Chapter 15

Globalization, Poverty, and Social Justice

Text Box: Chapter Aims This chapter will familiarize you with the historical origins of connections between globalization and world poverty. You will: (a) learn why globalization is a topic of intense debate, (b) grasp the importance of the concept of ideology for analyses of global poverty, and (c) learn about roles for community psychologists and citizens who want to address global inequality by deepening democracy and expanding human rights.  Tod Sloan

 

In this chapter, I examine the relation between corporate globalization and global poverty. After reviewing the rise of capitalist industrialization and its effects on what became the Third World, I discuss some of the general ways in which the globalization of capitalist consumerism is disrupting material and social well-being. My primary aim is to highlight the crucial roles that communities and citizens will play in determining the outcomes of the contemporary political struggles for global social and economic justice.

            I often find myself wondering why, in a world where billions upon billions of dollars are spent on weapons, space exploration, cosmetics, spectator sports, and popular music, can we not manage to shift resources to solve the problem of global poverty?  It is hard to imagine a more urgent task. A third of humanity scrapes by on an income equivalent to $2 a day or less (UNDP, 2000; World Bank, 2000). Such poverty is not just a lack of money as the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor research project ‘discovered’ when 60,000 poor men and women were interviewed.  Poverty is  a lived experience associated with hunger, illness, inadequate housing, illiteracy, human rights abuses, and social marginalization (Narayan, Chambers, Shah, & Petesch, 2000). Technological and socioeconomic developments over the last 50 years have improved the situation of some social classes in particular parts of the world, but rapid population growth, continuing violent conflict, and epidemic diseases in poorer countries have basically negated progress overall. Poverty is not due to there not being enough to go around – it stems from societal and institutional arrangements that do not give priority to meeting basic needs.

 

Text box here:

Conclusions from the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor Project

(from the website at http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/voices/listen-findings.htm)

 

The poor view wellbeing holistically

 

Poverty is much more than income alone. For the poor, the good life or wellbeing is multidimensional with both material and psychological dimensions. Wellbeing is peace of mind; it is good health; it is belonging to a community; it is safety; it is freedom of choice and action; it is a dependable livelihood and a steady source of income; it is food.

The poor describe illbeing as lack of material things - food especially but also lack of work, money, shelter and clothing -- and living and working in often unhealthy, polluted and risky environments. They also defined illbeing as bad experiences and bad feelings about the self. Perceptions of powerlessness over one's life and of voicelessness was common; so was anxiety and fear for the future.

 

"Poverty is like living in jail, living under bondage, waiting to be free" — Jamaica

 

"Poverty is lack of freedom, enslaved by crushing daily burden, by depression and fear of what the future will bring." — Georgia

 

"If you want to do something and have no power to do it, it is talauchi (poverty)." — Nigeria

 

"Lack of work worries me. My children were hungry and I told them the rice is cooking, until they fell asleep from hunger." — an older man from Bedsa, Egypt.

"A better life for me is to be healthy, peaceful and live in love without hunger. Love is more than anything. Money has no value in the absence of love." — a poor older woman in Ethiopia

 

"When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior. She has no food, so there is famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family." — a woman from Uganda

 

"For a poor person everything is terrible - illness, humiliation, shame. We are cripples; we are afraid of everything; we depend on everyone. No one needs us. We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of." — a blind woman from Tiraspol, Moldova

 

"I repeat that we need water as badly as we need air." — a woman from Tash-Bulak, The Kyrgyz Republic

 

"The waste brings some bugs; here we have cockroaches, spiders and even snakes and scorpions." — Nova California, Brazil

 

 

A PERSONAL JOURNEY

I was introduced to issues of global development early in my life as I traveled and lived abroad with my father, who worked for a small private foundation involved in Asian development. In the 1950s and 1960s, U. S. development projects were shaped by the larger context of the Cold War. The idea was to promote democratic institutions and market economies to squash the idea that state-controlled (socialist and communist) economies might meet people’s needs more effectively. As I child I saw, but certainly did not understand, Japan recovering from World War II with U.S. aid, Singapore beginning to boom, and even Afghanistan beginning to open to Western ways. As I rode a bus to a little American school in Kabul in the mid 1960s, I saw young men and women in European dress going to Kabul University. Unfortunately, one of the last phases of the Cold War closed the doors on education in Afghanistan, as the United States and the Soviet Union played out their differences in a manner that reduced that society to rubble and allowed the fundamentalist Taliban to take control.

What stood out most for me, however, was the sheer poverty of the urban poor wherever I went. I remember seeing boys standing barefoot in snow, children picking through garbage dumps for food, people with misshapen limbs dragging themselves along the street amidst cars and bicycles, and children no more than six or seven hawking nearly worthless items all day in hopes of a coin or two. These memories contrasted with my own middle-class lifestyle as a child and later as an adult, and they tugged at me when I saw that people living in suburban middle-class neighborhoods in the United States lived as if they had no idea that a billion or more people on the planet suffer from extreme poverty.

