Globalization
Feb. 28th, 2004 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaktwosGlobalization has been presented as purely a trade issue, but it is actually about appropriation of resources. It makes property out of things that have never before been owned as property. Native plant life replenishes itself and belongs to communities. The idea of patenting seeds, plants and even genes of certain organisms threatens to change this. Similarly, water, which has alwasy been recognized as a commons, is being privatized. This confilict involves nearly all of humanity--and all the species on this planet--versus a handful of corporations.
Why is this happening now? Because capital has reached its limits. Capital accumulation always needs new domains, new frontiers. During colonialism, the frontiers were other continents. Europeans came and took the land that belonged to the native communities in India and Africa. Now the frontiers are water, plant life, and life itself.
The limits of capitalization have been reached in teh wealthy, industrialized North: how many more suvs can you sell to families that already have two of them? In the Southern Hemisphere, people are poor. You can't sell them suvs, so you create new markets in teh necessities of life, items that even the poor must have daily. Thus you have a mechanism with which to suck capital from the poorest people of the world.
--Vandana Shiva
Now, if we challenge the notion of property, that has an affect on the validity of ownership in the past. Not that I have done research significantly in the past, but you owned property based on whether your government acknowledged you owned that property. Before organized government, you owned it by virtue of being able to defend it from others. Is the only thing making property valid is that you merely have a powerful authority acknowledge that it is yours?
Discuss.
Why is this happening now? Because capital has reached its limits. Capital accumulation always needs new domains, new frontiers. During colonialism, the frontiers were other continents. Europeans came and took the land that belonged to the native communities in India and Africa. Now the frontiers are water, plant life, and life itself.
The limits of capitalization have been reached in teh wealthy, industrialized North: how many more suvs can you sell to families that already have two of them? In the Southern Hemisphere, people are poor. You can't sell them suvs, so you create new markets in teh necessities of life, items that even the poor must have daily. Thus you have a mechanism with which to suck capital from the poorest people of the world.
--Vandana Shiva
Now, if we challenge the notion of property, that has an affect on the validity of ownership in the past. Not that I have done research significantly in the past, but you owned property based on whether your government acknowledged you owned that property. Before organized government, you owned it by virtue of being able to defend it from others. Is the only thing making property valid is that you merely have a powerful authority acknowledge that it is yours?
Discuss.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 01:36 pm (UTC)