Upload
donnnyboy
View
221
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
1/21
The Modern World System and the Development of
Alternative-Globalization Movements
Donald Ulrich
University of Alaska Anchorage
May 1, 2008
1
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
2/21
The modern spread of capitalist values through the expansion of Western neo-
liberal systems has resulted in the purveyance of globalization as a largely
hegemonic process. Countries that have self-regulated their global
integration such as Bhutan, offer an exception to this rule in its attempt to
take into account the spiritual foundation and history of the country and to
firstly address needs on the local level and secondarily the global level.
It is my intent with this paper to examine the reasons behind
globalization as a modern process and to better understand and explain why it
is that, as a process, globalization has developed the aspects that is has.
I do not have a complete or first hand understanding of what is an extremely
multivariable and complex process, but through a theoretical foundation I
believe that the question can be approached in such a manner as to begin
shedding some light on the subject of globalization.
To begin this examination I will first explore this theoretical
understanding of why globalization would be characterized as it is in regards
to its continuation of modern cultural and economic expansion. I believe
that there are sound theoretical arguments for why it is that Western values
such as capitalism and neo-liberalism are so prevalent as well as the
hegemonic process by which they are expanded into new and unique cultural
landscapes.
Primarily I will be analyzing modern globalization through the lens
provided by Immanuel Wallersteins World-systems Theory. I believe that he
has provided a useful assimilation of past theories that address both
capitalism and the emergence and operation of global economies and global
cultures. I also think that through a critical analyses his assimilation and
formulation of a world-systems theory is accurate in its descriptions of the
current state of affairs and well founded in the its attempts to predict the
course of globalization as a continuation of a historical line of progress.
2
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
3/21
After thoroughly developing and reviewing the most relevant theories
that directly address globalization as a modern process, I will present the
case of Bhutan as an example for analyses. I chose Bhutan because I believe
that it is a country that is both counter-culture in regards to the world
system and very relevant in its timing as it is still very much a country
whose attempts to integrate globally are a work in progress. The reason I
want to present a case that is an exception to the hegemony of Westernization
is that through its analysis I hope to make a case for the plausibility and
opportunity for successful alternatives to the seemingly unilinear process
that globalization has become. It is not my intent here to champion an
alternative as I am no Marx and this is not to be any sort of manifesto for
utopian possibilities in the future, but it is my hope to develop a workable
argument for the fallibility of the current world-system and to provide
through the case of Bhutan and example of a country that is developing one of
these alternative models. As a precursor to that section I will add that the
country of Bhutan is not a shining light by which all countries should
follow. It struggles to achieve its goals and as a small country attempting
something relatively unorthodox, it has had its hiccups and unfortunate
casualties in the process of finding that balance between the local and the
global.
Following the example of Bhutan I will end the paper with a brief
synopsis of the alternative globalization movements in general. Just as I
began with an exploration of the theories that address modern economic
globalization I will offer the same analyses to the connecting themes of
systems that attempt to globalize with a priority on social values. This is
almost always manifested in an emphasis by the nation-states addressing the
needs on the local level and then carefully integrating those needs in such a
way as to accommodate global policy. It is again my intent only to argue for
the plausibility of these alternatives and not to suggest that they are in
3
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
4/21
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
5/21
and interdependencies of individual cultures across the globe, but must also
be viewed and understood in terms of the bigger picture, and how
globalization is being shaped by cultural constructs and how it in turn acts
upon and shapes those cultures that operate within the web of
interdependency, both directly and indirectly.
Since globalization as a modern process is no longer just a byproduct
of progressive integration across national and cultural boundaries, but has
in fact become the mechanism that drives this interdependency, the focus in
terms of globalizations cultural constructions shifts to; what does
globalization mean to those who are caught up in it and to those with the
power to manage it? This question has come more into focus as social
sciences have begun to address global society in terms of the process of
industrialization and the impact this has in terms of developing and
maintaining social and economic gaps between the poor and wealthy countries
(Roberts & Hite, 2007). This is important in that it address many of the
assumptions that have long provided the moral basis for third world industry,
which was the notion that modernization would provide the solution to the
poor welfare of third world inhabitants (Roberts & Hite, 2007).
