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2001 / 5
Globalization and its Victims
Introduction: The Reasons for Returning to This Theme
Jon Sobrino and Feliz Winfred
September 11 was a very dark day of the twenty-first century. Thousands of living people were burnt alive and crushed to death in that senseless attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, and on the Pentagon in Washington.
This crime against humanity ought to be condemned in the severest terms. However, we need to do more, and ask ourselves, why such a thing?
Explanations could abound. But we cannot stop thinking, perhaps, that such an act was a symbol of something more than meets the eye. In a globalizing world with growing disparity as tall as the soaring towers of the Trade Centre, and misery as deep as the bottom of the ocean, the anger of the victims explode. Was it perhaps a symbolic and defiant hit at the trade and transnational capital which engineers globalization?
The process of globalization has surely created mind-boggling modes of fast communication and has infinitely multiplied the exchange of information. This is something very positive about globalization. The technology and science which have gone into it compel us to take our hats off in respect. Having said that, we need also to add that the new possibilities of communication do not automatically mean that there is greater solidarity that is truly a human and intersubjective reality.
Globalization is a maya, the term for illusion in classical Indian philosophy. It creates a world of make-believe which people happily inhabit. Let us think about the fictitious world of advertisements which offer instant solutions for every imaginable problem, and aggressive marketing strategies which can magically turn black into white and white into black. But let us remember this sweet illusion is good for the haves and the powerful of the world. We need to be awakened from this illusion by the poor who have both their legs planted on the ground, in reality. The victims tell us that their [12] world is one of struggle for food, water, shelter, basic education, primary medical needs, and so on. It is a very different world from the one which may be seen from the towers of trade centres and stock-exchanges. The world of maya cannot be a place to make a judgment on the situation of the world and plan its future. We need to interrogate the victims of our present world as to what globalization has brought to them. Has it really brought greater humanization or more poverty and destitution? What hopes and aspirations do the poor of the globe have? What would be their possible agenda for our world?
Another illusion globalization creates is that our world is becoming united. But the hard fact is that humanity has never been so fragmented as it is today. For globalization, in spite of its appearance, is in fact a process of exclusion. If the world is believed to be one because it offers greater chances of profit-making by widening the market-potential transnationally, or by making the labour force available across the borders, this cannot amount to a greater unity of humanity, if the same process means exclusion of people. During feudal times poor tenants were wanted, though they were subjugated; in the industrial capitalism, workers were wanted, even though they were often denied just wages. But today, with globalization, we have reached a situation where the poor ones are not wanted. These are the victims we are talking about. They have become redundant. The emergence of an underclass everywhere as a result of globalization is there for everybody to see. A look at the situation in the developed countries of the North - not to mention the situation in the South — would show how unemployment is becoming a serious issue, even while the so-called ‘new poverty’ seems to take hold of the weaker and poorer ones even in these countries. What we need is greater unity of the human family which will be simultaneously also a pursuit for greater justice. There is an indissociable co-relation between unity and justice. Globalization promises unity, but does not achieve it because it lacks justice, and that is why it cannot be a credible unity of the world. The real problem is not modernity, but equal opportunity for access to modernity.
Globalization is a cultural process as well. The very logic of globalization, with economy as the driving force, calls for homogenization of culture, of production and consumption, and way of life. Globalization seems to admit cultural diversity as long as it falls within and in service of the overarching sub-culture globalization is. trying to create world-wide. As a result, the cultural diversity of peoples and nations become more and more museum pieces. On the other hand, the very cultural-homogenization process [13] inherent in globalization has led to revival and assertion of cultural, ethnic and religious identities. The net result is a world with escalating conflicts and fragmentation.
Too little would be achieved if this issue of Concilium were to be dedicated solely to a critique of globalization. A critique of globalization is not an invitation to assume an atavistic and anti-modern posture. We are inviting readers to see that behind the critique there is an ardent yearning for a different order of things, for greater human solidarity.
A faith-inspired vision of globalization takes us to the very heart of two important Christian concerns: unity of the human family or the ideal of universality ; and the reality of the poor. On both these issues we need to reflect critically, and in hope. This issue of Concilium goes into the biblical and theological aspects of the dream of the unity of human family from the vantage point of the present victims of our world. Here, as we can see, both unity and justice are built up through the poor and the victims of this world and all those who side with them. If we listen to the cries of the victims, and take our Christian faith seriously, and take seriously the prophetic biblical tradition and the Jesus tradition, and pay attention to the more recent Medellin tradition, we will realize that they all have something important to tell us. These traditions call upon us to unmask the cover-ups and the lies that globalization represents. We are called to practice the eighth commandment which prohibits lie and falsehood. ‘Oh, you who call evil good and good evil, who call light darkness and darkness light' (Isa. 5.20). Suppressing truth with injustice is a primordial sin of humanity which leads to dehumanization (Rom. 1.18 ff.). Any judgment or evaluation of globalization has to be measured against the criterion of whether it brings life or death to the majority of the people in our globe. The discourse on globalization needs to be judged on the basis of its general trajectory: whether it moves in the direction of unveiling the reality, or of bringing death in the form of poverty, exclusion, discrimination, and so on. The Johannine tradition affirms it very clearly. The Evil One is a murderer and a liar, and in that order (John 8.44). It covers up the evil of its actions with lies.
The utopia of unity points to the whole or totality. However, this whole or `globalization' should be human, and indeed should point to the whole of human family symbolized in Jesus’ vision of the banquet of the kingdom which God has prepared for the poor and the victims of this world, and from which no one of good will is excluded. The whole or the universal should be extensive enough to include every human person and all of the human being. [14] It should respect the diversity among peoples in terms of religions and cultures, values and symbols. This would not be juxtaposing peoples, or still worse homogenizing them and their lives. The various religious traditions converge, though in different forms and symbols, in projecting a future unity of humankind. The realization of this utopia, so much part of Jesus’ vision, calls also for the adoption of appropriate means. Jesus himself has indicated it, namely that the kingdom of God is a reality promised to the poor (Luke 6.20). Hence, the utopia of the human family as a united whole should place the poor at its centre.
From the standpoint of faith, globalization, as we experience it today, needs redemption, since it continues to produce a host of evils. Here again, the Christian biblical tradition tells us that redemption comes from the poor and the despised ones of the earth. The central symbol of redemption is the crucified and resurrected one. The crucified people could redeem globalization by overcoming the ‘civilization of riches’ through their ‘civilization of poverty’. The poor and the victims after all are not simply the ones to whom the gospel is directed; they are too active historical subjects who prepare the banquet of the kingdom of God, where people from the East and West will come and sit at the same table (Matt. 8.11).
It is this vision and these thoughts which inspired the present issue of Concilium on Globalization and its Victims. The importance of the theme goes without saying. We know that much has been talked and written about globalization at different levels. But, the phenomenon has not been reflected upon sufficiently from a theological point of view. This issue intends to be a modest contribution in that direction. It is structured in four parts. The first part goes critically into the various dimensions of globalization - economic, cultural, etc. It is followed by the second section which is a critique of the phenomenon from the biblical and theological point of view. Theological reflection on the subject is not meant to be a separate entity all by itself. Theological reflections are woven in different forms into the texture of the various contributions we are presenting here. Together they form a theological discourse which needs to be further pursued and deepened. The third part, without claiming to offer an exhaustive description, presents important elements of how globalization is perceived in the diverse continents. The fourth part offers an alternative to present-day globalization as `the utopia of the human family', from the point of view of the diverse religions and of the Christian biblical tradition. This part ends with a reflection on the need for globalization to receive redemption from the victims.
[15] The issue closes with a chronicle of a March for Peace in Butembo, Congo, on 24 February 2001. It is an expression of the ‘globalization of quality’, of the universalization of solidarity and hope.