Conflicts of Globalization and Restructuring of Education Essay

The family 11 terrorist attacks render generated a wealth of theoretical reflection as hearty as regressive political responses by the scrubbing nerve and other g everyplacenments (Kellner, 2003b). The 9/11 attacks and subsequent Bush administration phalanx response nurse dramatized once again the centrality of orbiculateization in contemporaneous experience and the need for adequate conceptualizations and responses to it for set outicular hypothesis and pedagogy to remark their relevance in the give age. In this article, I want to postulate that critical educators need to comprehend the conflicts of planetaryisation, terrorist act, and the prospects and obstacles to democratization in order to break away pedagogies adequate to the challenges of the leave age.Accordingly, I begin with whatever comments on how the kinsfolk 11 terror attacks call attention to key aspects of globalisation, and then will a critical hypothesis of globalisation, subsequently whi ch I suggest some pedagogical initiatives to aid in the democratic reconstruction of education after 9/11.1 kinsfolk 11 and globalisation The terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and the subsequent fright warf be throughout the cosmos dramatically disclose the down aspect of globalisation, and the ways that global flows of technology, goods, study, ideologies, and large physical body idler stick destructive as well as productive effects.2 The disclosure of healthy anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalisation divides the population notwithstanding as it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants. The pull downts reveal fickle contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that facilitate globalization fuck likewise be used to undermine and attack it, and generate instruments of remainder as well as production.The experience of Sep tember 11 points to the butt ambiguity of globalization, that imperious and negative sides be interconnected, that the institutions of the sluttish society unlock the possibilities of destruction and violence, as well as democracy, free trade, and cultural and sociable exchange. Once again, the interconnection and interdependency of the networked world was dramatically demonstrated as terrorists from the Middle East brought local anaesthetic grievances from their expanse to attack key symbolic representations of US military condition and the very infrastructure of Wall Street. Some notice terrorism as an chatterion of the dark side of globalization, firearm I would conceive it as part of the objective ambiguity of globalization that at the same time creates friends and enemies, wealth and poverty, and growing divisions between the haves and have nots.Yet, the downturn in the global rescue, intensification of local and global political conflicts, repression of human rig hts and elegant liberties, and general improver in fear and anxiety have certainly undermined the nave optimism of globophiles who comprehend globalization as a purely validatory instrument of draw close and well-being. The use of stiff technologies as weapons of destruction similarly discloses accepted asymmetries of power and emergent forms of terrorism and war, as the smart millennium exploded into unplayful conflicts and military interventions. As technologies of mass destruction become more on tap(predicate) and dispersed, perilous instabilities have emerged that have elicited policing measures to stem the flow of movements of people and goods across borders and internally.In particular, the U.S. Patriot Act has led to repressive measures that argon replacing the spaces of the open and free information society with revolutionary forms of surveillance, policing, and restrictions of civil liberties, and then signifi great dealtly undermining U.S. democracy (see Kell ner, 2003b). Ultimately, however, the abhorrent terror acts by the bewilder in Laden network and the violent military response by the Bush administration whitethorn be an anomalous paroxysm whereby a highly regressive premodern Islamic fundamentalism has clashed with an old-fashi stard patriarchal and unilateralist Wild West militarism. It could be that such forms of terrorism, militarism, and state repression will be superseded by more intelligent forms of political science that globalize and criminalize terrorism, and that do not sacrifice the benefits of the open society and economy in the name of security.Yet the events of September 11 may open a new era of Terror War that will lead to the kind of apocalyptic futurist world visualized by cyberpunk fiction (see Kellner 2003b). In any case, the events of September 11 have promoted a fury of reflection, theoretical debates, and political conflicts and upheaval that put the complex dynamics of globalization at the center of con temporary theory and politics. To those skeptical of the centrality of globalization to contemporary experience, it is straight clear that we atomic number 18 animate in a global world that is highly interconnected and compromising to passions and crises that can cross borders and can affect anyone or any region at any time.The events of September 11 and their aftermath also can a test case to evaluate various theories of globalization in the contemporary era. In addition, they highlight some of the contradictions of globalization and the need to shoot a highly complex and dialectical model to capture its conflicts, ambiguities, and confounding effects. Consequently, I argue that in order to properly theorize globalization one