Some have taken to furthering the modern definition of globalization
and the global culture it entails, to a more specific structure of power
within which transnational elites have risen to assume control of the
political and economic institutions that are often behind globalizations
policies and procedures. A Wall Street-US Treasury-IMF/World Bank Complex
to whom the strings of international policies can be attributed (McMichael,
1996). While this may be a generalization of what is undoubtedly a very
complex cast of players that provide the financial incentive for
industrialization and modernization, it is a perspective from which to begin
understanding how nation-states position themselves within this global
economy. And while these entities may or may not continue to play the same
5
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
6/21
role, the Western economic complex that they are referring to is still a very
pervasive force despite the evolution and fluctuations of who it is that
forms that core.
The relation of these parts in the emergence of this global culture is
analyzed and explained through a modern development of a world-systems model.
What began as a theory of dependency on industrialization and developed into
modernization theory, which was characterized by its tendency to blame the
victim for the inequities of third world life, eventually would combine and
begin to analyze the relationship of all the parts in the global culture, or
as it is called, the world system (Boli & Lechner, 1999).
World-systems analysis is at its heart a post-Marxist comparison of
international relations that has reapplied many of Karl Marxs insights and
understandings of capitalism to the global economy that has developed, which
was Marxs prediction as an inevitable course for capitalisms need to
indefinitely expand into new markets (Roberts & Hite, 2007). Simplified, it
seems an explanation for core/periphery relationships (now with a semi-
periphery addition), but in practice and for those who have developed, and
continue to develop this approach, it is a much more complex and evolving set
of analytical frameworks from which to understand the current status of
nations and economic politics and how they develop. The world system is not
a theory in and of itself, but an approach to social analysis and social
change (Wallerstein, 2004).
It is through world-systems analysis that I believe we can begin to
understand why it is that Western neo-liberal values have brought capitalism
to the forefront of this process of globalization. The importance of world-
systems analysis is that it does not separate economies and cultures into
separate entities to be studied as such, but instead takes each culture and
its system of values as playing an integral part in the whole that is the
world culture. As Wallerstien (2004), one of the key developers of this
6
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
7/21
approach says, world-systems analysis calls for a unidisciplinary historical
social science, and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the
19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics or
disciplines. This is where anthropology and its holistic search for the
meaning of culture can offer an important analytical perspective in the
development of world culture.
First, it must be understood that capitalism can only exits in a world-
economy, but this world-economy is not intrinsically capitalistic. In the
words of Wallerstein, they are obverse sides of the same coin. One does not
cause the other. And capitalism is not necessarily the penultimate in
societal organization, but by its very nature re-instates its value system
from within and continuously grows, expanding into new markets and resource
pools (Wallerstein, 1979). It is a system designed for world-economies, not
micro. Therefore, while the multitude of cultures is part of the world-
economy which is currently capitalist, each culture and its representative
nation-state can institute any number of modes of production in order to
develop the capital they trade in the global market, but they also can not
help but introduce their system within the scope of capitalism as it develops
towards that end (Wallerstein, 2004).
To clarify, it is production with the intent to sell in a market
designed to maximize profit that is the defining feature of a capitalist
world-economy. That is why production can take so many avenues as long as
the destination of product is the same. Production will continue to expand
as long as there are new resources and/or new markets into which it can
expand at a profit (Wallerstein, 1979). Therefore, it can be seen that
capitalisms growth was and is inevitable as long as there are not
oppositional systems put in place to appose it and make it an unprofitable
venture in relation to the alternatives.