Ten years of studies in psychology did absolutely nothing to remind me of global poverty, let alone, poverty within the U. S. I think this is one of the major reasons to have serious concerns about the field of psychology as it is currently organized. How can a science of behavior nearly totally ignore the unequal economic conditions that affect psychological development so profoundly?

At any rate, my conscience was stirred by travels to Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s, particularly to Nicaragua, where a brave revolutionary society was doing the best it could to meet people’s basic needs first and to develop an alternative to both communist and capitalist forms of development. Nicaragua unfortunately became one of the last victims of the Cold War and it remains one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere. I am haunted by a 1995 memory of three little children in Managua sitting inactive and blank-eyed in a small wagon in the heat day after day while their mother sold towels at a busy intersection. A few blocks away, a shiny new supermarket full of imported goods, guarded by security guards with submachine guns, serviced people pulling up in $50,000 sport-utility vehicles.

Back at home, these images and memories easily fade, and I have found it very difficult to figure out what we can do, especially as psychologists, to transform the realities of poverty. Nevertheless, I would argue that the very first value that should be listed in the psychologist’s code of ethics should be to devote one’s expertise in the science of behavior to address the most widespread sources of human suffering.  High on the list along with war, violence, and disease would be poverty.

Critical Community Psychology

My interest in critical approaches to community psychology (see Sloan, 2000) stems in part from my hopes that the major groups of psychologists will reorient themselves radically to address the needs of the poorest of the poor and to contribute to the sociopolitical changes that this will require. Community psychologists in the United States have tended to do work that might modify and ameliorate families, schools, social services, and neighborhoods, but I fear that unless we significantly transform underlying political and economic processes that affect all of these community-level institutions, we are simply part of the problem. We are improving systems that are rely on the functioning of a larger system that is fundamentally flawed. When I look at the entire field of psychology through this lens, I really begin to despair. But hope is occasionally rekindled as I see glimpses of broadening awareness and possibilities for change. For example, the American Psychological Association recently made an important statement on the need for psychologists to address the effects of poverty (APA, 2000) and a few psychologists are involved in helping the United Nations meet its goals of reducing poverty by half by 2015. But the road will be long and hard.

If we as community psychologists and citizens are going to address larger political and economic structures, we need to know what those structures are and how they came to be that way. With this in mind, we turn now to some historical background on how globalization and poverty are intertwined. 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

What Are the Origins of Contemporary Poverty Around the World?

 

World history is usually taught in a manner that fails to convey the grand sweep of events, inventions, and movements that led to the current global situation. If one can manage to stand back a bit from the biographies of kings and chronicles of war, what stands out is the enormity of the social and political changes associated with the rise of modern science and associated technologies. Just 500 years ago, the vast majority of the world’s population lived in agrarian communities. Lives were simple, but most forms of life were self-sufficient and sustainable. When we look at surviving forms of self-sufficient life (indigenous peoples), we may think of them as poor, but that is a judgment imposed from an external point of view. Now, roughly three-fourths of humanity is urbanized, separated from agricultural processes and embedded in highly interdependent systems of production, energy, transportation, and commerce. Average urban lives are much longer and physically less challenging than pre-modern agrarian lives, but they are probably more complex at psychological and social levels. They are also not very sustainable in terms of their impact on natural environments.

Science and Modernity

Most historical accounts seem to concur with the idea that the magnitude of the changes that occurred over the past 500 years was indeed unprecedented. While explanations of the rise of modernity differ quite a bit, certain factors are always acknowledged. The scientific method led to increased human control over natural and physical processes. All technologies, from weapons and transportation to medicine and farming equipment, benefited from scientific reasoning. As a consequence, the power of superstition, magic, and religious authorities over human knowledge and action was reduced. The economies, armies, and navies of countries with advanced science and technology became powerful. In particular, Europeans used this new power to colonize other regions of the world beginning in the 1600s. This was rationalized as a civilizing process, but massacres, slavery, and exploitation were routine practices of the colonizing powers.

Industrialization and Imperialism

Philosophers of the Enlightenment period proposed rational ways of governing societies and, leaning on ideas such as democracy and equality, the rising commercial classes in Europe gradually displaced medieval nobilities to establish modern nation-states. The industrial revolution and the associated need for raw materials and new markets led to a second wave of colonization and conquest in the 1800s known as the era of imperialism. During this period, the industrializing European powers consolidated at least a degree of control over most of the territory on earth. Wealth accumulated in European and American banks. This was reinvested in further industrial development, increasing the need for resources from the colonies. These resources (labor, minerals, food) were extracted on terms that were not favorable to progress in the colonies. In fact, centuries-old forms of agrarian subsistence were disrupted as colonial economies were organized for resource extraction rather than for local needs, and the foundation for what was to become “Third World poverty” was laid. Previously autonomous communities became entangled in powerful webs of international commerce. Sustainable ways of life were replaced by labor-intensive systems of production serving the appetites and desires of distant populations: tea, coffee, cotton, silk, gold, silver, tobacco, hardwoods, fruit, etc.

