Civilizing Globalization argues an important point that corporate globalization—or market fundamentalism—is ideological. Sandbrook and Güven edit a book comprised of top-tier academics, mainly Canadian political scientists, who speak to market alternatives in South East Asia, Latin America and India. The 20 chapters are organized into four parts: social politics, political strategies, regulation and transnational entities, which all work to adddress the question of the essence of civilizing globalization. In the introduction, the main argument states that the neoliberal variant of globalization driven by elites is an entirely normative project that subordinates the social life.
Civilizing Globalization examines the state response in terms of managing corporate globalization. Sandbrook and Güven argue that “generic” globalization is not the problem per se. However, the ways in which globalization has been politicized is the issue. The book's thesis is that political ideology in markets has taken hold to the detriment to the social life. Yet the book does not go as far as to condemn the collusion between political and business elites, as does Amy Chua in World on Fire (Reference Chua2003), arguing that market-dominant minorities are able to manipulate the political leaders to their own liking. In chapter 5, Mitu Sengupta tells the tale of two Indias: one very rich and another poor and where big money is corrupt. Given the social politics in India and elsewhere, it is puzzling to see how some states can regulate corporate globalization.
Given that the roots of today's market economy were born out of the violent slave trade, how do countries greatly affected by this go about civilizing globalization? It seems that some states were formed with the intention to harm certain groups. States born this way would not be the best vehicles for addressing market failures. For this reason, I think the strongest aspect of the book is the focus on social politics, the people. It seems that that acknowledging diverse economies helps diffuse the myth that market fundamentalism is the way to engage in the world's economy.
In the first part of the book, the cultural experiences in East Asia, India and Latin America bring the cultural context into play. In chapter 4, Judith Teichman's Korea case stands out because of its increasing welfare provisioning and an activist state interested in addressing social inequality. In Part 2, devising various paths to manage neoliberal globalization has been important. Richard Falk's concept of “globalization from below” is intriguing because resistance comes from ordinary people. Grass-root experiences in the book could have been included as part of the political strategies from below.
The book does not highlight enough the bold experiments taking place against market fundamentalism. Since the 1970s, more than 30 million Indians belong to self-help groups and that they do so in the face of extreme liberalization is striking (Datta, Reference Datta2000). In 2006 Bangladesh's Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank, a bank that reaches over eight million people, won the Nobel Peace Prize and this is a testimony to people's will to reform elitist banks. Building countermovements is very much part of how to civilize markets. Millions of banker women in the diaspora and in developing countries are recreating money pools to contest commercial banks (Hossein, Reference Hossein2014). Spain's Mondragon Co-operative Corporation was created to address social exclusion, and today they are a successful global business (Macleod, 2007). Worker co-operatives such as Brazil's MST Landless workers have shown that people can “resist, occupy and produce” under neoliberalism (Dias Martins, Reference Dias Martins2000).
One billion of the world's people belong to collective institutions. To think about ways to “civilize globalization” must be rooted in a life-project. Civilizing Globalization is a superbly written book and worthy of a read in the social sciences. Is the book a survival guide? This book does not address the locally-driven social economies that people create when markets are exclusionary. Nevertheless, the book does discuss interesting relations between state-business-society. It seems to me that to civilize globalization will come from everyday people who change the way business operates in society.