7
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
8/21
This does in part provide an answer as to why Western neo-liberalism
has dominated the modern globalization process in such a hegemonic way, but
there are other obvious factors that have played a key part in its domination
of global policy. First among these would be the focus of power into a few
countries that have initiated sweeping foreign policies designed to align the
global political discourse behind them. And no country has been more
associated with the ideas of Western ideology in recent history then the
United States (Rydell & Kroes, 2005). Without getting into a history lesson
on U.S. politics, with the rise to super power status after the Second World
War, and the Cold War that ensued, America became the leader of the free
world. And as such they championed the freeing of all aspects of economic
life as a means of combating the totalitarian governments that reigned in the
emerging communist states. This provided the vehicle with which neo-
liberalism could find its way into all corners of the world. Neo-liberalism
is used here to describe a set of economic systems; people are free to vote
their dollars, not necessarily free to vote for their government, hence the
malleable ideals of the U.S. and its willingness to allow any country to sell
in its markets if they subscribed to a few policy mandates (Rydell & Kroes,
2005). This Americanization is now better summed up as a historical trend
that began well before the U.S.s modern global political status, tracing its
roots to market colonies established by Western Europe powers in the 1600s,
hence the term Westernization (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, & Stephens, 1992).
As long as one is in control of the capital in this system, it can be a
beneficial system to be brought into, and has been for many social groups
throughout the history of the process. But a small group of people can amass
a great deal of power through the control of capital and the means of
production, which can make alternative means of social organization very
appealing especially when the majority is at risk of disenfranchisement under
the homogenization of westernization.
8
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
9/21
Westernization almost always develops with one measure in mind, and
that is economic prosperity, and more specifically the prosperity of American
corporate entities (McMichael, 1996). This is why capitalism and
westernization are often used synonymously. The empire building of the West
fractured from the rule of one polis into the rule of one system of which a
few very powerful nation states and there economic purveyors held sway
(Wallerstein, 2004). This became the foundation for the modern ranking of
countries from first to third world, as Mike Sobocinski describes it the
relevance of even the simplest indicators per capita GDP used to identify
core, semi-peripheral, peripheral countries (Sobocinski, 2003).
This is the hegemony that countries are faced with, acceptance into a
free-market system that offers the opportunity to profit from the capitalist
world-economy, but also the pressures of neo-liberalization that come with
the opening of cultural development to a system that favors the homogenized
in terms of cultural demand which creates the markets for the goods produced
there and elsewhere. This is not to say that economics is the only driving
force, on the contrary, it is but one of many, and if carefully managed can
operate in conjunction with other needs of a society.
Many social theorists have begun to address this angle of globalization
that is the process as driven from within individual cultures and not just
globalization as an external phenomenon introduced to new societies from the
greater world-culture. It is an increasingly popular postmodern idea that
culture is, and possibly always has been, more important than economics in
driving social change. Therefore, understanding of internal variations
between nations is a vital part of the question as to why different parts of
the world are diverging under globalization (Roberts & Hite, 2007). It is
also a means to understanding how and why nations would choose to enter into
the global-economic system on their own terms through self regulation and how
this can preserve culture at the local level while allowing in the prosperity
9
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
10/21
of operating at the global level. Or, as the adage goes, Think globally,
act locally.
Bhutan: A case of internally regulated development
Bhutan is a unique and particularly appropriate example of a country going
through the process of modernization and immersing itself into the global
system at a time when the whole world seems have already arrived in some
guise or the other. The reason that I have chosen them as a point of inquiry
is an interest in their policy of regulation and their focus on globalizing
on their own terms, adapting the process to long standing beliefs and values
instead of the other way around. While the global system is composed of a
multitude of cultural mechanisms developed to allow many peoples and
societies to operate on the same plane, each culture also has vital
institutions and measurements of well being to which it subscribes that
determine on the national and on the personal level of life how good a
life is lead. And for many cultures it is a clash of these values that has
bred discontent as one foundation is eroded by the influx of new systems and
values that declare contrary ideology as necessary for operation. Bhutan
then, would seem to be a prime example for those cultures and countries that
take exception to the status quo, aiming for a global community that is not
homogenized or dominated through Western hegemony, and where the local and
global can coexist to the benefit of all. That at least is the goal, and as
a process that will require constant evaluation, their success will require
constant review.
