Globalization is?

Globalization is?:
Boundary of Vision in International Political Economy Course at the University of Queensland

While most of the western world may be accustomed to a commercial culture, there are other cultures (e.g., Amish, Islamic, peasant) that are not commercial or are uncomfortable with commercial definition. Because cultural meaning is not universally defined through the market, "globalization," as it is currently understood, is not necessarily a universal aspiration (Sage 2006: 1).

There are many perspectives and cultures that do not agree with the dominating view of “globalization” and development that is originated from Western ideology. However, there are those who do not seem to be aware of this diversity and assume that market-based economic development is desirable for all.

At the University of Queensland, school of Political Science and International Studies offers a course called ‘Globalization, International Political Economy and Development’ (POLS7101). In this paper, I will employ discourse analysis approach to examine and demonstrate how, throughout the course outlines and the handouts provided by the course coordinator, Dr. Mark Beeson, POLS7101 sets discourse of development and globalization to dominate students’ views and limit their opportunity to perceive the issues with vary perspectives.

POLS7101 is “designed to explore international political economy in an era of ‘globalization’” (POLS7101 2006: 2). However, it was notable that the course coordinator drew on a very limited range of arguments to represent globalization and development. This led me to argue that the way in which globalisation and development are represented within the course creates boundary where the issues are portrayed only within the perspective of Western economic development. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the course coordinator’s discourses which make students view the issues narrowly. It is an important way to challenge its hegemony as the only approach to study international political economy.

Discourse Analysis as Mode of Study

“It will remain difficult for any other voices to be heard until that(dominating) voice loses some of its power to define what we hear and how we name the world” (Cohn 1996: 339).

It is reprehensible to believe that our understanding of the world is “objective truth” (Burr 1995: 3; Gergen 1985: 266–7 cited in Jorgensen and Phillips 2002: 8). Discourse analysts “seek to examine how particular attitudes are shaped, reproduced, and legitimized through the use of language” (Tonkiss 2002: 253). It is a mode of analysis which treats language and texts as “form of discourse which helps to create and reproduce systems of social meaning” (Tonkiss 2002: 245). In undertaking this project, my ontological supposition is that the way we use language is “rarely innocent”, and discourse analysis can help to disclose how “talk and texts are ordered to produce specific meanings and effects” (Tonkiss 2002: 247).

In this paper, I will apply discourse analysis approach to analyze POLS7101’s course outline and handouts. I will try to identify how POLS7101’s course coordinator, Dr. Mark Beeson, uses language to create such discourses. I choose to examine these materials as, in my assumption, they are tangible sites in which social meaning of development and globalisation discourses are created and reproduced by the course coordinator. In the course outline, Dr. Mark summarizes and layouts the course description, course objectives, seminar questions, essay questions, and brief description of lecture programs. And the handouts are reviews of each point Dr. Mark makes during his lectures.

In sum, the study has two major aims: (1) to examine how is development and globalisation are understood and explained within POLS7101 (2) to study how the course coordinator creates such discourses.

Methodology: Different Project, Different Form

Discourse analysts use a “common set of tools” to analyse “how different discourses present their versions of the social world” (Tonkiss 2002: 249). However, “there is no set procedure for doing discourse analysis” (Fairclough 1992: 225). In this project, I have explore different approaches to doing discourse analysis and have created my own approach based on framework of practice guided by discourse analyst academics such as Fairclough (1992) and Tonkiss (2002).

The materials I examined are the course outline and handouts of POLS7101. I will focus mainly on how course coordinator uses language to put forward certain agenda and way of looking at issues such as development and globalisation but left out alternatives views. I will then select the quotes and essay questions that convey such examples and analyse them in a descriptive manner.

I am interested in how the course coordinator of POLS7101 uses language to construct certain way of meaning of ‘what is globalisation?’ and ‘how should countries develop?’ How is unindustrialized, lack of competitiveness, or access to global market are constructed as a ‘problem’ within POLS7101’s discourses?

In this paper, the analysis focuses on the details of textual extracts, on rhetoric, and on specific words and their uses. The aim is to find what evidence is there to suggest that language that is used in the course outline and handouts of POLS7101 creates discourses of development and globalisation that are based mainly on mainstream Western ideology and obstruct alternatives view to have their voices.

According to Tonkiss, discourse analysis asks the researcher to “make conjecture about alternative accounts which are excluded or omission” (Tonkiss 2002: 258). Fairclough also suggests that one way of ‘doing discourse’ is to look for keywords that are used to create discourse (Fairclough 1992: 228-230). In the study, I will look for way language is used to “present the reader and incite a certain respond” (Tonkiss 2002: 258) and identify keywords or phrases that the course coordinator uses to create discourses of development and globalisation.

It is important to state here that I am not aiming to explain why the course coordinator creates such discourses. It is a principled feature of the analysis that I focus on “explicating how the text do what they do” (MacMillan and Edwards 1999: 154). It is significant to recognize how the course coordinator creates discourses in POLS7101 to dominate and marginalize alternative views. Although I do not attempt to find solution to counter it but I see that learning the discourse will allow us to invite the transformation of our own thinking. And that is the important step to deconstruct the dominating discourse.

