The Send-Off
So todae was the send-off for 2 of my long-time friends, Xinyin & Judy, 2 cute babes on their way to the hallowed land of the US for their hard-earned work-and-travel program. My gosh, these peers of mine have actually graduated & enjoying the fruits of their labour.. on a journey to a land far away that has great promises in store for them. In perspective, i was part of a rather large send-off group, taking a break in the middle of my semester exams, recharging for my last struggles next week to complete my freshman year. Yeah, that made me feel rather small, but also engendered with a sense of hope and discovery, similar sentiments those 2 babes would be relishing on their long Pacific flight.
Well, the send-off was a rather simple one, not exactly a teary one, not exactly a grand one for they were only to be gone from our spatial comfort zone for 3 months. Somehow, the length of time away is a determinant of the magnitude of the departure, and perhaps thus the send-off. I sometimes wonder how this clashes with the propogated notion of a global village, of us only being a phone call away anywhere in the world, of the irrelevance of spatial distance.
Well actually i do kind of subscribe to the idea that spatial distance is irrelevant to human relations, but not exactly due to the amorphous phenomenon of globalization. Well the most important lesson ive learnt from taking 2 History modules in NUS is that we do not really live because we can feel our hearts beat or see our tummy in that too-tight t-shirt.
We live only in the memories of others, which is made more evident in the metaphor of death, where the departed only lives in our remembrance. Memory, though unobjective and a victim of emotion, is critical in dictating whether people in our lives actually live.
With relevance to myself, yeah i myself am leaving for North Carolina, USA in about 3 months' time, and will be gone for almost a year at least. Today's send-off was an eerie premonition of my own send-off. It seemed eerie to me as it felt like i was attending my own funeral, seeing most of my close friends there, who would most likely constitute my own fare-well if they were free then.
It seemed like a funeral, since if you didnt really make an impact on those around you, your memory in them would gradually die out like a drizzle, and only if you did matter to a certain part of their life and memory did you continue to live, whatever the spatial distance might be. A couple can be just right next to each other, holding hands and walking along town, yet if they weren't really actively re-constructing their memories of each other, they could be as dead as the brown leaves they strolled by, to each other.
It seems like a quirky dilemma, but i guess sometimes it's important to think about what it means to live, only through others? To die, only by perishing the thought that only the self matters?
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
A POLITICS OF AESTHETICS?
The politics of aesthetics is concerned with the examination of the conflict between the established global aesthetic about what ‘good-looking’ means and the multivariate social forces that have risen to oppose such a global aesthetic. With relevance to globalization, the established global aesthetic on looking good is very much propagated by mass media and advertising. This is made possible by the advances in telecommunications and advertising that enable corporations to capture the imagination of millions globally about what it means to look good and to become beautiful by using its advertised products and/or lifestyle.
This established aesthetic is challenged and hence made possible due to sites of resistance which can be found globally and also utilize the same advances in telecommunications to resist and challenge it. A clear examination of the variations in tradition, culture, social norms and religion would enable one to determine the leverages in such a dichotomous political relationship both between states and within states.
GLOBALIZATION AS THE BADGE OF MODERNITY
The process of globalization has been deemed as the badge of modernity. The modern consumer is provided with an exorbitant range of choices of goods and services, whether real or not. The consumer has the choice to purchase and consume such goods and services in order to emulate the established global aesthetic of being beautiful. However, if one does not purchase or consume such goods and services for whatever reasons, one may be deemed as either going against progressive modernist standards or falling out of favour with the established global aesthetic of being beautiful.
In a sense, the consumption of such goods and services become cultural goods which one must possess in order to remain in acceptance by the established aesthetic order. One may not possess or consume such cultural goods for many reasons, some by choice while others by circumstance, both of which provide rich breeding sites of resistance against such a global aesthetic order. Post-modernists may reject such an established aesthetic order, perhaps deeming it a crass attempt by fashion industries to induce everyone to dress either like a Hollywood superstar or the lithe models on the catwalks of London, Paris and New York. While the majority of middle-class peoples in the Third World and even developed nations may not be able to purchase such cultural goods due to relative or absolute poverty, which is perhaps the main reason for the thriving trade in imitation goods.
UPROAR OVER BONE-THIN MODELS
Indeed, the recent uproar in fashion circles itself against using seemingly bone-thin, skeletal and underweight models is an example of global resistance to the established global aesthetic, what with fashion shows in Italy also following suit. This open secret of the high-class fashion industry to use lithe models has been widely documented and has been known to attract a cult following of teenage girls becoming anorexic and bulimic in attempts to emulate the bone-thin models who are often oppressed into maintaining their lithe figures. The reason why the revived debate has drawn so much attention within the industry and the media was that the self-imposed restriction against using lithe models came within the industry itself, from a high-class fashion show in Spain, attracting similar actions within the industry. This could be seen as a form of globalization-from-above, since it was initiated from the industry itself, a major player in the politics of aesthetics, and attracting other industry players to follow suit in its moralistic direction.
The fashion industry is indeed a major player in the politics of aesthetics, along with its fellow weight-loss, cosmetics industries and their mass advertising appendages. These three major industries thrive on making millions of people feel insecure about their bodies, which has become a powerful reflection of their identities and their self-confidence.
