franke's page             anthropology department webpage

Richard W. Franke, Department of Anthropology
Montclair State University Globalization Teach-In
18 February 2002
What’s Wrong with Globalization?

What today we call globalization results from a two-stage process.

Phase 1. 1970 to 1992: From Debt Trap to Structural Adjustment

During the 1970s many developing countries fell prey to an avalanche of unregulated lending by first world banks flush with petrodollars. As the bills came due in the 1980s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) took on the role of enforcers, demanding what came to be called "Structural Adjustment," a package of policies that undermined national autonomy and assaulted wages and public sector investment by third world central governments.

From 1978 to 1992, more than 70 third world countries were subjected to 566 "stabilization" and structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the IMF and World Bank (McMichael 2000:134; Bello et al. 1994:31 and 132). SAPs radically reduce government spending, including education and health spending, liberalize imports, remove restrictions on foreign investment, privatize state enterprises, devalue currency, and freeze or cut wages (Bello 2000:12- 13).

SAPs are "designed quite explicitly to bring a recession" (MacEwan 1999:145). SAP recessions throughout the 1980s effectively reversed much of the development that had taken place up to that decade. Between 1984 and 1990, third world countries transferred $178 billion to first world commercial banks (Bello et al. 1994:68). Simultaneously per capita incomes in Africa decreased by 12.5%. In Latin America they dropped 9.1% (Pinstrup-Anderson 1993:87). Poverty levels in Latin America rose from 25% in 1980 to 30% by the end of the decade. In Ghana, often presented as an SAP showcase, a long-term trend of falling infant mortality rates was reversed by a 20% increase from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s (Pinstrup-Anderson 1993:105). Between 1980 and 1990 the percentage of underweight African children increased from 22 million to 38 million (Gardner and Halweil 2000:62). In Brazil, another SAP showcase, 60,000 "extra" child deaths are attributed to the 1980s SAP-induced recessions. In the same decade, the third world generally absorbed more than 500,000 recession-related deaths, not including war deaths (Grant 1989:1; The New York Times, 20 December 1988). Structural adjustment can reasonably be called a first world attack on the development potential of third world nations.

Phase 2. Free Trade and the Undemocratic Shrinking Third World State

The first world attack on third world development continued into the 1990s and expanded to include the former second world nations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In 1999, "More than 80 countries still have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or more ago," while "55 countries mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS, former republics of the Soviet Union] have had declining per capita incomes since 1990" (UNDP 1999:2–3). Between 1970 and 1997, 13 countries experienced declining life expectancy (computed from UNDP 1999:168–71). In Zambia, per capita incomes fell 10% between 1980 and 1986 and school enrollments declined. "In effect, all the development indicators, including infant mortality, took a downturn under the impact of adjustment policies" (McMichael 2000:132). The impact continued after the 1980s: infant mortality went from 76 in 1989 to 113 in 1997 (World Bank 1991:159; World Bank 1999:243).

These grim statistics are effects of the second stage of the first world project to reassert domination over the former colonies and now many of the former socialist nations. As early as 1989, the World Bank began to assert that "evaluating governance within debtor countries is within its jurisdiction" (McMichael 2000:145). Through the SAPs, third world states are being ordered to diminish their protections of their poorest citizens. Richard Falk (1999:3) notes, that "‘predatory globalization’ has eroded, if not altogether broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century or so."

Since 1995, shrinking the third world state has been furthered by the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a body of "global managers [who] assume extraordinary powers to manage the web of global economic relations lying across nation-states, often at the expense of national and/or democratic process. . . . Their proceedings are secret, denying citizen participation." (McMichael 2000:176). WTO bureaucrats can overrule national attempts to use tariffs, taxes, or other government devices to protect workers or businesses. The WTO rules in the name of "free trade," despite the recognition by academic economists that "Virtually all of our experience with economic development suggests that extensive regulation of foreign commerce by a country’s government has been an essential foundation for successful economic growth" (MacEwan 1999:36). Free trade, argues MacEwan (1999:31–65), is a "Neo-liberal myth." MacEwan’s claim is reinforced by a recent study showing that per capita output grew 83% during the pre-globalization period of 1960–80, but declined to 33% in the SAP-WTO free trade era of 1980–2000. The 33% growth was accounted for mostly by China, other East Asian countries, and South Asia, while Middle Eastern States and Subsaharan Africa registered economic decline with the onset of free trade. Latin America and The Caribbean dropped from 75% growth to just above 6% (Weisbrot, Naiman, and Kim 2000; Weisbrot, Baker, Naiman, and Neta 2001:3). Of 116 countries, 89 experienced growth rate declines in the 1980–2000 period of increased free trade. A further study shows that the declines in the rates of growth have been paralleled by declines in the rates of improvement in life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy rates in almost all cases. In the second poorest group of countries, adult female mortality actually worsened in the period 1980–2000 (Weisbrot, Baker, Kraev, and Chen 2001:11).