Modernization

The world wars of the first half of the 20th century accelerated industrialization in Europe, Japan, and the United States, and weakened European colonial powers in a manner that prepared the way for a wave of independence movements for colonies in the “Third World.” Real competition and the ideological divide between capitalist and socialist/communist economies led to further conflict in the second half of the 20th century – Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and Afghanistan, for example. The Cold War diverted resources sorely needed for schools, housing, sanitation and other basic needs into weapons stockpiles. Decolonization was primarily accomplished by elites and the middle classes in the South, often on the basis of political rhetoric about meeting the needs of the poor. Indeed, poverty was a striking feature of the Third World as the colonizing powers withdrew. The solution proposed by the Western economic powers and the Western-trained elites of the Third World was known as modernization. Bundled in this concept were a number of processes experienced by Europe and the United States over a span of two centuries: industrialization, urbanization, public education, literacy, and democratization. None of these processes is inherently problematic (Sloan, 1997), but development was extremely uneven and often created new problems. Certain sectors, usually the middle classes of urban centers, saw improvement. Urban and rural poor, however, continued to suffer in most Third World countries as rural poverty fueled migration to the cities, state bureaucracies bloated, foreign debts accumulated, and local economies continued to be affected by local corruption and global economic conditions. Eventually, the framework of global geopolitics changed when the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union left Western elites thinking that countries that hold democratic elections and foster market economies and free trade had undoubtedly discovered the best form of government and economy.

Globalization

The term globalization achieved its current popularity in the 1990s as a new way of describing the process that is supposed to bring the benefits of science, democracy, free trade, communications systems, and corporation-controlled capitalism to the entire world. (Some argue that globalization is merely a euphemism for capitalist modernization.) Quite a few individuals and groups are not convinced that this is the only possible path, and ironically, one of their biggest concerns also happens to be democracy, that is, the lack of it, for example, in international trade negotiations. The dramatic turn-of-the-century protests in Seattle, Washington, Prague, and Quebec against global financial and trade organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization are only the tip of the iceberg of a broad social movement that aims to construct a different sort of global political and economic order (Korten, 2001).

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT

 

            At this point, I think it is important to lay out some very basic understandings about the economics of development.  I fear that psychology has systematically made itself irrelevant to debates in economics and politics because it has failed to include include broad socioeconomic concepts in the education of psychology professionals. Psychology’s commitment to natural science models accounts for part of this narrowness, but actually the sheer success of the field has induced a certain overconfidence and blindness to its situation. Psychologists have a hard time recognizing that the acceptance they find within the social system is partially due to their willingness to serve as a conveyor of exactly the forms of individualism the system of exploitation requires (Fox & Prilleltensky, 1997).

            A key sociological understanding, stated most radically by Karl Marx, is that human beings are the products of the social relations they experience. The term social relations includes all dimensions of social life, from love and friendship to trading practices and legal systems. Human actors, in turn, can shape their social reality. This means it is impossible to determine whether there is an essence of humanity we could call “human nature.” Are people naturally greedy or aggressive? According to Marx, this question cannot be answered. For example, the observed greediness or aggressiveness of individuals or social groups is the product of a complex interaction of historical, cultural, economic, technological, and political relations that have shaped human action in a particular place and time. This key understanding led Marx and other social theorists, such as Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, to examine the roles of all these factors in the rise of modern society. Marx is, of course, best known for emphasizing the economic determinants of societal development, and since we are trying to understand the contemporary production of global poverty, we will review several concepts and perspectives that draw their inspiration from his work.

Capitalism

The term capitalism refers to a general economic system and associated way of producing goods. In capitalist economies, the means of production (factories, offices, tools, materials) are privately owned. Because of private ownership, profits from the sale of products are accumulated by individual owners or groups of owners and investors (corporations). Profits result when goods can be sold for more than the associated costs of materials, labor, and equipment. In this process, capital accumulates and becomes the basis for other investment, either directly or through the banking system. In capitalist economies, workers are usually not in a position to earn enough to participate much in the accumulation of capital (except perhaps through pension plans over which they have little control). Instead, they compete with each other on the labor market, selling their time, energy, and skills for the best wages they can get. The “reserve army” of the unemployed serve to keep wages low, since “there is always someone else who might want your job.”  The result is a fairly important divide between those who own and direct the productive system and those who do the work, whether managers or workers. The persistence of this divide is noted in Marxist sociology by the term class society.

The raw effects of capitalist relations in modern class society have been softened to some extent by the effectiveness of labor unions and state welfare systems. Unions first formed to protect the interests of groups of workers in collective bargaining with the owners of the means of production.  Government welfare systems emerged later as “safety nets” to ensure the basic health and housing of the unemployed labor pool and the unemployable, particularly when the capitalist economic system is undergoing one of its occasional recessions or depressions. Both unions and welfare systems are under attack in the era of globalization for various reasons, in particular, because individualism and capitalism go hand in hand. Individuals are supposed to compete to survive in the free market.  Collective bargaining by unions and taxes to support non-workers are perceived as brakes on businesses that might produce more jobs and better wages if left unhampered by constraints on individual competition.  This debate will certainly continue for a few more generations!