need to conceptualize several sets of contradictions generated by globalizations combination of technological systemal revolution and restructuring of jacket, which, in turn, generate tensions between capitalist economy and democracy, and haves and h ave nots. Within the world economy, globalization involves the proliferation of the logic of capital, but also the rotate of democracy in information, finance, investing, and the diffusion of technology (see Friedman, 1999 and Hardt and Negri, 2000). globalization is so a conflicting amalgam of capitalism and democracy, in which the logic of capital and the market system enter ever more arenas of global life, even as democracy spreads and more political regions and spaces of everyday life are being contested by democratic demands and forces.But the overall bear upon is contradictory. Sometimes globalizing forces promote democracy and sometimes inhibit it, thus either equating capitalism and democracy, or simply argue them, are problematical. The bear upones of globalization are highly turbulent and have generated intense conflicts throughout the world. gum benzoin Barber (1996) disembowels the strife between McWorld and jihad, contrasting the homogenizing, commercialized , Americanized tendencies of the global economy and stopping point with anti-modernizing Jihadist movements that go on going traditional horticultures and are resistant to aspects of neoliberal globalization.Thomas Friedman (1999) makes a more benign distinction between what he calls the Lexus and the Olive Tree. The former is a symbol of modernization, of affluence and luxury, and of Westernized consumption, contrasted with the Olive Tree that is a symbol of roots, tradition, place, and stable community. Barber (1996), however, is in addition negative toward McWorld and Jihad, failing to adequately describe the democratic and in the lead-moving forces within both. Although Barber recognizes a dialectic of McWorld and Jihad, he opposes both to democracy, failing to perceive how they generate their own democratic forces and tendencies, as well as opposing and undermining democratization. Within Western democracies, for instance, at that place is not just top-down homogenizati on and corporate domination, but also globalization-from-below and oppositional favorable movements that desire alternatives to capitalist globalization.Thus, it is not only traditionalist, non-Western forces of Jihad that oppose McWorld. Likewise, Jihad has its democratizing forces as well as the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who are now the most demonized elements of the contemporary era, as I discuss below. Jihad, like McWorld, has its contradictions and its authority for democratization, as well as elements of domination and destruction.3 Friedman, by contrast, is too noncrucial of globalization, caught up in his own Lexus highconsumption life-style, failing to perceive the depth of the tyrannic features of globalization and breadth and extent of immunity and opposition to it. In particular, he fails to articulate the contradictions between capitalism and democracy, and the ways that globalization and its economic logic undermine democracy as well as encouraging it.L ikewise, he does not grasp the virulence of the premodern and Jihadist tendencies that he blithely identifies with the Olive tree, and the reasons why globalization and the West are so strongly resisted in umpteen parts of the world. Hence, it is important to present globalization as a foreign amalgam of both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and heterogeneity, difference, and hybridity, as well as a contradictory mixture of democratizing and anti-democratizing tendencies. On one hand, globalization unfolds a process of standardization in which a globalized mass culture circulates the globe creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere. But globalized culture makes possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world, thus proliferating hybrids, difference, and heterogeneity.4 Every local context involves its own appropriation and reworking of global products and signifiers, thus proliferating difference, otherness, diversity, and variety (Luke and Luke, 2000).Grasping that globalization embodies these contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization and heterogeneity, is crucial to articulating the contradictions of globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions. My intention is to present globalization as conflictual, contradictory and open to resistance and democratic intervention and transformation and not just as a monolithic juggernaut of progress or domination as in many a(prenominal) other discourses. This goal is advanced by distinguishing between globalization from below and globalization from above of corporate capitalism and the capitalist state, a distinction that should help us to get a better sense of how globalization does or does not promote democratization.Globalization from below refers to the ways in which marginalized individuals and amicable movements and critical pedagogues resist globalization and/or use its institutions and instruments to further democratizat ion and social justice. Yet, one needs to avoid binary normative articulations, since globalization from below can have highly conservative and destructive effects, as well as positive ones, bit globalization from above can help produce global solutions to problems like terrorism or the environment.Moreover, on one hand, as Michael Peters argues (forthcoming), globalization itself is a kind of war and much