globalization

What follows is an excerpt from Frankfurt School theorist Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History” {1940}::

My wing is ready to fly

I would rather turn back
For had I stayed mortal time
I would have had little luck.
– Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

When I was in graduate school at UC-Irvine, I was in a doctoral seminar where we pondered these words. What did Benjamin really mean with his Angel of History? I struggled with it then and scholars have pondered Benjamin’s essays for decades.

I’ve been thinking of The Angel of History a lot these days, in terms of globalization, the financial meltdown, and the Big Recession. When Benjamin wrote this essay, he was thinking of the revolutions in France in of 1789, 1830 and 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1870. These “revolutions” are separated in time, but are part of a constellation. This is what the Angel sees when looking back at the rubble and the destruction of revolutions, but nothing can be done, as progress propels a trajectory. Benjamin’s view of the world was non-linear and dealt in gestalts.

In a global sense, I wonder if we are witnessing a shift. Progress and history are moving along a trajectory punctuated by discontinuities that affect the entire globe. These discontinuities aren’t isolated, but part of a constellation of ideas, concepts, events, actions, etc., such as::

1. The fall of the Soviet empire
2. The formation of the EU
3. The rise of global financial flows
4. The ubiquity of media
5. The rise of fundamentalist Islam
6. The rise of technologies and resultant efficiencies from IT and the web
7. The rise of China
8. The problem of intellectual property rights & their enforcement
9. The rise of emerging technologies like biotechnology based on the genome
10. The Big Recession of 2008-present*

What can be said of a constellation of the above? Are they isolated or interrelated? More importantly, how do these inform where we’re heading?

*Is this a discontinuity or a merely a part of ordinary business cycles?

Twitterversion:: Thoughts about Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, as it pertains to the global economic meltdown. #ThickCulture http://url.ie/4yje @Prof_K

Song:: Young Galaxy-“Long Live the Fallen World”

Notes from North of 49ºN

This is a follow-up post to:: Postcolonial Canada, National Identity, & the Nature of Hegemony :: The Trajectory of Canada. This post will focus on the political implications of the current postcolonial circumstance.

Around Canada Day last summer, I talked about the role of media in terms of nation and globalization. I was contemplating the concepts of “nation” and “citizen” within the sphere of North American capitalism. If nation doesn’t matter, do we just become consumers?

In my last post, I echo these ideas, but derived my thoughts on the “fuzziness” of Canadian identity by rooting it in its postcolonial circumstance. The concept of Canada as a nation is problematized by its history and trajectory; going from a colony of Britain with a sizeable minority culture {Québec} to being a next-door neighbour to a superpower. This isn’t to say that Canada has no identity. Ask “Joe” from the classic I Am a Canadian Molson ads series.  This one is titled “Rant”::

While within the context of the cultural product of advertising, I find the ad interesting, as it plays upon the notion of Canada as stereotyped and misunderstood by its powerful neighbour to the south. It juxtaposes Canada by delineating what it is not—the United States. The ad inspired several parodies, including this one from a Toronto radio station titled, “I Am Not Canadian”, which illuminates stereotypes of Québec. At any rate, I think there is a Canadian identity, but I’m not sure how unified it is across the country.

Perhaps one of the products of fuzzy identity is a steady trend of increasingly decentralized federalism since WWII. This set the stage for the rise of regionalism, perhaps starting with Québec opting out of federal programmes. Decentralized federalism also means that Canada as an institution will have less and less meaning over time. Pragmatically, it opens the door up for political gridlock::

“There is disagreement not only between the provinces and the federal government, but also among the provinces themselves. Canadians are losing patience with the endless cacophony. They want high-quality services, delivered in ways that are transparent so that they can track results. They are pragmatists. Fix it, they demand. When it doesn’t get fixed, they grow impatient with institutional gridlock.” [1]

Perhaps a product of this impatience is tuning out. Canadian voter turnout has been the lowest it’s been in 100 years, in the low to mid 60s the 00s and dipping to 58.8% in 2008.  Moreover, decentralized federalism could explain the fragmentation of politics we’ve seen of late, which I’ve blogged about over on Rhizomicon, characterized by 35% of the popular vote not going to the major parties. Decentralized federalism forces much of the national political discourse on domestic issues to focus on the provincial or regional implications of policy.  One of my observations is the rise of regional politics in Québec and the West.