THE WEIGHT-LOSS SCAM
Through the use of models with ultra muscular and toned bodies, the weight-loss industry establishes them as the global aesthetic and induces millions to achieve bodies as toned as the models through the use of their advertised weight-loss goods and services. The cruel reality, as we all know, is that very few of us would actually attain such toned bodies in our lifetimes, whether we use the products or not. In fact, it would not be surprising to find that the advertising models themselves never once used the advertised products, but were simply head-hunted for the jobs because they already had very toned bodies.
However, such irresponsible advertising results in the endeavors of millions who buy not so much the product or advertised lifestyles, but into their own escapist dreams and fantasies about having a toned body. Capitalizing on this fact, weight-loss corporations have been known to be lax in controlling what chemicals and substances constitute their health products, resulting in products that are highly unhealthy while perhaps inducing short-term weight-loss through severe laxative effects. The Slim10 debacle in Singapore is a good case in point where there were many reports of adverse reactions experienced by local users, with the most serious resulting in liver complications and even failure.
Such obnoxious industries survive and continue to thrive as they capitalize on the individual’s entrapment in the global aesthetic of looking good. Corporations will never stop advertising such utopian lifestyles unless consumers demand for them to be banned, consumer demand being the raison de’tre for such superficial industries in the first place. Has globalization and modernity really accorded the consumer many new real choices?
HAS GLOBALIZATION ACCORDED REAL CHOICE?
The cruel truth remains that modernity has only succeeded in institutionalizing a certain false consciousness, where the consumer is led to believe that he/she can utilize the most advanced products from world-class pharmaceuticals to modify their bodies towards the established global aesthetic. What the consumer fails to see is the utopian nature of such an enterprise and how many irresponsible giant pharmaceuticals are profiting enormously by encouraging everyone to strive to be a copy of one another and shed their identity and self-confidence in the process.
SINGAPOREAN SLIM10 DEBACLE
The Singaporean authorities were surprisingly hush on the Slim10 issue, only issuing health warnings initially and banning the product’s sale eventually, with no legal action taken against the company. One wonders if this issue of liver failures upon consuming Slim10 had occurred in the US, it might have already resulted in multi-million dollar class-action lawsuits, yet in Singapore it provoked a surprisingly tame reaction from the authorities. Upon closer scrutiny, many giant pharmaceuticals have operations in Singapore, and it does not stretch the imagination much to understand that the authorities might have reservations towards prosecuting Slim10’s parent firm, for follow-up actions might threaten the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.
This lack in punitive action by the usually authoritarian and iron-fisted Singaporean authorities should not be misunderstood as fulfilling globalization’s critics which speak of a retreat in the sovereignty of the nation-state. As the Slim10 debacle did not threaten Singapore’s strategic interests, it was not in the authority’s interests to prosecute it as harshly as it might with say, drug trafficking. In fact, it would be more reasonable to argue that this was exemplary of a tacit cooperation between the industry and the nation-state. The Singaporean authorities and the pharmaceuticals industry both stood to gain much more if they kept the Slim10 debacle from the public’s view and negotiated back-door deals that would benefit both parties much more in the long term than a class-action suit would. As students of globalization, we must be critical in our outlook and not easily mistake state inaction as the retreat of the nation-state.
HYPERPOLARIZED ASSERTIONS OF A GLOBAL AESTHETIC
Sites of resistance have indeed been formed by the families and close ones of victims of irresponsible health products which proclaim to assist in helping one achieve the global aesthetic of looking good. However, on the other extreme, pro-anorexia groups have actually sprouted, especially in the US from 2001 to 2003. Such tightly-knit support groups encourage each other to ‘purify’ themselves through anorexia and even claim that it should not be stigmatized as an illness.
We have seen how the nature of good-looking is never static, and is always dependent on variants like socialization, culture and religion. In such tightly-knit groups, pro-anorexic individuals receive a high degree of social support and social acceptance for continuing their otherwise deviant acts of anorexia. The nature of good-looking is always in flux and being challenged by different groups. Despite the attempts and global exercises in asserting a global aesthetic, there will always be discordance over it, thus a politics of aesthetics. The discrepancies in the distribution of power often determines which asserted aesthetic takes prominence, at least for the duration of that power status quo and within the cultural and religious constraints of that social milieu.
The politics of aesthetics is concerned with the examination of the conflict between the established global aesthetic about what ‘good-looking’ means and the multivariate social forces that have risen to oppose such a global aesthetic. With relevance to globalization, the established global aesthetic on looking good is very much propagated by mass media and advertising. This is made possible by the advances in telecommunications and advertising that enable corporations to capture the imagination of millions globally about what it means to look good and to become beautiful by using its advertised products and/or lifestyle.
This established aesthetic is challenged and hence made possible due to sites of resistance which can be found globally and also utilize the same advances in telecommunications to resist and challenge it. A clear examination of the variations in tradition, culture, social norms and religion would enable one to determine the leverages in such a dichotomous political relationship both between states and within states.
