Cambodia’s bill to limit NGOs

If Cambodia passes a law to regulate NGO activity, what influence will it have on the work of land rights activists?

Cambodia’s Council of Ministers recently released a third draft of the Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organisations (LANGO) that would more tightly control the eligibility of civil society organisations and how they are run. Several NGOs have spoken out against the proposed law, saying that it would give the government too much authority over their work.

“If the law is passed in its current form, everyone will lose out, from civil society to investors with an eye on Cambodia, but, above all, the Cambodian people in whose name NGOs and associations work,” said Virak Ou, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

LANGO requires all NGOs to register with the government but does not include an appeals process for denied applications. Without a guarantee of objectivity or an appeals process, some NGOs fear that they will be unjustly shut down.

“Ultimately,” Ou said, “the fear is that the law may be used as a legislative weapon to stifle grassroots democracy and freedom of expression and association in Cambodia, in violation of the Constitution and the principle of the rule of law.”

The Cambodian organisation, Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), which supported land rights protesters, received a government letter to suspend its activities on ambiguous terms. In a joint statement, 130 NGOs claimed the suspension lacked legal justification. They believe the government’s move was a symbol of increased efforts to block NGO activity so that land development projects of private and foreign companies can go ahead with greater ease.

NGOs play an integral role in educating civil society of their rights. As Cambodia launches more controversial development programs, land rights disputes and forced evictions are on the rise. Many human rights NGOs are working with citizens to launch campaigns to remain on their land and to protect their livelihood.

In a recent land rights protest, people from the Prey Lang Forest dawned leaf hats and face paint to mirror the struggle of the characters from the movie Avatar, which tells the story of a group of forest people who are threatened by outsiders seeking to exploit their land for natural resources. They were protesting upcoming development projects that would destroy the livelihood of more than 700,000 Cambodians. Demonstrations have been ongoing since May. Last week more than 100 villagers were detained in Phnom Penh for distributing protest flyers.

According to environmentalists, Prey Lang supports all of the country as a primary watershed that regulates water flow and is a breeding ground for fish and wildlife. Proposed agro-industrial plantations, mines and hydroelectric dams would disrupt the fragile ecosystem and force tens of thousands out of their homes.

Another land rights case involved a development project near Cambodia’s Boeng Kak Lake tourist area. The government had issued plans to turn the region in to an upscale shopping and apartment district, and since construction began in 2008, over 2,000 have been forced out of their homes and more than 10,000 face eviction. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Hun Sen, granted 1,000 families still living near the lake approximately 12 hectares of land on the development site.

These are some of the social media elements featured in this episode of The Stream.

• This press release from 130 civil society and private sector groups condemns the government’s proposed law to arbitrarily suspend the work of NGOs.

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  LICADHO – Press Release – Cambodia: “We Are All STT”: Civil Society and Private Sector Groups Condemn Government’s Arbitrary Suspension of Local NGO

  August 21, 2011 – We, representatives of the undersigned members of civil society and private sector groups, support national development that is equitable, inclusive, and sustainable. We believe national development should contribute not only to the growth of commerce and industry but also to the welfare of the wider population.

  licadho-cambodia.org

• Villagers burn tyres during a protest at the Boeung Kak lake area in Phnom Penh August 23, 2011. The villagers said they had written a letter of protest to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen after being told by officials that the land promised to them in return for being removed from their homes at the lake was not being given. Thousands of families living near the lake are facing eviction to make way for a Chinese development project. REUTERS/Samrang Pring (CAMBODIA – Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY CIVIL UNREST)

• 

• Oppression of civil society groups surfaced most recently when protests began after the government evicted citizens from their land. The valuable land in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Forest was then leased to domestic and foreign businesses.

Letters from abroad

Just few weeks ago, Canadians were proudly cheering on their team as they celebrated Canada’s gold-medal hockey win over America in the 2010 Olympic winter games held in Vancouver. Days afterwards, the National Hockey League (NHL) resumed its regular season, and in April the league will begin its own championship tournament. There are 32 hockey teams in the NHL who represent 32 cities with their hockey-playing prowess.