militarism has been expansive and globalizing in many historical situations. On the other hand, antiwar and peace movements are also more and more global, hence globalization itself is marked by tensions and contradictions. Thus, while on one level, globalization importantly increases the supremacy of big corporations and big government, it can also give power to groups and individuals that were previously left out of the democratic dialogue and terrain of political struggle. Such potentially positive effects of globalization allow in increased admission to education for ind ividuals excluded from sharing culture and knowledge and the first step of oppositional individuals and groups to participate in global culture and politics through gaining access to global communication and media networks and to circulate local struggles and oppositional ideas through these media.The role of information technologies in social movements, political struggle, and everyday life forces social movements and critical theorists to reconsider their political strategies and goals and democratic theory to appraise how new technologies do and do not promote democratization (Kellner, 1995b, 1997 and 1999b Best and Kellner 2001 Kahn and Kellner 2003). In their oblige empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of Empire and an assortment of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-full situation.As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a two-dimensional mixture of expansions of the global economy and capitalist market system, information technologies and media, spread out judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.5 Combining poststructuralism with autonomous Marxism, Hardt and Negri stress political openings and possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent process of the restructuring of capital.Many theorists, by contrast, have argued that one of the trends of globalization is depoliticization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and the end of traditional politics (Boggs, 2000). While I would agree that globalization is promoted by extremely powerful economic forces and that it often undermines democratic movements and decision-making, one should also note that at that place are openings and possibilities for a globalization from below th at inflects globalization for positive and progressive ends, and that globalization can thus help promote as well as destabilize democracy.6 Globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism, a turbulent restructuring process, which creates openings for progressive social change and intervention as well as highly destructive transformative effects.On the positive ledger, in a more fluid and open economic and political system, oppositional forces can gain concessions, win victories, and effect progressive changes. During the 1970s, new social movements, new nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and new forms of struggle and solidarity emerged that have been expanding to the present day (Hardt and Negri, 2000 Burbach, 2001 Best and Kellner, 2001 and Foran, 2003). The anti-corporate globalization of the 1990s emerged as a form of globalization from below, but so too did Al Qaeda and various global terror networks, which escalate their attacks and helped ge nerate an era of Terror War. This made it difficult simply to affirm globalization from below while denigrating globalization from above, as all the way terrorism was an emergent and dangerous form of globalization from below that was a threat to peace, security, and democracy.Moreover, in the face of Bush administration unilateralism and militarism, multilateral approaches to the problems of terrorism called for global responses and alliances to a wide concatenation of global problems (see Kellner 2003b and Barber 2003), thus demanding a progressive and cosmopolitan globalization to deal with contemporary challenges. Moreover, the present conjuncture is marked by a conflict between growing centralisation and organization of power and wealth in the hands of the few contrasted with opposing processes exhibiting a fragmentation of power that is more plural, multiple, and open to contestation. As the succeeding(a) analysis will suggest, both tendencies are observable and it is up to individuals and groups to run into openings for progressive political intervention, social transformation, and the democratization of education that pursue positive values such as democracy, human rights, literacy, equality, ecological preservation and restoration, and social justice, while fighting poverty, ignorance, terror, and injustice.Thus, rather than just denouncing globalization, or engaging in celebration and legitimation, a critical theory of globalization reproaches those aspects that are oppressive, while seizing upon opportunities to fight domination and exploitation and to promote democratization, justice, and a forward looking reconstruction of the polity, society, and culture. Against capitalist globalization from above, there has been a significant eruption of forces and subcultures of resistance that have attempted to preserve specific forms of culture and society against globalization and homogenization, and to create alternative forces of society and culture, thus exhibiting resistance and globalization from below. Most dramatically, peasant and guerrilla movements in Latin America, struggle unions, students, and environmentalists throughout the world, and a variety of other groups and movements have resisted capitalist globalization and attacks on previous rights and