SAPs and free trade rules from the WTO essentially take over from the third world state at the top. International agencies centralize and dominate at the global level what had been at least partially the independent prerogatives of nation-states. This centralization of international economic power in the hands of first world-appointed bureaucrats is the essence of what today is referred to as "globalization." At the same time, decentralization, now the buzzword in first world development agencies, weakens third world states by erosion from the bottom. One element of this erosion is privatization, viewed by decentralization theorists (such as Rondinelli, Nellis, and Cheema 1984:10, 23–26) as a particular component of the delegation form of decentralization. In Mexico, a World Bank/IMF model, more than 80% of the 1,555 government-owned companies were sold or dissolved during 1980s SAPs. Tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated (McMichael 2000:180). Throughout the third world, governments have been ordered to sell off thousands of state-owned or operated companies, often at rock-bottom prices for which they are scooped up by the rich.

Decentralization plays a role in the SAP/WTO scenario by transferring state responsibilities to lower levels of government. This is supposed to reduce government expenses, a key element of SAPs. It may also be intended to deflect some of the dangers to the central government by making lower administrative levels the targets of popular protest and thereby weakening the ability of opposition movements to forge national campaigns. How well this has worked is not clear because SAPs have led to widespread, often violent, resistance. The "states of unrest" website (States of Unrest 2000) for the year 2000 lists major and extended protests against SAPs in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Paraguay, South Africa, and Zambia. Some of the protests involved thousands of people and some led to general strikes. In Argentina a court found the IMF directly responsible for "a damaging economic policy." In Bolivia, hundreds of thousands demonstrated and organised a strike in Cochabamba, the country’s third largest city, to protest a 200% increase in the price of water following a World Bank attempt to impose a foreign-owned privatized supply company, Bechtel. Police killed eight protesters in the engagements. Nonetheless, the people of Cochabamba won at least a temporary victory when the Bolivian government revoked the water concession it had earlier awarded to Bechtel (Barlow 2000).

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What’s the Alternative?
Community-Sustainable Devlopment and Fair Trade

Where do we go after protesting?

In my view, the developing countries today need to achieve two breakthroughs:

1.First, they should squeeze as much quality of life improvement as possible out of the existing growth rates, no matter how apparently inadequate. In other words, they should try to break the correlation between GDP and quality of life to the greatest extent possible. If the entire world requires a US level GDP to get a US infant mortality rate, the strain on the earth’s natural resources might be too great. Instead, developing countries should increase the efficiency of their growth to the greatest possible levels in terms of the quality of life output. Redistribution of wealth as exemplified in the Kerala model of development can dramatically improve the quality of life and does not require foreign aid or high-growth strategies.

2. Secondly, they should design growth strategies that are community-oriented and community-sustainable. Community-sustainable growth means that the resources for job-creation and wealth creation remain available to the community over long periods of time. Here are some examples.

Porto Alegre, Brazil, where more than 50,000 people attended the counter WEF (World Economic Forum) meeting under the theme "Another world is possible." Following the 1989 election victory of the Workers Party, a people’s budgeting experiment was devised. The city of 1.3 million is divided into sixteen regions in which local assemblies are held and delegates elected for higher level assemblies that eventually make budget allocation proposals generally accepted by the urban and state-level representative bodies (Santos 1998:471–73). Overall allocations reflect both regional size and need and priorities are assigned through a system of weights and degree of representation (Santos 1998:474–75). In 1996, it was estimated that around 100,000 persons participated in assemblies of the various levels, equal to about 8% of the population (Santos 1998:485–86). Assuming that 70% of the population is of voting age, the percent of voters would come to about 11%. The people’s budgeting experiment seems to have stimulated the development of smaller-scale neighborhood associations which increased in number from 300 in 1988 to 540 by 1998 (Baiocchi 1999:16).

