Positive and Negative Effect of Westernization

Positive and Negative Effect of Globalization Prof. Abdelhadi Boutaleb(*) Before defining globalization, it might be useful to start with defining a concept that was used before globalization. This concept is still used nowadays to denote a meaning different from that of modern globalization, which has special dimensions. It was well known to ancient Greek logicians that defining concepts or terms with their synonyms or antonyms is an approach that is confirmed and recognized by the rules of science and of logic. This is a scientific method to understand the opposite or approximate concept. It helps fathom the concept through comparing the points of divergence and similitude. The concept that I will deal with very briefly is Universality. Universality means belonging to the world and opening it to humans, their ideas and information and transferring their practices, ideas and trends from their limited space (the homeland, the birthplace or the place of residence) to a wider space throughout which human-beings –all human-beings as well as all ideas, information, currents and creeds - move without restrictions or borders whatsoever so that the human thought becomes a factor that influences and is influenced by the universal environment as a whole. Longing for universality grows into a dream of seeing this very universality substitute citizenship, the single homeland, the nation-state and the borders, a dream wherein the world becomes a large homeland for human beings and an extended space for their work and movement. This trend is now known as Universality. The tendency to generalize identification to the whole world, is called universalism. This concept has existed since the dawn of time, as it emerged since the very beginning of the existence of man, as humans were possessed by an instinct to fathom the secrets of the world. This instinct was general amongst all human-beings to such an extent that man can be described as a globe-trotter by nature, who hates to be confined in one homeland without being able to move around the world to discover it and draw lessons from this experience. However, the longer man lives in his homeland, the more attached to this homeland he grows and, hence, to himself in view of the benefits that the homeland brings him and the memories man gathers in this homeland with the passing of time. Numerous are the phenomena that can be described as universal, including trends, creeds and theories that were designed to be spread and belong to the world as a whole. Capitalism joins its former enemy communism in their shared universal trend. Communism endeavored to spread its dominion over the world. And now capitalism is poised to be the sole world order However, universalism did not often stem from man’s ambitions of forcible expansion on others’ land, as was the case of ancient emperors or modern colonizers, nor from man’s tyrannical use of indigenous populations to serve his own interests. Universalism rather sought essentially to secure benefits and foster exchange as changing environment entails more diversified and larger prospects to achieve individual and collective purposes in wider and more favorable horizons. In this open world, shared values were spread amongst humankind, without being impeded by borders or stalled by any authority, blockade or restriction. These ideas, ethics, values, principles, religions and theories were described as universal.

This universalism marked the religions that came to educate man and enable him to spread good on earth. This is the origin of the principle of God’s assigning humankind, all humankind, to act on His behalf on earth to build and wisely manage God’s creatures on earth. This principle matches the human instinct, which is marked by and built on universalism. The Holy Koran incited human-beings to enlarge their knowledge and thoughts through exploring earth without restrictions: “ Go ye through the earth and see” (Holy Koran, surate Annaml, Al-Ankabout and Arroum). The message of Islam is universal. God addressed Prophet Mohammed saying in the Holy Koran: “We sent thee but as a mercy for all creatures” (Holy Koran, Surate Al-Anbiaa 21, Verse 107). God also said in Surate Sabaa 24, Verse 28 “We have not sent thee but as a universal (Messenger) to men”. Therefore, the Holy Koran addressed the entire humanity using the expression “O people”, because the call of Islam is for all, i.e. universal. And God in Islam is the Lord of Alamine (humanity) and not only the Lord of the people of the Arabian Peninsula, where Islam was revealed. This idea was embodied in what can be considered as Islam’s first call ever for universal coexistence, well before the calls made by nations and by international organizations. This came in Surate Al-Imrane 3, Verse 64: “ Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah.” This universal call was consecrated when Islam abolished discrimination based on race, colour and sex, a custom that was known to all pre-Islamic communities not only in the Arabian Peninsula alone but in the world at large. God told humankind: “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you.” (Surate Al-Hujurate 49, Verse 13). This verse brought in three principles whereupon the universalism of Islam is founded: equality among people, their inalienable right to difference as peoples and tribes (this points out to the types of legitimate differences), preserving the existence of the other embodied in the difference of peculiarities so that each race knows its sisterly race and, therefore, promoting exchanges (to know one another, as seen in the afore-mentioned verse of the holy Koran). Equality in universalism, abolishing differences without however canceling peculiarities and urging mankind to fathom the secrets of these peculiarities as a means to better know each other is a triangular relationship whereupon Islam founded its universal call and message to achieve mutual respect among humankind. Without this respect, no understanding nor cooperation is possible among people. Nevertheless, Islam did not impose this universalism (welded around a unique universal community based on piety) by means of force, occupation or tyranny. Islam rather disseminated its message with wisdom, good advice and argumentation, far from any constraints or any hegemonic ambition and without exclusion of the Other. Moreover, Islam upheld its call in a harmonious co-existence with the messages of the previous monotheist religions and on the basis of faith in their messengers and revealed books.

