content of symbols and functions within different cultures, he emphasizes the structure of symbolization shaped by language. In his view, the process of language itself is crucial to creating (cultural) meanings. Thus, meaning and symbols of culture is created beyond a simple act of communication between two people and is "mobilized in the passage through a Third Space, which represents both the general conditions of language and the specific implication of the utterance in a performative and institutional strategy of which it cannot 'in itself' be conscious " (p. 53). Therefore, this Third Space constitutes the act of cultural enunciation, which is a contradictory, ambivalent, and indeterminate space. The acknowledgment of this Third Space of cultural enunciation is critical to understanding the historical identity of culture. He states:
The intervention of the Third Space of enunciation, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as an integrated, open, and expanding code. Such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homegenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People. (p. 54)
For Bhabha, the nature of culture lies not in purity, fixity, or unity but in hybridity that a Third Space produces. Bhabha describes this Third Space as an alien territory, a split-space, or inbetween space. He argues that the theoretical recognition of this space may help conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or cultural diversity in a liberal sense but on the articulation of culture's hybridity.
By emphasizing the Third Space and the hybridity of culture, he calls attention to a discontinuity of cultural identities that people bring forward in their liberatory struggle. He observes that by destroying the continuity of the nationalist tradition, people can translate and negotiate their new culture within a new context. Bhabha states:
The people are now the very principle of 'dialectical reorganization' and they construct their culture from the national text translated into modern Western forms of information technology, language, dress. The changed political and historical site of enunciation transforms the meanings of the colonial inheritance into the liberatory signs of a free people of the future. (p. 56)
Bhabha distinguishes himself from nationalists who call for the true national culture as a safeguard against colonial cultural imposition. As he notes, his perspective resonates in Fanon's. Bhabha writes, "for Fanon, the liberatory people who initiate the productive instability of revolutionary cultural change are themselves the bearers of a hybridity identity" (p. 55).
[It seems that the reason why he is called a post-colonial scholar is that his emphasis on a departure from the legacy of colonialism on the basis of the changing culture from the people.]
Chapter 7. Articulating the Archaic: Cultural difference and colonial nonsense (175-198)
Bhabha opposes to the restoration of cultural essence or authenticity. According to him, this approach is taken from the perspective of relativism for the recognition of cultural difference. Defining cultural difference as a problem caused by cultural plurality, he argues that cultural difference is not acquisition or accumulation of additional cultural knowledge, but the momentous extinction of the recognizable object of culture. Thereby he continues to emphasize a discontinuity of culture at the edge of experience. For him, culture is not a fixity, but a fluidity, disrupted by time and space.
[His discussion is not much about cultural collision within an immigrant society, rather a nation-state in a post-colonial period.]
Chapter 8. DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation (199-244)
Focusing on the emergence of the modern nation from the mid-nineteenth century, he defines the Western nation as an obscure and ubiquitous form of living the "locality" of culture. He argues that in the act of writing the nation, which is an apparatus of symbolic power, a continual slippage of categories, like sexuality, class affiliation, territorial paranoia or cultural difference. But Bhabha argues that by focusing on the nation-space, the narrative of nation fails to address the ambivalent and chiasmatic intersections of time and place that constitute the 'modern' experience of the Western nation. Thus his focus is placed on the temporality of the modernity.
Within this context he warns that cultural difference must not be understood from the perspective of pluralities in the "homogeneous empty" time of the national community. He states:
The question of cultural difference faces us with a disposition of knowledges or a distribution of practices that exist beside each other, abseits designating a form of social contradiction or antagonism that has to be negotiated rather than sublated...The aim of cultural difference is to rearticulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of the signifying position of the minority that resists totalization [my emphasis]...[that] serves to disturb the calculation of power and knowledge, producing other spaces of subaltern signification. (p. 232-233)
[I seems that Bhabha regards the other spaces produced in the hybrid conditions as a site of potential subversion, but it could be and in-between culture is not powerless, however his perspective is narrated without enough evidence. The in-between culture is negotiated and can be either subversive or obedient to the totalization.]