GLOBALIZATION AS THE BADGE OF MODERNITY
The process of globalization has been deemed as the badge of modernity. The modern consumer is provided with an exorbitant range of choices of goods and services, whether real or not. The consumer has the choice to purchase and consume such goods and services in order to emulate the established global aesthetic of being beautiful. However, if one does not purchase or consume such goods and services for whatever reasons, one may be deemed as either going against progressive modernist standards or falling out of favour with the established global aesthetic of being beautiful.
In a sense, the consumption of such goods and services become cultural goods which one must possess in order to remain in acceptance by the established aesthetic order. One may not possess or consume such cultural goods for many reasons, some by choice while others by circumstance, both of which provide rich breeding sites of resistance against such a global aesthetic order. Post-modernists may reject such an established aesthetic order, perhaps deeming it a crass attempt by fashion industries to induce everyone to dress either like a Hollywood superstar or the lithe models on the catwalks of London, Paris and New York. While the majority of middle-class peoples in the Third World and even developed nations may not be able to purchase such cultural goods due to relative or absolute poverty, which is perhaps the main reason for the thriving trade in imitation goods.
UPROAR OVER BONE-THIN MODELS
Indeed, the recent uproar in fashion circles itself against using seemingly bone-thin, skeletal and underweight models is an example of global resistance to the established global aesthetic, what with fashion shows in Italy also following suit. This open secret of the high-class fashion industry to use lithe models has been widely documented and has been known to attract a cult following of teenage girls becoming anorexic and bulimic in attempts to emulate the bone-thin models who are often oppressed into maintaining their lithe figures. The reason why the revived debate has drawn so much attention within the industry and the media was that the self-imposed restriction against using lithe models came within the industry itself, from a high-class fashion show in Spain, attracting similar actions within the industry. This could be seen as a form of globalization-from-above, since it was initiated from the industry itself, a major player in the politics of aesthetics, and attracting other industry players to follow suit in its moralistic direction.
The fashion industry is indeed a major player in the politics of aesthetics, along with its fellow weight-loss, cosmetics industries and their mass advertising appendages. These three major industries thrive on making millions of people feel insecure about their bodies, which has become a powerful reflection of their identities and their self-confidence.
THE WEIGHT-LOSS SCAM
Through the use of models with ultra muscular and toned bodies, the weight-loss industry establishes them as the global aesthetic and induces millions to achieve bodies as toned as the models through the use of their advertised weight-loss goods and services. The cruel reality, as we all know, is that very few of us would actually attain such toned bodies in our lifetimes, whether we use the products or not. In fact, it would not be surprising to find that the advertising models themselves never once used the advertised products, but were simply head-hunted for the jobs because they already had very toned bodies.
However, such irresponsible advertising results in the endeavors of millions who buy not so much the product or advertised lifestyles, but into their own escapist dreams and fantasies about having a toned body. Capitalizing on this fact, weight-loss corporations have been known to be lax in controlling what chemicals and substances constitute their health products, resulting in products that are highly unhealthy while perhaps inducing short-term weight-loss through severe laxative effects. The Slim10 debacle in Singapore is a good case in point where there were many reports of adverse reactions experienced by local users, with the most serious resulting in liver complications and even failure.
Such obnoxious industries survive and continue to thrive as they capitalize on the individual’s entrapment in the global aesthetic of looking good. Corporations will never stop advertising such utopian lifestyles unless consumers demand for them to be banned, consumer demand being the raison de’tre for such superficial industries in the first place. Has globalization and modernity really accorded the consumer many new real choices?
HAS GLOBALIZATION ACCORDED REAL CHOICE?
The cruel truth remains that modernity has only succeeded in institutionalizing a certain false consciousness, where the consumer is led to believe that he/she can utilize the most advanced products from world-class pharmaceuticals to modify their bodies towards the established global aesthetic. What the consumer fails to see is the utopian nature of such an enterprise and how many irresponsible giant pharmaceuticals are profiting enormously by encouraging everyone to strive to be a copy of one another and shed their identity and self-confidence in the process.
SINGAPOREAN SLIM10 DEBACLE
The Singaporean authorities were surprisingly hush on the Slim10 issue, only issuing health warnings initially and banning the product’s sale eventually, with no legal action taken against the company. One wonders if this issue of liver failures upon consuming Slim10 had occurred in the US, it might have already resulted in multi-million dollar class-action lawsuits, yet in Singapore it provoked a surprisingly tame reaction from the authorities. Upon closer scrutiny, many giant pharmaceuticals have operations in Singapore, and it does not stretch the imagination much to understand that the authorities might have reservations towards prosecuting Slim10’s parent firm, for follow-up actions might threaten the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.
This lack in punitive action by the usually authoritarian and iron-fisted Singaporean authorities should not be misunderstood as fulfilling globalization’s critics which speak of a retreat in the sovereignty of the nation-state. As the Slim10 debacle did not threaten Singapore’s strategic interests, it was not in the authority’s interests to prosecute it as harshly as it might with say, drug trafficking. In fact, it would be more reasonable to argue that this was exemplary of a tacit cooperation between the industry and the nation-state. The Singaporean authorities and the pharmaceuticals industry both stood to gain much more if they kept the Slim10 debacle from the public’s view and negotiated back-door deals that would benefit both parties much more in the long term than a class-action suit would. As students of globalization, we must be critical in our outlook and not easily mistake state inaction as the retreat of the nation-state.