In the light of universalism, refined by religion, piety and virtue, the Arab and Muslim wise men were the first to lift barriers hampering knowledge and wisdom. They promoted the motto “knowledge without borders” and urged for the quest of knowledge and science from the cradle to the grave and everywhere in the world. They effected this motto in the realms of scientific research and in exchanging wisdom. Some of them achieved the miracle of the greatest journeys around the globe at a time when it was difficult to cross the world by land or sea. They made discoveries, interacted culturally with the others and contributed, hence, to the heritage of the universal civilization. These globe trotters, including historians and geographers, conveyed a clear, thorough and genuine image of the world’s large nature, diversified environments, different races, and remote areas with their human, architectural and cultural peculiarities. Civilizations, therefore, belong to all humankind or to the world as a whole and in this global sense a universal content. These civilizations are the product of distinguished ways of thinking and practice and were shaped by a shared creativity that can be described, without being mistaken, as universal. The civilization that isolates itself is doomed to fall in decline and oblivion, while open and inter-penetrated civilizations flourish, develop and diversify their creativities and hence live longer and spread all over the world. Which civilization can rightfully claim to be the fruit of its own sons and people alone? Weren’t the spiritual civilizations influenced by the materialism of the other civilizations? Weren’t the civilization of materialistic societies influenced by the spirituality of other civilizations? The western materialistic civilization today says it is originally a JewishChristian civilization. What is globalization ? Today and more than ever before, the world has become a “global village” with the expansion of the communication networks, the rapid information exchange, the gradual shrink of borders and of attachment to identities and citizenship, the lifting of the barriers of visas and passports, the consecration of a new era when national sovereignty and the authority of the nation-state is fading away in favor of regional groupings, international organizations and international legality and law. This means the beginning of the return to the universal trend which is imposed by human instinct, but in a broader environment and in an evident endeavor to dominate the world. Today’s universalism is marked by its reliance on sophisticated and highly performing technology that was not available for the old form of universalism. The fact that the verb “globalize” and the noun “globalization” -both require a subject and an object in the other languages from which the world “Awlama” was translated into the Arabic language- implies that the globalization process is not spontaneous as it is implied by the word universalism. Globalization is an act by the subject, a “globalizer”, on an object that has to accept the act thoroughly and in detail, willingly or unwillingly.

Globalization is also an act and a practice. It is equally an integrated system wherein the subject leaves no choice to the object destined to be shaped up. That is why globalization advocates describe it as inevitable for humanity, sooner or later. The subject of this globalization is the United States’ regime embodying the uni-polar system and seeking to spread this system so that the world adopts the American system in politics, economy, sociology, culture, way of thinking, behavior and lifestyle. This will make the American system the unique universal system. Such a situation prompted some circles to describe globalization as Americanization. The American globalization discourse was preceded by a call to building a new world order made by former US President George Bush after the Gulf world War. George Bush himself was behind the holding of a summit of the United Nations Security Council on January 3, 1992 to debate the foundations of the new order. However, the final communiqué of this summit did not clearly lay out the traits of this order nor did it define its objectives and limits nor the means to build it. The communiqué only spoke in the customary way used by the international political community which proclaims at the end of each world war the birth of a new world order. It was quite normal that the World Gulf War should be no exception to the pattern that marked the end of the two world wars. The First World War led to a new world order based on consecrating the legitimacy of the occupation of the South by the North, and dividing areas of dominion in the world by consensus among the allies, winners of the war. This trend was reflected in the Versailles Convention, which can be considered as a convention for the distribution of booty, and the Charter of the League of Nations. Likewise, the Second World War yielded the distribution of dominion, decided at Yalta in 1945 between the United States of America and the Soviet Union in a consecration of bipolarisation between them, which made the Yalta Agreement, an agreement for the distribution of booty among the winners of the war. After the Gulf War, the world experienced several events that reshaped the political map, drawn by the two poles after the Second World War, and replaced with a new map, where the United States of America emerged as the single power that takes hold of the booty, by controlling the oil-exporting Arab region and deciding for its destiny and maps. Globalization, which is designed to be the major trait of the new World Order - that is poised to be an old one - has spread since the beginning like an octopus in all fields. It uses its gains through being attached to them and through consolidating them as well as through enlarging its networks around the world to take more. This globalization octopus risks to go beyond all obstacles and restrictions to swallow everything. Since the 1980’s, there was a succession of events that deeply influenced the world, and contributed to reshaping the systems of the world and unifying them in a new World order or a new world. This situation heralded the fall of the Soviet Union pole and the start of a unipolar order, embodied in the United States of America. In 1985, the former Soviet President Michael Gorbatchev declared a peaceful revolution to build a new order in the Soviet Union, based on reform, or Perestroika, and transparency, or Glasnost. In 1987, the World population increased strongly to stand at more than five billion souls.