The countrys official web site declares, As Bhutanese, we go to
unusual lengths to preserve each element of our life. From environment to
dress to language to religion, we have managed to keep our centuries-old
culture and traditions alive. Besides learning as much as we can from our
10
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
11/21
past, we also try, whenever possible, to embrace the future and envelope it
in a Bhutanese way (Gov., 2008). This is vital to understanding what it is
that makes Bhutan such a valuable case study; they meld the old with the new
so that globalization becomes a process of evolving what they already have
and not adopting something outside of their own culture as a substitute or to
drive out and replace a system that has provided so much for such a vital
period in the countries past.
One of the most amazing aspects of this cultural revitalization and
overhauling process is the rapidity with which it has been instituted. As
late as the 1960s Bhutan was one of the least progressive nations in the
modern world. Before the development policies begun by King Jigme Dorji
Wangchuk in 1965, Bhutan had no maintained roads, no telephones, and no
national mail service. The economy was based largely on a barter system as
there was almost no monetary policy and there were only eleven schools which
served about 500 kids. 95 percent of the population lived in rural
communities and life expectancy was estimated to be about 35 years with a 50
percent infant mortality rate (Rutland, 1999). These are daunting statistics
for any leader to hope to overcome and yet Bhutans apparently benevolent
monarch set out to do just that. Through a series of carefully instituted
plans the country was set on course to balance the rich spiritual faith and
closely knit rural life styles of the Bhutanese with the best of what the
modern world had to offer, namely health care, education and a sustainable,
sturdy economy that could raise the standards of living in the country
without sacrificing the cultural foundations of the people. This development
from within would prove key in the future plans of the monarchy as
globalization would not be an opening of the door for the rest of the world
to come pouring in through, but instead would be an opportunity for the
Bhutanese to discover and learn from the world outside (Gov., 2008).
11
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
12/21
It should be noted for context that Bhutan was truly a land isolated
from the rest of the world. It has never been colonized by the West and has
avoided assimilation into larger nations, namely India to the south and China
to the north, through the geographic isolation of being located in the midst
of the Himalayas. And by the time the outside world rediscovered Bhutan,
they had settled on a strict policy of political isolation to keep themselves
from the influences of culture that threatened their deep spiritual Buddhism
and pristine historical maintenance of life (Rutland, 1999).
How then is such a level of wellness to be measured in a country that
has declared an intent to develop outside of the dominant economic systems?
In the West, economic development is considered to be the precursor to
individual happiness and systems to record these changes are prevalent
throughout the world. This standard by which development is measured around
the world is Gross National Product, a system that is the product of a
capitalist world economy which dictates the standards of the world culture
(Rueschemeyer et al., 1992). And yet Bhutan was not looking to exchange one
set of values for another in order to generate wealth, it was looking to
adapt one system to its own in order to generate wellbeing (Giri, 2004).
With this in mind Bhutan developed its own system for tracking the progress
and success of the development plans and attempts to globalize, the Gross
National Happiness standard. GNH is a more idealistic, but still tangible,
method with which to understand the welfare of the country.
The play on words is obvious and goes beyond titles to demonstrate the
direct and intentional substitution of international measurements. Gross
National Happiness is based on the four pillars just as there are the four
pillars of a free market economy. These guiding principles are sustainable
development, environmental protection, cultural preservation, and good
governance (Larmer, 2008). King Jigme Dori Wangchuk, Dorji Wangchuks
successor, has been a very proactive pursuer of these goals and has had very
12
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
13/21
quantifiable measures of success. In terms of economic growth, Bhutan has
steadily risen an average of eight percent every year since 1980 bringing the
gross domestic product from $249 in 1980 to $1523 in 2006 (Gov., 2008). For
a country that has a professed focus on happiness and sustainable well being,
there have also been definite measures of success that can be seen and
appreciated by an economically driven world. This is only encouragement for
a country that has been criticized for its Gross National Happiness policy
while enjoying the double success of cultural sensitivity and increased
standards of living.
