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October 2005
Understanding Globalization Through the Internet October 2005 Fall 2005 Canon Magazine New School University Graduate Faculty Journal Many argue the world is fragmenting, dwindling into bite size ever more specific chunks, which is both good and bad depending on who's speaking. Some believe fragmentation will shatter power structures and strengthen community while others fear chaos and anticipate lost community. Some reject this fragmentation by spouting sci-fi predictions of bleak hegemony - Oh how culture will be destroyed by mega corporations and surveillance style global governments! Others embrace a 'one world' concept, placing great faith in institutions like the United Nations and the Internet. Since the 1990's the concept of 'globalization' has included and implied all these hopes and concerns. Definitions of globalization often teeter along diametrical extremes -- North or Western (American) imperialism, the death of the nation state, free market liberalization/rampant capitalism, rise of the corporate super state, one world government/brave new world style, internationalization/cosmopolitism and simultaneous degradation of the rural, loss of indigenous culture/homogenization, a travesty for the environment (toxic waste, ozone depletion), good for the environment (universal perspective, collaborative science), further marginalization of the already marginalized (especially in terms of wealth distribution and access to social services/employment/education), an exaggerated opportunity for social change (in an exaggerated decentralized world), the end of modernity, the rise of post modernity, or neither, or all of the above. The puzzle is thick. But there may be hope... An examination of technology, specifically the accelerated use and adoption of the Internet and networked devices, provides at least one powerful lens through which to view globalization and the blurry relationship it bears on local, national and global politics as well as economics, and culture. For example, networked devices (the fax machine) aided student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and software helped Africans learn previously lost native languages. Less hopeful, technology (and its counterpart capitalism) contributes to pollution and labor disputes (outsourcing software development, customer service, and manufacturing). The Internet has potential to 'level the playing field' and 'promote democracy' by disrupting political and social institutions that disenfranchise. But it can also be a tool for surveillance by totalitarian governments and controlling parents (AOL will tell you about every website your child tries to view and every email she gets). And, perhaps worst, it may also be used to subvert democracy, as alleged in the 2004 Black Box Ohio voting machine controversy. In keeping with its puzzling and diverse functions, the Internet encourages the global and the local simultaneously. It promotes and exposes the limitations of democracy, highlights the complications of sovereignty, and celebrates the individual alongside all-encompassing super-structure systems. In this way, technology aptly illustrates the inherent contradictions in our understanding of the concept of globalization. ... Investigating this increasingly complicated relationship between the Internet and the nation, a study from Harvard University decided to monitor website censorship in China. From May 2002 through November 2002, 19,032 mostly religious, news, and pornography websites were inaccessible. China also seemed to be blocking sites about Chinese culture [note:1] and as of March 28th, 2004 all blogspot sites. [Note:2] (Blogspot freely hosts diary-type online journals providing server space and easy to use publishing tools). While China now embraces its own brand of capitalism articulating its desire to play the globalization game, it is far from supporting open democracy and the cultural freedom also tied to globalization (and the Internet). China needs to support the Internet for cultural, political, and economic reasons, but attachment to nationalistic ideals forbids it from totally embracing the phenomena. It would be impossible for China to control even a slice of the Internet's reach given its open architecture and worldwide adoption. To what degree can we call China a sovereign nation when it increasingly becomes less Chinese and more 'global'? To what extent must China reinvent or reassert itself to preserve notions of sovereignty, i.e. add 'global' into the definition of what it means to be Chinese? To what degree has globalization changed our very understanding and definitions of sovereignty? And how does the Internet challenge and support sovereignty? By creating a new venue for politics and culture, the Internet challenges sovereignty along many axes. It complicates intrastate taxing (payment policies are underdeveloped and enforcement agencies are not yet up to speed) and communications regulation (many can talk via Internet telephony using existing phone, cable, and DSL lines at a lower cost, and sometimes for the savvy user, it's free). Global online purchasing power threatens local cultural customs making certain fashions, music, and technology gadgets not only desirable, but accessible -- sometimes against the wishes of non-secular nations. With national spending, laws, and customs all on the brink of annihilation because of the Internet it is easy to understand how sovereignty as we once understood it may be at risk. And yet, at the same time, the Internet also seems to promote national identity. For example even the open, transparent, and global Indymedia.org (an activist 'write your own news' resource) has sub-sites based on city centers (Indymedia NYC and Calgary), nation states (Indymedia Mexico, Belgium, and France) and even regions (Indymedia Rocky Mountain). Additionally, its main stories are translated into eight languages, and headlines vary from site to site based on local relevance. So while Indymedia serves to unify activists from all over the world, it also re-enforces local, regional, national, linguistic, political, and cultural differences. Nearly every country in the world has at least one national website, usually more, and sometimes hundreds. Local and national government services ranging from vehicle registration to food stamps also have informational and sometimes transactional websites. (In New York residents can pay parking tickets and file for unemployment online). During and after the Bush/Kerry election of 2004 it was a popular game to compare blue states and red states in interactive maps on websites like The New York Times -- an exercise which re-enforces local identities. In 1996 there were 16 million Internet users mostly residing in North America. Many feared the Internet as the harbinger of western (American) imperialism and the iron fist of global English. As of September 2005 there were more than 957 million worldwide users with only 23.4% from North America. Asia leads (34.2%) and Europe is second (28.5%). And though English still dominates the web world at 31.7%, Chinese (13%), Japanese (8.1%), Spanish (6.4%), and German (5.8%) make up the next 33.3%. [Note:3] While some argue that a globalization backlash produced what Manuel Castells calls "the widespread surge of powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalization and cosmopolitanism on behalf of cultural singularity."[note:4] Many others contend that a rise in fundamentalism, aided by advances in communications technologies, is a direct response to globalization. Even the most perfect draft of an Iraqi constitution will not overpower the internet's ability to import pornography and create local, cultural demand for a decidedly un-global identity. Nor will it stop the increasing online calls for Jihad. There are other cases of the Internet as a tool for political action. For example, hundreds of web pages, mailing lists, and newsgroups dissect the history and cause of the Zapatistas. People within the movement in Chiapas and other worldwide supporters use the Internet to share information, plan action, and mobilize. This is an instance of local and global communities, using a global network, to evangelize a local movement that resists both the Mexican national position as well as a global capitalist world. Befitting this massive entanglement of layers, concepts and seemingly counterintuitive contradictions, Anthony Giddens uses the technological metaphors of networks and nodes to explain globalization. In his book "The Consequences of Modernity" (1990) Giddens writes of a shifting world with overlapping spheres of influence. He refers to this world as a "network" and on that network lives various "nodes" or power points that impact each other. He maps out a series of relationships that form this network -- political, social, economic, etc. Within these dimensions exists sources of concentrated power that scatter previous understandings of politics, location, and self. To view these trends in simple terms of fragmentation and unity, pro's and con's, or opposing extremes in a matrix, would undermine the significance of the Internet as multiple complex arrangements of economic, political, and cultural spheres. And so, just as the Internet challenges our traditional understandings of space, time, place, and borders, so too should globalization extend beyond a simplistic dialog of fragmentation and unity. It's time we take our discussions about globalization into a more sophisticated framework. And using the Internet as a model may be a good place to start building such a framework. -- shel kimen
2 The Peking Duck Website. " The Banning of Blogs in China." [http://pekingduck.org/archives/001095.php] March 28, 2004. 3 Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics. [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm]October 2005> 4 Castells, Manuel. The power of identity. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997. back ||| home | words | music | friends | email klever |