In Porto Alegre in 1989, just prior to People’s Budgeting, 49% of the people had access to safe drinking water and proper sewage. In 1996, drinking water access rose to 98% while for sewage the figure was 85%. Road paving needs were reduced by 50%. There was a doubling of students in elementary schools (Santos 1998:485). The increase in school access was achieved by increasing the number of municipal schools from twenty-nine to eighty-six from 1986–88 to 1992–95. The number of families receiving housing assistance in that period rose from 1,714 to 28,862 (Baiocchi 1999:12).

From 1987 to 1993, the north Brazilian state of Cear registered an annual growth rate of 3.4%. The Brazilian national rate was 0.87%, and the Northeast region of Brazil, long one of the country’s poorest, experienced a 0.04% decline. In Cear polio and measles vaccination rates went from 25% to 90%, the infant mortality rate declined from 102 to sixty-five per thousand, the percent of municipalities with nurses increased from 30% to almost 100%, and 65% of the population began receiving monthly visits from health assistants (Tendler 1997:12 and 22). In a detailed study Judith Tendler concluded massive changes for the better were effected by dedication and creative energy of two state governors and the antagonistic forces they set in motion were reinforced by policies encouraging worker dedication at lower levels through a strong state-created sense of "calling," the ability of workers to carry out varied and satisfying tasks, pressures in the community for better accountability, and government recognition for the 7,300 rural women health activists who were adequately trained (1997:14 and 42).

In Kerala State, India, from 1996 to 2001, a remarkable experiment in participatory democracy was carried out. Three million people, ten percent of the population, took part in local assemblies where they planned their own development with little bureaucratic interference. The results were also remarkable.

During its first three years, for which the data have been compiled, the campaign has yielded striking physical achievements. Local communities like Panjal, together:

• Built 306,288 houses, compared with 269,988 built in the entire five-year span of the Eighth Plan of 1991–96.
• Built 117,173 of the new houses 38% for SC (Scheduled or former untouchable caste) and ST (Scheduled or former untouchable tribal) households, compared with only 18,023 7% during the Eighth Plan. Since about 12% of Kerala’s people belong to SC/ST households, the figures suggest that under the Eighth Plan housing inequality actually increased while the People’s Campaign has made serious inroads to reduce it.
• Constructed 413,174 sanitary latrines, covering about 10% of all households. This compares with 125,000 during the entire Eighth Plan. At the rate of the first three years, the campaign over five years would build sanitary latrines for about 17% of all Kerala households, but the state government has taken steps to provide additional finance to local governments interested in extending housing, sanitation, and drinking water programs. The government has decided that all households should be provided with a home, a sanitary latrine, and access to safe drinking water within 200 meters by the year 2003. This will mean stepping up the rate of construction for houses, latrines, and drinking water facilities.

Universal preschool, improvement in the quality of education and in healthcare centers, and completion of rural electrification are also on the immediate agenda. Such targets would have appeared preposterous a few years ago. Total housing programs were taken up in all of Kerala’s fourteen districts in the 2000–01 annual plans.

Kerala’s critics often cite the state’s lack of agricultural and industrial growth. The People’s Campaign managed in its first three years

• to bring 315,881 acres into additional food production activity, an increase of 5.6% over the cultivated area in 1992–93. This includes reclamation of wastelands often via small-scale irrigation that the campaign has emphasized—and planting second and third crops;
• to increase the agricultural growth rate in 1998–99 to 3.82%, compared with an average of 1.3% in the previous three years;
• to increase milk production by 31% between 1998–99 and 1999–2000. In early 2000, the stocks increased by an additional 18%;
• to increase industrial growth in Kerala in 1998–99 to 7.2%;
• to provide 84,917 persons with job training. If all the trainees got jobs, Kerala’s high unemployment rate would have been reduced by 2.26%, but additional jobs in construction activities related to the campaign probably brought the unemployment rate down by another 3%, so that about 5% of joblessness was overcome;
• to create 3,804 new cooperatives; and
• to bring thousands of women into new job areas outside the home as autorickshaw drivers or in more traditional women’s work in small-scale industries manufacturing soap, umbrellas, emergency lanterns, and ready-made clothing.