chapter. 9 The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: the question of agency
According to Bhabha, postcolonial criticism revolves around unequal cultural representation. In order to do so, they intervene in the discourse of modernity, in particular around its rationalization, that normalizes the unequal and differential representation. Thus, they attempt to reconstitute cultural difference, social authority and political discrimination in order to reveal the oppressive function of modernity. He states that, in the discourse of cultural difference, they oppose to the continuity of an authentic 'past' and a living 'present'. Instead they see culture as a strategy of survival and focus on the transnational dimension of cultural transformation, such as migration, diaspora, displacement and relocation. Thus, he argues that the postcolonialism challenges a consensual and collusive liberal sense of cultural community. Instead, they look at culture as a disturbing practice of survival and focus on a process of alterity, which construct cultural and political identities.
Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition (ix-xxv)
Bhabha's interest focus on the hybrid forms of life that the marginalized produce amid the situation where their cultural integrity is negated through the ignorance of their differences. He distinguishes two discourses of globalization. In this criticism of the predominant discourse, global cosmopolitanism, he asserts that it focuses on neo-liberal forms of governance and free-market forces of competition. He states:
A global cosmopolitanism of this sort readily celebrates a world of plural cultures and peoples located at the periphery, so long as they produce healthy profit margins within metropolitan societies. States that participate in such multicultural[sic] multiculturalism affirm their commitment to 'diversity', at home and abroad, so long as the demography of diversity consists largely of educated economic migrants--computer engineers, medical technicians, and entrepreneurs, rather than refugees, political exiles, or the poor. (p. xiv)
Instead, Bhabha calls attention to globalization that deals with difference within, such as problems of diversity and redistribution at the local level and the rights and representations of minorities in the regional domain. From this view, he suggests the term vernacular cosmopolitanism, which measures global progress from minorities perspective and their claims to freedom and equality are marked by a right to difference in equality. He states:
The vernacular cosmopolitan takes the view that the commitment to a 'right to difference in equality' as a process of constituting emergent groups and affiliations has less to do with the affirmation or authentication of origins and 'identities,' and more to do with political practices and ethical choices. (p. xvii)
Bhabha sharply criticizes Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. The Article declares the rights of minority to preserve their cultural inheritance. (The current statement is as follows) "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits." Bhabha contests that this statement neglects inter-cultural affiliation across minority communities. He states:
Article 27 emphasizes the need for minorities to 'preserve' their cultural identities, rather than to affiliate across emergent minority communities. For all its good intentions, such rights neglect the 'inter-cultural' political existence and ethical imperative...(p. xxii)
[The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the sentence, "All human beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms." But it is quite intriguing that Arendt once wrote, "we are not born equal, but become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights" (The Origin of Totalitarianism, p. 297) Although the two approaches aim at the same goal of preserving human rights, Arendt emphasizes the need for struggle to achieve the goal, thus allows us to see the inveterate power differentials in our society.]
Introduction (p. 1-27)
Bhabha delineates an innovative theoretical approach as thinking beyond narratives of initial subjectivities and focus on processes produced in the articulation of cultural differences. He calls them"in-between" spaces. With respect to cultural engagement, Bhabha states:
The social articulation of difference, from minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation...The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definition of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress. (p. 3)
Bhabha explains postcoloniality: (1) it focuses on the persistent 'neo-colonial' conditions within the 'new' world order and the multinational division of labor, and (2) it look at cultures 'otherwise than modern'. He describes this phrase, "Such cultures of a postcolonial contra-modernity may be contingent to modernity, discontinuous or in contention with it, resistant to its oppressive, assimilationist technologies; but they also deploy the cultural hybridity of their borderline conditions to 'translate', and therefore reinscribe, the social imaginary of both metropolis and modernity" (p. 9).
