BOOK REVIEW Unglobalized at the edges Bound Together by Nayan Chanda
Reviewed by Scott B MacDonald
Globalization is a highly emotional topic, with everyone from Noam Chomsky and
Naomi Klein on the left to the establishment bedrocks of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD).
To many on the left, globalization is a gross materialistic form of
Americanization, constructed around a diabolical plan to force everyone to eat
at McDonald's, watch Disney movies and shop at Wal-Mart, while the capitalist
fat cats preside over growing socio-economic inequalities.
In sharp contrast, international organizations like the IMF, World
Bank and OECD and major corporations in both the more developed and developing
economies see globalization as a force pulling millions of people out of abject
poverty, creating world-wide markets, and opening the door to still greater
commercial opportunities. Certainly, China's embrace of a more liberal trade
regime and other market reforms has lifted millions of its citizens out of
poverty and given that country considerable weight in global affairs.
Needless
to say, there are some very different views about globalization, many of them
blinkered by ideological grindings. All of this makes Nayan Chanda's Bound
Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped
Globalization a very worthwhile read. There is a desire to explain
globalization as something that is a logical outcome of mankind's long
experience on planet Earth and provide a more optimistic outlook for that
process.
Chanda comes to Bound Together as someone who is, in many ways, a
product of globalization. Born in India, he served as the editor for the
well-respected Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asian Wall Street Journal,
wrote what some regard as the seminal book on Indochina's 20th-century wars, Brother
Enemy: The War After the War, and became the director of publications
at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and editor of the
YaleGlobalOnline, a webzine to study - what else - globalization.
He has lived in India, Vietnam, France and the United States. Chanda was also a
winner of the Schorenstein Prize on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at
Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government in 2005. One could
argue that he looks at the world with an experienced pair of eyes and certainly
his current position provides him with an excellent perch.
Chanda begins his book with an incident involving an electrician who came to
work on his home in New Haven, Connecticut. In a conversation with Jerry, the
electrician, the author divulged that he was affiliated with the Yale Center
for the Study of Globalization. The reaction to this was not exactly as
expected. As Chanda notes, "When I mentioned my affiliation with the Yale
Center for the Study of Globalization, he seemed stunned, as if I had just
confessed to being a charter member of a Colombian drug cartel."
But from that puzzling encounter, Chanda went on to formulate the fundamental
questions - what is globalization, how did it evolve and where is it heading?
As he notes, "To answer Jerry's concerns, I thought it was important to
understand who the globalizers are, what they are doing and why and how long
they have been at it."
Probably the last is the most significant as Chanda's story of globalization
"begins with the journey of anatomically modern humans out of Africa some
50,000 years ago". From such a starting point, the human race spread out across
the planet, was disconnected, and has spent the rest of the time reintegrating
in an initially gradual fashion, but accelerating over time due to advances in
technology and communications. With such an approach (covered in 10 chapters),
Chanda emphasizes that there is nothing new about globalization. In a sense, Bound
Together is a history of the world observed through the lens of
globalization.
The main players in the globalization game are traders, preachers, adventurers
and warriors. These groups, in various forms, have constantly sought to expand
their range of activities and influence beyond the horizon. As Chanda states,
"The same human desire for a better life and greater security that prompted
traders to brave the waves, the same political ambition of warriors to occupy
foreign lands, the same urge for preachers to set out to convert others to
their ideas of the good, and the same drive of adventurers to seek new lands
and opportunities are still working to shrink the world."
What has made globalization such a buzzword over the last decade has been the
advent of technology and speed. Chanda makes the point that while the traders,
adventurers (today's tourists), preachers (today's non-governmental
organizations), and warriors have been a historical constant, velocity is
accelerating the process with significant knock-on effects. And this is
probably what has kicked up the most dust in today's debate about
globalization.
As he wrote, "The big differences that mark globalization of the early years
with that of the present are in the velocity with which products and ideas are
transferred, the ever-growing volume of consumers and products and their
variety, and the resultant increase in the visibility of the process."
While there is a wide range of views about globalization, from Naomi Klein's
most recent anti-capitalist venting (The Shock Doctrine: Disaster Capitalism)
to Tom Friedmans pro-globalization The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the
Twenty-First Century, everyone has a strong opinion. What is refreshing
about Bound Together is the author's effort to show globalization as a
historical process, not a grand conspiracy, launched by a handful of shadowy
figures. Globalization has been a meandering process, often times haphazard and
somewhat impartial. It certainly has been far from perfect.
All the same, interconnectiveness has grown, there have been real benefits from
what the global menu has to offer, and international organizations have been
created to handle the process. As Chanda warns, "Yet life in every country
today is so inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world that failure to
appreciate this interdependence and its long-term effects could risk the
world's drifting toward a major crisis."
One of the most interesting chapters is the conclusion, entitled "The Road
Ahead". Chanda discusses what the US Pentagon refers to as the "non-integrating
gap" from which new and unconventional security challenges are likely to
emerge. Accordingly, this covers large numbers of people left behind. As he
notes, "Lacking such basic infrastructure as drinking water, primary education,
health services, roads, electricity and ports, nearly two billion people are
forgotten and invisible denizens of a world I could not access from my plane.
Yet it is this population that represents both a moral and practical challenge
to the developed world." That challenge takes its form in illegal immigration,
transnational crime and the spread of contagious diseases.
Along these lines, Chanda recognizes that not everyone is on board with
globalization, as a third of the world's population "desperately want to join
in the globalized network but are prevented by global rules and the hand they
have been dealt". And as he amply demonstrates, this is where the tensions
arise. While he is pro-globalization, he is willing to admit that it is hardly
a perfect process - not from the beginning of civilization to contemporary
times. Because the planet is increasingly bound together, so to are its
problems more evident across borders - as are the solutions.
Perhaps one of the few weak points in the book is also in the last chapter.
While there appears to be an almost inevitable flow of events towards
globalization, ie a re-convergence of humankind, there is also a nasty
undercurrent of inequality, injustice and strife. We find ourselves left
wondering what is the tipping point between globalization as poverty reducer
and inequality creator. A little further commentary by Chanda on this would
have been welcomed.
Chanda has written a well-researched, interesting and topical book on a subject
of often intense polarized views. Bound Together is highly recommended
for readers who want to step back and examine a complex subject in a
constructive fashion. Chanda makes a contribution in the globalization debate
by providing a better understanding of something that will continue to dominate
the headlines, political debates and daily life.
Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped
Globalization by Nayan Chanda. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
ISBN-10: 0300112017. Price $27.50, 416 pages.
Scott B MacDonald is editor of KWR International Advisor.
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Needless
to say, there are some very different views about globalization, many of them
blinkered by ideological grindings. All of this makes Nayan Chanda's Bound
Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped
Globalization a very worthwhile read. There is a desire to explain
globalization as something that is a logical outcome of mankind's long
experience on planet Earth and provide a more optimistic outlook for that
process.