Further Achievements

Alongside these remarkable material accomplishments, the campaign has introduced an array of new elements into Kerala’s economic, social, and political life. Among them are the following:

• Development of a functional division among the different levels of government so that each is more effectively carrying out tasks appropriate to its resources;
• A massive reduction in corruption and a corresponding improvement in the efficiency of delivery of public services and the use of public funds;
• An ambitious village computerization project that promises further improvements in government efficiency and that promises to bring about a statewide database that will be useful to future planners;
• The mobilization of thousands of volunteers leading to increased community spirit, reduction of cynicism, and an effective supplement to the government budget of 10% or more in many villages;
• Creation of special projects for women’s development and creation of conditions favorable to greater women’s empowerment and involvement in community life beyond the immediate household;
• Writing of local community development reports: possibly the largest self-study action ever anywhere in the world;
• Emergence of model panchayats the generation of a virtual statewide laboratory of creative experiments in solving local problems that the State Planning Board can popularize statewide through experience-sharing seminars;
• Creation of local neighborhood groups that can foster rotating credit associations and serve as local problem-solving forums;
• Introduction of environmental sustainability as a component of planning for economic development; in particular the insertion of micro-watershed analysis to support long-term thinking about environmental issues; and
• Carrying out probably the largest informal adult education program ever anywhere in the world. Hundreds of thousands of activists and volunteers were trained over the first three years of the campaign alone.

The first three years of the campaign accomplished much. The fourth and fifth years saw additional accomplishments that we will describe in later chapters. The pieces are now in place for a long march towards more sustainable, equality-oriented, and democratic communities in Kerala.

Is it utopian to imagine such a possibility? Can Americans create institutions to fuel growth in a community-sustainable way? In their 1991 survey of what they call Reclaiming Capital, Christopher and Hazel Gunn’s found an array of local community initiatives to generate or manage economic growth. These included workers’ cooperatives, community and alternative credit unions, community land trusts, and community self-help and development corporations in Santa Cruz, California, Durham North Carolina, Tupelo Mississippi, Cleveland Ohio, and many other US communities. Michael Shuman's book Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age, has additional and more recent examples along with 67 pages of web links and mailing addresses for organizations worldwide that promote community-sustainable growth in one form or another.

Fair trade is a small but growing movement in Europe, Japan, and North America, to guarantee third world producers a better share from the sale of their goods than in the open, or so-called "free trade" markets. Fair trade is most developed in Western Europe where in some countries even supermarket chains now carry coffee, tea, bananas, sugar, cocoa, honey, and orange juice that meet fair trade criteria. In some countries, as much as 10% of sales are now claimed by the fair trade organizations to be in their quarter. For 1998-99, the New Internationalist magazine (322:19) reported 1,414 cooperatives and approved plantations accounting for $138 million in fair trade sales. In the USA, Starbucks has now joined the fair trade movement. See the web site for the US branch of the fair trade movement.

Initiated by the Max Havelaar Foundation in The Netherlands, the fair trade movement has evolved into an international Fairtrade Labelling Organization that has established the following general criteria for its products:

• a price that covers the cost of production
• social premium for development purposes
• partial payment in advance to avoid small producer organisations falling into debt
• contracts that allow long term production planning
• long term trade relations that allow proper planning and sustainable production practices

Fair production conditions include:

for small farmers’ co-operatives a democratic, participative structure

for plantations/factories the workers should have:     franke's page             anthropology department webpage

decent wages (at least the legal minimum)
good housing, where appropriate
minimum health and safety standards
the right to join trade unions
no child or forced labor
minimum environmental requirements

Certain specific conditions are added as appropriate for particular products. (The name "Max Havelaar" comes from a 19^th century Dutch novel by Eduard Douwes Dekker called Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (1860), considered by many the greatest prose writing in the Dutch language. Max Havelaar is the name of the hero, a promising young Dutch colonial official who objects to the exploitation of the Indonesians and ends up on an Amsterdam street spattered with mud from the passing king's carriage. The book was inspired in part by Uncle Tom's Cabin and influenced D. H. Lawrence.) You can find out more about fair trade at http://www.fairtrade.net.

