A new kind of world
«(…)
Take globalization as an example. The dominant Western view has been that
globalization is a process by which the rest of the world becomes, and should
become, increasingly Westernized, with the adoption of free markets, the import
of Western capital, privatization, the rule of law, human rights regimes and
democratic norms. Much political effort, indeed, has been expended by the West
towards this end. Competition, the market and technology, meanwhile, have been
powerful and parallel pressures fostering the kind of convergence and homogeneity
which is visible in many developing cities around the world in the form of
high-rise buildings, expressways, mobile phones, and much else. There are,
however, strong countervailing forces, rooted in the specifi c history and
culture of each society, that serve to shape indigenous institutions like the
family, the government and the company and which pull in exactly the opposite
direction. Furthermore, as countries grow more prosperous they become
increasingly self-confident about their own culture and history, and thereby
less inclined to ape the West. Far from being a one-way process, globalization
is rather more complex: the United States may have been the single most influential
player, exerting enormous power in successive rounds of global trade talks, for
example, but the biggest winner has been East Asia and the greatest single benefi
ciary China. The process of globalization involves an unending tension between
on the one hand the forces of convergence, including Western political
pressure, and on the other hand the counter-trend towards divergence and
indigenization.
Prior
to 1960, the West and Japan enjoyed a huge economic advantage over the rest of
the world, which still remained largely agrarian in character, but since then a
gamut of developing countries have closed the gap with the West, especially
those in East Asia. As a consequence, it is becoming increasingly difficult to
distinguish between the developed world and the more advanced parts of the
developing world: South Korea and Taiwan, for example, are now to be counted as
developed. But as countries reach Western levels of development, do they become
more like the West, or less like the West, or perhaps paradoxically a
combination of the two? Clearly the pressures for convergence indicate the
former but the forces of divergence and indigenization suggest the contrary.
Previously, the overarching difference between
the developed and the developing world was the huge disparity in their levels
of economic development. It is only with the arrival of these countries at the
lower reaches of Western levels of development that the question of convergence
or divergence becomes pertinent. There has been an assumption by the Western
mainstream that there is only one way of being modern, which involves the
adoption of Western-style institutions, values, customs and beliefs, such as
the rule of law, the free market and democratic norms. This, one might add, is
an attitude typically held by peoples and cultures who regard themselves as
more developed and more civilized than others: that progress for those
who are lower down on the developmental scale involves them becoming more like
those who are higher up». In Martin Jacques, Quando a China Mandar no Mundo,
2009, 2012, Temas e Debates, Círculo de Leitores, ISBN 978-989-644-196-8,
Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-713-992-540.
Cortesia de TeDebates/CdeLeitores/PenguinB/JDACT
