Globalization Signifiers

“But then again, perhaps as you observe the debacle in which I now exist, the utter ruin that I say is my life, perhaps you are remembering that you had always felt people like me cannot run things, people like me will never grasp the idea of Gross National Product, people like me will never be able to take command of the thing the most simpleminded among you can master, people like me will never understand the notion of rule by law, people like me cannot really think in abstractions, people like me cannot be objective, we make everything so personal. You will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, that Gross National Product is on of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favor you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it's because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of.” (36-37) A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid

This passage characterizes globalization as an integration of ideals and values aside from mere business and economic collaboration. Examples like the Gross National Product and notion of rule by law signify components that have become standards for globalization (that is, if a country doesn't adapt to these methods of rank, then they cannot become successful players in a global setting). Yet beyond these concrete signifiers Kincaid challenges the equality of globalization itself by using arbitrary signifiers (eg the slave trade, racism, and colonialism). Contrary to Friedman, she qualifies globalization not as an equal cooperation between nations in a global community, but rather that globalization requires the adoption of developed states' ideals by developing countries. Globalization, therefore, is a rigged playing field by inherently valuing the interests of the developed nations (“all the laws that you know mysteriously favor you”). With this interpretation it becomes apparent why Kincaid finds globalization so frustrating. Not only do the globalizing superpowers ignore the harm they have caused her people (treating her as capital), but she must now adopt their ideologies and methods to even have a possibility at becoming a member of the global community. Similar to Susan Bordo's argument, Kincaid is placed into a double bind where becoming empowered in globalization standards requires the destruction of her own cultural identity.

"Here I am in Bangalore—more than five hundred years after Columbus sailed over the horizon, using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned safely to prove definitively that the world was round—and one of India's smartest engineers, trained at his country's top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was essentially telling me that the world was flat—as flat as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even more interesting, he was citing this development as a good thing, as a new milestone in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world—the fact that we had made our world flat!" (7) The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman

I agree with Courtney that the expansion of technology is both a positive cause and outcome of globalization. However, I notice many subtle details in this passage that reveal a deeper negative impact of globalization and its challenges to countries' differing values. Notice how Friedman compares his business trip in India to Columbus's voyage. Did Columbus really return to Spain to tell the Queen that the world was round? Or was it to tell the Spanish crown of all the resources and profit he found in the new world? It is important to note that Friedman ignores the exploitative nature of Columbus's journey because it later reflects his own exclusion of globalization as a perpetrator of exploitative domination. First, Friedman describes meeting one of the India's smartest engineers, yet he specifies that the engineer was “trained at his country's top technical institute [italics added].” Such specification is more important than it initially appears because it reveals that Friedman is characterizing the institute as merely the best in India—as though it still lacks the credibility to be considered the best outside of India in a global context. Furthermore, Friedman qualifies the engineer's argument as counter-intuitive. His shock explains his stance against the notion that an equal playing field (granting “a great opportunity for India and the world”) is a good thing for human progress. But why does he find this idea so shocking? Though it could simply be a literary style Friedman employs, such shock reveals that Friedman finds it difficult to believe that other nations could accomplish the same technological advances as his homeland.

Repeatedly, Friedman only uses global signifiers that are also prominent in the US (eg large flat screen TVs, golf courses named after American companies). Therefore, Friedman sees the US as the standard for globalization, meaning that other nations must mimic the tendencies of the US (via technology, economy, or ideology) to be considered global competitors. Yet in treating his own nation as the standard, Friedman qualifies other states as failed attempts of his own, therefore disrespecting their inherent worth. Under this view, the world can only become flat when the world becomes Americanized. Though he tries to say that globalization has made an even playing field, the truth is that globalization has only created an even playing field for nations that succumb to the policies of the US (or those European nations that have retained their global power).

I may be reading too far into these texts, but Kincaid, Friedman, and Life and Debt have revealed the negative burdens of globalization. Sure, globalization connects countries with one another through interwoven economies and technological collaborations. Yet, globalization forces clash between cultures in order to determine a dominant standard for regulating global success (eg business policies, money transactions, even common language spoken in international affairs). Insofar as this occurs, there will always be a dichotomy of us versus them where a dominate nation, as its ideologies and customs reign supreme, oppress the rights and values of other states. While Friedman argues that globalization gives voice to these oppressed countries in a global community, I would rather agree with Kincaid and Life and Debt that globalization further submits such nations to the rules and regulations of developed superpowers.