Global Economy and Cultures

by James L. Connor, S.J.

[Woodstock Report, October 1999, No. 59]
Copyright © 1999 Woodstock Theological Center
All rights reserved

http://www.georgetown.edu/centers/woodstock/report/r-fea59.htm

Introduction. From September 10 to 17, 1999, 14 Jesuits from research and social action centers in 11 countries gathered in Washington under the auspices of the Woodstock Theological Center to reflect on the impact that the globalization of the free market economy is having on local cultures worldwide (see page 4). It was the kick-off session of the most ambitious—and expensive ($1.2 million) —project that Woodstock has ever undertaken.

This project is a direct response to a mandate of the 1995 Jesuit General Congregation, which, when in session, is the highest governing body of the Jesuit Order. This was the 34^th such Congregation in the 450-year history of the Jesuits. On the topic of the global economy and culture it said:

The globalization of the world economy and society proceeds at a rapid pace, fed by developments in technology, communications, and business. While there can be many benefits from this phenomenon, it can also create injustices on a massive scale ... In justice, we must counter this by working to build up a world order of genuine solidarity, where all can have a rightful place at the banquet of the Kingdom. (General Congregation 34, Decree 3, no.7)

I was one of the 220 Jesuit members of that Congregation. During the course of those three months, 25 of us who worked in Jesuit social research or social action centers got together informally several times to share experience and to discover whether there were any issues on which we could profitably collaborate. After much discussion, we landed on the globalization of the economy and its impact on cultures. I volunteered Woodstock as the coordinating agency.

Launching the project. Once home I asked Woodstock fellow Father Gasper F. (Gap) Lo Biondo, S.J., to head up this project. And we started the process by enlisting an international sponsoring committee: Irudayam Aloysius, S.J. (India), Jean Yves Calvez, S.J. (France), Marcos Recolons, S.J. (Latin America), Jean Illboudo, S.J. (Africa), Francisco Ivern, S.J. (Brasil), and Ismael Zuloaga, S.J. (East Asia). Next, we invited 44 Jesuit centers to participate (see Core Participants in Global Economy and Cultures Project). The enthusiastically affirmative response confirmed our confidence in our choice of topic. The ultimate aim of the project would be to decide on, publish, and try to have implemented some policy level recommendations for the improvement of the way the global economy is affecting cultures and peoples. Policymakers envisaged range from the international level (World Bank, IMF, multinational corporations) all the way down to the grassroots (local government, social action centers).

The first step was to ask the participating centers for stories! Our motive here was to head off the Jesuit penchant to give an opinion, insist on a theory, cite an authority, or even offer a solution, before we were sure what the facts were! And the facts are imbedded in actual experience. Fortunately, Jesuit centers are in contact with the whole range of people who are being variously affected by the new economy, from the poorest of the poor, to those at the highest levels of government or corporate life, including scholars and experts in and out of academia.

Besides the expert advisers (see page 8) that we are and will be consulting, we are reading the recent rash of literature that authors are producing on this topic of globalization and its influence on society and culture. (See bibliography on page 7.) They all agree that what is uniquely characteristic about this new wave of globalization —that of the 1990s—is its "engine" or "power-source," namely, the technology of electronic communication. Precisely how this technology is shaping not only business, society, and culture, but human consciousness itself is a core question deeply imbedded in this project on "globalization and cultures!" Its ramifications are profound.

"So, what’s happening?" That’s what we asked people in this first go-around. And they told us their actual experience in the form of story, anecdote, or example. We got dozens of stories back from the centers. We collated them, summarized them, and mailed all of them back out to the 44 participating centers, so that all could see what each sector was experiencing. And that’s when we convened here in Washington, D.C., with representatives from roughly a quarter of the participating centers to re-read, analyze, and discuss with one another this welter of evidence. We hoped to discover in these stories some patterns, common themes, regularly recurring relationships, and the underlying explanation for both successes and failures of the global economy.

This method of starting with concrete experience, and struggling to understand its meaning and implications, before moving to decide what to do to improve or remedy a situation, is the pattern St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, commends in his "Spiritual Exercises." General Congregation 34 (quoting GC 32) described it, as "the Ignatian method of prayerful discernment which can be described as ‘a constant interplay between experience, reflection, decision and action, in line with the Jesuit ideal of being contemplative in action.’" This is the process we followed at the September meeting and it is the process which, with appropriate adaptations, the entire three-year project will follow.

By meeting’s end this September, the group issued a 16 page consensus statement that was appropriately tentative in tone. Even simple declarative sentences were regarded more as questions for future study than closed doors on issues. A sampling will illustrate the point.

An opening "Note" gives the flavor of the meeting.

Globalization is a complex reality. Like capitalism, as described by Joseph Schumpeter, globalization consists of a process of "creative destruction" in which there are economic winners and losers. Globalization stimulates economic growth and social improvement for some, while at the same time, it lays economic burdens on many people and disrupts human development.

The harms and benefits of globalization are not evenly distributed either among nations or within them. Given the economic gap between the First World and the Third World, however, our effort to see globalization from the perspective of the world's poor inevitably means that, while the participants did consider the benefits of globalization and endeavored to correct an overly negative bias, the discussion reported here did not view globalization in a neutral way. Our concern is for the victims of the process.

