An underside to globalization.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Hinkson, John
• Date: 22 March 2005

It does not matter where one looks, the distinctive mark of globalization and its varied and deep-going crises are anywhere and everywhere. In Australia, these express themselves in the taking apart of the fabric of the settled work and industry practices that have existed for as long as anyone can remember. In Europe, the prosperous states of the European Union struggle to defend the conditions of life for privileged social strata against those who wish to challenge systematic exclusion. On the one hand there are social groups: in the foreground Muslim emigres, but more generally subcultures and groupings that have been excluded for over a generation. On the other hand there are states: those of Eastern Europe whose exclusion followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and that desperately seek to re-establish themselves--whether by flat taxes or other means. Both excluded groups and would-be resurgent states are mirror images of each other in the globalization process. And looming on the horizon, shaping events on a global scale, there is the entry of China and India into the global economy. Nothing can be readily conserved when up against this unfolding logic of integration and exclusion. In the midst of this structured turmoil it is no longer possible to assume that the vegetables on our table are the products of local toil.

Even the signature events of the Bush administration are now being displaced. The rejection of Kyoto and the invasion of Iraq, both of which sought to preserve the status quo for energy cartels by stabilizing the supply of Middle Eastern oil, are being overwhelmed by global events. For there are new significant consumers of energy living outside the developed world and their demand has forced oil pricing to the edge of tolerability for Western consumers. Moreover, before this expansion of energy users can even be assimilated, there are convincing claims that geological limits to oil production are about to make their own mark. Whether materializing tomorrow or in ten years time, they produce their own distinctive and immediate anticipatory effect: they undermine the assumptions of the contemporary social order about ever-expanding populations, production and consumption. Such limits cast doubt upon the trajectory of the societies that have structured themselves around consumption lifestyles and 'high-tech' proliferation of commodities. These concerns present themselves even before there is consideration of global...