HYPERPOLARIZED ASSERTIONS OF A GLOBAL AESTHETIC
Sites of resistance have indeed been formed by the families and close ones of victims of irresponsible health products which proclaim to assist in helping one achieve the global aesthetic of looking good. However, on the other extreme, pro-anorexia groups have actually sprouted, especially in the US from 2001 to 2003. Such tightly-knit support groups encourage each other to ‘purify’ themselves through anorexia and even claim that it should not be stigmatized as an illness.
We have seen how the nature of good-looking is never static, and is always dependent on variants like socialization, culture and religion. In such tightly-knit groups, pro-anorexic individuals receive a high degree of social support and social acceptance for continuing their otherwise deviant acts of anorexia. The nature of good-looking is always in flux and being challenged by different groups. Despite the attempts and global exercises in asserting a global aesthetic, there will always be discordance over it, thus a politics of aesthetics. The discrepancies in the distribution of power often determines which asserted aesthetic takes prominence, at least for the duration of that power status quo and within the cultural and religious constraints of that social milieu.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
CARBON CREDITS-A DIRTY TRADE
Despite recent condemnation of the carbon credits scheme, especially with hypocritical grandstanding by Al Gore, I can understand how its structural nature is borne out of contemporary corporate globalization and how it may be the best short-term solution targeted at industries and the minority ultra-rich consumers like Al Gore.
Carbon credits were originally mooted as a way for Kyoto Protocol signatories to gradually reduce their carbon emissions. It allowed for heavily polluting industries to green their operations over time and in the meanwhile buy extra carbon credits from other Kyoto Protocol partners to compensate for exceeding its cap. This was viewed as mutually beneficial as developed nations could pay while taking time to clean up their industries, which takes time and political will, while developing nations received funds for modernizing their industries and silenced their complaints about the developed world contributing much more to accumulated and present pollution.
Although this cap-and-trade has not worked entirely due to lax controls and even its essence receives much flak for allowing rich nations to continue polluting with a clear conscience, we have to acknowledge this as a step forward in engaging industries and avoid a strictly moralistic stand that will get us nowhere in this corporate globalizing world. We have to come to the cruel understanding that only when the environment is regarded and traded as a commodity, will it figure as a commercial consideration. Before this development, environmental costs only appeared in a small section of economic textbooks under the sub-section of externalities, largely ignored by corporations. Only when there was money to be made in turning green (or at least appearing so), or potential costs incurred when not turning green did it figure in corporations’ business at all.
COMMODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT
Just like labour and raw material, only when the environment is commoditized and politicized, will it receive serious attention from industries, a dominant player in determining the future of the environment, along with governments and the consumer. Recently carbon credits have received additional flak due to new variants like individual carbon offsetting, where individuals voluntarily pay an extra cost for their goods and services to a carbon trader who pledges to convert that sum to maintain a neutral carbon footprint. Indeed the lack of transparency is a cause for concern, but more importantly it allows ultra-rich consumers like Al Gore to continue with their lavish lifestyles of pollutive consumption without guilt. This effectively creates a huge barrier to reaching out to these rich consumers, who are the guiltiest of creating pollution but also the most capable of making a change, not by paying for their guilt but by actually changing their excessive lifestyles.
THE HAZE CASE STUDY
Indeed the environment has become heavily politicized in recent years, with many governments realizing that pollution knows no borders. However, the form of politicization has sometimes also revealed the tacit alliance between governments and industries. The haze affecting Singapore is a good case in point. Along with neighbours like Malaysia and Thailand, Singapore has faced serious air pollution problems which results in an annual haze for more than a decade. While Singapore has always been quick to put the blame on widespread slash-and-burn farming techniques in Indonesia, it has been remarkably silent on the heavily polluting major oil operations that are also sited in neigbouring Indonesian islands.
A scrutiny on Singapore as a major oil re-processing hub reveals that the same oil MNCs that operate on Indonesia also have hug investments and installations in Singapore. Thus it is not surprising that the Singapore government cannot afford to criticize its strategic crude oil corporate partners who also own polluting operations in Indonesia. Using the state-dominated media, the Singaporean government has been able to frame the blame for the haze solely on Indonesian slash-and-burn farmers who usually have no alternative cost-effective methods.
Despite recent condemnation of the carbon credits scheme, especially with hypocritical grandstanding by Al Gore, I can understand how its structural nature is borne out of contemporary corporate globalization and how it may be the best short-term solution targeted at industries and the minority ultra-rich consumers like Al Gore.
Carbon credits were originally mooted as a way for Kyoto Protocol signatories to gradually reduce their carbon emissions. It allowed for heavily polluting industries to green their operations over time and in the meanwhile buy extra carbon credits from other Kyoto Protocol partners to compensate for exceeding its cap. This was viewed as mutually beneficial as developed nations could pay while taking time to clean up their industries, which takes time and political will, while developing nations received funds for modernizing their industries and silenced their complaints about the developed world contributing much more to accumulated and present pollution.