The league is divided into 16 teams on the West Coast and 16 teams on the East Coast. Canada has six teams in the East Coast league, with the other 26 teams coming from America. The playoffs are the grand finale of the season, where eight teams from each side of the continent play each other for the Stanley Cup, a trophy that is given to the league’s best team each year.

“I am cheering for the Calgary Flames to reach the playoffs,” said Kevin Troung, who is an 18-year-old fan of the Canadian hockey team. “They are currently battling with the Red Wings of Detroit to get a chance to enter the Stanley Cup finals.”

While football is the most popular sport in Cambodia, hockey is without a doubt the most popular sport in Canada, and the two games have many differences. In football, the players run around on the green grass wearing nothing but shin pads to protect themselves from injury. Hockey players, on the other hand, are equipped with helmets, padding and a stick that they use to move the puck (like a flattened ball) around the ice while they move around on their skates like hurricanes. Each side is composed of six players: three forwards who attempt to hit the puck into the opponent’s small goal, and two defenders and a goalie who try to stop the other team from scoring. Like soccer, the winner is the team that scores the most goals.

Media commentators in Canada describe hockey as the most attractive sport in the world, with the ability to bring together people from all ages and social strata. It is not only players in the NHL who devote themselves to hockey; schools and communities encourage students and youths to join their own teams for a healthy extracurricular activity, or in some cases to begin a career in athletics. And it is not only in the arena that you see hockey fans. It is common to see streetcars and houses adorned with Flames flasg all around Calgary.

Sophan Seng is a Cambodian living in Canada. He is the facilitator of the Khmer-Canadian Buddhist Cultural Center and president of the Khmer Youth Association of Alberta. If you are living abroad and you want to share your experiences with our readers, send your letters to lift@phnompenhpost.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Original source:  The Phnom Penh Post

Dear Editor,

I am surprisingly impressed by the different blessings during the Khmer New Year celebrations during the Year of the Ox, 2553 B.E. It is a very important opportunity for Cambodian people to give good wishes and blessings to each other. Political leaders have also used this day to deliver their blessing to their party members and supporters. The meaning of their blessings carries both good wishes and political messages.

The blessing that impressed me the most was that of Prime Minister Hun Sen, about the Prohm Vihea Thir Boun, or Four Sublime States of the Mind, to the Cambodian people. This blessing is extraordinarily well-known for the good leadership of the Kings, called “Dhamma King” or “Dhammika”.

Dhamma Kings have to pursue the virtue of loving-kindness (Metta), compassion (Karuna), sympathetic joy (Mudita) and neutrality (Upeka).

These four teachings are well-known among Cambodians. A good leader has to pursue this teaching, but to understand it clearly in both theory and practice is not well-conceptualised.

Furthermore, the mechanism to bring this teaching to the leaders as well as the general public is important. How can Cambodian political leaders and people pursue this Dhamma teaching? By blessings, individual observation or enlightenment, or strengthening the rule of law to embed it in Cambodian society? It would be a question for all policymakers and political leaders to leave their legacy for this ideal blessing of our current challenging and transitional world.

In the past, our parochial and charismatic leaders or kings might have been important. But now, these charismatic and capable leaders will not be substantial because the belief in democracy and good governance requires the capability of the people in active bottom-line participation and the rule of law, not the rule of any individual leader.

I hope with great optimism that the blessing of Cambodia’s prime minister this year will become a reality.

