Roots & wings

In his much-praised recent book, Ulrich Beck, German sociologist and professor at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich, demonstrates why neither nation-states nor international capital alone can save us from the many dangers of the "globalized" globe, and proposes an alliance of these two forces (which can't be ignored) with global "civil society" movements -- not to withdraw from globalization, but to engage it and realize its potential for making a better world for all of us.

Beck, Ulrich. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2005.

Beck argues that: 1. The most urgent problems are now too global to be dealt with effectively by any state (global warming, pollution, exhaustion of carbon fuels, AIDS and other diseases, immigration, terrorism, etc.); 2. Transnational organizations (UN, WTO, NATO, etc.) are clumsy and ineffective, because they are still playing by obsolete "rules" of seeking common ground among states rather than among citizens; 3. Global capital is thus unrestrained by laws except companies' own "extralegal laws" of agreements among themselves, and exercises power over states by nonviolent means of threatening not to invest (in, say, Bolivia, if its laws become too uncomfortable) -- though companies do have to invest somewhere in order to survive, and fierce competition among and within companies makes their leaders' power precarious; 4. Global NGOs can exploit the vunerabilities of global capital (e.g., by organizing consumer boycotts) and pressuring states (e.g., by mobilizing voters and demonstrators), either to solve terrible humanitarian or ecological problems (e.g., Greenpeace, Amnesty International) or exacerbating them (e.g., al-Qaeda -- which is another kind of global nongovernmental organization).

The only hope for humanity is for these three forces (states, which are still necessary instruments of power, enlightened global capital, and global civil society) to combine forces as cosmopolitans, meaning that they feel themselves as belonging simultaneously to the cosmos and to the polis ("glocalization"), not to impose a Western vision of democracy or American culture or any other particular ideology ("universalism" of this sort is imperialism), but recognizing and accepting "the otherness of others" (die Andersheit der Anderen), different strokes for different folks, all recognizing one another's rights to live in a better world.

He says all that in far too many words (my favorite, from p. 286, is Globalisierungsbefürwortungsgegner, rendered by the translator as "opponents of the pro-globalization lobby") and occasionally surrealist metaphors (cosmopolitans should have "both roots and wings" he says over and over), repeats ideas and even phrases, and tells you many things that you already knew (e.g., Pres. Bush's attempt to impose his own sketchily-developed vision of a world order has had and can only have disastrous results, in Iraq and everywhere). Still, the basic ideas (the 4 points numbered above) are probably valid and well worth thinking about and maybe even acting upon -- the utopian (his term) cosmopolitan vision is a lot better than any of the alternatives under discussion.

Thanks to Professor Christopher Leo (University of Winnipeg) for suggesting the importance of this book. For other interesting postings by this astute reader of social theory, see his blog, Christopher Leo.

Cities and Revolutions in Latin America

A call-for-proposals (CFP) with this title caught my attention, because it's something I've been pondering for practically all my adult life -- since my days in rebellious Caracas back in the 1960s. The session organizers, Federica Morelli and Jordana Dym, have also given it a lot of thought. But if their summary of current historiography is right, I have some doubts about the split between pre-modern (colonial and 19th century) and 20th-21st century views of city dynamics.

They write that scholars specializing in the colonial period "tend to emphasize cities as places of social revolution and economic dynamism. Scholars of independence and the nineteenth century see cities as places for popular mobilization (riots) and organized political opposition (juntas, coups) by elites. Scholars of the twentieth century and beyond tend to contrast Indian or peasant villages with the 'mega-cities' of Latin America where factories take in internal and external migrants, housewives demonstrate against dictators, gangs use urban institutions to organize, and politicians develop popular support that launches presidential careers."

The cut seems to be ca. 1920 or so. As described above, “colonialist” & 19th c. histories both see cities as “as places of social revolution and economic dynamism,” including riots & coups. That is, the rapid, innovative social dynamic of “cities,” built places with the greatest density of population – and an inertia of change – is clearly differentiated from the inertia of much slower change in their rural hinterlands, where Marx remarked on “the idiocy of rural life.” It is in the 20th century that ‘megacities’ incorporate the urban v. rural conflict within the urban density: that large numbers of rural people “invade” the cities, that is, are impelled to migrate there, but are not fully assimilated culturally.