Although this cap-and-trade has not worked entirely due to lax controls and even its essence receives much flak for allowing rich nations to continue polluting with a clear conscience, we have to acknowledge this as a step forward in engaging industries and avoid a strictly moralistic stand that will get us nowhere in this corporate globalizing world. We have to come to the cruel understanding that only when the environment is regarded and traded as a commodity, will it figure as a commercial consideration. Before this development, environmental costs only appeared in a small section of economic textbooks under the sub-section of externalities, largely ignored by corporations. Only when there was money to be made in turning green (or at least appearing so), or potential costs incurred when not turning green did it figure in corporations’ business at all.
COMMODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT
Just like labour and raw material, only when the environment is commoditized and politicized, will it receive serious attention from industries, a dominant player in determining the future of the environment, along with governments and the consumer. Recently carbon credits have received additional flak due to new variants like individual carbon offsetting, where individuals voluntarily pay an extra cost for their goods and services to a carbon trader who pledges to convert that sum to maintain a neutral carbon footprint. Indeed the lack of transparency is a cause for concern, but more importantly it allows ultra-rich consumers like Al Gore to continue with their lavish lifestyles of pollutive consumption without guilt. This effectively creates a huge barrier to reaching out to these rich consumers, who are the guiltiest of creating pollution but also the most capable of making a change, not by paying for their guilt but by actually changing their excessive lifestyles.
THE HAZE CASE STUDY
Indeed the environment has become heavily politicized in recent years, with many governments realizing that pollution knows no borders. However, the form of politicization has sometimes also revealed the tacit alliance between governments and industries. The haze affecting Singapore is a good case in point. Along with neighbours like Malaysia and Thailand, Singapore has faced serious air pollution problems which results in an annual haze for more than a decade. While Singapore has always been quick to put the blame on widespread slash-and-burn farming techniques in Indonesia, it has been remarkably silent on the heavily polluting major oil operations that are also sited in neigbouring Indonesian islands.
A scrutiny on Singapore as a major oil re-processing hub reveals that the same oil MNCs that operate on Indonesia also have hug investments and installations in Singapore. Thus it is not surprising that the Singapore government cannot afford to criticize its strategic crude oil corporate partners who also own polluting operations in Indonesia. Using the state-dominated media, the Singaporean government has been able to frame the blame for the haze solely on Indonesian slash-and-burn farmers who usually have no alternative cost-effective methods.
This case study reveals how when huge capital investments are concerned, governments may not be willing to comment or act on environmentally harmful operations of MNCs. This tacit alliance between governments and industries is something we have to be critically aware of instead of hypocritically pointing the blame for the haze at Indonesian farmers and government just by reading the local tabloid. Indeed the Singaporean government has been successful in creating an informational and geopoltical haze that allows only a narrow non-critical perspective if one is careless when reading state material.
MAJOR STAKEHOLDERS
In the politics of a globalized environment, it is almost senseless to continue this finger-pointing that both developed and developing nations are both guilty of. What is more important is recognizing the major stakeholders, which are the governments, industries and the individual consumer, and formulating ways to actively engage them by convincing them of the mutual benefits.
Corporations being businesses that are strictly profit-oriented would see no need to incur extra costs by going green or appearing to do so. However, an emerging global civil society that feels the environmental costs like global warming and actively urges for green industry might induce corporations to at least profess its desire to go green or donate sums toward environmental efforts. In light of today’s globalized world where nation-states are limited in their ability to influence either corporations or consumers, an emerging global civil society that is environmentally conscious is more important than ever.
A more concrete way of really cranking up and greening the corporate machinery is when consumers actually desire and purchase green products. An example would be the Toyota Prius which has helped Toyota secure its market dominance. The Toyota Prius has proved to be the most commercially successful hybrid automobile that promises the individual’s ability to maintain a mobile lifestyle which is easy on the pocket while being environmentally friendly too. Indeed the initial costs of hybrid cars remain high due to the pioneering technology and the lack of competition, yet Toyota has identified that there is money to be made in this venture and has created a viable product, testimony of the possibility of greening consumerism.
MAJOR STAKEHOLDERS
In the politics of a globalized environment, it is almost senseless to continue this finger-pointing that both developed and developing nations are both guilty of. What is more important is recognizing the major stakeholders, which are the governments, industries and the individual consumer, and formulating ways to actively engage them by convincing them of the mutual benefits.
Corporations being businesses that are strictly profit-oriented would see no need to incur extra costs by going green or appearing to do so. However, an emerging global civil society that feels the environmental costs like global warming and actively urges for green industry might induce corporations to at least profess its desire to go green or donate sums toward environmental efforts. In light of today’s globalized world where nation-states are limited in their ability to influence either corporations or consumers, an emerging global civil society that is environmentally conscious is more important than ever.