The dynamic combination of modern science and technology with capital accumulation and investment led to the impressive achievements of the industrial revolution in Europe and the United States. Production systems became more effective and efficient. Marx himself was impressed by this and assumed that agrarian societies would have to move through a capitalist phase of industrialization before moving on to socialist and communist economies. But, as seen above, the effects of capitalist industrialization were harsh. As feudal-era rural arrangements collapsed, poverty spread and urban centers expanded as workers flowed into cities. Meanwhile, the drive for access to raw materials and bigger markets for industrial products fueled further European and American expansion and imperialism. When the former European colonies gained their independence in the post World War II era, most of them had not developed significant industry of their own. As mentioned above, they had been used, and continue to be used, by the colonizing powers as sources for raw materials and agricultural products. The newly independent countries of the Third World were encouraged and helped to “modernize.” The effect of modernization in practice, however, was the reordering of society in ways that increased the efficiency of capitalist production and the accumulation of wealth by the powerful classes.

The thrill of independence was quickly displaced by new forms of exploitation in a process that came to be known as underdevelopment (Clark, 1986). Goods and raw materials were bought cheaply in the peripheral societies and sold at high prices from the core, enriching middlepersons and investors, and leaving no local capital for development of the periphery. Elites in Third World countries had a share in profits but tended to keep their wealth in banks outside of their own countries in order to avoid the wild economic swings of developing economies. Gradually, most Third World countries were encumbered with incredible debts incurred in hopes that development would follow. In many cases, interest payments alone have consumed up to a third or more of a country’s gross domestic product.

To summarize, modernization conducted according to capitalist models left Third World countries only partly developed, with vast sectors of their populations stranded between previously self-sufficient agrarian lifestyles and unattainable middle-class urban lifestyles. Rampant unemployment, forty to seventy percent of populations living below official poverty lines, high infant mortality – all these indicators of Third World suffering are fairly well known.  Burdened by billions of dollars of debt, Third World governments had little room for action in response to poverty. They came more and more under the control of the financial institutions of the world’s economic powers. This was the general scenario that gave rise to the hooplah about globalization and to the resistance against it.

           

GLOBALIZATION AND ITS EFFECTS

            As a description of what has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the buzzword globalization is useful only to a certain extent. At the most general level, globalization simply means the spread of a local practice or product to the entire world, for example, the use of e-mail or the availability of pizza or hamburgers. From this point of view, globalization actually started hundreds of years ago with the spice trade.

            A second common use of the term globalization is a bit more specific, but still far too broad in its scope. It sees globalization both as a process and a result of that process. The primary drivers of the process of globalization are all events, forces, and changes that are transnational, transcultural, and transborder. These include: flows of capital, ownership, and trade; telecommunications; transportation; political and military alliances; and international organizations. The results, according to Marsella (1998) are greater interdependence, shifting personal and collective identities and lifestyles, awareness of the global condition, increased linkages and chain reactions, and new levels and forms of control of processes such as trade, communications, and finance. Marsella was one of the first psychologists to draw attention to the importance of these forms of globalization:

Thanks to the process known as globalization, human survival and well-being are now embedded in a complex and interdependent web of economic, political, social, technical, and environmental events, forces, and changes. The scale, complexity, and consequences of these changes constitute an important challenge to our individual and collective well-being because they confront us with an array of complex, conflicting, and confusing demands and/or opportunities. Our response to this challenge will shape the nature, quality, and meaning of our lives in the coming century (Marsella, 1998).

More recently, Arnett (2002) also examined the psychological impact of globalization, focusing on adolescent identity development. Unfortunately, he uses a watered-down definition of globalization that almost completely misses the economic tensions and contradictions that make globalization such a major political issue: “Globalization has existed for many centuries as a process by which cultures influence one another and become more alike through trade, immigration, and the exchange of information and ideas” (p. 774).

Friedman’s (2000) popular account of globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, captures these dynamic processes very well, and helps reduce the vagueness of the concept of globalization by focusing on the globalization of electronic communications, democratic practices, and financial systems. Even though Friedman supports globalization, he raises a few concerns about its consequences.  In each case, however, he believes that the solution is simply more globalization (e.g., better communications systems, better representative democracies, and better financial systems).

            A fast-growing group of concerned citizens and non-governmental organizations around the world do not agree that the kinks in globalization will simply work themselves out eventually through more globalization. They begin by pointing out that the core economic practices driving globalization are inherently problematic. If these practices are continued, the global situation will only become worse. This core structure of globalization that has driven workers, students, human rights activists and environmentalists into the streets in protest is known as corporate globalization (Anderson & Cavanagh, 2000; Barlow & Clarke, 2001). It is essential to keep in mind that contemporary protests are not about the general versions of globalization discussed above. Very few people have problems with improved communications and cross-cultural exchange, for example. When Western political leaders argue in favor of globalization, they are primarily referring to the expansion of capitalist market economies and “free trade.” In order to avoid saying this, they often speak of spreading “democracy,” when they really mean pressuring governments to open their markets to foreign products.