Here’s a map of the 2000 federal election, before the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/Canadian Alliance parties merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, but after the formation of the Bloc Québecois in 1991::

In the West, the Canadian Alliance {green} won 66 of 301 seats in Parliament, while in Québec, the Bloc Québecois {light blue} won 38 seats.  The predecessor to the Canadian Alliance , the Reform Party, was a socially and fiscally conservative populist party that had the bulk of the support in the western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, making inroads into Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Its policies and rhetoric were, at times, very divisive and anti-Québec, as evident in this ad campaign from the prior election in 1997::

“[Preston] Manning and Reform were roundly criticized by the other candidates when they ran an ad saying politicians from Québec had controlled the federal government for too long.

Chretien [Liberal Party leader], Charest [Progressive Conservative leader] and Duceppe [Bloc Québécois leader] are all from Québec, and the prime minister of Canada for 28 of the last 29 years has hailed from the province. Still, the assertion led to denunciations of Manning as ‘intolerant’ and a ‘bigot,’ though it seemed to play well in his Western base.” [2]

The Reform “style” members of Parliament of the Conservative Party, who are primarily in the West, have effectively formed a Western “Bloc,” as some argue that the policies of the Conservative Party are heavily influenced by the Reform wing. additionally, the Conservative Party has less of a stake in federalism, which frees them to serve regional interests.

Where does this leave Canada in term of its future trajectory? I don’t see identity formation occurring overnight and I see the likelihood of increased political fragmentation based on region and ideology {given the rise in support of the New Democrats and the Greens since 2000}. In light of this, it may be time to think about more centralized federalism, but the challenge will be how to configure it without a serious crisis at hand. On the other hand, what about leadership? Does strong leadership with results give the electorate meaning, a sense of identity, and increased civic engagement?

Twitterversion:: Thoughts on rising politics of region in Canada, stemming fr.”fuzziness” on concept of Canada as a nation #ThickCulture http://url.ie/4r5l #ThickCulture @Prof_K

References::

[1] Stein, Janice G. (2006) “Canada by Mondrian: Networked Federalism in an Era of Globalization.” Banff Forum. Accessed 24 January 2010, http://banffforum.ca/common/documents/Reading_polit_sust_stein.pdf

[2] CNN (1997)  “Canada poised for vote that may deadlock parliament”.  Retrieved 21 January 2010, from http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/01/canada.elex/index.html

Notes from North of 49ºN

I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of nation, of late.  In summers past, the 4th. of July, Independence Day in the United States, meant being in northern California and perhaps heading to Point Reyes and seeing the tug-of-war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach.  The past three years, I have observed Canada Day, celebrating when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario became a federation, a dominion with ties to the UK.  Two adjacent countries, which appear to have similarities, but have key differences.  Population is one differentiator. At confederation in 1867, the US population was around over 10 times that of Canada, 38,558,371 to 3,625,000 {1870}.  The twentieth century would see the rise of American dominance, not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of media and culture.

American culture is readily evident in Canada.  On television and in major cities like Toronto, with the prevalence of brands like Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, and Subway.  A quick scan of the TV listings shows how popular US television content is in anglophone Canada.  Canada is aware of this and requires broadcasters to show Canadian content {Can con}.  The CBC, the Canadian national public broadcaster, is a flagship network of the nation, where, through its mandate, the network’s goal is to be a cultural touchstone for the nation.  I’ve blogged about the future of the CBC television on this post:: Will Globalization Kill or Make the CBC Relevant Again?, which touches on how the CBC is struggling to remain viable and relevant in the shadow of big media players in the United States and fending off challengers within Canada.  Unlike the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster, which is funded through household television licences, the CBC gets funding from the government, but also is subject to market forces through selling ad time, both sources being historically uneven.