A more concrete way of really cranking up and greening the corporate machinery is when consumers actually desire and purchase green products. An example would be the Toyota Prius which has helped Toyota secure its market dominance. The Toyota Prius has proved to be the most commercially successful hybrid automobile that promises the individual’s ability to maintain a mobile lifestyle which is easy on the pocket while being environmentally friendly too. Indeed the initial costs of hybrid cars remain high due to the pioneering technology and the lack of competition, yet Toyota has identified that there is money to be made in this venture and has created a viable product, testimony of the possibility of greening consumerism.
RETREAT OF THE NATION-STATE IN GLOBALIZED WORLD?
Despite the popular notion that nation-states have receded in importance and relevance in today’s globalized world, governments actually have a prime role to play, especially in providing incentives to attract green industries to set up their firms and research & development in their countries. Without these subsidies and provision of an encouraging and suitable infrastructure, most firms would not invest in high-risk, low-gain green business ventures at all. Governments can also strive to slap conservation taxes on water, power utilities, as has been done in Singapore. Although utilities are free to pass on the additional costs to consumers (and usually do so), indirectly a clear message is also sent to consumers; that excessive use of water and electricity carries increasing externalities and punitive costs. Taxes collected from such sources can also be re-channeled into national research & development into costly green technologies that may otherwise not be attempted due to the cost.
CONSUMER IS KING
At the core of the solution still lies the consumer, which has a much greater say in what and how a product is produced than he/she is made to believe. Individual consumers can so much more than the oft-cited mantra of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Individual consumers can make a huge difference by just saying no to certain products which are produced inefficiently or have been identified with a heavily-polluting manufacturing process. For example, the apparel industry is one area where almost all consumers can act to make a considerable difference. Rejecting crude-derived fabrics like Rayon and Lycra and other carbon-constituent artificial fabrics can help to reduce demand for crude oil to a certain extent. While it may be argued that our modern oil-guzzling transportation system will still consume oil as usual, lack of demand for its by-products may make it more expensive overall to process and sell oil.
Governments like the US may still myopically isolate themselves from the Kyoto Protocol, even Kyoto signatories themselves have at times failed to live up to their promises. Such globalization-from-above and formal politics of a globalized environment seem to have limited use and relevance to practical realities on the ground. An emerging global civil society that starts with concerned and aware individual consumers constantly urging industries and governments to clean up their act may be more useful in the short term. Such globalization-from-below forming a pragmatic politics of a globalized environment may better serve the needs of our ailing environment that requires urgent effort and cannot wait for inter-governmental sophistry and rhetoric to resolve their differences.
CONSUMER IS KING
Most democratic governments are voted in by its peoples, formed by individual consumers. Even dictatorial regimes require popular acquiescence to a certain extent. Industries and corporations require consumer demand before they decide to invest and produce. Without demand from the individual consumer, industries cannot survive in the long term. Overproduction has always been a nemesis to industries in this post-industrial age, which is very much the reason why giant pharmaceuticals can make astronomical profits only by existing in a closed and oligopolistic market protected by patent laws. Mass advertising can only secure a limited consumer base in today’s fickle consumer that is already speaking out against spamming and hard-selling.
THE CONSUMER-ENGINE OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION
The consumer is at the heart of industries and government, for the individual consumer justifies their continued existence and both players are willing to do almost anything to pander to the consumer’s voracious appetite and fickle changes. In a subtle sense, the individual consumer can be the dominant power in such a tripartite power relation, although the consumer is dominantly portrayed as a slave to magazine and industry prescriptions of what it means to look good and feel good. The consumer is the engine of globalization’s ugly corporate face.
It would indeed be in the interest of corporations to further capitalize on the global obsession with aesthetics to continue to create the impression that the consumer is in charge and in control. Yet subtly, industries do very much control the global politics of aesthetics by determining how people should dress, eat, even indulge in recreation. The corporation today sells products but advertises more of a pre-determined packaged lifestyle than a product.
A ‘GLOBAL’ VILLAGE?
Indeed, when we speak of globalization, we tend to imagine how the whole world is becoming more connected due to advancements in telecommunications and transport, the compressions of time and space. Building upon these infrastructure, we are painted a picture of global connectedness where global trade and capital flows invades all economies and nations. However, this totalizing tendency of globalization is exaggerated and even some scholars of globalization are guilty of this inaccuracy. We tend to forget that the dominant nature of this phase of globalization is one of information capitalism, where investments and capital-in-finance moves in search of markets which speak the language of globalization; Information technology and English to a certain extent.
If we scrutinize the post-Cold War dominant capital flows, they are mainly directed at previously untapped markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and a further centralizing of capital in information technology sectors in established markets of the US, Western Europe and perhaps Japan. Indeed, there are large parts of humanity in South Asia, South America and Africa that is left out of this equation and in the new modes of participation in this ‘global’ economy. How could be speak of a ‘global village’ which is gradually developing a global identity when most Africans have only seen their thatched villages their whole lives and the closest thing to modernity they have witnessed are probably international food aid and wildlife documentary crews?