Under the postcolonial condition, Bhabha introduces the concept of unhomeliness, meaning the recess of the domestic space or simply displacement. He assert that it is inherent to inter-cultural rites and becomes historically the most intricate invasion, blurring the borders between home and world as well as private and public. [THIS REMINDS ME OF ARENDT'S ARGUMENT OF THE PRESERVATION OF PRIVATE DOMAIN]
Chapter 1. The Commitment to Theory (28-56)
Bhabha emphasizes the political commitment of a theory. Opposing to singularity, he states that hegemony requires iteration and alterity to be effectively produce politicized populations. Within this context, he argues that theoretical statements should be made through negotiation and recognition of heterogeneity, where hybrid forms of knowledge can be produced. He writes:
A knowledge can only become political through an agnostic process: dissensus, alterity and otherness are the discursive conditions for the circulation and recognition of a politicized subject and a public 'truth'. (p. 34)
He maintains that in the negotiation between politics and knowledge, theories cannot be a metanarrative claiming generality and should not lag the time and space of politics.
Bhabha notes that cultural diversity, the recognition of pre-given cultural contents and customs, gives rise to liberal notion of multiculturalism.
His perspective on the relationship between cultural meaning and language is worth to look at. [Is it similar to poststructuralism?] In his view, the act of cultural enunciation [making known] is crossed by the difference of writing. Refusing a traditional emphasis on the content of symbols and functions within different cultures, he emphasizes the structure of symbolization shaped by language. In his view, the process of language itself is crucial to creating (cultural) meanings. Thus, meaning and symbols of culture is created beyond a simple act of communication between two people and is "mobilized in the passage through a Third Space, which represents both the general conditions of language and the specific implication of the utterance in a performative and institutional strategy of which it cannot 'in itself' be conscious " (p. 53). Therefore, this Third Space constitutes the act of cultural enunciation, which is a contradictory, ambivalent, and indeterminate space. The acknowledgment of this Third Space of cultural enunciation is critical to understanding the historical identity of culture. He states:
The intervention of the Third Space of enunciation, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as an integrated, open, and expanding code. Such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homegenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People. (p. 54)
For Bhabha, the nature of culture lies not in purity, fixity, or unity but in hybridity that a Third Space produces. Bhabha describes this Third Space as an alien territory, a split-space, or inbetween space. He argues that the theoretical recognition of this space may help conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or cultural diversity in a liberal sense but on the articulation of culture's hybridity.
By emphasizing the Third Space and the hybridity of culture, he calls attention to a discontinuity of cultural identities that people bring forward in their liberatory struggle. He observes that by destroying the continuity of the nationalist tradition, people can translate and negotiate their new culture within a new context. Bhabha states:
The people are now the very principle of 'dialectical reorganization' and they construct their culture from the national text translated into modern Western forms of information technology, language, dress. The changed political and historical site of enunciation transforms the meanings of the colonial inheritance into the liberatory signs of a free people of the future. (p. 56)
Bhabha distinguishes himself from nationalists who call for the true national culture as a safeguard against colonial cultural imposition. As he notes, his perspective resonates in Fanon's. Bhabha writes, "for Fanon, the liberatory people who initiate the productive instability of revolutionary cultural change are themselves the bearers of a hybridity identity" (p. 55).
[It seems that the reason why he is called a post-colonial scholar is that his emphasis on a departure from the legacy of colonialism on the basis of the changing culture from the people.]
Chapter 7. Articulating the Archaic: Cultural difference and colonial nonsense (175-198)
Bhabha opposes to the restoration of cultural essence or authenticity. According to him, this approach is taken from the perspective of relativism for the recognition of cultural difference. Defining cultural difference as a problem caused by cultural plurality, he argues that cultural difference is not acquisition or accumulation of additional cultural knowledge, but the momentous extinction of the recognizable object of culture. Thereby he continues to emphasize a discontinuity of culture at the edge of experience. For him, culture is not a fixity, but a fluidity, disrupted by time and space.