Development Paradigm

Discourse functions more as an ideological (Cohn 1996: 338).

Although it is clear to me that the study of international political economy in POLS7101 is operates within the Western development paradigm the aim of this paper is not to prove this view but to analyse how the course coordinator make such discourses and what are the consequences. However I will provide a brief background of Western development paradigm and an example of one alternative view to demonstrate why I think it is important to undertake this project

After the Second World War, “Development/modernity became the standard by which other societies were judged”; this is a “new paradigm” that the world (McMichael 2005: 27). Shamsul Haque (2003) studied the development of this paradigm and argues that such Eurocentric cultural biases in international politics have today perpetuated "Western-centered parochialism" in understanding the international system (2003: 1). The power of this “development paradigm” is its ability to “present itself as universal, autonomous, and therefore uncontentious” (McMichael 2005: 27).

Western way to development focuses on market-based economic transformation. Consequentially, “the emphasis on economic growth allowed the application of a universal quantifiable standard to national development” (McMichael 2005: 27). However, this is not the only way to view the world.

There is also a growing movement to develop alternative livelihood strategies beyond formal economic relations—to explore new ways of community living or simply to recover older ways of life that preceded the specializing thrust of modern commercial systems (McMichael 2005: 37-38).

To provide an example, I will illustrate Buddhism’s model of development as one of the alternatives. Sulak Sivaraksa (2006), a renowned Buddhist scholar criticizes that the dominating development paradigm of the West “presupposes the ideas of capital markets, nation state structures, the free individual, and the linear and unlimited process of growth” (Sivaraksa 2006: 1).

To Sulak, this trend will lead to alienation and unfulfilling way of live where “identity is no longer interconnected with family and village but instead with money and consumer goods” (Sivaraksa 2006: 1). He then proposes Buddhism’s model of development where material development is relative to spiritual happiness and personal transformation; “it is the development of an human’s understanding of the interconnectedness of individual happiness and societal emancipation from greed, hatred, and delusion” (Sivaraksa 2006: 1).

The Analysis and Findings

Review and Limit:

In the week 2 lecture about globalization, the course coordinator summarizes in the handout that there are three major arguments in viewing globalization; hyperglobalizers; skeptics; transformationalists:

- Hyperglobalizers: states becoming redundant – something neoliberalists celebrate” “Borderless world”, primarily economic phenomenon, driven by market forces:

- Skeptics: globalization is not new – economic integration greater in late C19th than late(ish) C20th” “Globalization is ‘uneven’ – structure of IPE unchanged i.e. North-South divide, growing inequality”

- Transformationalists: “new global infrastructure of communication/transport support new forms of economic/political organization” (Handout week 2).


In the seminar question, students are asked to answer “How do the major theoretical approaches differ in their interpretation of globalization and the development of international political economy? Which do you find most convincing? Why?” (POLS7101 2006: 7).

Instead of asking student to think freely about what globalization is and what are its effects, the course coordinator limits students’ ways to view the issue by asking them to merely analyze the three perspectives that he offers and ask them to think which idea is the best. This way, students end up thinking within the boundary of the three approaches.

Also, must note here that the course coordinator uses the term ‘theoretical approaches’ to assume that the three viewpoints are academically correct. Experts’ language has three important effects: “it marks out a field of knowledge; it confers membership; and it bestows authority” (Cohn 1996: 338). In this case, the use of the term ‘theoretical approaches’ constitutes the three viewpoints as a proper knowledge and worth studying which in turn undermines other alternative views such as environmentalist or spiritualist whose arguments lack of academic references.

The course coordinator explains in the course outline’s lecture program description that “As we shall see, there are no fixed, uncontroversial ways of understanding globalization” (POLS7101 2006: 13). And one of the course objectives of POLS7101 is to “Critically evaluate competing perspectives on ‘globalization’” (POLS7101 2006: 2). But in the handout, only three ways of looking are represented and all based on economic perspective and no other explanations has room in the discussion.

In the lecture program about the History Evolution of international political economy (IPE), the course coordinator asserts in the handout that “Before capitalism there was feudalism” (Handout week3), then the handout reviews the linear evolution of IPE in the following order: Feudalism, The rise of capitalism, Capitalism, Industrial Revolution, Development of trade, Colonialism and Imperialism, British hegemony.

Then the following handout of week4 goes on and claims that, at the moment, the evolution of IPE is at the state where we are observing the “American Hegemony” (Handout week4).

This idea of the evolution of IPE assumes a linear direction for development. The course coordinator uses a variety of descriptions that undermine the importance of why we should study everything else but certain direction of evolution of IPE, as the handout put it:

Why Europe?
- China was a sophisticated civilization long before Europe but possible too stable (Handout week4).

The handout emphasises this claimed truth and limit other explanations by asking the question in the Seminar Questions Summary page:

“Why did capitalism begin in Europe and spread across the world?”
“What, if anything, is distinctive about American hegemony?” (POLS7101 2006: 7).