Sophan Seng
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Original source: The Phnom Penh Post

State and Society or State in Society

State in society is concurrently under debate among political scientists. At least, there are three different schools who have initially justified their own assumption. Among those perspectives, two extreme conception of finding the distinction of state and society has been in a heated dialogue. Autonomous state and society state should be two different schools in the dialogue. I prefer these two concepts as the basic premise to get a very constructive argument. However, pure society advocates will argue that statist approaches have always regarded state as the key structure and autonomous entity in political science and they will further their reason that state itself should not be existed irrespectively. Timothy Mitchell intuitively divided the argument in an extreme way to distinguish the different between state and society, regardless of autonomous state and society state. In this extreme respect, I see the “autonomous state” is a state that has been organized in the way that state structure or state bureaucracy can play by it own autonomously and at least is has always exploited their own people in that territory. Peter Evans named this kind of state “predatory state” in case study of Zaire country. India and Brazil have shared similar development of bureaucratic structure like Zaire, but it is not common for Evans to call these two developed states as “predatory ones”. These two are more complex and sophisticated than the case of Zaire. In extent to that, the same autonomous state constituted of autonomous bureaucracy like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, Evans, admitted the empirical success in economic development. He named these three last states as “developmental states”. Are these developmental states autonomous? Are these developmental states in or outside society? How about Zaire, that has been called a “predatory state”, is in or outside society?

While Timothy Michell tried to reflect the extreme approaches of debate on the abandoning of the state, the political scientists concurred that the term “state” itself has been vague, very subjective, unrealistic, unpractical and academically disagreeable. State itself is so skeptical about its implementation if it doesn’t connect to society, state will not exist and it will not possibly implement its policy. State is a very unfavorable for researchers in term of its terminology and practical political breeding. And when it comes to practice, the prestige of the state will be easily lost because of its despotic characteristic in itself and in case of modern state like Zaire, is a good example to the unpopularity of the term “state”. If we look back to history of political movements in the old age, the state didn’t appear. When most territories were organized under the totalitarian leadership such as absolute kings, absolute republicans or absolutely kleptocrats, the state didn’t exist in that time. The state or nation-state in modern age, at least, constitute some key manageable elements and structures such as coherent bureaucrat, intermediate judicial body, embedded public policy, and the rule of law etc. So, Timothy Michell, including Peter Evans and Joel S. Migdal have insistently suggested the middle path theory of the state and society. In their different perspectives but directing the same goal, state and society is interconnected and inseparable social entity. At the end of his article, Timothy Mitchell recommended five new approaches to deal with the controversy of state and society. He suggested that state should not be taken as a free standing entity; the distinction between state and society should nevertheless be taken seriously; subjective view of the state is essentially important for its activities of decision making and policy for the well-being of the people; the state should be addressed as an effect of detailed processes of spatial organization, temporal arrangement, functional specification and supervision and surveillance; and finally the state appears as an abstraction in relation to the concreteness of the social and as a subjective ideality in relation to the objectiveness of the material world.

Peter Evans suggested his two essential analyses in the inseparable state and society by calling it “effective, coherence autonomous, embedded state”. His idea should be regarded as the compromising idea to lead a constructive debate by juxtaposing many case studies different countries which have evolved. More than this, Peter Evans is an honest fan of Weber’s effective bureaucratic structure realism. Joel S. Migdal has extensively illustrated the different evolutions of states in its important relationship to society. He recapitulated the substantial components of society to shape and reshape states such as ethnic conflict, the growing power of judiciaries, and the complex relationship between nation and state.

In conclusion, the different approaches to debate on state and society should not be extreme. State and society is two inseparable social entities. The debate should be elaborately ascended to the key connection that can bring state and society to develop its comprehensive and complimentary interdependency. Predatory state is a good example of showing the incompetent state that cannot link its bureaucratic policy to the needs of the society. Many evidences in case studies like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil and India have begun their state task at the blink of autonomous bureaucrat and gradually these states have adapted their policy possibly leading to a sound state bureaucratic management. In the meantime, the power of civil societies, communities and individuals have to be incentivized and upgraded in a level that can be complimentary to the adaptation of the state who have always worked as the “guardian of the universal interests”.

References:

Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics.” The American Political Science Review 85(1): 77-96

Evans, Peter B. 1995. “Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, Excerpts.

Migdal, Joel S. 2001. “State in Society Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another.” Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1, 2, 3.