Why does fair trade work? We first world consumers, it turns out, are a lot less selfish than our self-stereotypes. A European Commission survey found that 75% of respondents would buy fair trade bananas if they were available alongside ordinary ones, and 37% would pay 10% more for them (Lamb 2000:11). This sounds a lot like the consumers of KDB products in Kerala who value not only the high quality of the products but also the ethical conditions under which they are produced. US surveys produce similar results. Although the responses differ according to what's in the news and how the questions are phrased, Americans frequently support the idea of ethical purchasing. The National Labor Committee that organizes against sweatshops reported a 1995 Marymount University poll in which 78% of respondents said they would avoid retailers selling sweatshop-made products. Seventy-five percent of families earning only $15,000 said they would pay $1.00 more for a $20 garment if it was not made in a sweatshop. In another poll, more than 2/3 of Canadian consumers stated they would go out of their way to purchase ethically made goods. These attitudes constitute a basis for fueling a new kind of economic growth. If you want to read more about these polls, go to http://www.nlcnet.org/Haiti11.htm.

So far fair trade has involved mostly primary agricultural goods such as coffee, tea and hemp coffee filters reusable and more environmentally correct than paper ones and some outlets internationally carry basket goods, t-shirts, and a few other light industrial items. But why couldn't the fair trade movement go on to develop processed foods and computer hardware manufacture, software design, and data entry? And, thinking about the community sustainability aspect of economic growth what is the potential for the sister city movement in the United States to expand beyond educational events and rituals of friendship to some type of connected community development? What if the computer training plans in Kerala or Porto Alegre could be integrated with the local medical association of an American town or county in some way so that a fair trade guarantee of long-term community-sustainable employment was built into a design for lower-cost medical services in, say, Montclair? We have only begun to think of the possibilities.

franke's page             anthropology department webpage     Your comments and criticisms are welcomed: send me an email

References

Abers, R. 1998. From clientelism to cooperation: local government, participatory policy, and civic organizing in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Politics and Society 26(4): 511–37.
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. 1999. Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative Democratic Theory. Paper presented at the Real Utopias Project Conference V: Experiments in Empowered Deliberative Democracy. January 14–16, 2000. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Barber, Benjamin R. 1998. A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. New York: Hill and Wang.
Barlow, Maude. 2000. Desperate Bolivians Fought Street Battles to Halt a Water–for–Profit Scheme. The Toronto Globe and Mail 9 May, page A–17.
Bello, Walden. 2000. The Iron Cage: The World Trade Organization, the Bretton Woods Institutions, and the South. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 11(1):3–32.
———, Shea Cunningham, and Bill Rau. 1994. Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment, and Global Poverty. London: Pluto Press.
Falk, Richard. 1999. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fung, Archon, and Erik Olin Wright. 2000. Experiments in Empowered Deliberative Democracy. Paper presented at the Conference on The Real Utopias Project, January 14–16. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Gardner, Gary. 2001. Microcredit expanding rapidly. In Worldwatch Institute. Vital Signs 2001: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Pp. 110–11.
———, and Brian Halweil. 2000. Nourishing the Underfed and Overfed. In Lester Brown, Christopher Flavin, Hilary French, et al., eds. State of the World 2000. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Pp. 59–78.
Grant, James. 1989. The State of the World’s Children. New York: Oxford University Press. Published for UNICEF.
MacEwan, Arthur. 1999. Neo-liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century. London: Zed Books.
McMichael, Philip. 2000. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press. Second Edition.
Musgrave, R. A. 1959. The Theory of Public Finance. New York: McGraw Hill.
New Internationalist. 2000. Fair Trade or Free Trade The Facts. 322:19. April 2000.
Pinstrup-Anderson, Per. 1993. Economic Crises and Policy Reforms during the 1980s and Their Impact on the Poor. In Macroeconomic Environment and Health: With Case Studies for Countries in Greatest Need. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton N. J.: Princeton University Press.
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
States of Unrest. 2000. http://www.wdm.org.uk/cambriefs/DEBT/ unrest.htm
Transfairusa
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 1999. Human Development Report 1999. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weaver, James H., Michael T. Rock, and Kenneth Kusterer. 1997. Achieving Broad-Based Sustainable Development: Governance, Environment, and Growth with Equity. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, Inc.
Weisbrot, Mark, Robert Naiman, and Joyce Kim. 2000. The Emperor Has No Growth: Declining Economic Growth Rates in the Era of Globalization. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/globalization/maihome.html
———, Dean Baker, Robert Naiman, and Gila Neta. 2001. Growth May Be Good for the Poor But Are IMF and World Bank Policies Good for Growth? A Closer Look at the World Bank’s Recent Defense of Its Policies. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/globalization/Growth_May_Be_Good_For_The_Poor.htm
———, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev, and Judy Chen. 2001. The Scorecard on Globalization 1980–2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/globalization/scorecard_on_ globalization.htm
World Bank. 1991. World Development Report: The Challenge of Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1995. Better Urban Services: Finding the Right Incentives. Washington, D.C.
———. 1999. Entering the 21st Century: World Development Report 1999/2000. New York: Oxford University Press.