Indeed, there are certain ‘black holes’ in this age of information capitalism, certain sectors of humanity that are simply ignored in the global corporate map. The corporate face of globalization requires something or a people to exploit, however there are certain sectors of the globe which are just too poor to exploit, especially if the corporate engine continues to be fired by the demand and supply of luxury consumer goods. These people are systematically left out in this global exploitation, due to their complete irrelevance in a global economy that requires the acquisition of knowledge, especially IT knowledge. However, before we cheer at the notion that these poor peoples are at least spared this global exploitation, we need to understand that this is a changing reality, as even corporations have been alerted to this and have modified their nature to penetrate these last remaining markets.
PROFIT OFF THE POOR
When we talk about consumerism, it is usually in the context of individuals pursuing wants rather than needs, luxuries rather than necessities. It is usually within the context of purchasing cultural goods so that one may remain or scale the ladder of social mobility. However, the post-Cold War neo-liberal corporate machinery has been quick to capitalize on anything that can make profits, even if it is at the expense of profiteering off the poorest in the Third World through the capitalization on necessities.
The Bolivian water crisis of 2000 provides a good case study, and it must be understood amidst the post-Cold War neo-liberal streak of developing countries to adopt a privatization road map out of poverty. Bolivia, being the poorest South American nation, succumbed to the lures of privatizing its national assets, compounded by World Bank and IMF pressures to do so. The Bolivian government stood to gain from the retention of credit trust for continued international loans and from foreign capital flows that would have been impossible to attract without privatizing its state assets like its airlines and water utility.
However, the privatization scheme went awry when the water utility of Cochabamba city was privatized and almost immediately water prices were tripled. The poorest South Americans in this city were forced to pay almost a third of their meager monthly wages on a basic necessity like water. Indeed, local residents were also banned from collecting rainwater to produce potable water, ensuring the utility’s complete monopoly. Riots and demonstrations soon followed in 2000 which resulted in a violent clampdown by a complicit government, eager to protect its selfish gains by its partnership with the utility. Here, we witness how the two major players of industry and government can be complicit in their eagerness to make a profit, even at the expense of the millions of impoverished consumers, who require water to survive. Third World peoples being denied of even the basic right to produce and consume safe water; this is neo-liberal capitalism at its ugliest.
Indeed, industries have been flexible enough to capitalize on even necessities like water to make profits off the poorest peoples in the Third World, a situation also mirrored in the Nigerian context in Africa. Corporations have also been able to identify acquiescent governments to collectively oppress the poor consumer. This example may serve to weaken the argument that the consumer is at the heart of globalization’s corporate face. However, we must be mindful that this is an extreme case where the consumer is extremely disempowered, and it is indeed worthy of note that widespread popular protests did eventually force the Bolivian government to reluctantly break the contract with the foreign MNC, majority owned by a subsidiary of the US firm, Bechtel Corporation.
NEO-LIBERAL PROMISE OF GLOBALIZATION
The Bolivian water crisis is not an isolated crisis by itself. It is symbolic of the general failed promise of globalization to bring wealth to all who participate in its complex web of corporate relations. In stark contrast, it has furthered miseries and poverty in the Third World and in the Bolivian case has even robbed them of access to a basic necessity like safe water, something that most people in the developed world assume will flow out of their taps when they turn the faucet.
Under the guise of a responsible corporation that intends to revamp Cochabamba’s water grid and promising millions of follow-up capital investment, Bechtel has systematically robbed a poor people of their most basic rights to water and held its complicit government at ransom. It is made more abhorrent by the fact that it was supported by global institutions like the World Bank and IMF which preach neo-liberal privatization solutions and structural adjustments to the Third World. It is not hard for the average Bolivian to imagine a global conspiracy of epic proportions by the developed world to profit from exploiting the poor and disempowered. It is not hard for us to imagine how this tragedy of globalization and neo-liberal capitalism is repeatedly played out in different forms all across the Third World, which face a tricky choice of submitting to World Bank and IMF conditionality or face economic ruin and total irrelevance in the global economy.
Most democratic governments are voted in by its peoples, formed by individual consumers. Even dictatorial regimes require popular acquiescence to a certain extent. Industries and corporations require consumer demand before they decide to invest and produce. Without demand from the individual consumer, industries cannot survive in the long term. Overproduction has always been a nemesis to industries in this post-industrial age, which is very much the reason why giant pharmaceuticals can make astronomical profits only by existing in a closed and oligopolistic market protected by patent laws. Mass advertising can only secure a limited consumer base in today’s fickle consumer that is already speaking out against spamming and hard-selling.
THE CONSUMER-ENGINE OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION
The consumer is at the heart of industries and government, for the individual consumer justifies their continued existence and both players are willing to do almost anything to pander to the consumer’s voracious appetite and fickle changes. In a subtle sense, the individual consumer can be the dominant power in such a tripartite power relation, although the consumer is dominantly portrayed as a slave to magazine and industry prescriptions of what it means to look good and feel good. The consumer is the engine of globalization’s ugly corporate face.
It would indeed be in the interest of corporations to further capitalize on the global obsession with aesthetics to continue to create the impression that the consumer is in charge and in control. Yet subtly, industries do very much control the global politics of aesthetics by determining how people should dress, eat, even indulge in recreation. The corporation today sells products but advertises more of a pre-determined packaged lifestyle than a product.