The question I have is whether the role of a national broadcaster is even important.  I don’t see the United States as having the equivalent of the CBC, let alone the BBC.  PBS and NPR are, in my opinion, a loose confederation of programming, as opposed to a network with a strong identity, let alone an entity fostering a conceptualization of the United States as a culture or a nation.

The ideas of Arjun Appadurai and Benedict Anderson come to mind.  Appadurai speaks of globalization in terms of flows.  Flows of finance, ideologies, technologies, people and media, each with the suffix scapes.  Mediascapes have two components::

1. The flows of capacity to produce and disseminate electronic information
2. The images of the world created by these media

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities discusses nation as an abstract entity, where meaning is shared within and the mass media address its citizens as a public.

Borders are often permeable under globalization and Canada has seen flows of media flood across its southern border, but what has this done to Canadians’ notion of nation?  Can Canadian content policy and the CBC help to reinforce the imagined community of Canada?  Does nation even matter?  Is Canada to Canadians “our home and disparate land,” as stated in today’s Vancouver Sun?  What about shared Canadian experiences such as Hinterland’s Who’s Who::

I think we need to remember that the context here is capitalism.  Media is flowing, media full of American meanings and ideals, as entertainment content to generate revenues.  In light of this onslaught, I think it is important for Canada to preserve its identity by creating content that increases Canadian cultural knowledge and awareness.  Why?  Without a national identity, i.e., an imagined community of Canada, meaning becomes increasingly derived from imagined communities of brands.  If our Diderot unities reduce to the constellation of brands we surround ourselves with, can we be citizens or are we just consumers?

I think nation does and should matter.  In Benedict Anderson’s words, nation::

“…is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the inequality of that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep. horizontal kinship.”–p.7

Song:: Dreamer – Jenn Grant {Halifax, NS}

Video Extra:: jPod clips of “Cowboy” aired on CBC, Winter 2008.

Twitterversion:: #Canada, national identity, & #Media. Globalization blurs borders, but does #nation matter? #Appadurai #BenedictAnderson http://url.ie/1xu6 @Prof_K

Notes from north of 49ºN.

I now live in a relatively small country, ranked 36th. in population, at 33.7M {versus 306.7M in the US}, but in the top 10 in terms of economies with a GDP of $1.3T {#9 ranking}, versus 13.8T for the US {#1 ranking}.  I mention this, as I wonder about scale and innovation, i.e., can smaller countries effectively compete in technology in a global environment?  One of my interests in innovation is biotechnology, a “new economy” area focusing on better outcomes for “health, the environment, and for industrial, agricultural and energy production.”  Advances in genetics are creating a race for companies and countries, with the idea of dominating the biotech field in order to enjoying profits and prosperity.

Last summer, I saw on a Canadian network a segment on how Canadian government investments in biotech were getting bought up by US firms, implying that the relatively small Canadian government was, in part, subsidizing innovations flowing south of the border.  The Matthew effect kicks in, as rich get richer and the poor get poorer, given that Canadian firms were being snapped up by US firms with deep pockets, transferring value southward.  According to a Globe & Mail article {click on license option}, another issue is that Canadian venture capital is lacking, so Canadian biotech firms often are capitalized by US venture capital firms that like to keep close tabs on operations and encourage offices/operations in the US.

Well, is Canada even a player in this biotech area?

According to 2006 OECD data, Canada is a player in terms of the number of firms {532}, the number of patents {ranked #6 in 2004}, and revenues {$83M}, along with an 11% compound annual growth rate {CAGR} of revenues from 1999-2005.

Given how collaboration and capital are now global, does it even matter where innovations are incubated?  A study by Bagchi-Sen & Scully {2004} is illuminating.  They divide biotech forms into two categories:: high R&D intensity and low R&D intensity.  Each has a different take with respect to strategies within the context of globalization::

• High R&D Intensity:: Ties to local universities/Canadian researchers & collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, but desire global capital inflows.  Prototypical firm is in health theraputics.
• Low R&D Intensity:: Emphasis on local production and development of Canadian market.  Focus on strategic alliances with foreign firms.  Prototypical firm is in diagnostics or agricultural biotech.