franke's page             anthropology department webpage

Richard W. Franke, Department of Anthropology
Montclair State University Globalization Teach-In
18 February 2002
What’s Wrong with Globalization?

1. It doesn’t promote economic growth.
2. It increases inequality.
3. It weakens social security safety nets.
4. It raises the cost of public services.
5. It increases the threats to the environment.
6. It undermines democracy.
7. It is a partial cause of terrorism and other forms of violence.

Douthwaite, Richard. 1999. The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many, and Endangered the Planet. Gabriola Island, B. C.: New Society Publishers.
Presents data to show that human happiness in the rich countries has not increased for the last 50 years despite huge increases in income resulting from economic growth. Includes a good summary of the main environmental threats associated with uncontrolled growth.

Falk, Richard. 1999. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.
Argues that the corporate attack on government welfare programs worldwide is a fundamental break with a covenant people have assumed was valid since the 17th century.

MacEwan, Arthur. 1999. Neoliberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century. New York: Zed Books.
Shows that the technical economists’ literature of recent years proves that so-called free trade does not and never did fuel economic growth. (esp. pp. 31-65)

McMichael, Philip. 2000. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Second Edition.
Traces the origins and history of globalization and argues that it undermines democracy and promotes extreme forms of inequality.
Weisbrot, Mark, Robert Naiman, and Joyce Kim. 2000. The Emperor Has No Growth: Declining Economic Growth Rates in the Era of Globalization. Washington D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/IMF/The_Emperor_Has_No_Growth.htm
Presents statistics to show that the more globalization has progressed the slower economic growth has been?in direct contradiction to the claims of globalization supporters.

_____, Dean Baker, Robert Naiman, and Gila Neta. 2001a. Growth May Be Good for the Poor But are IMF and World Bank Policies Good for Growth? A Closer Look at the World Bank’s Recent Defense of Its Policies. Washington D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/globalization/Growth_May_Be_Good_for_the_Poor.htm
Additional information on the citation just above.

Weisbrot, Mark, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev, and Judy Chen. 2001b. The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress. Washington D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/globalization/scorecard_on_globalization.htm
Shows that the declining growth and/or increasing inequality are slowing improvements in human welfare and even reversing them in some instances.

World Bank. 2001. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.
The official view.

See the following readings for information supporting the seven points above:

Gunn, Christopher, and Hazel Dayton Gunn. 1991. Reclaiming Capital: Democratic Initiatives and Community Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Several US communities have found alternatives to corporate or multinational corporate-driven development.

            New Internationalist. 2000. Fair Trade or Free Trade The Facts. 322:19. April 2000.
            Substantial numbers of European, Canadian, and US citizens are prepared to pay up to 10% more for products made by workers                  who receive fair wages in circumstances that protect the environment.

http://www.newint.org/streets/brazil/index.html gives info from the Porto Alegre conference of Feb 2002 on the them that "Another World is Possible."

Perrucci, Robert. 2000. Inventing Social Justice: SSSP and the Twenty-First Century. Social Problems 48(2):159-67.
We need to study "middle-level utopias" that show the possibility of "a place between system transforming revolutionary change and modest reforms"…[that could] "raise public awareness of the possibilities of alternatives to the present."

Shuman, Michael H. 1998. Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age. New York: The Free Press.
Local communities can generate far more wealth than they realize and that they do not need multinational corporations to help them develop.

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
The 1998 Nobel Prize winner in economics presents a careful cross-cultural and historical analysis to show that democracy is the essential prerequisite for freedom?contrary to the notion of the WTO that behind-the-scenes bureaucrats should decide what is in people’s interest.

            Wright, Erik Olin. 2001. The Real Utopias Project. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/RealUtopias.htm
            A Wisconsin Univ sociologist provides links to promising alternative experiments.

franke's page             anthropology department webpage

Your comments and criticisms are welcomed: send me an email