While modernization has been a source of division for many countries,
the monarchy and specifically the current King Jigme Dori Wangchuk, have
really pulled the country together around the idea of development and the
overall benefits that it is bringing to Bhutan (Rutland, 1999). Instead of
generational gaps driving the old and the young apart, a common heritage in
the Buddhist traditions of the past and the emphasis on developing for the
community and not the individual has brought the Bhutanese forward with a
sense of having a shared stake in the progress being made (Giri, 2004).
It is a delicate line that they tread though, with happiness a term
that means many things to many people. Some fear that the cultural values
are already being lost by an influx of media and ideas that are challenging
the long held beliefs and inward focus of the Bhutanese. Some analysts say
that the plan fell apart in 1999 when Bhutan brought in the first television
and internet service to the country. Following the turn of the century,
there was an increase in family break-ups, criminal activity and drug abuse
(Tucker, 2007). One local study showed that up to a third of parents in
cities preferred watching TV to talking to their children. Certainly to be
taken with a grain of salt, but an interesting conclusion to be drawn from
research coming out of the country. And everything about the last several
decades has not been a rosy path to enlightenment in the modern world, and
13
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
14/21
like the introduction of global media, there have been difficulties to
overcome. But this challenge has been one that has been addressed in an even
more radical way, with democracy and in that an opportunity for the people to
determine the course with which they see the brightest future (Larmer, 2008).
Democracy has been a bitter medicine for some to swallow, as the King
has been an extremely popular figure since he took the throne in 1974
(Larmer, 2008). But it has been the opinion of the King that it is only
through self-governance that the people of Bhutan can truly find their own
happiness. It is also through democracy that the people will be able to
establish a mechanism by which they can express their satisfaction with the
state of individual and community welfare. For this reason the country has
been in the process of transitioning to a constitutional monarchy, with
periodic steps, from establishing a parliament chosen by the King who would
have the power to counter-act royal decree, to the instituting of public
elections. The elections culminated in the first ever publicly elected
parliament in March of this year (Gov., 2008). Aspects of society that have
long lacked a voice will now be entering into the political arena with the
advent of democracy as well and will for the first time be able to express
their desires and values on the national scale (Larmer, 2008).
While this may all seem like a perfect example of an alternative model
by which a country can integrate local values with the world culture, there
have been pitfalls for the Bhutanese to overcome; one of these being cultural
dissidents. Democratic elections give an opportunity for government by the
people, for the people, but they may also lead to a tyranny of the majority.
And in this sense the issue in preserving a local cultural foundation with
which to provide for the communal aspects of life and the values that a
people may hold dear, means that one may have to decide just who assigns
value and whos values will take precedence. In the case of Bhutan this has
meant a crackdown on many foreign peoples who have called the region of
14
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
15/21
Bhutan home, but have not given up their own local values for the Buddhism
and the way of life that a Buddhist may lead (Larmer, 2008). Refugees form
Bhutan numbered 106,000 over the last 17 years as policies from the Bhutanese
royalty have been enacted in an attempt to protect local culture from the
influx of new ideas and customs that migrants often bring with them (Briggs,
2007). These refugees have primarily been Nepali-speaking Hindus and were
part of a group that made up nearly 200,000 people in a country with just
fewer than 700,000. Nepal has refused to admit these refugees and while
Bhutan has halted its policy of cultural cleansing, it also will not resettle
them (Briggs, 2007).