In terms of innovation policy, this brings up interesting food for thought for Canadian politicians in light of this recession.  Thanks to Barack Obama, Canada’s large neighbour to the south is pumping $21.5B of stimulus towards science and technology, which begs the question, how will this affect Canada?

It makes sense that Canadian policy would encourage the projects of low-intensity R&D firms with ties to the US, as these firms:: may be able to capitalize on relationships with stimulus-receiving firms, will develop innovations for the Canadian market, and will be focused on local Canadian production and manufacturing.  The high-intensity R&D firms could use funding {hint:: even more than $1B+CAN stimulus} that focuses on spurring innovations and the building of a sustainable base of Canadian talent and resources.  Dalton McGuinty’s {Liberal Premiere} efforts in Ontario might be a step in the right direction, but I’m not seeing clearly how this all fits together with an economic recovery plan.  Biotech. is not without risks, particularly with respect to agricultural biotech, which consumers are uncertain of.  Activists have alerted consumers with terms like “Frankenfood” for genetically-modified organisms {GMOs} and Monsanto’s lawsuits against journalists and farmers don’t help the cause.  So, maybe ag. biotech is a lose, but developing Canadian competitive advantage in innovations, in terms of other forms of biotech, nanotechnologies, clean energy, and green collar jobs, may provide fertile terrain for politicians and policymakers.

Well, enough of this talk of the “new economy” of biotech and innovations, what about the old economy, still prevalent in many parts of Canada?  Globalization has drawn Stephen Harper’s {Prime Minister} Conservative government into bailout fever to the tune of $9.5B, in order to secure that 16% of GM’s production remains in Canada.  This includes $3.1B that the Province of Ontario ponied up by Dalton McGuinty’s government.  Unfortunately, this might only save 4,400 jobs, after projected layoffs, according to CBC::

Given how the Tories and the Grits have played their cards in this {along with playing a current game of Federal “chicken”}, I see an opportunity for the NDP to make inroads with their platform based on developing new technologies and saving jobs.  Alas, more on “GMfail” and job losses in Canada in a future post.

So, it looks like nation matters, but in a global milieu.  Nothing surprising.  If you were to advise Canadian politicians, should new technologies {e.g., biotech, green, energy} be developed more aggressively {or at least explored} and does it make sense to commit billions to save jobs with an untested GM restructuring?

Twitterversion:: #newblogpost How should Canada compete {bio}tech, given globalzatn, US domnce, & recession? #GMfail bailout, good idea? http://bit.ly/18bBq8 @Prof_K

Song:: Genetic Engineering – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

Video::

Saskia Sassen has a good essay in the latest issue of Dissent regarding globalization and the expansion of executive power in liberal democracies.

She makes the case that the globalization literature tends to focus on whether the state as a whole is made stronger or weaker by globalization. She calls for parsing units of power within the state and evaluating their relative strength vis-a-vis globalization. She reports on new work she’s doing that suggests the rise of trade and finance related agencies, the rise of cross border collaboration, the rise of the IMF and WTO and the increasing deregulatory climate for trade around the world has led to increased executive power.

These findings are in step with what what Post-Fordist theorists have been saying since the 1990’s. The central claim of many of these theorists is that the state would not fall away but that it would have to become a more flexible state to adapt to quickly changing conditions (i.e. global financial crises) Logically, executives are more flexible and adaptable than legislatures because they are not deliberative bodies and are not consensus based.

She’s right to assert that this expansion of the executive erodes citizen power. There are few mechanisms to make executives accountable. My hope is that the generative capacities of the internet make it easier for the electorate to be engaged by more conveniently providing access to political information. There are some rumblings about the Obama administration’s delay in making information about it’s inner workings accessible to the public. But..it’s hard to generate mass public outrage over the lack of citizen briefing books.