Page 24 - Culture Society and Economy

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BRINGING THE ECONOMY BACK IN

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or national so strongly assail globalization. This is also why many who
oppose globalization put forward alternatives to globalization which
emphasize ‘localization’ of the economy, including immigration control.
They understand very well that it is this very international division of
labor itself which is the basis of globalization. This ‘localization’ model
will be critiqued in a later chapter as completely unworkable, indeed,
undesirable.
One should note that these ideas are in the same tradition as the
Durkheimian concern for the reconciliation of individuality with sociality.
To Durkheim this contradiction is overcome by the solidarity generated
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by the mutual dependences of the division of labor. The basic weakness
of his argument – as that of many Left Liberals and Social Democrats –
is the idea that this can be achieved within the framework of private
ownership of the means of production and without a fundamental trans-
formation of society and the political system. Marx’s entire argument is
that the contradiction between individuality and sociality rests on the
contradiction between private and social property – ultimately on the
development of the forces of production as expressed in the division of
labour. This contradiction has to be overcome if individuality is to be in
harmony with its social foundation. Moreover, Marx’s conception of indi-
viduality goes further than that of Durkheim. Durkheim still retains
notions of self-subsistent individuals brought into inter-dependence
by the social division of labor. Marx’s point, however, and the reality of
the modern global world is that sociality enters into the very constitution
of the individual, whether such a person is self-consciously cosmopolitan
or not. It is not a taste for the exotic or a self-conscious cosmopolitanism –
‘cut-and-mix’ – which makes persons ‘hybrid’. Hybridity is really located
in the most mundane and everyday processes which bear not the slight-
est imprint of the exotic and of which most individuals have little aware-
ness. A much deeper and broader analysis of the issue of what has
been mistakenly labeled ‘hybridity’ or sometimes, ‘cosmopolitanism’, is
called for.
In other words, if one is what one consumes and produces, one could
say that persons living in the United States may already be about 10 percent
‘Chinese’ by virtue of the substantial consumption of goods imported
from China into the United States. According to its own estimates, the US
retail giant Wal-Mart alone imported $15 billion worth of goods from
China into the United States in 2003. Of the 6,000 factories worldwide
which supply Wal-Mart, 80 percent are in China. However, since China
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also imports vast quantities of both consumer and producer goods and
services from other countries of the world, though not so much from the

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