Q1: Is this view of the premodern periods generally accurate? In Argentina and Venezuela (the 2 countries whose social history I know best), in the late colonial period and throughout the first century of independence, pressure for change came mostly from the rural areas: montoneras (rebellious bands of mounted men) in Argentina, in Venezuela the many rural revolts leading to changes in the central government in Caracas. The men who came to power, almost always by revolution (i.e., rural revolt), included Páez, a cattleman from the southern llanos, followed by the Monagas brothers (especially José Tadeo) from the rural east, others from rural Miranda or Falcón, and then a whole series of cattlemen and shepherds from the western Andes, especially the state of Táchira, where there was no city of important size.

The earlier independence wars were also largely rural affairs. The assemblies of dignitaries who declared independence met in cities (Tucumán, a quite small provincial capital in the remote north or Argentina, and the colonial capitals were usually centers of conspiracy, but the troops and very soon their officers came from smaller towns & villages). And even earlier, in Peru, Mexico and other places, the most serious threats to the colonial administration had come from small towns and villages.

Q2: In 20th & 21st centuries, why has the assimilation of rural migrants been such a difficult issue? Why have they formed villas miserias (Argentina), barrios (Venezuela), favelas (Brazil), campamentos (Chile), etc., that is, dense and precarious shantytowns surrounding and in interstices within the city, but seemingly antagonistic to its urban culture? Here are some likely explanations:

• Too many arriving too suddenly
• Rejection of the newcomers by the urbanites
• Preference of the newcomers for maintaining family ties & other traditions

The problem with the first hypothesis is that Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, Lima, Sao Paulo and other great cities have had much more difficulty assimilating their own rural compatriots than they have had with the large numbers of foreigners who began arriving around the beginning of the 20th century. I don't mean that all those Italians, Gallegos, Japanese, and Eastern European Jews were welcomed by the native urbanites, but that many of them found oportunities in their new environment to become effective urban actors, whether in politics, arts, business, or crime. The rural-urban migrants mostly did not.

I'm tempted to submit a proposal, even though I probably won't be able to get to Lyon (France) next August (I plan to be in the U.S. around that time). At the very least, I wanted to develop some ideas about it.

See the call for papers, IXth International Conference on Urban History, Lyon, France, 27th - 30th August 2008: Cities and Revolutions in Latin America

"9-11" x 2

Today is the anniversary of two massive assaults on civilian populations. The first, in Santiago, Chile 34 years ago, caused a proportionally greater loss of life (Chile was a country of only 10 million) and especially deep damage to the institutions of civil society, ushering in a dictatorship that endured for 17 years. The second, in 2001 in Manhattan, was much more concentrated, its effect magnified by its location in the media capital of the world. The two planes that struck the towers killed in a few hours about as many people as the Chilean counterrevolution killed in its much more prolonged assault, beginning on September 11, 1973 and continuing its ferocity for months.

The Chile events were very close to me. Before the coup, I had been a close observer, hopeful but fearful for the success of the country's peaceful revolution. Then, when the horror occurred, as soon as possible -- in February, 1974 -- I got to Chile as part of the ten-person Chicago Committee to Save Lives in Chile, getting into prisons, interviewing survivors, and even meeting with trade union and political activists in hiding.

The other September 11 was also very close. In 2001, I lived close enough to hear the impact of the first plane against the World Trade Center and then to watch from our rooftop the burning and the appalling, sickening collapse of the second tower, to breathe the air thick with incinerated cement, metal, plastic and human flesh.

And so, every year on this date, I cannot help remembering both of them. And this morning, I was wondering how they might be connected. Suddenly it seems obvious. Two sides of the same coin. The assault on democracy in Chile was a continuation of the long-standing, and continuing, United States practice of suppressing the popular will in foreign states. The Al-Qaeda attack was a response to that practice.

The most visible dirty work in Chile was done by reactionary Chilean generals and their far-right supporters, but they had been set in motion by Nixon and Henry Kissinger and K's subordinates, who provided them the money, weapons, technical assistance to create chaos (manipulated strikes, shortages, etc.) and then, when that proved insufficient, to strike by land, air and sea the center of government and all other points expected to put up resistance (including factories, community centers, schools).

All hegemonic powers act to suppress the popular will whenever it challenges the system of subjugation -- Rome, France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Ottomans, the Chinese, the Russians before, during and after the USSR, the USA at least since the Mexican War. Often they cloak their aggression by claiming to act in defense of "democracy," "the rights of man" or "socialist brotherhood." Those who oppose them are labeled "extremists."

And sometimes, finding no legal, institutional way to realize their goals or even to lead what they consider dignified lives, those opponents become extremists in fact, attempting suicidal violence against what they see as the foreign oppressor.