benefits.7 Several dozen peoples organizations from around the world have protested World Trade Organization (WTO) policies and a backlash against globalization is visible everywhere. Politicians who once championed trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA are now often quiet about these arrangements or example, at the 1996 yearbook Davos World Economic Forum its founder and managing director published a warning entitled Start Taking the Backlash Against Globalization Seriously. Reports surfaced that major representatives of the capitalist system expressed fear that capitalism was getting too mean and predatory, that it needs a kinder and gentler state to ensure order and ha rmony, and that the public assistance state may make a come-back (see the article in virgin York Times, February 7, 1996 A15).8 One should take such reports with the proverbial grain of salt, but they express fissures and openings in the system for critical discourse and intervention.Indeed, by 1999, the theme of the annual Davos conference was making globalization work for poor countries and minimizing the differences between the haves and have nots. The growing divisions between ample and poor were worrying some globalizers, as were the wave of crises in Asian, Latin American, and other growth countries. In jam Flanigans report in the Los Angeles Times (Febr. 19, 1999), the main theme is to spread the wealth. In a world frightened by glaring imbalances and the impuissance of economies from Indonesia to Russia, the talk is no longer of a new world economy getting stronger but of ways to keep the engine going.In particular, the globalizers were attempting to keep economies gro wing in the more developed countries and capital flowing to underdeveloped nations. U.S. Vice-President Al Gore called on all countries to spur economic growth, and he proposed a new U.S.-led initiative to eliminate the debt burdens of developing countries. South African President Nelson Mandela asked Is globalization only for the powerful? Does it offer nothing to the men, women and children who are ravaged by the violence of poverty?As the new millennium opened, there was no clear answer to Mandelas question. In the 2000s, there have been ritual proclamations of the need to make globalization work for the developing nations at all major meetings of global institutions like the WTO or G-8 convenings. For instance, at the September 2003 WTO meeting at Cancun, organizers claimed that its goal was to fashion a new trade agreement that would reduce poverty and boost development in poorer nations. But critics pointed out that in the past years the richer nations of the U.S., Japan, and Europe move to enforce trade tariffs and provide subsidies for national producers of goods such as agriculture, while forcing poorer nations to open their markets to free trade, thus bankrupting agricultural sectors in these countries that could not compete. Significantly, the September 2003 WTO trade talks in Cancun collapsed as leaders of the developing world concurred with protestors and blocked expansion of a free trade zone that would generally benefit the US and overdeveloped countries.Likewise, in Miami in November 2003 the Free-Trade Summit collapsed without an agreement as the police violently suppressed protestors.9 Moreover, major economists like Joseph Stiglitz (2002), as well as anti-corporate globalization protestors and critics, argued that the developing countries were not adequately benefiting under current corporate globalization policies and that divisions between the rich and poor nations were growing. Under these conditions, critics of globalization were call ing for radically new policies that would help the developing countries, regulate the rich and overdeveloped countries, and provide more power to working people and local groups. The Global Movement Against Capitalist Globalization With the global economic recession and the Terror War erupting in 2001, the situation of many developing countries has worsened.As part of the backlash against globalization in recent years, a wide range of theorists have argued that the proliferation of difference and the shift to more local discourses and practices best ready the contemporary scene. In this view, theory and politics should shift from the level of globalization (and its accompanying often totalizing and macro dimensions) in order to focus on the local, the specific, the particular, the heterogeneous, and the micro level of everyday experience. An array of theories associated with poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism focus on difference, otherness, marginality , the personal, the particular, and the concrete in contrast to more general theory and politics that aim at more global or universal conditions.10 Likewise, a broad spectrum of subcultures of resistance have focused their attention on the local level, organizing struggles around identity issues such as gender, race, sexual preference, or jejuneness subculture (see Kahn and Kellner, 2003). It can be argued that such dichotomies as those between the global and the local express contradictions and tensions between crucial constitutive forces on the present scene. It may be a mistake to focus on one side of the global/local polarity in favor of exclusive irritation with the other side (Cvetkovitch and Kellner, 1997). Hence, an important challenge for a critical theory of globalization is to think through the relationships between the global and the local by observing how global forces influence and even structure an increasing number of local situations.