            Corporate globalization has been facilitated by financial policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, known as “structural adjustment.”  These policies require debt-ridden countries seeking loans to slash government spending on education and health, privatize government-owned enterprises, shift economies toward production of exports, and open themselves to flows of external capital. The extent to which the structural adjustment strategy is working is hotly debated. While conservatives argue that it is just a matter of allowing free markets enough time to stimulate economic growth, progressives claim that corporate-led globalization concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few and leads to further impoverishment for the masses of humanity. They note, for example, that national markets have become increasingly volatile and national democratic processes are squashed by transnational corporate decisions. Government subsidies for basic needs such as water and electricity are removed as structural adjustment requires that these essential services be privatized. Jobs are lost as companies hop around the world to employ workers who will accept lower wages in countries that will fuss about violations of labor rights. Families and communities are disrupted as workers migrate in hopes of finding employment.  Environmental protections are weakened as countries compete for foreign investment by promising limited regulation.

Citing such major problems associated with “globalization from above,” Brecher, Costello, and Smith (2000) propose a “globalization from below” that would take into account the interests of the great majority of the world’s people (see Text Box).

Text box:

Draft of a Global Program

From Brecher, Costello and Smith (2000), Globalization from Below (p.68-69)

 

1.      Level labor, environmental, social, and human rights conditions upward.

2.      Democratize institutions at every level form local to global.

3.      Make decisions as close as possible to those they affect.

4.      Equalize global wealth and power.

5.      Convert the global economy to environmental sustainability.

6.      Create prosperity by meeting human and environmental needs.

7.      Protect against global boom and bust.

 

 

 

 

 

 If it is not already obvious, I should make it clear that while I see some merit in the conservative position on globalization, my studies have convinced me that the basic operating principle of corporate capitalism (maximization of profits to enrich investors) run counter to the interests of the vast majority of humanity and the earth’s environment. A significantly different system for meeting human needs must be developed. This is a task that must be addressed by community psychologists and by all citizens in the 21st century. I look first at what we are up against and then discuss the tools we can develop to confront the challenge.

 

 

IDEOLOGY: A KEY CONCEPT

 

At the outset of this chapter, I asked how it is that the world has not yet solved the problem of global poverty. One can also ask, in light of what the world has experienced as a result of exploitation built into capitalist economics, why it is that so many people believe that it is a good system and blame themselves for their difficulties in making ends meet.  My best answer to this question points to the power of the curious phenomena associated with ideology. Ideology refers to a system of ideas and practices that sustain social relations of domination and oppression (Thompson, 1984). It is essential to understand that we are not using this term in the more common, neutral sense used to denote any system of ideas, but rather in what is known as a “critical” sense. The Marxist notion of “false consciousness” is related to what we have in mind, but that implies a mostly cognitive process, as if changing ideology might simply involve improved education (Rosen, 1996). Ideological processes are always sustained not only by cognitive, but also by emotional, behavioral, and institutional practices (Sloan, 1997, 2000). A critical notion of ideology would always attend to the interaction of these different aspects of structures of social injustice.

In order to make headway in the eradication of global poverty, it is essential to analyze a central ideological structure involved in corporate globalization: consumerism. I define consumerism as the process that orients major quantities of life activity around earning money in order to purchase unnecessary goods. Consumerism is a core ideological process sustaining globalization, and it must be confronted if global poverty is to be eradicated.

            At the behavioral level, consumerism simply requires that people purchase items that they do not really need in order to survive or enjoy life. Note that they do not need to actually use any of the products they buy – the system simply requires that purchases be made. At the emotional level, making purchases is made to feel good through an elaborate system of lifestyle advertising and status symbol construction (Korten, 2001). At the cognitive level, consumerism is justified as the driving force of economic growth, as evidenced by concerns about indicators of low “consumer confidence.” Finally, at the institutional level, banks support consumerism through credit card offers and stores support consumerism by extending their hours of operation and redesigning malls as places to spend leisure time. In turn, politicians promise to work for policies that favor economic growth, reduce taxes, increase salaries, and maximize disposable income for consumer purchases.

            We must now add the fact that in order to engage in the direct behavioral component of consumerism, people must be willing to work longer hours than necessary to earn the extra money needed to buy products that are not essential to survival. The entire advertising industry serves to make people feel they must have products that they objectively do not need in order to live comfortably. Accordingly, advertisements increasingly focus on identity and status issues that will be resolved if one owns or uses a product.  Consumerism does not feel like direct oppression or exploitation, but it is a form of domination nonetheless.

            Along with many others, I have argued that consumerism has played a major role in destroying the fabric of community in Western society (Sloan, 1997). It is clearly beginning to undermine community in the rest of the world. I especially saw this in the contrasts between the isolated lifestyles of the new middle classes in Latin America and the more collective forms of life among the working classes there.  People increasingly shift their free time and energy into either working for or using cars, consumer gadgets, entertainment products, and toys. In general, these are used either privately or in small groups (watching TV, playing videogames, solitary hobbies). Dialogue, communication, social life, group life, creative action – all key components of a thriving community – tend to be displaced by shopping and isolated entertainment. (For example, I know a family of four that has six television sets to ensure maximum individual TV-watching pleasure.)