And when that foreign power has degraded the notions of "democracy" or "socialism" or "the rights of man" by its cluster bombs, SAM missiles, air raids, tortures of prisoners and other horrors, the rebels look for some uncompromisingly opposite doctrine to explain themselves. Whatever seems most likely to horrify the enemy. A century ago, in most of Europe and much of the U.S., that was anarchism. Today in a large part of the world, and for the young Arabs who rammed the planes into the World Trade Center, it's a rigid form of Islam.

Back home in Spain

We just got back to our place in Carboneras last night, and we're still a little weary from all the travel: Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogotá, back to Buenos Aires, and then Madrid. Four grand cities. For pictures and a brief report of some of what we saw in Caracas (in Spanish), check out Política y espacio: El "23 de Enero" and Otra visión de Caracas in Lecturas y Lectores. In coming days I'll post some other notes (in English) on South America today, and how the region has changed since my first acquaintance nearly 45 years ago.

What we're up to

In case you're curious: This afternoon we leave 40 degree C. Andalucía for 2 degree C Buenos Aires. We (Susana & I, and possibly the unpredictable Balta & Fidedigna) will be in South America for the entire month of August. On the 8th, we fly to Caracas, mostly to see works of Carlos Raúl Villanueva (especially the Universidad Central and the former "2 de Diciembre", now "23 de Enero") but also to see old friends & places I worked in my youth. Then on to Bogotá, to see a whole list of important buildings, get a sense of the city, and for Susana to deliver a lecture (a beautiful piece on two almost opposite examples of feminist architecture, Frida Kahlo's house in Mexico City and Victoria Ocampo's in Buenos Aires). Then back to Buenos Aires, for many things (friends, family, dentist), but mainly for the book, including visits to some of the public housing erected during Perón's first term in office.

I'm free -- FREE -- to think about 21st century urban problems now. That's because I finally finished Part I of our book on architecture & urbanism in Latin America, the part dealing with the pre-Columbian built environment (Olmecs, Mayas, Mexicas, Incas et al.). Six big chapters. Whew!

Be back in Spain in September. See ya'.

More capitalism, please -- Are you sure?

Terrible things are happening all over the world. Rainforests are disappearing, icecaps melting, the air is becoming unbreathable, and the Chinese are poisoning our toothpaste. And besides all that, there are people who want to kill us, although they don't even know us. Just in today's El País, lead stories include "50 big cities [just in Spain!] exceed air contamination limits," new suicide attacks in Baghdad and in northern Iraq,and terror in the United Kingdom perpetrated (apparently) by physicians who are supposed to be saving lives. And inside there's a map of all the places too dangerous to visit on your vacation.

What's going on, and what should we do? Besides duck, I mean. Is global capitalism the problem? Or is it the solution? And is there anything we can do about it, either way?

Scholar, Richard. Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) gives us arguments on all sides. James Wolfensohn, the intelligent and enterprising past-president of the World Bank (1995-2005, before the lamentable Paul Wolfowitz), is well aware of the problems but convinced that only capitalism can solve them: he gives us lots of persuasive examples of how fomenting capitalism among the poor has improved lives from Rio de Janeiro to South Asia (micro credits, for example, using capital scraped together by the poor themselves, or provision of basic services like water for which the poor are willing to pay a small fee). Meanwhile, Stuart Hall and David Harvey have no doubts that global capitalism is creating poverty, inequality, frustration and massive social violence -- not to mention (curiously, they don't) environmental degradation. Changing the system will be a massive job but not impossible, thinks Harvey. But it will require challenging the very concepts of rights and social justice that Wolfensohn buys into.

Michael Likosky mostly agrees with Harvey and Hall, even as he accepts Wolfensohn's record of good accomplishments -- but raises the moral issue, of whether it is right to make the poor pay for infrastructural improvements that mostly benefit, economically, the big companies that build them?

And then there's Peter Hall, no relation genetically or ideologically to Stuart. He thinks things aren't all that bad, and anyway there's no alternative to capitalism. (He doesn't buy Harvey's argument.)

The only sensible answer is, yes, of course, to all of them. "Capitalism" is many things, all operating simultaneously, with notoriously contradictory effects. The clearest definition of it I know is by Ellen Wood: "a system in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange, where even human labor power is a commodity for sale in the market, and where, because all economic actors are dependent on the market, the requirements of competition and profit maximization are the fundamental rules of life."

