>Perhaps it is unkind of me or even heretical of me to say it, but I
>think there's something to the claim (usually voiced by neo-liberal
>apologists, or paleo-Marxist Prometheans like Heartfield on this
>list) that a certain (liberal upper middle-class) segment of the
>anti-globalization movement opposes the further incorporation of
>Third World land and labor into circuits of capital accumulation b/c
>they want the Third World to be preserved in some kind of imagined
>exotic splendor, free of the rationalized and predictable built and
>social landscapes of advanced capitalism. In other words, this is
>the "anti-globalization" politics of the First World eco-tourist who
>vacations by trekking around the Tibetan plateau. Instead of
>fighting to transform the heartlands of the empire -- i.e. the
>deadening physical landscapes of strip malls, theme parks, and
>subdivisions, and social landscapes of shopping, infotainment,
>alienating and time-consuming work, etc. -- into red-green paradises
>(hence obviating the need to "get away" to faraway paradises), this
>creature takes a stand against "corporate globalization" in order to
>preserve the escape hatch of the "unruined" Third World (and I
>should add only someone of a upper-middle class background has the
>financial security but perhaps more importantly the liberal
>education and cultural disposition to _want _ to do this). In other
>words, if one puts on his or her Freudian-Marxist thinking cap, I
>think it is possible to frame the peculiarly "modernist anti-modern"
>(for only moderns can be anti-modern) dimensions of the
>anti-"corporate globalization" movement as being about the
>_cultural_ politics of the liberal upper-middle class.
"Something to the claim...certain segment...it is possible..." Well yeah, but lots of student activists, for example, are taking their cue from workers, doing what they can from their position of relative privilege to act in solidarity with some severely exploited value-producers. They're not dreaming of ecotourism paradises, they're dreaming of decent wages and factory air that doesn't make you sick.
Doug