            The news media, of course, do not do much to raise awareness of the global impact of consumerism or of the political and economic forces that want to protect the divide between the wealthy and rest of us.  The news media pretend to offer an array of opinion, but actually actively exclude reasonable ideas and proposals that would disrupt current arrangements of wealth and privilege.  The same media also tend to exclude third parties from political debates – so the public only gets to hear two candidates leaning toward the middle ground of public opinion.  A complicated process labeled “manufacturing consent” by psychologist Noam Chomsky seals off the ideological structure of corporate capitalist consumerism from effective criticism and we all pay the price (see Web and Video resources for links to Chomsky’s video on this topic).

            Meanwhile, the resources that would be devoted in a rationally-organized society toward the alleviation and eradication of poverty are squandered. Instead of creating meaningful employment of the world’s labor energies in the production and equitable distribution of sufficient food, shelter, transportation, schools, health clinics, recreation centers, and so forth, we have millions occupied in the production of unneeded products and other millions standing around as retail clerks waiting on consumers!

            The various components of the ideological structure of consumerism are going to be very hard to unravel and replace with more consciously chosen and sustainable lifestyles. In the remainder of this chapter, I touch on a number of ideas, practices, and strategies that may be relevant to this project. I do not claim to have worked all this out.  In fact, as I write this, I am in the midst of a major life transition with hopes of making my work more effective in relation to this global problem.

THE PROMISE OF GLOBAL COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY

Given that we are addressing the issue of global poverty from the perspective of community psychology, it is important to note that the changes in the field itself will need to occur before it is up to the challenge.  A leader in international psychology, Anthony Marsella (1998) boldly proposed an expanded vision and scope for community psychology that would take into account the effects of globalization on personal and community well-being. This would be a “global community psychology.” As we reviewed the effects of globalization, the urgent need for such an approach became clear. Globalization may have some positive effects for some sectors, such as improved health and material standards of living, new meanings and purposes for life, and freedom from oppressive traditions, but these changes, combined with negative effects, can be very disruptive if individuals are not supported by community structures that help them negotiate change. Changes associated with globalization can increase uncertainty, anxiety, depression, and fear. Among groups with less support, these can lead to greater incidence of serious mental illness. Economic disruption and poverty can produce increased drug abuse, prostitution, and crime. In short, rapid social change produces societal stress and confusion, which is linked directly to marginalization and alienation of certain groups, and to identity confusion, emotional distress, and behavioral problems.  Community psychology must address both the material and the psychocultural aspects of social change if it is to be effective.

Participatory Democracy

One of the more apparent solutions to the decline of community brought about by the Western consumerist individualism is the construction or reconstruction of forms of community in direct response to the pressures undermine community life.  Among the promising possibilities are the following, each of which strengthens local ties: food co-ops; community gardens; systems for sharing tools and bartering skills in neighborhoods (see Textbox); agricultural, craft, and manufacturing cooperatives; and co-housing projects that provide common spaces for intergenerational and mixed-income interaction. . Each of these forms addresses one of the components of the problem – there will be no single solution, just an array of alternative ways of living that gradually emerge and become integrated with each other.

 

Textbox:

On Local Exchange Trading Systems

 

In cities like Ithaca, New York, communities have devised their own currencies, sometimes called Time Dollars or Green Dollars, to reduce dependency on working for cash.  These are set up in various ways, but usually involve a directory of members offering skills or products to other members.  Time Dollars are exchanged or a tally is kept of each member’s credits or debits for helping to paint a house, baking a cake, fixing a bike, having a guitar lesson or a massage, etc.  The benefits are numerous.  People get to know each other and pick up skills.  They don’t have to spend time at their usual job just to earn money to pay for an expensive service. 

See http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/ and http://ccdev.lets.net/ for more information.

 

 

Underpinning these practical projects are the processes of citizen participation that can envision and organize them. Democracy must be deepened and practiced across all spheres of life in which decisions are made that affect the quality of people’s lives. In this case, democracy means much more than simply voting for or against a representative or a proposal. It means an open process in which all those who have a stake in the outcome have a chance to reflect carefully and develop an opinion, on the basis of adequate information, and move toward consensus on best outcomes with others who may be affected by the decision. The culture of deep democracy has not been very well developed in advanced industrial society, so this is going to take a lot of practice!

            A particular role for psychologists in this connection should be to insist that in order to realize the promise of deep democracy, the values that inform participatory decision-making must be implemented as fully as possible. Think of your own frustrations in meetings at work or school in which a group was trying to make a difficult decision!  There is hope.  Expert facilitators of group process point to the following values as central to effective decision making and offer methods for realizing them (Kaner, 1996):

When these core values guide group process, not only do groups become more effective, their members learn more and develop leadership skills that transfer to other spheres of life. Community psychologists can be trained to serve as facilitators for all sorts of community dialogues and deliberative processes that are occurring in relation to visioning post-consumerist societies. Community psychologists can also play an important role in researching exemplary community projects in participatory democracy. The documentation of these exemplars can be widely shared and emulated in other settings to facilitate social change (see, for example, Barker, 1999).

