Oh Great LJ-mind, I Come to You in Supplication: Globalization

[tacithydra]

Comments

[orbitalmechanic]

Are you looking specifically for economic stuff? I know less about it, although I bet Michael Pollan, however much he may irritate me, is thinking about agricultural/economic issues in usefully negative terms. There is some interesting work from a feminist standpoint about the effects of global capitalism on women's labor, or on how western feminism does or doesn't help other women. I could scare some of that up for you, including a great article that changed my understanding of the Muslim headscarf. [Not in a theological way--the clearest example was the young Muslim woman who said, Look, I wear the scarf, I'm a good girl, my family lets me go to college in Canada by myself. That's incredibly feminist and important, and if you get hung up on it, that's your problem.]

Uh, obviously that is only tenuously related to capitalism.

[tacithydra]

Hah! Actually I would love to read the article that changed your understanding of the Muslim headscarf - it sounds interesting

[le_trombone]

I'd think common sense would be an effective weapon against The World Is Flat, but I'd have to do some research to recommend an actual book that responds to it. Most of my background knowledge comes from discussing it (briefly) with some friends-of-friends anthropologists.

[tacithydra]

Yeah, I don't need something that's a direct response, but something that looks at the sweeping economic, corporate, and international changes that have hit over the last ten years or so, and what that means, would be very helpful.

Something not written by Friedman, that is.

I have all these isolated pieces of information, but the only thing that I've read lately that purports to provide... I'm not sure how to say it? Comparative magnitudes? Is this stuff. I feel like the only way to get a clearer idea of what's going on, and what things are seriously affecting other things vs. mildly affecting other things, is to triangulate from a number of different viewpoints and let them fight each other. Only I don't know what other viewpoints there's a general consensus about as valid, that aren't piecemeal approaches.

And hell, maybe I just have entirely the wrong mental frame for this whole thing, which is why I'm kind of flopping around, here.

[nihilistic_kid]

The mainstream answer would be Globalization and Its Discontents by Stiglitz. Incidentally, there is a book of the same title, not really for a general audience, by Stephen McBride and John Wiseman.

People out of Place: Globalization, Human Rights, and the Citizenship Gap by Alison Brysk and Gershon Shafir might be up your handwringing alley.

A very unusual book is Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism by Meghnad Desai.

[tacithydra]

Sweet - thank you.

Do you think Brysk and Shafir's handwringing is warranted?

When I type "Marx's Revenge" into Amazon, Desai's book comes up first. Next is an autobiography of Groucho.

[nihilistic_kid]

Something's warranted. Is handwringing ever?

[tacithydra]

I suppose it depends on the goals of the handwringers.

[coalescent]

I am currently reading Planet of Slums. Sample quote: "Since the mid-1990s the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and other aid institutions, have increasingly bypassed or short-circuited governments to work directly with regional and neighborhood non-governmental organizations ... What Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz in his brief tenure as chief economist for the Bank described as an emerging "post-Washington Consensus" might be better characterized as "soft imperialism", with the major NGOs captive to the agenda of the international donors, and grassroots groups similarly dependent upon the international NGOs ... the actual power relations in this new NGO universe resemble nothing so much as traditional clientelism." It's not what you would call a cheerful read.

[tacithydra]

This sounds really good - thank you.

And yeah, if I want a cheerful read I'll stick with Friedman. His glee just rolls off the page.

[coalescent]

As the title suggests, it does focus on urbanization, although within the context of globalization (Davis is basically furious at everyone who let or encouraged things to get this bad). In a possibly-related context, my colleague was recommending this to me this morning. I've also heard good things about The Shock Doctrine, but not read it.

[alecaustin]

I don't know if you've read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, but I gather that it presents a rather less rosy view of globalization and how it's used as a bludgeon.

Friedman's "The world is flat"

[anonymous]

I would like to recommend a small, but interesting book, by Aronica and Ramdoo, "The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman's New York Times Bestseller," which offers a counterperspective to Friedman's theory on globalization