Such a system is not entirely evil. It has proven very efficient at capital accumulation, which is needed for investment in anything, including good things like those listed by Wolfensohn. And a lot of perfectly awful things, enumerated by Stuart Hall. More important, and in support of Harvey, capitalism (as defined by Wood) is NOT inevitable or unchangeable. Maintaining it obviously requires constant "inputs" of energy and capital in propaganda, police and military repression (think Iraq), an elaborate state and judicial structure (for example, to deny rights to Bush & Blair's prisoners of war). This is because, basically, it goes against those most common human instincts of solidarity and group loyalties, instincts that are likely to break out whenever the State relaxes its vigilance. Nor is the system everywhere in effect (think of how decisions are made in Saudi Arabia, for example, or in your family), but because it is in effect in ruling sectors of the most powerful countries of the globe, its operations in some ways condition everything else.

But our discussions of that great ball of meanings we call "globalization" will get nowhere as long as we use such catch-all terms as "globalization" or even "capitalism." We can sit around nodding our heads in agreement with those who use these words the way we like, but to do anything useful we are going to have to pierce the rhetorical fog and challenge cherished formulations. Harvey seems to be pointing us in the right direction, though so far he is only waving vaguely. And it will only be worth following that path if we can deliver solutions at least as good as Wolfensohn's.

Falling apples, projecting fire extinguishers

The weekend before last, we were guests of our friend Michael Aizenman at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK. Fortunately, like most very bright people, Michael has many interests besides his specialty, mathematics, so we were able to find things to talk about.

Nevertheless, wandering through the institute and peering at Newton's walking stick and his notebook of living expenses (he'd bought Stilton cheese) got me thinking about math (sort of) as I tried to assemble the bits of Newtoniana scattered through my memory, mainly his three laws of motion (alas, I have yet to master calculus). And the only reason I, science-averse as I was in my student days, have any clear notion of those three laws is the amazing Leonard K. Nash who taught a Natural Science course for nonscientific freshmen at that other Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts. His classes were theatrical performances, with explosions to demonstrate Boyle's Law and, most memorable of all, his lecture on Newton's third law of motion. It came near the end of the hour. An assistant wheeled out a low cart with an upright fire extinguisher mounted behind a padded seat. Without interrupting his talk, Nash sat himself on the cart and pressed the levers of the extinguisher as he declared, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." And propelled himself offstage at precisely the last minute of class.

This was in 1959, and still I remember. And as I looked at the Newton memorabilia, I I began wondering if Newton's Three Laws of Motion might not be applicable to political science. The first one, the law of inertia certainly seems applicable to American politics (and all other social behavior): the parties just continue doing whatever they have been doing forever, unless and until some external force -- riots, a stock market crash, public outrage over the disaster in Iraq -- makes them change course. And once that force is applied, it will keep propelling the pols until friction (there's a lot of that in politics) slows them down (2nd Law). And of course the 3rd Law, which I think of as the fire extinguisher law. We can easily come up with examples of "equal and opposite" political reactions, e.g., to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I was sure that this could not be a new idea, so I looked up "Newtonian political science" on Google. And sure enough, there's a whole book on "Quantum Politics," claiming to go beyond Newton to base political science on quantum mechanics. And I found this very
amusing review by Ingemar Nordin, Linkiping University, Sweden, who finds that although this whole approach is scientifically absurd (social behavior is not like physics), it may still generate valuable insights.

Chile & Venezuela: different Lefts, different paths

Someone just forwarded an anonymous attack --a string of insults, really -- on Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile, because he dared to say in an interview that Hugo Chávez's kind of leftism was not replicable in other countries without Venezuela's fat "checkbook". An obvious enough point, one would think, but unacceptable to the anonymous author, who seems to think that boldness and clear revolutionary thinking are all that are needed to bring about revolutions everywhere.

We should be skeptical of all politicians, including Lagos & Chávez. Nevertheless, Lagos appears to me to be one of the most honest and effective of the bunch. He left office even more popular than when he entered, so clearly a lot of Chileans have a high opinion of him. He is of course pragmatic -- like all successful and long-lasting politicians, Left or Right. What the French call a possibiliste. And he is also cautious, as anybody governing Chile (with its terrible recent history) should be. So if his policies were "liberal" or "neoliberal", that was due less to his personal wishes than to his estimate (pretty astute, I think) of what his government could get away with.