Defining globalization and culture. Two basic questions that the group bumped into almost immediately were, "What is globalization?" and "What do we mean by culture?" And when they took a shot at defining terms this is what they came up with:

Globalization encompasses the process of an increasingly open flow of information and movement of money, goods, images, ideas, and people between different countries and cultures. Economic globalization refers to the progressive incorporation and networking of nations in the international (global) free market economy through agreements on policies of rapid liberalization or the opening up of local markets to international flows of capital, labor, goods, services, and technology under the control of transnational institutions.

In defining culture, they went back to General Congregation 34 and expanded on it:

"Culture is the way in which a human group lives, thinks, feels, organizes, celebrates, and shares life." (GC 34, D 4, n. 1) Underlying all manifestations or expressions of culture there is a set or system of meanings, of values and criteria, of world views that are translated into languages, gestures, symbols, roles, styles, and patterns of life.

While cultures possess an enduring core of values, etc., they are also pluriform and subject to change through interaction with other cultural influences.

The group then moved to list beneficial and negative influences of the economy on cultures.

First, the benefits:

(1) The development and use of information technology, especially the internet, in the ease with which knowledge can be communicated to people in distant places,

(2) The increase in economies of scale results for some people in wealth and opportunities for upward mobility,

(3) The capability of promoting common cultural values, in that people in different parts of the world can identify and act in light of "best practices,"

(4) Modern communication and travel enabling groups, people, and countries struggling for justice to achieve greater solidarity,

(5) A greater concern for human rights as part of, and in response to, the globalization process,

(6) An explosive increase of healthy spirituality, and

(7) Greater community activity.

Second, the negative impacts:

(1) The ideology of the free market advances the interests of business and increases the power of economic decision-making groups. Globalization is driven by the imposition of business values—particularly, the assertion of the primacy of the market and the diminution of the role of the state in economic life.

(2) In many poor and indebted nations, the imposition of Economic Structural Adjustment Programs forces countries into a liberalized global market on whose rules they exercise no influence.

(3) The growth of international media tends to alter (homogenize) local consumption habits and displace traditional, domestic forms of production and consumption. Through cinema, television, and the internet, global media reach into remote corners of the world, establishing a global culture but also relativizing and subverting local cultures.

(4) Globalization has led to "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer," among and within nations. The majority of the world population has been excluded from the benefits of globalization.

(5) A "culture of illusion" has arisen, characterized by unrealistic expectations and wants.

(6) The migration of people has grown.

(7) The Third World has become more dependent on multinational/transnational corporations.

Next steps. The participants concluded by listing 25 (!!) topics that need further study before this project can complete its work responsibly. That shows how tentative current con-clusions are, as well as how much the project has yet to do.

The report was mailed out to all 44 participating centers. Grateful and congratulatory responses started coming in immediately. The report is being shared with the full membership of the centers’ research teams, with their Jesuit province leadership, with other scholars, and organizations with whom they work. The report will be the basis for the next phase of discussion, criticism and constructive suggestions.

Gap Lo Biondo will start moving around the world to promote regional meetings of the participating centers. He left on October 8 to spend two weeks in India. Thereafter, he will go to South America, Africa, East Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, Western Europe, and North America. He will be cumulatively communicating at each location what other locations are thinking, saying, and concluding.

There is also a "chat room" being set up, wherein participants can interchange with one another directly. There will certainly be at least one large, long, international gathering of all the participating center members before the final statement of policy recommendations is finished for publication and distribution. Depending on funding, there might even be two such large meetings, appropriately spaced.

Fulfilling a dream. I must confess to enormous enthusiasm for this project. It is the realization of a dream of our late Father General Pedro Arrupe, S.J., for whom I have deep affection and great gratitude. I came to know him well when I was provincial superior of the Maryland Province and president of the U.S. Jesuit Conference, assignments which took me rather often to Rome.

Father Arrupe dreamed of Jesuit centers all over the world in active communication with one another to address major social issues of our day. He called them "poles of reflection," which made me think of telephone poles con-nected together by world-girdling wires! A better world for all people is what drove Father Arrupe relentlessly. (One major influence on him was the fact that he was the first medically trained person to treat the victims of Hiroshima!)

Fulfilling Father Arrupe’s dream would alone suffice to make this project a "labor of love" for Woodstock and its companion centers. The second reason is to share in his passion for a better world for all people.

PARTICIPANTS IN THE SEPTEMBER MEETING

Marcello Azevedo, S.J., Centro Cultural de Brasilia, Brasil
John Carroll, S.J., Institute on Church and Social Issues, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
Ricardo Falla, S.J., Central American Province Social Apostolate Commission, Honduras
Muhigirwa Ferdinand, S.J., CEPAS, Kinshasa, D.R. Congo
Michel Guery, S.J., INADES, Abijan, Ivory Coast
Savarimuthu Lazar, S.J., Indian Social Institute, Bangalore, India
Stanislaus Opiela, S.J., Moscow, Russia
Ambrose Pinto, S.J., Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, India
William F. Ryan, S.J., Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice, Toronto, Canada
Dieter B. Scholz, S.J., Silveira House, Zimbabwe
William Toner, S.J., Centre for Faith and Justice, Dublin, Ireland
Jean-Yves Calvez, S.J., Paris, France
James L. Connor, S.J., Woodstock Theological Center, Washington, D.C., USA
Wilfredo Gonzalez, S.J., Centro Gumilla, Caracas, Venezuela