In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell. In the Same year, Germany was reunified to become a capitalist democratic state. In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the United States of America drummed up the support of its Western allies to the “Desert Storm” war. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union stood as a sheer spectator, signaling thus its withdrawal from the competition for polarization. Former President Bush called, after victory, for establishing a new world order. On 3 January 1992, the Security Council positively responded to the call of the President of the United States of America to convene a summit that was crowned with a declaration that served as the first international document that paved the way for the specialized international organizations to devise regulations and technology to come up with what it is today called the strategy of globalization. The present study will deal with the concept of globalization and its evolution towards full domination of the world, as it has become omnipresent in all fields. We will tackle the relationship between economic globalization and capitalist liberalism in the world, and survey the fields that are being globalized. We will equally address the various types of discourse of globalization and of antiglobalization as well as the movements of resistance, that oppose globalization in a bid to safeguard their threatened peculiarities. We will highlight the positive aspects of globalization and its negative consequences. We will conclude with the following question: “What kind of world do we wish to build in the 21st century? We will try to answer in conclusion that we aspire to a globalized world, but within some limits, a kind of fair globalization that rejects opportunist gluttony. We dream of a world able to preserve the diversified peculiarities and identities of its inhabitants, a unified and diversified world at the same time. What are the Fields of Action of Globalization? Some claim that beginning with economic globalization was meant to fulfill a universal comprehensive development and reflect the world cooperation in economic fields as a starting point for a global cooperation in all other realms. Economic globalization appeared as an extension of the world capitalist liberalization which seeks to enable strong capital to achieve utmost benefits through liberalizing trade and establishing free competition in trade exchanges. This is the system of free economy which is based on opening markets to capital able to conquer them. In other words this is the market economy. Economic globalization thrived with the beginning of the 1990’s as a result of a wellorganized interdependence between the world capital and the goods and services markets, and also thanks to the rush of countries which had not joined the GATT at that time, to adhere to the World Trade Organization after the Second Uruguay Round and committing themselves to its world conventions. The provisions and covenants of the World Trade Organization (WTO) came to confirm the principles of free competition of capital and the gradual lowering of barriers hampering the free movement of capital and their flow onto markets. The WTO principles and covenants also confirmed the freedom of movement of national products in the world markets. Goods

and services, made in a local or national market, are distributed and consumed in an international space, regardless of their origin. In this way national economies are gradually integrated into the world market part of what is called global economic openness. No need to say that economic globalization requires states (or the public sector) to give up their role in favor of the national or foreign private sector. It equally requires the nation-state to implement a policy of the public sector privatization, to lift hurdles on this privatization policy until the public sector is deprived of all its previous prerogatives that used to entitle the nation-state to playing the leading and major role in running the national economy. All this is done in favor of the private sector which has become an actor in the fields of employment, health, education, environment protection, the management of some utilities like water and electricity distribution and national firms. Globalization assigns these fields to the private sector and to multinational companies. According to statistics, the number of these companies in the world rose from 100 in 1970 to nearly 50,000 now. Some 200 of these companies were categorized as nation-states and multinationals given their importance. More than 100 of these companies were multinationals, while the nation-states accounted for less than 100. This clearly indicates the rapid evolution of world economy as a result of economic globalization, privatization and the reduction of the role of the state. Moreover, this shows the long way that economic globalization has covered in the process, as it outclassed the liberal capitalism market, which progressed slowly and timidly. Other telling figures show that multinational companies contribute only 7 percent to employment in the world and pay only 9 percent of taxes at the world scale, while controlling 80 percent of the world trade.