Hugo Chávez is less obviously pragmatic, and far less cautious in what he says -- though I think he's very careful about maintaining good relations with his armed forces, which is a kind of pragmatism. He has also discovered that he can get away with, can dare to pursue, much bolder anti-U.S. policies than could Lagos. Not only that he can do it, but that he will be applauded for it. There are at least three immense differences between Venezuela and Chile that make Chávez's defiant rhetoric and aggressive reforms possible, all of them conjunctural (that is, produced by a convergence of historical processes that may not last long): (1) the high price of petroleum, and Venezuela's abundance of it; Chilean copper is selling well, too, but not like oil. So Chávez has the resources to spend on projects both useful and wasteful. (2) The weakening of the U.S. government's interest or capacity to slap down this opponent, because of its contradictory petroleum needs and the calamitous failure of its Iraq war (which was supposed to secure the needs of U.S. petroleum interests forever, but has ended up producing nothing but costs in all areas -- military depletion, diplomatic weakness, spiraling deficit). (3) The utterly different social-political history of the two countries. Just one aspect to note: Chile has a very large, established and monied conservative bloc, nearly as large as its very deeply established left. Votes, when free (before and after Pinochet) have always been close, with either Right or Left's hold on government precarious. Neither Lagos, nor Allende, nor anybody had the kind of support in the polls that Hugo Chávez musters. I think the main reason that the Right is so ineffective as a political force in Venezuela is that it never really had to bother about mobilizing voters, it was enough for them to make money while a whole series of corruptible governments of the white elite kept the darker masses at bay. The Venezuelan Left is also radically different from that in Chile, where both the Socialist and Communist parties became highly institutionalized, with large bases of trade union members, producing a more cautious political culture than in Venezuela where the ideologues of the Left parties, with much smaller and more marginalized rank-and-files, were responsible to no one but their own visions of the truth.

By the way, here's what Lagos really had to say about Chávez, in an interview in El País (26/03/2007). It sounds very sensible.

¿Considera válidos los análisis que dividen a América Latina entre los países en favor y en contra del presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez?
Las políticas de Chávez se sustentan en la capacidad financiera que le da el petróleo y no son reproducibles en otros países que no tienen petróleo, donde no tienen esa solvencia. A lo mejor, a muchos jefes de Estado les gustaría tener la chequera abundante; otra cosa es saber darle el mejor uso a esa chequera. En condiciones mucho más modestas, Chile ha experimentado una holgura financiera producto del precio del cobre y ha hecho un uso cuidadoso de esos fondos, destinando parte de esos recursos al desarrollo en ciencia y tecnología y guardando otra parte... El tema de los pros y los anti Chávez es maniqueo.

Photo of Lagos from Chilean newspaper Clarín

Hometown Baghdad » Blog Archive » Episode 37 0f 38 - “One of Thousands”

I just watched episode 37, on the death of a beloved uncle at a U.S. Army roadblock. I don't know if I'm ready to suffer the pain of watching the whole series, on the impossible lives of a middle-class Baghdadi family -- several of whose members are fluent in English -- just trying to go about their business and studies in their U.S.-occupied, multiterrorized city. Hometown Baghdad » Blog Archive » Episode 37 0f 38 - “One of Thousands”

Frustrating development

I just read an essay that helps put into perspective the failure of Ghana and other countries to fulfill the great promises that independence seemed to open up (see my note below on Ghana). The articulate Jamaican-born cultural theorist Stuart Hall puts it this way:

The decolonization that occurred at the end of World War II, often hailed as 'setting the colonial world free', was in fact marked by three broad stages redefining relations between the developed West and the rest. In the first phase, fundamental relations of neocolonial dependency were established between the developed and underdeveloped worlds in the context of the Cold War. ...the Cold War was fought out largely by proxy on post-colonial terrain. In the second phase, 'structural adjustment' regimes were imposed by the West on the developing world, via international organizations coupled with massive indebtedness through the banking system. More recently, with the collapse of the Soviet empire and the rise of the US to single super-power hegemony, an unholy alliance of global corporate forces, collusive indigenous elites, and legal and illegal armies on the loose has been able to treat the world's poor and the societies of the South as open marketplaces, repositories of scarce resources, and reservoirs of cheap labour.

(Pp. 27-28 in Hall, Stuart. "Cosmopolitan Promises, Multicultural Realities." Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 20-51.)

Photo of Hall from The Chronicle - Stuart Hall

Ghana and Guinea (Conakry) were among the countries that resisted being sucked into the Cold War, but Ghanaian cocoa farmers and others, backed by the C.I.A., readily enlisted and overthrew Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. Sékou Touré, who had led the République de Guinée to independence (and became the exiled Nkrumah's host) hung on to power until his death in 1984, but the international agencies mentioned by Hall (initially, the aggressive economic and diplomatic actions of France) made serious economic development impossible.