[His discussion is not much about cultural collision within an immigrant society, rather a nation-state in a post-colonial period.]
Chapter 8. DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation (199-244)
Focusing on the emergence of the modern nation from the mid-nineteenth century, he defines the Western nation as an obscure and ubiquitous form of living the "locality" of culture. He argues that in the act of writing the nation, which is an apparatus of symbolic power, a continual slippage of categories, like sexuality, class affiliation, territorial paranoia or cultural difference. But Bhabha argues that by focusing on the nation-space, the narrative of nation fails to address the ambivalent and chiasmatic intersections of time and place that constitute the 'modern' experience of the Western nation. Thus his focus is placed on the temporality of the modernity.
Within this context he warns that cultural difference must not be understood from the perspective of pluralities in the "homogeneous empty" time of the national community. He states:
The question of cultural difference faces us with a disposition of knowledges or a distribution of practices that exist beside each other, abseits designating a form of social contradiction or antagonism that has to be negotiated rather than sublated...The aim of cultural difference is to rearticulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of the signifying position of the minority that resists totalization [my emphasis]...[that] serves to disturb the calculation of power and knowledge, producing other spaces of subaltern signification. (p. 232-233)
[I seems that Bhabha regards the other spaces produced in the hybrid conditions as a site of potential subversion, but it could be and in-between culture is not powerless, however his perspective is narrated without enough evidence. The in-between culture is negotiated and can be either subversive or obedient to the totalization.]
chapter. 9 The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: the question of agency
According to Bhabha, postcolonial criticism revolves around unequal cultural representation. In order to do so, they intervene in the discourse of modernity, in particular around its rationalization, that normalizes the unequal and differential representation. Thus, they attempt to reconstitute cultural difference, social authority and political discrimination in order to reveal the oppressive function of modernity. He states that, in the discourse of cultural difference, they oppose to the continuity of an authentic 'past' and a living 'present'. Instead they see culture as a strategy of survival and focus on the transnational dimension of cultural transformation, such as migration, diaspora, displacement and relocation. Thus, he argues that the postcolonialism challenges a consensual and collusive liberal sense of cultural community. Instead, they look at culture as a disturbing practice of survival and focus on a process of alterity, which construct cultural and political identities.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Globalization and Discontents
Joseph Stiglitz (2002). NY:W.W.Norton & Company
Stiglitz mentioned that the IMF and the U.S. Treasury, which emphasized information transparency in East Asia during the global financial crisis in 1997-98, were the least transparent he experienced with. Upon his experience, he asserts that the way international institutions such as the IMF influence the world economies is subtle such that it is a matter of a tone of voice, a meeting behind closed doors or a memo after discussions.(preface. pp. ix-xvi)
A new phenomenon in globalization, according to him, is anti-globalization wave in developed countries, which is based on the prevalent awareness that globalization in many developing countries did not bring the promised economic benefits. He supports this idea from a document of World Bank (Global Economic Prospect and the Developing Countries 2000): for the last decade, the number of people in poverty increased by almost 100 millions. The hypocrisy of the Western countries lie in that they push doors of the poor to eliminate barrier while keeping their own closed--in particular Japan and the U.S. The Uruguay Round (1986-1993 concluded by the agreements of 117 countries on trade liberalization and as a result, WTO was formed.), in particular, put the intellectual property right into fire and protected the interests of the producers, concentrated in the developed countries. He argues premature capital market liberalization caused global instability and destroyed job markets in poor countries such that a sense of job security is heightened, if not loss. Nevertheless, "capital market liberalization has been pushed despite the fact that there is no evidence showing it spurs economic growth"(p. 16). IMF, World Bank and WTo are the major international institutions who he states govern the global markets and it is interesting to how he sees these players in this context: "the application of mistaken economic theories would not be such a problem if the end of first colonialism and then communism had not given the IMF and the World Bank the opportunity to greatly expand their respective original mandate, to vastly extend their reach" (p.17) He also maintains the view that globalization can be good and reshaped as long as it is governed well, but a problem he frequently mentions is the way in which the three major players operate somewhat surreptitiously for their own financial interests--it is irony that IMF is run by taxpayers' money but its representatives are mostly directly from corporations--and there is no voice of developing countries although most activities are in the developing world.[He advocates progressive capitalism with certain governmental intervention to compensate market failure.] (pp.3-22).