Globalization and Financialization

The New Approach of Best Corporate Citizenship

Abstract

Globally speaking, the politics of globalization has been enormously debated. Current financial crisis has triggered the unenthusiastic brunt of people worldwide. This phenomenon is substantially caused by the impact of globalization. This paper will seek to understand the current financial crisis of financialization under the spectrum of globalization. The ongoing financial crisis of America and other regions of the world clearly translate the interconnectedness of the new approach of financialization conundrum. This paper elaborates the effect of globalization on financial flows and discovers the casualties from this crisis. The current United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called this crisis as “Slavery Perpetuated by Global Financial Crisis”.

First, there will be an introduction and some thought of pros and cons of globalization. Second, there will be an explanation of financial crisis, its casualties in our planet. Third, there will be suggestions and recommendations including the structure design to the new approach of best corporate citizenship to shoulder force in tackling this predicament.

Background

Globalization simply refers to the integration of regions into a global sphere. Many factors are considered the substantial proponents of globalization such as political ideology, social, culture, finance, technology, economics and geography that have drastically changed its shape to fulfill the lens of globalization. Many authors have linked current globalization to the belief of it is a repeating world history. Some said globalization has evolved around the expansion of human population and the invention of civilization such as the Sindhu of India, Roman Empire, or Han Dynasty of China. Some found that the historical routs of explorers and colonial agents are initially the links of flow of globalization such as the discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus or the Silk Road of Marco Polo. But the notion of globalization clearly emerged after the World War II when economists and politicians tried to restrain from continuing declining international economic integration and intractable division. The term itself was coined by different scholars interpreting in different periods. But in modern world, globalization has been preferably reiterated to identify the flows of trade, exchange of ideas and knowledge, technology, investment, and financial exchange. In Globalization and Its Discontent, Joseph Stiglitz defines globalization as “closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital knowledge, and (to a less extreme) people across borders” (Stiglitz, 2002). Part of this change is due to mobilization of labors and migration, but much of the larger part is due to changes in per capita income that is the “great divergence” as the ratio of per capita income of the richest to poorest nations are widened (Venables, 2006).

Primary concern of modern globalization is the economic driving the pace, scope and scale of this trend. It is dramatically accelerating the politic, culture and social to bend follow its force. Effort has been made to create “global government” to respond to current rapid change of social, political, economic. Motivation behind this effort is likely inspired by the achievement of the creation of the United Nations, the WTO, or the World Bank. Politics, culture and social have changed according to the scope and scale of economy. Some scholars argue that culture has embodied in the shape of more “divergent” than “convergent”, but some think oppositely. Remarkably, globalization creates both cultural homogenization and metropolitan multiculturalism. However, multicultural communication in management is essential for businessmen and students in this contemporary society.

In short, modern globalization drives politic, culture, economic and social in a type of corporation and investment. This phenomenon aggregates in the central flows of capital. Both human capital and financial capital orchestrate corporations to form, to function and to fasten. Otherwise, economists believe globalization may be the clarification of key trends in the global economy such as lower wages for worker, higher profit in the concept of Western world; the flooding of migrants from suburb areas to urban areas in the developing countries; and low inflation with low interest rates despite strong growth (BBC, 2007).

In the common sense of global village, globalization is driven by financialization, and the current ongoing financial crisis shall end the world or what? What measure should we recommend to tackle current crisis? The debate will motion around the finance, the corporations, and the people.

Globalization: The Pros and Cons

There are heated debate on the pros and cons of globalization. Some see that globalization has delivered technology innovation, knowledge, currency, jobs and growth to developing countries, but some have reversely argued that through this new trend the rich have continued to exploit the poor. Many giant corporations have earned their living at the expenses of the poor. Beside this, there are ecologically outsourcing as the natural resources have no place to hide from those aggressive high-tech capitalists. The worse consequences have consequently emerged such as the international terrorist network and the swift spread of SARS epidemics probably caused by globalization. These serious emergences have forced governments and scholars to adopt a more complex view (Weidenbaum, 2003). Weidenbaum also pinpointed the cheap labor has continually targeted by the sweatshop oversea corporations and the intractable degradation of environment.

