CHALLENGING CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION: TARGETS, OPPORTUNITIES, CONTRADICTIONS
Visiting Professor: Patrick Bond, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Course Description:
Using mainly a critical literature, this course will begin by surveying debates regarding the nature of the capitalist-driven globalization process said to be central to defining the parameters of contemporary international political economy. After then identifying differing possible foundational positions on key strategic problems, the course will focus on the nature of the various resistances -- some as dramatic as the "Battle of Seattle" and similar confrontations in Prague, Washington and Quebec City, others more modest and localized but no less worthy of attention -- that this process has given rise to. The world-wide scope of such resistance will be emphasized, highlighting common structural processes and political patterns that are evident around the world; within this framework, several cross-cutting case studies will serve to illustrate the way in which targets are understood, opportunities are created, and contradictions emerge.
Simultaneously, however, careful consideration will have to be given to the very specific (and often unique) socio-economic conditions, political traditions, discourses, and strategies/tactics that prevail in a range of diverse settings. (The geographical areas of North America and Southern Africa will provide the main material for study, but other instances of resistance -- in South Korea, India and Mexico -- will also be explored.) In consequence, serious questions will be raised as to whether the sometimes convergent, sometimes divergent campaigns associated with opposition to globalization are and/or can be sustainable, cumulative and generalizable. Is the phenomenon of international resistance truly a "movement" (a "Mobilization for Global Justice" as it was termed in Washington last April) or instead merely a set of discrete, disconnected and untenable issues/organizations which may never achieve a lasting alliance and gain sufficient power to make change?
To answer these questions will require an analysis of the balance of forces across a broad front and, in particular, a sensitivity to question of the politics of scale. Thus the relative importance of local, national, regional, hemispheric and global activities will be examined, as will the nature and degree of the interrelationship amongst struggles at these different levels. Various contradictions said to haunt the new global resistance movement -- the tensions between North/South and national/global preoccupations; the relative claims of labour-based, identity-based and environmental concerns; and of populist, socialist, feminist and green politics -- will also be explored, as will a number of concrete case studies of key global policy areas.
The course is grounded in an awareness that both the mounting of resistance to the process of "globalization from above" and the theorizing of any such resistance represent relatively new undertakings amongst political economists. Controversies that are at once practical and analytical have arisen in the recent international literature about such phenomena; moreover, the dilemmas such controversies evoke continue to make the work of alliance-building between various forces extremely challenging. This course must therefore proceed with precisely the fine balance of modesty and boldness that its ambitious agenda, scientific but also profoundly political, demands.
Visiting Professor:
This course will be led by PATRICK BOND, currently Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and Development Management of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Bond has written dozens of articles and a number of books on issues of capitalist globalization, notably with respect to the impact of that process on southern Africa (his books include "Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa;" "Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance, Development and Underdevelopment;" "Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal: Essays on South Africa's New Urban Crisis;" and four forthcoming works, "Sustainable Development in South Africa?;" "South Africa: Apartheid and After" [with John S. Saul]; "Zimbabwe's Plunge;" and "Threatening Global Apartheid: South Africa's Windows on the World Bank, the IMF and International Finance.") He is also closely linked to a wide range of initiatives that assist in coordinating and analyzing resistance to capitalist globalization (as a participant in the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town, the 50 Years is Enough South Council in Washington, and the Center for Economic Justice in Albuquerque, for example, and as a contributor to a wide range of progressive periodicals) and continues to travel extensively in undertaking both scientific and political work relevant to the subject-matter of this course. In addition to Professor Bond, special guest participants in one or more of the sessions in the course will include Canadian authors NAOMI KLEIN and LINDA MCQUAIG, whose recent books will be studied. Professor JOHN S. SAUL of the Department of Political Science will coordinate the course.
Required Preparatory Reading:
All participants in this course should read Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (South End Press: Boston, 2000) prior to the commencement of this course, as well as one additional text (drawn from a list prepared by the coordinator and specifically assigned to each registered participant), the main arguments of which that participant will be expected to present briefly to the seminar sometime in the course of our deliberations. A course kit will also be available for purchase with key extracts from a range of relevant readings.
Assignments:
A grade will be established on the following basis: (1) the extent and quality of the student's active participation in the seminars; (2) a brief book review of the text assigned for seminar presentation, due at the end of the first week of the seminar (Friday, July 6); a short paper on an assigned topic, due NOT LATER THAN Monday, July 16.
Format:
The seminar will meet every weekday morning from 9:30 to 12:30 between July 3 and July 13; in addition, there will be one or two additional sessions held in the afternoon or early evening during the two week period and a one-day workshop (which is also to involve participants from the wider Toronto community but which students are expected to attend) at the end of the course.
Information and Application:
Graduate students in York's Faculty of Environmental Studies who wish to apply to take this course should contact Ms. Peggy McGrath at 416-736-2100, ext. 33254/<peggym at yorku.ca>. Similarly, graduate students in York's Department of Political Science who wish to apply should contact Ms Jlenya Sarra at 416-736-2100, ext. 88825/<jsarra at yorku.ca>. The number of spaces in this course is limited, but some of these spaces have also been set aside for interested persons from the wider community, engaged in either academic and non-academic pursuits, whom we would encourage to apply; any such potential participants should also contact Ms Sarra for further information. (Please note that for all participants who are not seeking academic credit, the fee for the course is CDN $500.) John S. Saul, the host York professor who will coordinate the course, may be reached at <johnsaul at yorku.ca>. *****