Stiglitz calls it the colonial mentality or white man's burden that they know what is the best for developing countries. Furthermore, what they know about is solely based on an ideology--market fundamentalism--and they insist on playing a central role in policy making without consideration of local specifics. He presents two examples, Ethiopia and Botswana: while Ethiopia, who relied on the IMF funds, did not achieve sustainable development, let alone encountering a threat of fund cut, Botswana carefully selected advisers from various private sectors and wend through their way. Despite obvious atmosphere of discontents on the policies that the IMF pushed on Korea in 1997, the reason why government officials kept silent publicly was that they were afraid of being judged as "off track" by the IMF and losing opportunities to get funded from the IMF--also note that other access to funds contingent on IMF approval. One hot topic that the IMF imposed on Korea during the supervisory period is pushing further independence of the Central Bank from the government and having it focused on inflation. He argues that this policy reflects a groundless market fundamentalism that the IMF persists with two empirical evidence: there is a general consent that European Central Bank's independence actually exacerbated an economic downturn and also, even in the U.S., Federal Reserve Bank, U.S. central bank, refused to focus on inflation only and took into account employment and growth as well. [The U.S. doesn't have to listen to the IMF, but smaller countries often have no option, but it is a matter of balancing intellectual power to some degree. The IMF is not the only way to choose.] (pp. 23-52)
Stiglitz maintains his light that there are alternative strategies, for instance, land reform not capital market liberalization, competition policies before privatization, job creation along with trade liberalization. "The essence of freedom is the right to make a choice--and to accept the responsibility that comes with it." (pp.53-88)
Stiglitz says, "it became clear that the IMF policies not only exacerbated the ownturns but were partially responsible for the onset: excessively rapid financial and capital market liberalization was probably the single most important cause of the crisis, though mistaken policies on teh part of the countries themselves played a role as well" (pp.89-90). He recalls moments when the crisis in East Asia was about to break out: the IMF and U.S. Treasury began to criticize the countries about corruption, malfunctions, etc. although they were hardly experts. He defines that Fund aid was at the cost of accepting country's economic sovereignty. Even when the IMF calls the end of recovery, the criteria is given to stabilization of interest or exchange rate, however, he argues that there is no true recovery until workers return to their jobs and wages are restored. He continues to argue governments' role in recovering economic crisis and it is bizarre that he states that Korea is an example of the government's intervention, which not only led fast recovery but also could be more competitive in the near future. He mentions that the unemployment was up fourfold in Korea during the crisis. If the recovery was successful, the unemployment should have been reduced now. I do not have statistics, but considering skyrocket inflation, the wages are far from the restoration, I propose. (pp. 89-132).