Linking the Global and the Local

The ideals of participatory democracy are difficult enough to achieve in local settings. They are even more complicated when national governments and international organizations interact with local communities affected by multinational trade. The challenge for the future is to preserve the advantages of a global economy and market without harming community, environmental, and human resources. This can only be done by attending to issues of human rights and social justice at each of the interdependent levels that affect collective, relational and personal well-being (Edwards & Gaventa, 2001). International organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, national organizations, community-based organization and citizens all need to be linked in new forms of networks and partnerships if the material and social needs of the world’s poor are to be adequately addressed. Community psychologists occupy a crucial position at one of the main points of intersection of these various levels. The possibilities for action and related research are many, but all of these possibilities require a fundamental shift in attitudes about citizenship and the professional roles of psychologists.

A first step in moving toward roles as citizen-professionals is to think through the issues involved in working in solidarity with oppressed groups (Nelson, Prilleltensky & MacGillivary, 2001). In particular, issues arising from the perceived power of the expert need to be addressed. A mode of practice that will need to be continuously reworked, both at the professional and the personal levels, is to achieve depowerment of the privileged participants in a project, program, or campaign simultaneously with the empowerment of the members of the oppressed or disadvantaged group.

Important lessons can be learned from the advocates of community participation in development planning. A mode of empowerment that has been practice extensively in Third World rural development projects is known as participatory rural appraisal (PRA) (Singh, 2001). This practice involves assembling knowledgeable members of a community to discuss needs and establish priorities for development. The practice developed partly in response to the failure of various projects that had not involved local communities in project planning. PRA certainly increased community input into planning, but recently serious questions have been raised. Cooke and Kothari (2001) are concerned that such practices may mask the fact that the important decisions about funding and projects are still made far from the communities that are affected by them.  Participation may simply be a form of window dressing to make projects appealing to donors and to get community buy-in to reduce obstacles in implementation. In some cases, participation has been advocated in order to disconnect development projects from radical political movements. If participants can feel a part of incremental change in concrete projects to improve housing, for example, they are less likely to push for changes in the political order. Cooke and Kothari (2001) advocate extensive participatory action research in order to determine the sorts of things that are happening under the rubric of participation. It is not a matter of avoiding participation in the future, but of ensuring that it is meaningful, effective, and equitable.

Participatory solutions to poverty have been developed along other lines as well.  Communities in India and Brazil have had considerable success with a process known as participatory budgeting (Fong and Wright, in press). In Kerala, India and Curitiba, Brazil, for example, a major portion of the city budget is set aside for citizens themselves to allocate after reviewing the city’s needs. Such forms of direct democratic planning are likely to spread, especially as cities attempt to tap citizen’s visions for the future. More direct political action is possible as well and has often led to significant improvement in conditions. Barker (1999) documents how global political and economic realities can be addressed at the margins of power in remote local settings. These accounts also reveal the degree to which all situations are now penetrated by globalization and therefore need to be addressed globally as well as locally. The Students Against Sweatshops movement is an impressive example of how local action can have a major impact on conditions far away (see Textbox).

Content for textbox:

 The Student Anti-Sweatshop Movement

Students on over two hundred campuses in North America have organized to protest conditions under which girls and young women in the ‘Third World’ work as they produce university-licensed apparel such as T-shirts and gym clothes.  The movement began in 1997 at the University of North Carolina in opposition to an exclusive $11 million contract with Nike.  Students had become aware of horrendous fourteen-hour days worked in unhealthy conditions for highly exploitative wages in countries like Indonesia and Honduras.  Coalitions quickly formed with groups at other universities.  Students and professors arranged teach-ins and seminars, met with administrators, and eventually held sit-ins to demand that universities fully disclose information on the factories that produce their licensed products and require that these factories abide by codes of conduct and pay a living wage.  Some campus groups have achieved their goals and others are still struggling to disentangle university administrations from their ties to corporate

The overall impact on global trade has been limited by the fact that university apparel sales constitute only two percent of the clothing sales in the US, but the debate has brought new energy to the global anti-sweatshop movement.  Students are learning that solidarity with their local labor movement and with diverse coalitions is as important to success as international solidarity.

See Marion Traub-Werner, “Sustaining the Student Antisweatshop Movement: Living Workers’ Struggles,” in The Global Activist’s Manual, edited by M. Prokosch and L. Raymond (2002; New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press).

End of textbox

 

Dozens of international non-profit organizations (NGOs) and thousands of local non-profit organizations are working to transform the global economy in ways that would decrease exploitation and inequality. It is worth noting that the hopes that are resting with this “third sector” (after government and the market), also called civil society, can only be realized if NGOs themselves operate in ways that prefigure the sort of deep democracy that will need to characterize social relations in a more equitable society. In many cases, NGOs duplicate the authoritarian bureaucracies of the corporate and government structures they are attempting to transform (Williams, 2001). They do this partly in the name of efficiency and to please donors, but in the long run, opportunities to practice full participation in decision making are being bypassed.

