To assert that economists use statistics for the same reason that the military uses body-counts: to dehumanize the victims and make it easy to carry on with the task requires some guts, and this is the kind of language that The Big Sellout is not afraid to use. Of course when you have heavy-weights such as Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, there will be few objections to the validity of the argument.
Directed by Florian Opitz, this documentary about the real consequences of privatization was my favorite at the recent HotDocs. Its biggest accomplishment is to reveal the characters affected by globalization, thus humanizing the problem again. Making it clear that it is not about statistics or economics. It is about the people that have their lives affected in such a way that many of them are robbed of their most essential rights. To do this he recruited a small group of local heroes battling with the consequences of privatization in very different ways: a South African hacking the electrical system to give power to the poorest, an [...]
One of my favorite sites, WorldChanging posted the article Can Migration Change the World? by Alex Steffen. I applaud the fact that migration is recognized as a force that can shape the world and lead positive change:
Maybe we need to start to rethink migration, not in the light of the discussions we’ve had in the past (huddled masses and all), but in the light of a 21st Century, globally-intertwined society. Migrants, though they may be looking to better themselves, ought perhaps to be seen (here in the Global North) as our partners in creating the prosperity we expect; and we ought to perhaps regard our interactions with them as the best opportunity we have for global diplomacy and sustainable development
However, realizing that we have explored this topic in much more depth here I felt compelled to add a few comments to their post:
You address the usual issues: remittances, migrant integration and even suggest a few novel ideas such as micro-financing which is proving to be quite effective for certain type of action. Allow me to share what I’ve learned after almost a year of editing the Global Culture blog:
To talk about the North and the South as [...]
A new take on the old debate of homogenization of culture in hands of global corporations is brought by the Global Politician with an article by Trish Hallmark. Exploring the usual argument about how deep american culture has penetrated other countries and whether or not this has had a positive influence on them is nothing new, maybe just interesting for a few key facts:
Through “good old fashioned capitalism” America came to the forefront of global culture. McDonalds owns over 30,000 restaurants world-wide, in 113 countries. Starbucks sells coffee-on-the-go in 40 overseas markets, operating 12,000 stores and plans to open new stores in Brazil, India, Egypt and Russia. Nike has stores on six continents. Wal-Mart has 2,700 global retail units employing 500,000 and according to FLOW reports authored by Michael Strong (CEO) and co-founder of FLOW, ‚”WalMart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.” (Global Envision website article, October 6, 2006.)
I have explored this argument with the posts jazz & macdonald’s, misunderstanding globalization and is far coast cool?. But I find the suggestion that corporate social responsibility is now becoming part of the [...]
Via a beautiful visual essay on the latest ADBUSTERS, I learned about the book Planet of Slums from urbanist theorist and activist Mike Davis. A sample from the book that reminds of previous posts in this blog:
Sometime in the next year or two, a woman will give birth in the Lagos slum of Ajegunle, a young man will flee his village in west Java for the bright lights of Jakarta, or a farmer will move his impoverished family into one of Lima’s inumerable pueblos jovenes. The exact moment is unimportant and it will pass unnoticed. Nonetheless it will constitute a watershed in human history; comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions. For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural. Indeed, given the imprecisions of Third World censuses, this epochal transition may already have occurred
Indeed. How can it be possible to know anything about what is happening in places like these? Above a section of what is known as “Ciudad Neza” in Mexico City. Click to open the Google Map and zoom in to appreciate the detail. This is undeveloped land beyond the city limits. [...]
NetSquared is preparing for its 2007 Conference by allowing the public to vote on the projects that will be the focus of the event. As their tag line indicates they are “remixing the web for social change” so while the projects are very diverse they all share the spirit of this project: leveraging technology to advance social causes. Upon reviewing the list I found a few projects that may be of interest to the readers of this blog:
nabuur.com: the global neighbour network: by allowing volunteers to provide expertise needed by remote communities, they are leveraging the “energy of global citizens” to resolve real problems.
Most villages around the world will never get outside assistance to solve some of their issues. Interestingly, the required knowledge, experience, contacts, goods, manpower or money usually exist, elsewhere. And millions of global citizens want to DO something concrete. But today’s institutions (governments, businesses and ngo’s), are not designed to connect the demand in the villages to the supply of the global citizens. Fortunately, for the first time in history there is a medium, the internet, that allows such direct communication of many to many. So imagine a reliable, moderated platform where [...]
Prof. Mike Madison has published his Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh, recognizing above all that in an era of hyper-connectivity there are plenty of resources that cities must take advantage of in order to leverage the influence they have on other regions by means of their fellow citizens who have migrated.
In the 21st century, connectivity is key and king, and in that connected world, Pittsburgh has a unique asset, which we call the Pittsburgh diaspora: the thousands of people who live around the world yet who still identify closely with the Steel City. They grew up in Pittsburgh, worked in Pittsburgh, or have family in Pittsburgh. By identifying with Pittsburgh they energize it emotionally. We believe that it is possible to translate that emotional energy into economic energy. Pittsburgh can, should, and must recapture and benefit from the intellectual, economic, and cultural capital associated with the Pittsburgh diaspora. That capital is distributed geographically, but it can be invested locally.
In tone with my previous post big city, in which I wrote about how world change must start by focusing on big cities, the effort from Prof. Madison will likely lead to widespread change with roots in the Pittsburgh local scene, but [...]
After being offline (no web, email or blogs!) for over a week I’m catching up with my feeds to find the stories that tell the tale of this incredibly diverse world. The first one comes via Michael Parekh about an editorial on Barron’s Online entitled End the Work-Visa Lottery by Thomas G. Donlan:
[April 2] was the first day that applicants could file for the 65,000 H-1B visas that admit foreigners to work in the U.S. as engineers, programmers or other skilled workers. By that afternoon, more than 150,000 people had filed. By Tuesday afternoon, the golden gates were closed.
The posts complain about the lottery-type of system in which as many as 85,000 applicants and their sponsors will be left without a solution. Because of the type of visa, these are immigrants that have already found a job in the United States. According to the H1 Base site there is already legislation being pushed to top the number of accepted immigrants through this type of visa to 115,000 and allow for annual raises to 180,000 as market conditions dictate.
The nature of these visas allows applicants to apply for a permanent resident visa down the road should they decide [...]
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