Globalization potentially produces equilibrium disparity including both income and productivity. Venables considered two types of nature geography impact on this disparity: international wage difference and economic conglomeration. Simply speaking, the income elasticity of the labors in developing countries easily take risk because the corporations can mobilize their factories or investments to other locations expecting of cheaper cost to maximize their benefit. For instance, in the era of globalization, the manufacturing move from N to S and the equilibrium wage gap narrows (Figure 1). An empirical study shows that real wages in a two country model has widely moved from N to S simply for the benefit of their corporations.

The evidence of income disparity is the measure of the impact of globalization in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There are tremendous changes between 1700 and 1998 which Latin America appears in the wider scale as well as the Asia (Figure 2). The first question is: why are economic activity and growths spread so unevenly? Is it possible that an American really 50 or 100 times more productive than an Ethiopian? For instance, even within the UK, why are the earnings of a Londoner 70 percent higher than those of someone from Stoke-on-Trent (Venables, 2006).

The cause of inequality of globalization is the deficit of trade and investment which base on quotas and tariff. Especially the WTO, when its members open the border for free trade, the weak of production leads to huge trade deficit in developing countries. Also, many developed countries subsidized their farmers to produce crops causing the farmers of developing countries failed to gain their marginal benefit. In case of implementation of tariff in US, unregulated trade creates inefficiency when dead weight loss (DWL) is wider leading marginal social cost become worse (see figure 3).

Financialization: The Financial Crisis

Financialization simply refers to the flowing of finance capital, finance exchange, and finance interest rate. In Financialization of Daily Life, Randy Martin formulated the term financialization as following: “financialization is animated by the freeing of capital from its prior places of residence, and it is in the frenzied movement of currencies and other instruments of exchange that the mass of money available as investment outstrips the amount invested in industrial capacity” (Martin, 2002). The financial system is a mysterious machine and its shifts of regional loans transferring to global market identify financialization formless fluctuations of without having real money. Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. announced to file for liquidation on September 14, 2008 when its mortgage market and investor confidence crippled and was unable to find the buyer (NYtimes 2008). This bankruptcy is considered as the first spot caused current global financial crisis. Lehman has simply started collapsed as the mortgage market crisis unfolded in 2007. Consequently other companies and financial institutes fail to stabilize themselves. The phenomenon is uncontrollable when it was interconnected and unknown since the beginning.

This finance downturn has led to global awareness and political debates. Among world political leaders, Iran’s hard line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed America as the spearhead to this crisis and he declared that the crisis signaled the end of “the unjust and merciless” capitalist societies (Taiwan News, 2008). World Bank estimated that 40 million people will plunge into poverty in 2009 as the result of financial crisis. This financial crisis infiltrates to every country regardless of what their banking system is. At that Doha meeting, Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon stressed it’s “the poorest countries that will feel the blow most sharply.”

Corporation and the Best Corporate Citizens

Globalization is constructing a world corporation and a global homogenous culture. It raises issues of global governance and challenges our future understanding of citizenship and civil society. In a world in which workers, from professionals to laborers, have to be constantly moving across borders, how far can membership of the nation-state still count as the basis of citizenship? And if global corporations are now overtaking national governments as the building blocks of world order, how should we adapt our concepts of civil society and citizenship? Can global companies be transformed into corporate citizens and defenders of civil society?

Instead of a world composed exclusively of nations, we now have various global organizations beyond the nation-state, such as the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF. And there’s a tension between these powerful political and economic forces on the one hand and non-government organizations and community movements on the other.

Princeton University’s Professor Richard Falk characterizes these forces as globalization from above and below. He said there are certainly plenty of claims that globalization has had broad economic benefits and economic growth, but alongside that you’ve got to look at who have been the winners and losers (Falk, 1999). There is clear evidence of growing inequality both across the world and in particular countries. You can see the losers in the factories and the villages of places like Africa, parts of Latin America. It’s not necessarily just a question of theoretical critique, it’s a very practical sense that there are winners and losers and the people whose lives have been perhaps worst impacted are saying enough is enough and there has to be another way.