A ‘GLOBAL’ VILLAGE?
Indeed, when we speak of globalization, we tend to imagine how the whole world is becoming more connected due to advancements in telecommunications and transport, the compressions of time and space. Building upon these infrastructure, we are painted a picture of global connectedness where global trade and capital flows invades all economies and nations. However, this totalizing tendency of globalization is exaggerated and even some scholars of globalization are guilty of this inaccuracy. We tend to forget that the dominant nature of this phase of globalization is one of information capitalism, where investments and capital-in-finance moves in search of markets which speak the language of globalization; Information technology and English to a certain extent.
If we scrutinize the post-Cold War dominant capital flows, they are mainly directed at previously untapped markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and a further centralizing of capital in information technology sectors in established markets of the US, Western Europe and perhaps Japan. Indeed, there are large parts of humanity in South Asia, South America and Africa that is left out of this equation and in the new modes of participation in this ‘global’ economy. How could be speak of a ‘global village’ which is gradually developing a global identity when most Africans have only seen their thatched villages their whole lives and the closest thing to modernity they have witnessed are probably international food aid and wildlife documentary crews?
Indeed, there are certain ‘black holes’ in this age of information capitalism, certain sectors of humanity that are simply ignored in the global corporate map. The corporate face of globalization requires something or a people to exploit, however there are certain sectors of the globe which are just too poor to exploit, especially if the corporate engine continues to be fired by the demand and supply of luxury consumer goods. These people are systematically left out in this global exploitation, due to their complete irrelevance in a global economy that requires the acquisition of knowledge, especially IT knowledge. However, before we cheer at the notion that these poor peoples are at least spared this global exploitation, we need to understand that this is a changing reality, as even corporations have been alerted to this and have modified their nature to penetrate these last remaining markets.
PROFIT OFF THE POOR
When we talk about consumerism, it is usually in the context of individuals pursuing wants rather than needs, luxuries rather than necessities. It is usually within the context of purchasing cultural goods so that one may remain or scale the ladder of social mobility. However, the post-Cold War neo-liberal corporate machinery has been quick to capitalize on anything that can make profits, even if it is at the expense of profiteering off the poorest in the Third World through the capitalization on necessities.
The Bolivian water crisis of 2000 provides a good case study, and it must be understood amidst the post-Cold War neo-liberal streak of developing countries to adopt a privatization road map out of poverty. Bolivia, being the poorest South American nation, succumbed to the lures of privatizing its national assets, compounded by World Bank and IMF pressures to do so. The Bolivian government stood to gain from the retention of credit trust for continued international loans and from foreign capital flows that would have been impossible to attract without privatizing its state assets like its airlines and water utility.
However, the privatization scheme went awry when the water utility of Cochabamba city was privatized and almost immediately water prices were tripled. The poorest South Americans in this city were forced to pay almost a third of their meager monthly wages on a basic necessity like water. Indeed, local residents were also banned from collecting rainwater to produce potable water, ensuring the utility’s complete monopoly. Riots and demonstrations soon followed in 2000 which resulted in a violent clampdown by a complicit government, eager to protect its selfish gains by its partnership with the utility. Here, we witness how the two major players of industry and government can be complicit in their eagerness to make a profit, even at the expense of the millions of impoverished consumers, who require water to survive. Third World peoples being denied of even the basic right to produce and consume safe water; this is neo-liberal capitalism at its ugliest.
Indeed, industries have been flexible enough to capitalize on even necessities like water to make profits off the poorest peoples in the Third World, a situation also mirrored in the Nigerian context in Africa. Corporations have also been able to identify acquiescent governments to collectively oppress the poor consumer. This example may serve to weaken the argument that the consumer is at the heart of globalization’s corporate face. However, we must be mindful that this is an extreme case where the consumer is extremely disempowered, and it is indeed worthy of note that widespread popular protests did eventually force the Bolivian government to reluctantly break the contract with the foreign MNC, majority owned by a subsidiary of the US firm, Bechtel Corporation.
NEO-LIBERAL PROMISE OF GLOBALIZATION
The Bolivian water crisis is not an isolated crisis by itself. It is symbolic of the general failed promise of globalization to bring wealth to all who participate in its complex web of corporate relations. In stark contrast, it has furthered miseries and poverty in the Third World and in the Bolivian case has even robbed them of access to a basic necessity like safe water, something that most people in the developed world assume will flow out of their taps when they turn the faucet.
Under the guise of a responsible corporation that intends to revamp Cochabamba’s water grid and promising millions of follow-up capital investment, Bechtel has systematically robbed a poor people of their most basic rights to water and held its complicit government at ransom. It is made more abhorrent by the fact that it was supported by global institutions like the World Bank and IMF which preach neo-liberal privatization solutions and structural adjustments to the Third World. It is not hard for the average Bolivian to imagine a global conspiracy of epic proportions by the developed world to profit from exploiting the poor and disempowered. It is not hard for us to imagine how this tragedy of globalization and neo-liberal capitalism is repeatedly played out in different forms all across the Third World, which face a tricky choice of submitting to World Bank and IMF conditionality or face economic ruin and total irrelevance in the global economy.
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