Stiglitz mentioned that the IMF and the U.S. Treasury, which emphasized information transparency in East Asia during the global financial crisis in 1997-98, were the least transparent he experienced with. Upon his experience, he asserts that the way international institutions such as the IMF influence the world economies is subtle such that it is a matter of a tone of voice, a meeting behind closed doors or a memo after discussions.(preface. pp. ix-xvi)
A new phenomenon in globalization, according to him, is anti-globalization wave in developed countries, which is based on the prevalent awareness that globalization in many developing countries did not bring the promised economic benefits. He supports this idea from a document of World Bank (Global Economic Prospect and the Developing Countries 2000): for the last decade, the number of people in poverty increased by almost 100 millions. The hypocrisy of the Western countries lie in that they push doors of the poor to eliminate barrier while keeping their own closed--in particular Japan and the U.S. The Uruguay Round (1986-1993 concluded by the agreements of 117 countries on trade liberalization and as a result, WTO was formed.), in particular, put the intellectual property right into fire and protected the interests of the producers, concentrated in the developed countries. He argues premature capital market liberalization caused global instability and destroyed job markets in poor countries such that a sense of job security is heightened, if not loss. Nevertheless, "capital market liberalization has been pushed despite the fact that there is no evidence showing it spurs economic growth"(p. 16). IMF, World Bank and WTo are the major international institutions who he states govern the global markets and it is interesting to how he sees these players in this context: "the application of mistaken economic theories would not be such a problem if the end of first colonialism and then communism had not given the IMF and the World Bank the opportunity to greatly expand their respective original mandate, to vastly extend their reach" (p.17) He also maintains the view that globalization can be good and reshaped as long as it is governed well, but a problem he frequently mentions is the way in which the three major players operate somewhat surreptitiously for their own financial interests--it is irony that IMF is run by taxpayers' money but its representatives are mostly directly from corporations--and there is no voice of developing countries although most activities are in the developing world.[He advocates progressive capitalism with certain governmental intervention to compensate market failure.] (pp.3-22).
Stiglitz calls it the colonial mentality or white man's burden that they know what is the best for developing countries. Furthermore, what they know about is solely based on an ideology--market fundamentalism--and they insist on playing a central role in policy making without consideration of local specifics. He presents two examples, Ethiopia and Botswana: while Ethiopia, who relied on the IMF funds, did not achieve sustainable development, let alone encountering a threat of fund cut, Botswana carefully selected advisers from various private sectors and wend through their way. Despite obvious atmosphere of discontents on the policies that the IMF pushed on Korea in 1997, the reason why government officials kept silent publicly was that they were afraid of being judged as "off track" by the IMF and losing opportunities to get funded from the IMF--also note that other access to funds contingent on IMF approval. One hot topic that the IMF imposed on Korea during the supervisory period is pushing further independence of the Central Bank from the government and having it focused on inflation. He argues that this policy reflects a groundless market fundamentalism that the IMF persists with two empirical evidence: there is a general consent that European Central Bank's independence actually exacerbated an economic downturn and also, even in the U.S., Federal Reserve Bank, U.S. central bank, refused to focus on inflation only and took into account employment and growth as well. [The U.S. doesn't have to listen to the IMF, but smaller countries often have no option, but it is a matter of balancing intellectual power to some degree. The IMF is not the only way to choose.] (pp. 23-52)
Stiglitz maintains his light that there are alternative strategies, for instance, land reform not capital market liberalization, competition policies before privatization, job creation along with trade liberalization. "The essence of freedom is the right to make a choice--and to accept the responsibility that comes with it." (pp.53-88)
Stiglitz says, "it became clear that the IMF policies not only exacerbated the ownturns but were partially responsible for the onset: excessively rapid financial and capital market liberalization was probably the single most important cause of the crisis, though mistaken policies on teh part of the countries themselves played a role as well" (pp.89-90). He recalls moments when the crisis in East Asia was about to break out: the IMF and U.S. Treasury began to criticize the countries about corruption, malfunctions, etc. although they were hardly experts. He defines that Fund aid was at the cost of accepting country's economic sovereignty. Even when the IMF calls the end of recovery, the criteria is given to stabilization of interest or exchange rate, however, he argues that there is no true recovery until workers return to their jobs and wages are restored. He continues to argue governments' role in recovering economic crisis and it is bizarre that he states that Korea is an example of the government's intervention, which not only led fast recovery but also could be more competitive in the near future. He mentions that the unemployment was up fourfold in Korea during the crisis. If the recovery was successful, the unemployment should have been reduced now. I do not have statistics, but considering skyrocket inflation, the wages are far from the restoration, I propose. (pp. 89-132).