So while there are potential short comings to a system such as the one
that Bhutan has put in place, it still bears measuring the focus and benefits
of such an approach to the process of globally integrating a country. I am
not arguing that modern world systems are wrong or that there is a right
way out there, only that there are alternatives that are equally as viable as
the capitalist system championed by the West with its tendency to take on
hegemonic qualities. And it is in Bhutan that we see a concerted effort to
actually bring the idea of thinking globally and acting locally to fruit on
the level of national policy. Bhutan has shown a cultural vitality that
despite being prone to biased policy has persevered into a world that, in my
opinion, has shown less of concern for the local and instead has been aimed
at a global solidarity of markets, where cultural variations are only
accepted in that they dont interfere. And Bhutan may be trying to institute
cultural preservation on a level that is impractical, that being the nation-
state level, but as a unique example I would only emphasize that the
challenges they face are unique and for that reason worth analyzing and
understanding in hopes that they can be learned from and improved in order to
better serve cultures that will certainly face a same desire to preserve
locally and operate globally in the future.
15
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
16/21
Alternative-Global Movements
It is my opinion that countries, and transnational policies and organizations
must take into account the diversity of the cultural landscape presented by a
global world, and in doing so offer a measure of leeway to the vital services
that these cultures offer to the people that represent them and to the
multiple perspectives they offer in a global dialogue in which prevailing
theory has never shown itself to be infallible.
With this section I again want to emphasize that these movements are
not anti-globalization, but only alternatives which in some way emphasize an
aspect other than the current capitalist, neo-liberal model that dominates
the process of international integration. The world system developed under
this neo-liberalization does not provide a barrier to the possibility of
alternatives, and has even set in place a foundation from which other
movements can build upon.
The key emphasis that I see as a uniting factor in the most prevalent
and successful of these movements is that of the social movement and
representation of these movements on the local scale. These movements have
long been neglected or have broken apart due to an attempt to work within a
system that was designed to negate their power structure and the ability of a
social movement to gain traction when developed in the traditional nation-
state model (CHO, 2000). Still, there has been a determined aspect of the
need for social representation and recognition that has allowed movements of
this sort to persevere and to multiply in numbers across the globe (Karsin,
2000).
The key to developing these movements into a global system is public
regulatory mechanisms. The problem is that this globalization of capital
movement is breaking off the social regulatory mechanism,which were
established through the social and class struggle within the terrain of a
16
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
17/21
nation-state boundary, and is including all the former fragmented areas into
the global free market (CHO, 2000). In other words, the public must be
given a means to express their needs and to affect change as it represents
their values as a community.
Transnational economics and the corporations that operate within this
system have exceeded the ability of structures in place to regulate the
economy within a cultural framework. Solutions to this issue may include a
break down of economic tyranny and a reassertion of the publics, and by
public I mean the people as a collective, right to guide the direction of
policies that impact their wellbeing and cultural values (CHO, 2000). There
needs to be a manner in which the local value sets can garner representation
in the global discourse.
Anthony Giddens suggests a need for redemocratization of the global
system. It is his understanding that only through an opportunity for each
member of the society, at the local level and at the global, to have access
to regular and fair elections, in which all members of the population take
part to express their civil liberties freedom of expression and discussion,
together with the freedom to form and join political groups or associations
(Giddens, 2003), that there can be a workable solution formed from the
global society. Giddens asserts that democracy is not only viable, but is in
fact the best solution for a governmental system. This is not necessarily
reflected in the all the democracies of the West, of which there are many
varieties of democracy taken into different areas of focus and relative
power, but the ideal, the core of democracy is something that he sees as
being the answer to the global organization of social movements. And this
organization is a system that applies to a people establishing self rule in a
country such as Bhutan all the way to an international regulatory body that
is made up of elected representatives from the various interests of the
world. And for the countries that have become disillusioned with the process
17
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
18/21
and no longer see it as a truly representative form of government, the
solution is still to return to the fundamentals of democracy, a
democratizing democracy as Giddens puts it (Giddens, 2003).
