Read the following quotes of different people about globalization. What is their position towards the globalization (pro, contra, indifferent, anxious)? What opinion do you agree with?

 

1. «One day there will be no borders, no boundaries, no flags and no countries and the only passport will be the heart» (Carlos Santana,
a Mexican and American musician who became famous in the late 1960s
and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music).

2. «It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity» (Kofi Annan, the 7th General Secretary of the UNO, 1997 – 2006).

3. «Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility» (Kofi Annan).

4. «This is a very exciting time in the world of information. It’s not just that the personal computer has come along as a great tool. The whole pace of business is moving faster. Globalization is forcing companies to do things in new ways»

 (Bill Gates , the founder of Microsoft)

5. «We are in a struggle against a globalization that has no place for principles, values and standards» (Bill Jordan, Professor of Social Policy at Plymouth University in the South West of England).

6. «We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step» (Kofi Annan).

7. «We must take care that globalization does not become something people become afraid of» (Gerhard Schroeder, a German politician,
ex-Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, member of the Social
Democratic Party of Germany).

8. « Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world’s best talents and greatest ideas.”

 (Jack Welch, a retired American business executive, author, and chemical engineer).

9. «Globalization is seen as another word for Americanization. All the big multinational brands are American» (Christopher Mesnooh, specialist in media & entertainment and technology & telecommunications industries, particularly in the internet, new media, software and
e-commerce).

10. «The globalization in its American version is dangerous and absurd. 40 % of total income belongs only to 1000 families. The Mass-Media are also controlled by the certain group of people which supervises the political situation in the world. Slowly the process of taking away the freedom of the human being is taking place. Soon the whole mankind will be involved into the total control system» (Alexey Osipov, Professor of the Moscow Spiritual Seminary and Academy).

 

5.2*. Read and dramatize the extract from the Interview given by Jerry Mander to the reporter Scott London of HopeDance magazine and formulate the main matters were discussed. What other questions could you ask?

Reference:

Jerry Mander, an American activist and author, is regarded as one of today's most articulate and outspoken critics of technology and economic globalization. His books include Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, In the Absence of the Sacred, and The Case Against the Global Economy (co-edited with Edward Goldsmith). In this interview, Mander makes a forceful case against economic globalization, arguing that we need to examine the hidden costs of free trade and deregulation and search for more enlightened economic models to guide us into the twenty-first century.

The Perils of Globalization:

An Interview with Jerry Mander

Scott London: The case, as it's usually presented, is that the globalized economy is a good thing that will secure jobs, allow us to remain competitive, and promote democracy abroad. Isn't there some truth to that?

Jerry Mander: The people who are making that case are the people who are promoting globalization – corporations and banks and governments. They are saying that globalization can solve the world's problems, that it's going to give people something to eat and so on. They are redesigning an economy that they say works. But it doesn’t work. We’ve had globalization for quite a while, it’s just being accelerated right now. Wherever the rules of free trade and economic globalization are followed, you have economic and ecological disasters immediately thereafter.

London: Some people feel that now that communism has collapsed, free-market capitalism may be next. After all, the economy can't continue to grow forever – at some point, an exponential curve has to either level off or crash.

Mander: I think that if I say «Yes, we have to rethink capitalism», then it gets reduced to, «Oh, he's anti-capitalist». The global economy is not capitalism. I have a master's degree in economics, and I know this is not capitalism. What we have now is a centrally controlled economy. The only capitalism that takes place is among the people who have no part in the real benefits of the system – you know, the people at the lower rungs have some capitalism going with small stores and so on. But, basically, the great part of the system doesn't function in a capitalist manner. It's not a socialist manner either. It's some kind of hodge-podge of connections that have been put together for greasing the skids of advanced development and growth and corporate benefit.

Free trade? Free market? We don’t have either of those either. We have some kind of combination. What we have is a corporate take-over of the rules and a lot of corporate authority.

London: Corporatism?

Mander: Yes, a corporate economy – an economy that is good for corporations. It’s not capitalism exactly, and it’s not socialism exactly, and it’s not anarchy either. It's a different of system of organization in which corporations exercise the control and reap the benefits.

London: You’ve written that one of the insidious effects of the global economy is the creation of monocultures defined by satellite television and global marketing. What’s wrong with kids in Nepal wearing Reebok shoes and wearing Madonna T-shirts if we here in the States are eating sushi and listening to Brazilian pop music?

Mander: There is nothing really wrong with any of it. That’s not the point. I don’t think that any human being is wrong for wanting something, or even using something. Why shouldn?t a kid wear Nikes? What we have to take a look at is the multiplicity of rearrangements and new rules that creates kids in Nepal dying to get hold of Air Jordan sneakers, and what that expresses in terms of homogenized viewpoints and the loss of cultural diversity and so on. Are we gaining more or losing more? That’s what people really need to focus on, and that's what we need to decide.

London: How do we respond to the forces of globalization?

Mander: Well, if the car is about to go off the cliff, the first thing you do is stop the car. We’re about to go off the cliff and we've got to stop the car. That's number one. Then we have to find a road map – where to go next. A lot of people are already looking for this road map.

The question that is most interesting to me, and the only that seems to make sense is: if globalization doesn’t work, what about localization?
I think relocalization is absolutely inevitable. It’s going to happen one way or another because the global economy will break down, even if we don’t organize a mass movement about it. It simply doesn’t work. It can’t sustain itself. It's going to fall apart and disintegrate – I hope sooner rather than later – so a certain degree of relocalization is going to take place automatically. I’m a little worried that it might also entail the growth of fascism here and there, as local powers gain real control. But I don't think that’s an argument against relocalization, just against the wrong kind of localization.

What’s necessary is that real power and real economic control be reduced very far down so that people have real control of their lives, and so that the technologies and forms of organization that they use don't assist the process of globalization.

London: And what about advertising, which has a great deal to do with the global economy? You used to be an advertising executive but made
a conscious decision to get out back in the 1960s. Why?

Mander: I began to feel that doing advertising and promoting greater consumption and greater use of resources and more cars (we had a car count at the time) was the problem, not the solution. I was also beginning to relate to the world according to the kinds of movements that were developing at the time. We began to do advertising for the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and some other groups in those days. The ecology movement was growing up and I started to take it seriously. Then I formed the country’s first non-profit advertising company, which was called Public Interest Communications, which no longer exists. But now I work for the Public Media Center, which started up on its own a few years after that. My relationship to this subject is really rooted in what began at that time, because I now see that the consumption orientation is a major part of the problem, and that it’s now being expressed globally to such a degree that it’s become an advertising man’s greatest fantasy.

5.3*. Imagine you are the participant of the international forum devoted to the problems people face in the global world. There are the topics to be discussed.

1. Do you believe in the unified society in all aspects (political, economical, religious, cultural ones)?

2. Can globalization solve the world problems? (terrorism, disparity, unemployment, loss of culture)

3. Do you agree with the idea that globalization is a smart trick of the USA to influence the political, economic and cultural processes over the world?

 4. Would you like to be imposed foreign traditions?

VI. LISTENING

6.1. Listen to the text Immigration and Customs on http://www.esl-lab.com

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