With these principles and practices in mind, group after group can be mobilized into ever wider coalitions that will be able to organize strikes and boycotts, insist on major roles in the deliberations of world financial and trade organizations, shift government investments toward the needs of the poor, reduce the power of corporate decisions to affect communities in negative ways – the possibilities are endless.

Protecting Basic Human Rights

Finally, one of the most important things to keep in mind is the link between human rights work and poverty eradication (Van Genugten & Perez-Bustillo, 2001). Nobel prize laureate Amartya Sen (1999) has argued that economic development cannot proceed fully unless it is accompanied by civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and speech. Governments that protect human rights are ensuring that the fruits of economic development will be enjoyed more widely and reducing the possibility that corruption will interfere with the efforts of individuals and businesses that obey the law. The protection of human rights also means that community organizers and labor leaders can represent their constituencies without fear of reprisals from paramilitary groups or company thugs. Poor people’s movements towards inclusion in civil society depend on protected spaces for meeting and protest. In recent surveys of the poorest of the poor (Narayan et al., 2000), it was discovered that abuses of basic human rights by police and bureaucrats ranked as high among their concerns as improved economic possibilities. 

In sum, community psychologists confronting global poverty should expect to work as interdisciplinary participants in a broad social movement (Montero, 1998). They will need to know as much about issues in global governance as about local practices.  They need to be ready to catalyze change where it is ready to happen and to build the bases for change where it will be a long time coming. They will benefit from extended fieldwork in particular regions as well as from experience inside bureaucratic organizations such as the United Nations or development agencies and foundations. Students aiming for careers in global community psychology should therefore seriously consider starting with international service organizations such as the Peace Corps or its equivalents (mostly for language learning and cultural understanding) and then enroll in graduate programs that allow for practica, internships, and participatory action research with international organizations working on poverty, community development, and human rights.

I will conclude by saying that there is no right way to go about this work. Each person will have his or her own contribution to make. But this work is complicated and scenarios are complex. We can never know enough to be sure that what we are doing will work. The best corrective for this is to be deeply committed to working with others who share the goal of eradicating the misery of poverty. Only solutions that are imagined and realized collectively will endure. The fact that the beginning of the twenty-first century found the earth with one clear superpower, both militarily and economically, points to the possibility for a new global order (Hardt & Negri, 2000). Will it be characterized by neo-feudal relations, with special enclaves for the super-rich protected from the hungry masses by armed guards, or by a new level of civilization, where differences are resolved peacefully and the world’s resources are shared equitably?  My hope is that each of us will find ways to ensure that our work and our lives contribute to a global flourishing of social justice.

Web and Video Resources on Globalization, Poverty, and Social Justice

1. Basic Facts and News

a. United Nations Development Program – for current data on world poverty -- www.undp.org

b. World Bank – data and information on development projects – www.worldbank.org

c. Essential Action – fact sheets and reports on corporations -- www.essential.org

d. OneWorld --News on the general global situation: www.oneworld.net

e. Canadian Social Research – dozens of helpful links on globalization --www.canadiansocialresearch.net/global.htm

f. inequality.org – a website full of basic tables and articles on the unequal distribution of wealth, primarily in the United States

2. Debates

Pro Logo vs No Logo forum (web radio) – a debate between Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and Sameena Ahmad, business correspondent for The Economist http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/09262002

3. Policy Analysis

a. The Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies – excellent summaries of complex economic and political issues – www.ips-dc.org

b. The Center for Economic and Policy Research – in-depth research papers -- www.cepr.net

c. International Forum on Globalization – an alliance of sixty activists, economists, and researchers propose innovative solutions – www.ifg.org

d. Alliance for Responsible Trade -- alternatives to the Free Trade Area of the Americas -- www.art-us.org

e. Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter – info on networks of worker cooperatives –www.geonewsletter.org

f. Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy – research on corporate responsibility – www.poclad.org

g. CorpWatch – information on corporate power and resistance to corporate globalization – www.corpwatch.org

h. The Co-Intelligence Institute – catalogues methods for practicing deep democracy in various settings – www.co-intelligence.org

4. Organized Resistance

a. Mobilization for Global Justice – central organizers at Seattle, DC, Quebec protests – www.globalizethis.org

b. Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes / Anti-Capitalist Convergence – decentralized “affinity groups” working to challenge corporate globalization – various websites, start at http://www.abolishthebank.org/

c. Global Exchange – creative projects confronting oppression and inequality – www.globalexchange.org

d. Students against Sweatshops – over 200 campuses organzing to improve labor conditions – various websites

5. Videos

a. This is What Democracy Looks Like, 2000, 70 minutes.  Experience the 1999 Seattle WTO protests at street level.  www.bignoisefilms.com.

b. Global Village or Global Pillage! 1999, 27 minutes.  An overview of the global economy and the possibilities for changing it. 

c. Manufacturing Consent, 1993, 167 minutes.  Documentary exploring the thought of Noam Chomsky, critic of ideology in the media.  www.zeitgeistvideo.com.