Another solution that looks to the same general field of global
cooperation but strays to a less centralized model than a global democratic
regulatory agency is a global confederation of cultural groups that could
still decree guidelines and regulations on transnational economics and
corporations but would be more or less self sufficient in regards to national
policy. Benjamin R. Barber develops this theory in his article Jihad Vs.
McWorld. Barber is still an advocate of a democratic system, but he
describes it as a decentralized participatory form of democratic government
in which there would be the leeway for the more extreme ends of the
democratic spectrum, from parochialism to communitarianism, to still have the
ability to cooperate on global policy to the end that is a beneficial process
for the variation of values and policies that each country may subscribe to
(Barber, 1992).
Confederations would also be plausible solutions to predicaments such
as the one face by Bhutan in which even at the state level there are further
divisions among cultural entities within its bounds. Each of these cultural
regions could have separate representation. The problem for this solution to
overcome, as Barber sees it, is the continued trend towards uniformitarian
globalism. He feels that through the organization of peoples desire for
self-governance that a solution could be found. He does not advocate for a
union of states, but instead a representative body of cultures, or the
societies they represent (Barber, 1992).
Both Giddens and Barber advocate for a globally accepted method of
representation that allows cultural values to elect their own representation.
They see a need to regulate the unbridled extremes that are possibilities of
hegemonic take over of the world-system and they both believe that the best
18
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
19/21
way to do this is through a system of democratically elected governments.
They differ on the final situation, but the method is very much the same,
leading one to the global and one to the local.
Final Thoughts
With this paper I hope to have demonstrated why it is that the modern process
of globalization has been so dominated by the set of values representing
capitalism as an economic system born of Western cultures, and the neo-
liberalization of the world that has opened up cultures and markets for the
exploitation of Western corporations and governments. The current world-
system as described by researchers such as Wallerstein does seem to be the
work of a force that is almost unrelenting in its tendency to drive countries
towards a single value system. But as Wallerstein states, there is bound to
be an evolution of counter-culture systems that will erode the foundation of
a Westernized global capitalism and reinstate some alternative form by which
the global discourse will be directed (Wallerstein, 1979).
The problem that has arisen in the current system is that it has
designed regulations that are not about limiting transnational companys
options as regulations do at the state level, but instead are about limiting
the options of those countries whose governments are in the process of
developing, taking away their abilities to constrain those transnational
companies seeking to operate within their borders (Wade, 2003). It is this
continued expansion of economic rights at the cost of social rights that has
caused disillusionment with the current state of affairs and the beginnings
of many counter-culture movements that express a desire for alternative forms
of globalization and an ability to exert the cultural values held at the
local level. There are many proposed or desired methods through which these
various movements hope to achieve their goals, but I think that the cases
19
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
20/21
presented by Giddens and Barber are two of the most flexible systems that
attempt to address the need for a global social movement that accounts for
the local needs of each culture and its chosen means of representation.
In Bhutan I think we see a country that has started this process and is
setting a precedent by asserting their local values first, and adapting the
global system within the constraints of those needs. They are still limited,
and challenged by many of the influences of the capitalist world-system, but
I also believe that they are making proactive attempts to address these
challenges and that they provide a path for those who follow to refine and
develop. The system developed by Bhutan is certainly not claimed in this
paper to be a pinnacle of achievement, and has had, and will certainly have
its problems, but as it has developed it seems to be a viable alternative
model and for that reason I hope that it does receive the attention due to a
pioneer in that field. There are certainly other models out there that I
would have liked to incorporate into a larger and more complete collage of
alternative globalization movements and through a demonstration of Bhutans
success I believe that their own plausibility must be evaluated more
seriously as we move ahead in a world that is increasingly more integrated
and increasingly so in a fashion that represents the values of neo-
liberalization and capitalism.
20
7/28/2019 The Modern World System and the Development of Alternative-Globalization Movements
21/21
Works Cited: