Democracy?

The Rhododendrons are just beginning to bloom, but more importantly they are more vibrantly green everyday.

Much of this blog has probably read like a travel log, Tom's friluftsliv adventures...every now and then I have reflected a bit on issues and even commented on the politics back home--like my cheering the health care efforts. I have deliberately tried to avoid spending too much time complaining about the state of American society...it's easy to see the things that bother me from a distanced perspective; I actually think I have spent much more time thinking about all the American things I care about and miss. But today I cannot contain my disdain for the news from home. I am referring to Arizona. I feel the strongest sense of dread for my country than I have since the start of war in Iraq (the second one).

How often do we hear the phrase, ‘we live in a global society’ and accept it without really thinking about what it means? I have to admit to not clearly understanding the idea of globalization despite its’ ubiquitous presence in our daily lives, much like the term ‘sustainability.’ There is assumption that everyone shares a common understanding. Thus while reading a very interesting book, For Space by Doreen Massey (2005) I was struck by Massey’s consideration of 'globalization.' There is one particular reference that really provoked me, given its timing in conjunction with political events back home. Massey writes:

The dominant institutions and governments which clamour most strongly in favour of globalization argue for it in terms of free trade. And they argue for ‘free trade’ in terms which in turn suggest that there is some self-evident right to global mobility. The very term ‘free’ immediately implies something good , something to be aimed at. It is self-evidently right that space should be unbounded. Yet, come a debate on immigration, and they immediately have recourse to another geographical imagination altogether, another vision of global space which is equally powerful, equally—apparently—incontrovertibile. This second imagination is the imagination of defensible places, of the rights of ‘local people’ to their own ‘local places’, of a world divided by difference and the smack of firm boundaries, a geographical imagination of nationalisms. In one breath such spokespeople assume that ‘free trade’ is akin to some moral virtue; in the next they pour out venom against asylum-seekers (widely assumed to be bogus) and ‘economic migrants’ (‘economics’, it seems is not good enough reason to want to migrate—what was it they were saying about capital?). (p. 86)

The timing I reference is the signing into law the anti-illegal immigration bill in the US state of Arizona. My analysis of this bill signed into law concludes that it is nothing short of institutional racism. While few would argue with a region’s desire to rid itself of drug trafficking and other illegal activity (the reasons usually presented in conjunction with this law), the reality from my viewpoint is that the United States has created a situation where it wants its economy to flourish ‘globally’ i.e. having access to the rest of the world, yet without providing reciprocity in terms of open borders for economic opportunity. My guess is that most people in Arizona (and all over the USA) benefit from cheap labor all over the world just via the clothing that they wear…and the cheap gas prices allow us to use resources at an alarming rate without paying the true ‘global’ environmental costs…Americans benefit, via inexpensive products, at the cost of other people producing for export when they should be producing for local consumption and regional sustainability…It represents policies that argue for the free movement of capital yet against the free movement of labor. Massey writes: “So here we have two apparently self-evident truths, a geography of borderlessness and mobility, and geography of border discipline; two completely antinomic geographical imaginations of global space, which are called upon in turn” (p. 86). It is this very contradiction which is so difficult to understand, especially while living in Sweden and trying to gain a deeper perspective on the EU, i.e. how Sweden fits into a united Europe. One of the accomplishments the EU notes on the official EU website is ‘borderfree travel and borderfree business’ thus, it is from this emphasis on the shared identity of the European nations comprising the EU that I look back to the US. Not a fair comparison on many levels, but what does globalization really look like? Massey writes:

And so in this era of ‘globalisation’ we have sniffer dogs to detect people hiding in the holds of boats, people dying in the attempt to cross frontiers, people precisely trying to ‘seek out the best opportunities’. That double imaginary, in the very fact of its doubleness, of the freedom of space on one hand and the ‘right to one’s own place’ on the other, works in favor of the already powerful. Capital, the rich, the skilled…can move easily about in the world, as investment, or trade, as sought-after labour or as tourists; and at the same time, whether it be in the immigration-controlled countires of the West, or the gated communities of the rich in any major metropolis anywhere, or in the elite enclosures of knowledge production and high technology, they can protect their fortress homes. Meanwhile the poor and the unskilled from the so-called margins of this world are both instructed to open up their borders and welcome the West’s invasion in whatever form it comes, and told to stay where they are. (p. 86-87).

Massey’s rich imagery gives me ideas of what globalization looks like to many…It is obvious from world events that the point Massey is making is that ‘globilization’ exists for the powerful, certainly not for all. I am disgusted by the actions in Arizona. Not wanting to sound overly dramatic, but I fear for our American democracy. There you have my left leaning perspective on this gray May Day in Göteborg...


Global Göteborg