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Key Themes - Chapter 22

Global exclusion and inclusion

The authors seek to answer the question of whether there is some underlying logic or central insight that explains why social exclusion arises: their hypothesis is that social exclusion is more likely to occur when the adoption of neo-liberal economic practices is disengaged from social policy and forms of political governance. A free market alone is neither an ethical good nor a practical solution to inequality or marginality if there is no simultaneous social reform or if dictatorial, inefficient or corrupt forms of politics are allowed to continue. This point can be illustrated at a country level, but more importantly it also forms the basis of a global discussion of social inclusion and exclusion – of who wins and who loses. It is argued that we are witnessing a countermovement to neo-liberalism that has a variety of supporters and activists who operate on local, national and global scales. The counter movement seeks to recover or advance the cause of social inclusion. It is difficult to study such a global and dispersed countermovement, but we have shown through the book that social movements like the Green and Women’s movement have sought to organize the marginalized, disposessed and excluded, drawing them into the mainstream through a process of confronting the established order and empowering the hitherto powerless.

 

Cultural globalization: uniformity or creolization

The authors argue that at the cultural level, globalization will not so much lead to a condition of bland sameness but rather to the creolization of the world where flows and movements of ideas, images, capital and people will generate new cultures and new hybridities. Some suggest that dominant forms of globalization tend not so much to unevenness but, to a condition of bland sameness. What are the sources of this supposed global monoculture and is there the cultural equivalent of a social and political countermovement acting as a rival force? Here although the dangers TNCs and the spread of capitalism are highlighted as formidable causes, the authors argue that the concrete evidence for suggesting that this produces an irresistible, disempowering and homogenous culture dominated by US consumerist values is more apparent than real. Instead a vigorous and growing countermovement to cultural homogeneity is identified as being expressed through the processes of hybridity and creolization. As those predicting the creolization of the world propose, the locals will select particular elements from incoming cultures, endow these with meanings different from those they possessed in the original culture and then creatively merge these with indigenous and other imported traditions to create totally new forms. In short, the flows and movements of ideas, images, capital and people will generate a new wave of syncretism, new cultures, new hybridities, in short a creolization of the world.