These two questions assume that the assumptions summarized in the handout are true, that “capitalism begin in Europe and spread across the world” and “American hegemony” exist. These questions marginalize other explanations and questions such as ‘did capitalism really begin in Europe and spread across the world?’ and perhaps America is not a hegemonic power if we look at power in different perceptions.

Uses of Certain Words:

- People began trading because they couldn’t produce everything they needed- still true
- Japan is resource poor and couldn’t survive without reliable access to key inputs – WW2 reminder of how sensitive this is (Handout week5).

Here, the word ‘need’ is used instead of ‘want’ or ‘desire’, and ‘survive’ rather than ‘live in content’ or ‘feel that they have enough’. These two summaries imply that, in order for human to survive, we more than just minimal provision of basic needs. More over, the course coordinator uses the phrases ‘still true’ confirms that it is the truth.

- Trade rationale/system under attack from environmentalists/developing world
- Environmentally unsustainable (Handout week5).

In the above two lines, the course coordinator describes the respond of those who do not agree and raise their voice against the existing trade system as an act of ‘attack’. If one has other worldview or political stand these voices might be depicted as a ‘concern’ or ‘compassionate act’. Besides, ‘Environment’ enters these development and globalisation discourses of POLS7101 in a particular economic way, while alternative accounts are excluded. Here, environment is seen as a resource for human’s needs and some claim that human’s use environment in an ‘unsustainable’ manner.

Another example;

- Developing countries cannot access wealthy markets/compete ‘fairly’
- Over-specialization in less valuable products in ‘distorted’/volatile markets
- WTO is “theoretically democratic but developing countries lack personnel/expertise to achieve effective representation (Handout week5).

And then there is a question for student to write as a final essay:

Why has much of the ‘developing world’ still not developed economically? Who, if anyone, is to blame? What, if anything, should be done?” (POLS7101 2006: 8).

While the course coordinator focuses on explaining that the reasons why developing countries is still not developed any direct discussion of alternative view of development is absent. When the reasons why developing countries are still not developed are described as inability to gain access to wealthy market/compete fairly or having producing wrong products, a solution is almost self-evident; gain access to market and produce the right products.

Conclusion:

The documents which I studied, while noting the issues of globalization and development in term of market-based world trade system limits their discussion of other explanations of world economic system such as barter system among communities or grass-root level cooperation of NGOs. Students are asked, for example, ‘Why has much of the ‘developing world’ still not developed economically?’. While this may identify as important problem, it is function in a dominating way where other way of looking and questioning such as ‘are there any other way for ‘developing world’ to become happy without having to follow the West?’ is simply ignored.

Through the text, I analysed key words such as ‘compete’, ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘need’ found in the texts. The use of these specific words underlines that a shift to economic solution is desirable; the only condition we have to discuss is ‘what is the best way to do it?’ The course coordinator teaches students to see incompetent access to global market or backward in competitiveness as problems and thus certain states are not ‘developed’. This is a qualitative ways of thinking about decent life where low income means low living standard. Many, such as Sulak, would argue that there is more than just money or material development that matters in living a decent life.

By asking certain questions, one can limit others’ way of thinking. Throughout the handouts and questions in the course outline, the course coordinator advances certain arguments of economic development and asks students to analyse why there are certain problems in the world. Through the course outline and handouts, POLS7101 generate discourses which marginalized other alternative views, another development paradigm which referent is neither money nor material development. These discourses remove the possibility to imagine a different kind of society or mode of production from students of the course.

Boundary is created when one does not know what the true goal is. Likewise, when students are taught to look at the world limitedly and are asked to think only in a certain way, boundaries exist clouding their vision.

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Reference List:

Haque, M. Shamsul. 2003. ‘The revival of realism in international politics after September 11 and its ethical impact.’ International Journal of Politics and Ethics, Spring 2003 v3 i1 p135(21)

Tonkiss, F. 2002. ‘Analysing Discourse’ in C. Seale (ed) Researching Society and Culture. London: Sage.

Beeson, Mark. 2006. Pols7107 Globalisation, International Political Economy and Development: Course Profile. St. Lucia: School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland.

Cohn, Carol. 1996. ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’. In Classics of International Relations, ed. J. Vasquez. NJ: Prentice Hall.

Jorgensen, Marianne W. and Phillips, Louise J. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication.

MacMillan, K. and Edwards, D. 1999. ‘Who killed the princess? Description and blame in the British press’, Discourse and Society, 1(2): 151-74.

McMichael, Philip. 2005. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication.

Sivaraksa, Sulak. 2006. ‘Buddhism and Development’, (online), accessed 9 April 2006. Available at http://daga.dhs.org/daga/ds/dsp00/dl3m-f.htm

Fairclough, N.1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Sage Publication. 2006. Book Description of Philip McMichael’s Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective 3rd Edition. (online), accessed 26 April 2006. Available at http://www.sagepub.com/printerfriendly.aspx?pid=9826&ptype=B