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Korea's Globalization
Samuel Kim (Ed.). (2000). NY: Cambridge University Press.
7. K. Moon. Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism (pp.147-169).
Through an empirical review about migrant workers in Korea, Moon points out globalization in Korea resembles its common dual process--market/labor integration as well as defensive nationalism. Here are some examples that support her propositions: as seen in the case that Korean Chinese are better welcome as labor force, cultural homogeneity is inveterate. Also, the opposition against legalizing an employment-permit system bears worried anticipation of massive labor movements from North Korea after Korean reunification. According to the author, this is territorially bounded--rather than ethnically or economically--nationalism which is expressed with xenophobia oppressive toward others. But in September 1997, Immigration Control Law was revised such that legal workers may be allowed to join unions. She argues that this revision resulted from worrying the international reputation of the nation. There were some changes in citizenship as well. Here is a quote from media that the author inserted with the revision: "the government's attempt to modernize the Korean legal order in accordance with the era of globalization" (Hankyoreh, 20 September 1997).
However, this soft policy took another turn with the IMF crisis with the announcement from Justice Ministry on December 27, 1997. All illegal foreign workers were required to leave by the end of March 1998 without fine. The author interprets this action as viewing migrant workers as a threat to national job security. Finally she states that democracy movements should temper excessive nationalism and boost globalization in terms of human rights and democritization, while resisting economic globalization.
7. K. Moon. Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism (pp.147-169).
Through an empirical review about migrant workers in Korea, Moon points out globalization in Korea resembles its common dual process--market/labor integration as well as defensive nationalism. Here are some examples that support her propositions: as seen in the case that Korean Chinese are better welcome as labor force, cultural homogeneity is inveterate. Also, the opposition against legalizing an employment-permit system bears worried anticipation of massive labor movements from North Korea after Korean reunification. According to the author, this is territorially bounded--rather than ethnically or economically--nationalism which is expressed with xenophobia oppressive toward others. But in September 1997, Immigration Control Law was revised such that legal workers may be allowed to join unions. She argues that this revision resulted from worrying the international reputation of the nation. There were some changes in citizenship as well. Here is a quote from media that the author inserted with the revision: "the government's attempt to modernize the Korean legal order in accordance with the era of globalization" (Hankyoreh, 20 September 1997).
However, this soft policy took another turn with the IMF crisis with the announcement from Justice Ministry on December 27, 1997. All illegal foreign workers were required to leave by the end of March 1998 without fine. The author interprets this action as viewing migrant workers as a threat to national job security. Finally she states that democracy movements should temper excessive nationalism and boost globalization in terms of human rights and democritization, while resisting economic globalization.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Globalization and Neoliberalism
A Taxonomy and Some Implications for ‘Anti-Globalization’
Bowles, Paul. (2005). Canadian Journal of Development Studies. Vol. 26(1).
Bowles argues that neoliberalism is primarily an economic concept dedicated to ‘free markets’ based on privatization and deregulation and it takes various polities and identifies four different groups of views on globalization.
Group 1: globalization is an inevitable process driven by communication technology, thus weakening state power. Within this context, neolieralism is the 'rational' policy responding to the change and the roles of state should shrink to maximize the flow of technology and deregulate national trade policies at all levels. In this way, poor nations can be more benefited than others and 'economic convergence', in the term of economist, will occur. On this other hand, there is a school of thought that criticizes this neoliberal view. They argue that new forms of governance has to established in order to realize the immense productive potential of globalization. The current neoliberalism at both state and international levels just doesn't meet the condition.
Group 2: Globalization is a myth, as global worldwide trade is not new, and only serves as a tool for neoliberalists, thus ideology or globalism. "globalization is really a myth, an over-hyped idea designed to support the neoliberal agenda with its political redistribution of power to corporate and financial elites."
Group 3: "Globalization can be seen as a code word for the ascendancy of U.S. imperialism" (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2001). They also argue that globalization is a project to open up markets abroad as an exit from the crisis of profitability and therefore, neoliberalism joins this imperial impetus as the policy thrust to achieve the objectives, and nation-states play a more vigorous role to implement the policy.
Group 4: Globalization is in fact regionalism, as often expressed as "stumbling bloc" or "building bloc." Thus, regions are central to globalization and the way they are being structured is neolibral.
The author argues that anti-globalization is in fact anti-neoliberalism and looks for new governance forms at the global and local levels as an opposition to corporate power. He quotes David Held's position as an explanation of the local level: Held (1995) argues that at the local level, forms of participatory development and community-based organizations and institutions are seen as the governance structures necessary to empower the losers in the neoliberal globalization process and to democratize local processes (cited on p 22). [Democracy and Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. (1995)] In this movment, the author adds, 'global civil society' gets into the main stream and 'deradicalized' by taking 'well-worn footsteps' of gender and sustainability, thus 'global social justice' movement differentiates itself from the mainstream movement. Walden Bello, the author quotes, argues anti-globalization, which means deglobalization, aims decentralizing decision-making at the local, national and global levels. According to the author, the common central idea of global social justice movement is that local spaces are essential in order to resist corporate driven, or neoliberal, globalization as stated in group 1. There seem other movements correspondent to the other groups, but they are relatively insignificant.
Bowles, Paul. (2005). Canadian Journal of Development Studies. Vol. 26(1).
Bowles argues that neoliberalism is primarily an economic concept dedicated to ‘free markets’ based on privatization and deregulation and it takes various polities and identifies four different groups of views on globalization.
Group 1: globalization is an inevitable process driven by communication technology, thus weakening state power. Within this context, neolieralism is the 'rational' policy responding to the change and the roles of state should shrink to maximize the flow of technology and deregulate national trade policies at all levels. In this way, poor nations can be more benefited than others and 'economic convergence', in the term of economist, will occur. On this other hand, there is a school of thought that criticizes this neoliberal view. They argue that new forms of governance has to established in order to realize the immense productive potential of globalization. The current neoliberalism at both state and international levels just doesn't meet the condition.
Group 2: Globalization is a myth, as global worldwide trade is not new, and only serves as a tool for neoliberalists, thus ideology or globalism. "globalization is really a myth, an over-hyped idea designed to support the neoliberal agenda with its political redistribution of power to corporate and financial elites."
Group 3: "Globalization can be seen as a code word for the ascendancy of U.S. imperialism" (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2001). They also argue that globalization is a project to open up markets abroad as an exit from the crisis of profitability and therefore, neoliberalism joins this imperial impetus as the policy thrust to achieve the objectives, and nation-states play a more vigorous role to implement the policy.
Group 4: Globalization is in fact regionalism, as often expressed as "stumbling bloc" or "building bloc." Thus, regions are central to globalization and the way they are being structured is neolibral.
The author argues that anti-globalization is in fact anti-neoliberalism and looks for new governance forms at the global and local levels as an opposition to corporate power. He quotes David Held's position as an explanation of the local level: Held (1995) argues that at the local level, forms of participatory development and community-based organizations and institutions are seen as the governance structures necessary to empower the losers in the neoliberal globalization process and to democratize local processes (cited on p 22). [Democracy and Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. (1995)] In this movment, the author adds, 'global civil society' gets into the main stream and 'deradicalized' by taking 'well-worn footsteps' of gender and sustainability, thus 'global social justice' movement differentiates itself from the mainstream movement. Walden Bello, the author quotes, argues anti-globalization, which means deglobalization, aims decentralizing decision-making at the local, national and global levels. According to the author, the common central idea of global social justice movement is that local spaces are essential in order to resist corporate driven, or neoliberal, globalization as stated in group 1. There seem other movements correspondent to the other groups, but they are relatively insignificant.
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