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1. Counter-forces: The Politics of Uneven Power
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 Counter-forces: The Politics of Uneven Power 3 1 COUNTER-FORCES: THE POLITICS OF UNEVEN POWER Terence Chong INTRODUCTION: GLOBALIZATION’S DEMOCRATIZATION OF POWER Even as the world shrinks with each technological and communicative breakthrough, we are still uncertain as to where this much-hyped phenomenon called “globalization” is going to bring us. Over the years it has forced us to re-assess big ideas like the “nation-state” and “community”, needled us into refining their characteristics, and challenged us to imagine them anew. We have accepted that age-old values like sovereignty and national identity have not been rendered irrelevant but, instead, stretched and manipulated by an increasing array of transboundary processes. And yet, while globalization has cornered us into re-thinking how we define ourselves, we are still unsure as to how the human story will unfold. This is because, far from the picture of an economic beast roaming the earth in search of self-fulfilment that many politicians, journalists, even scholars, have painted, globalization, like all social, political and cultural forces, is of man. Globalization, though driven largely by the logic of neo-capitalism, is more than just economic process. Its political, social and cultural dimensions have shown us, through numerous studies, that homogenization and universalism are but some of the possible outcomes. Resistance, hybridity and sheer indifference are legitimate possibilities of globalization, suggesting that as long as it remains impossible to predict how global processes will affect the interests of certain groups, or 3 01 G&CForces Ch 1 1/28/08, 12:22 PM 3 4 4 Terence Chong how they would react, it will be just as impossible to say exactly where globalization will take us. It is with this understanding that we have moved from the imperialist school of thought towards a more open-ended mode of analysis of globalization. The belief that globalization is imperialistic and homogenizing in nature is premised on the dualistic framework that describes the global political and cultural economy as the sum total of the uneven power relations between the core and periphery, the developing and developed countries, the West and the rest. This imperialist-based analysis is driven by the assumption that cultural capital and power are synonymous with economic capital, and culture, like the logic of capitalism, rapacious and irresistible, flows out from centres of power. With such an analytical mode it is no wonder that we have to conclude that the world is fast becoming one big “homogenized North Atlantic cultural slop”.1 This mode of analysis is not only limited in capturing ethnographic reality but also deterministic in that global processes are, a priori, defined as universalizing agents. Furthermore it fails to account for the increasing cultural flows from the socalled periphery to the core. For while it is undeniable that Hollywood movies rule the global cinemas with its cultural attraction and distributive power, an imperialist-based analysis would not be able to capture the counter-flow examples such as Hollywood’s stylistic borrowing of the Hong Kong triad movies genre, Yuen Woo Ping’s martial arts influence on global products like the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, and the re-location of Asian directors like John Woo and Lee Ang in the American movie-making industry.2 On a political level, how do we account for how a group like al-Qaeda can change the tone of global politics and upset the rhythm of globalization from the periphery? As such, one of the most pressing questions in the age of globalization is the conceptualization of power, the different abilities and capacities to express it, the new social actors who can express it, and the ends to which it is expressed for. After all globalization is more than the tale of a shrinking and inter-connected world but also that of power democratization whereby the ability and capacity to act and counter-act is increasingly available to all. Power is still conventionally thought of as expansive in movement, flowing outward as exercised by the dominant classes. In such cases power is synonymous with economic or symbolic capital accumulated by individuals or institutions, and premised on an imperialistic logic that must express itself in a radial manner. Such conceptions of power manifestation do not square with the realities of globalization, that is, communicative technologies like 01 G&CForces Ch 1 1/28/08, 12:22 PM 4 [44.222.212.138] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:32 GMT) 5 Counter...