In responding to this negative description of corporation in modern age of globalization, the investing in corporate social responsibility has been extensively requested by scholars and civil society. Ranging of different precepts in tackling inequality normally put in motion of sustainability, sustainable development, corporate responsibility, corporate social responsibility, corporate community investment, and corporate governance. All these regulations centralize in corporate governance that can equate corporations in both profitability and sharing with social marginal cost. Considering social goods, corporation has to focus on employee health, occupational and public safety, environment, business ethics, human rights, security and the company’s role in society (Hancock, 2004).

At least, we can divide corporation into three distinctive forms to articulate the effective solution to modern financial crises: the For Profit Corporation, the Non-Profit Corporation, and the Profit Enterprise or Hybrid Corporation of both profit and non-profit oriented corporation (Kelly, 2008). These three types of corporation share similar and distinctive governance systems.

For Profit Corporation (FPC) primarily prioritizes on profitability. The motivation of world corporations have the same target is to maximize the marginal benefit. Profitability is in fact the cornerstone of an effective corporate governance strategy and this is an essential feature of corporate responsibility (Llewellyn, 2004). FPC’s recipe for success bases on the identification adherence of ownership, profitable governance system, capitalization, high revenue and high compensation (see figure 4).

For Non-Profit Organization or Corporation (FNPC) genuinely base on the volunteering activities. This is the ideal model of modern civil society. But gradually it has transformed to other form deviating from non-profit orientation. Economically, the motivation is slack because of not having strong competition. However, this model has been inclusively embedded in human society long time ago beyond our imagination. The body systemized by operational governance, with both explicit and implicit compensation, and basically funded by foundation or private donation. (see figure 5)

For Profit Enterprise is a popular emerging requirement for our current financialization crunch. It is essential to hybridize this concept to balance both profitability and social goods contributability. The appearance of this third type of corporation is compared like the economic efficient theory of equilibrium that demand and supply, or marginal cost and marginal benefit must be in the curve of equilibrium. Formerly known as Non-Profit Organization can become For Profit Enterprise when their investment capital is not longer relied on donation anymore. On the other hand, the tendencies that For Profit Corporation will be optimistically become For Profit Enterprise. This For Profit Enterprise has been currently appealed by the corporate citizens to enhance themselves as the genuine entrepreneurs. For Profit Enterprise also bases on systematic governance that can uphold human beings motivation. This structure consists of ownership, governance, compensation and capitalization through meritorious benefit while its central goal is to achieve both social mission and profit. (see figure 6)

Conclusion

Globalization has brought both positive and negative impact to our earth. It is the double-edged sword phenomena. But the crucial mission for us is to maintain these two edges not to become too distant from each other. Finally, the phenomenon of financialization has brought us other alarming bell ring to consider this formless transaction as devastative. Current financial crisis can be solved if everyone is aware of minimizing personal interest by maximizing the social interest. The equilibrium of happiness is to trace in the middle path. Understanding three different types of corporation and try to modelize the For Profit Enterprise Corporation would be efficient for middle path implementation.

Significantly, there are three organizational archetypes of human species. For Profit Enterprise is the living system which can bridge the gap of the globalization of above (the transnational corporations) with the globalization of the below (the emigrational population). All living systems are “self-organizing” that has been populated by the values. Current capitalists’ values are “self-interest organizing” to struggle for personal growth and seek for cheap labors, output natural resources, and free market. But emerging new values are the awareness of “original interdependent organizing” of sustainability and well-being which are the core course of family growth and collective sustainable benefit. Through these basic comprehensive organizing, we can see the nation-states, civil societies, and corporations have paid attention to create ethic codes, regulations and universal norms to achieve genuine social enterprise.

Future research would empirically concentrate on the effectiveness and deviation of above three types of corporation.

