globalization Archives - Page 6 of 12 - Foreign Policy In Focus

The Big Yam

by John Feffer | Feb 8, 2008

Headquarters was worried. Complaints were flooding in from the Chinese countryside about the quality of the new Haier washing machines. The water pipes were defective, the peasants told the Chinese manufacturer. But when the Haier team went to investigate, they were surprised to discover that the pipes were not broken or poorly fitted. Rather, they were clogged with yam skins. The peasants had been washing their dinner ingredients, not their clothes. An American manufacturer might have lectured the consumers about the proper uses of a washing machine. Haier’s CEO, Zhang Ruimin, decided instead to design a machine with wider pipes that could wash both clothes and large root vegetables. He called it the Big Yam, and the machine became a big seller in the Chinese countryside.

The Post-Washington Dissensus

by Walden Bello, Miriam Pemberton | Sep 21, 2007

Development circles were not shocked last year when two studies detailed how the World Bank’s research unit had been systematically manipulating data to show that neoliberal market reforms were promoting growth and reducing poverty in developing countries. They merely saw these devastating findings, one by American University Professor Robin Broad, the other by Princeton University […]

Remittances: For Love and Money

by Francis Calpotura, John Feffer | Aug 14, 2007

Yania Marcelino was a six-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic when her mother left their family to find work in another country. She went first to Puerto Rico, then later to New York City to work as a seamstress. There she began sending money back to Marcelino and her three siblings and four cousins. The children often had to travel 15 or 20 kilometers to get to the wire transfer agency, and sometimes the money sent was lost.

The Frankenstein Alliance

by John Feffer, Emanuel Pastreich | Mar 9, 2007

If you read U.S. newspapers through a security lens, you might get the impression that Washington is well on its way to containing China economically, politically and militarily. China is portrayed in the media as America’s enemy of choice: the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Report states explicitly that “of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter-strategies.”

Globalization in Retreat

by Walden Bello, John Feffer | Dec 27, 2006

When it first became part of the English vocabulary in the early 1990s, globalization was supposed to be the wave of the future. Fifteen years ago, the writings of globalist thinkers such as Kenichi Ohmae and Robert Reich celebrated the advent of the emergence of the so-called borderless world. The process by which relatively autonomous national economies become functionally integrated into one global economy was touted as “irreversible. ” And the people who opposed globalization were disdainfully dismissed as modern day incarnations of the Luddites that destroyed machines during the Industrial Revolution.

Militarism and U.S. Trade Policy

by Erik Leaver, David Ranney | Dec 15, 2006

It is rare to think about the links between militarism and U.S. “trade” policy. But in recent decades, U.S. global economic policies have increasingly driven U.S. military policy. And under the Presidency of George W. Bush and the “war on terrorism” the trend has rapidly and dangerously accelerated. The results have generated a militarism that is beyond the reach of democratic processes both in the United States and abroad. For this reason, activists who oppose the Iraq War and U.S. militarism generally and those promoting global economic and environmental justice must develop a common agenda.

The Perils of Globeerization

by John Feffer, Chris O'Brien | Oct 24, 2006

The world’s cup runneth over with living beer traditions. But this vast repository of cultural brewing capital is under attack by global corporations. The top five brewing companies, all of which are American- or European-owned, control 41% of the world market. Perversely, economists and politicians calculate the conquest by industrial breweries as economic growth while the value of small-scale traditional brewing goes uncounted. Much will be lost if this global ÂbeerodiversityÂ is lost to the forces of corporate-led homogenization.

The Crisis of Multilateralism

by Walden Bello, John Feffer | Sep 12, 2006

Already buffeted by institutional crisis and policy conflicts, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are heading into their fall meetingÂscheduled to begin September 13 in SingaporeÂwith yet one more problem. Desperate to win credibility among civil society groups, the Bank and the Fund had given official accreditation to representatives of four civil society organizations. The Singapore government had a different idea. It banned the groups Âfor security reasons.Â This commentator was among those specifically named and banned as a Âsecurity threat.Â

Global Economic Governance: Strategic Crossroads

by Tom Barry, Foreign Policy In Focus | Sep 1, 2001

The objective of this discussion paper is to examine in broad terms the emergence of a transnational citizen movement opposed to the current forms of global economic governance, while providing sketches of main analytical tendencies within this diverse movement. Although largely a backlash movement—one that mobilizes against the negative manifestations of economic globalization and the associated role of the institutions of global economic governance—the main theorists and organizers have in the past several years taken tentative steps toward formulating alternative paths for the global economy and its governance.

Strategy and Self-Activity In the Global Justice Movements

by Patrick Bond | Aug 1, 2001

Let us take as a starting point that the broadly consensual strategy and basis for self-activity in what we can term Global Justice Movements is the following: to promote the globalization of people and halt (or at minimum radically modify) the globalization of capital. But this strategy conflicts with the objectives of at least four other tendencies that also appear to have solidified in recent years. Since the full-blown emergence of an international financial crisis around mid-1997, the world has witnessed a revival of Third World Nationalism, a Post-Washington Consensus reform option, obstinacy on the part of Washington Consensus powerbrokers, and a formidable Rightwing Resurgence.