Neocolonialism

Neocolonialism refers to the idea that without maintaining active settlements, it is still possible to exercise power in a colonial way. This occurs not just with military force or through geopolitical economic institutions like the IMF, but in the control of discourse. Lang helped us see that globalization could not be a primarily economic phenomena, because the constitutive integration of markets is a century older than globalization discourse. Globalization as a discourse and its universalizing rhetoric serve to erase the dissent of the colonized while exercising economic, political, and ecological power over them.

In class we unpacked the “ization” of globalization. Globalization must be understood, on its own terms, as a process of becoming global. For market globalists, globalization points to a point in the imaginary future with total market integration across the entire world. This barrier-free, global economy is the utopian future wherein economic theory promises the maximum possible welfare for everyone on Earth.

Capitalist Logics: Comparative Advantage

   The utopian logic of market globalism is based on the economic concept of comparative advantage. The concept holds that different actors, or people, or countries, have different capabilities of production. Some people are better at making guns, and other people are better at raising cows. It turns out that if these people exclusively produce what they’re best at producing, and then trade with each other, they will end up with more guns and butter than if they had both been raising their own cows and building their own guns.

    This welfare-increasing effect of specialization and trade increases the more actors there are participating in an economy. This means that economic trade between countries should always benefit both countries, and that the more countries involved in international trade, the more wealthy everyone is.

    Unfortunately, comparative advantage works off of idealized assumptions that are not at work in the real world: people can’t travel freely across borders, people can’t trade freely without tariffs (taxes and subsidies). The US and EU practice more labor immobility and government intervention in tariffs than weaker countries are even allowed. This means that their markets are actually less integrated (read: globalized) than the developing nations who are forced into liberalization programs under IMF contracts or by the digital herd. The injustice at work is that they profit far more from access to “third world” markets than occurs in reverse.

If neoliberal market globalism is a paradigm that we disagree with, we can find subversive traction in its nature as a world picture. As such, in subverting the pictures of the world that enable and promote market globalism, we may be able to construct counter-global ideologies. This is radical cartography.

Different Chicagos

Google maps presents Chicago as a homogenized space, fully accessible and egalitarian. All roads are free and open to travel, and symbolize the unity and integration of space. The radical cartographer’s map of Chicago, color-coded by race, reveals how humans actually live. Here, roads function to segregate spaces. The google map tells us where we can go while the radical cartography unveils the hidden stratification that actually dominates the lives of Chicagonians. This exposes the barriers to human movement, and in some sense class mobility that the Apollonian market globalist view of the Earth simply fails to acknowledge.

Weirdo Apollo

“The collections of Street Views both celebrate and critique the current world. To deny Google’s power over framing our perceptions would be delusional, but the curator, in seeking out frames within these frames, reminds us of our humanity. The artist/curator, in reasserting the significance of the human gaze within Street View, recognizes the pain and disempowerment in being declared insignificant. The artist/curator challenges Google’s imperial claims and questions the company’s right to be the only one framing our cognitions and perceptions.” – John Rafman

One Word Feels

When prompted to respond to “globalization,” we came up with these words:

spread of ideas, epcot center, actualization of global view, internet, hegemony, exploitation, big and small, Antarctica (sea sanctuaries), outsourcing international exploitation of labor, plurality/multiplicity, clothes, mouth vomit, loss of individuality, statistics, exchange and exchange value, homogenization of culture, exploitation, internet, the world is a cybernetic system, Friedman, from world war to world depressions, McDonalds/cooler art, mapping.

Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

A controversial yet delightfully simple perspective on the economics of philanthropy, especially as they operate in modern capitalism. The actions of the IMF should be scrutinized heavily with this perspective. The point of most relevance starts at 7:05.

As this bricolage cacophony unraveled, we heard a multiplicity of anti-globalisms and complications of both market globalism and justice globalism. Some responses (exploitation, homogenization of culture, outsourcing) reveal a clear opposition to market globalization while others (epcot center, mouth vomit, cooler art) convey particular perks of global thinking. Ben suggested that by highlighting the elements of globalization that we support, we can begin to build counter-globalisms that subvert the hegemonic globalism. It is interesting to note that these counter-globisms, like jihad or justice globalism, remain global in scale.

The Wall-Street Bull: King of the Digital Herd