References

Anthony J. Venables. (2006). “Shifts in Economic Geography and Their Cause,” The Journal of Economic Review, Volume 91: 61-85

Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2002). “Globalization and Its Discontent,” W. W. Norton & Company

Randy, Martin. (2002). “Financialization of Daily Life,” Temple University Press, Philadelphia

Richard, Falk. (1999). “Predatory Globalization: A Critique,” Polity Publisher

John, Hancock et al (2004). “Investing in Corporate Social Responsibility,” Kogan Page Publishing, London & Sterling, VA

Thomas M. Hoenig. (2008). “Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial Crises: Some Lessons Relearned Again?”. Economic Review, First Quarter

Stephen Redding & Anthony J. Venables. (2001). “Economic Geography and International Inequality,” International Trade

Yeats, Alexander J. (1998). “Just how big is global production sharing?,” Policy Research Working Paper Series 1871, The World Bank.

Francesco Caselli & Nicola Gennaioli. (2007). “Economics and Politics of Alternative Institutional Reforms,” CEP Discussion Papers, Centre for Economic Performance

Marjorie, Kelly. (2008). “Best Corporate Citizenship: Integrating Social, Environmental and Financial Concerns”. Paper Presentation on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at the University of Hawaii

_____________(2001). “The Devine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy,” Berrett-Koehler Publishing, Inc. San Francisco

BBC (2006). “Globalization shakes the world: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6279679.stm”. Accessed on November 29, 2008

Murray Weidenbaum. (2003). “Weighing the Pros and Cons of Globalization: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/Weidenbaum.pdf”. Accessed on November 29, 2008

NYtimes.com (2008). “Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/lehman_brothers_holdings_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org”. Accessed on November 29, 2008

Taiwan News. (2008). “Ahmadinejad: West to blame for financial crisis: http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=800023&lang=eng_news ”. Accessed on November 29, 2008

Figures Illustration

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Source: group study of Plan 603 Fall 2008 on “Globalization: good or bad for urban development?”

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

States and State Formation

There are numerous articles and researches digesting the states and state formation. Among those researches, I am intrigued by the book called “Understanding Nationalism” written by Margaret Hoogeveen published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Publishing in 2008. This book explored the recipes of state actors leading to the state formation. Taking different approaches from Tilly, Moore and Skocpol, Margaret emphasized the importance of nationalism as the substantial factor having built a nation-state. But she dismissed the approach of ultranationalism. It would cause the destruction of a nation-state.

Nationalism is the by-product of sociopolitical movements in a society. It is essentially built by a collective sense of identity. This collective identity has been presumably expanded by individual identity, and it sprang to a national identity. Loyalty to their value and identity underpin the need of caring and protection. Till has collaboratively assured his thesis of the intervention of a state in making war to weaken, eliminate or neutralize rivals outside of their territory, making a state in the mission of eliminating or neutralizing those internal rivals inside their territory, making a trustworthy protection inside their state in order to convince their state-clients feel secure from enemies, and making an extraction activity to aggregate the means that can allow them to continue carrying out those three activities (Till, 1985, p.181). With this state’s monopolistic extraction activity, Skocpol elaborated the social classes of both elites and bourgeoisies have constantly played important role to shape the state formation and state’s changing phenomena particularly current modernity of state’s capitalist forms.

Social factors such as language, ethnicity, culture, religion, geography, relationship to land, spirituality, politics, shared value and beliefs have mainly proliferated the formation of a nation and a nation-state, Margaret assured. These factors have been extensively generated by national myths substantially leading to the political myths. Myths can also represent a nation’s identity. Most cultures are founded on a creation of myth such as a story that tells how a place, a city, or a nation and its people came into being. These myths had provided ancient peoples with a base for their future and a reason for their norms, laws and traditions. They also helped unite the members of the community. Today, myths are still used to unify a people and to promote national identity. National myths are stories that promote national values and perspectives. They can include ancient myths, such as stories of the Greek gods of Mount Olympus, and ancient religious texts, such as the Hindu epic poem Ramayana. Those myths can also include versions of historical events and personalities.

References:

Margaret Hoogeveen 2008. Understanding Nationalism: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Publishing.

Evan, Peter B. et.al. 1985. Bringing the State Back in. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch .1, 5

Moore, Barrington Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon. Intro, Ch.1