Page 80 - Culture Society and Economy

Robotham-04.qxd 1/31/2005 6:23 PM Page 73

GLOBALIZATION AND RISKS

The basic issue, therefore, which is not addressed in risk society
theory is what to do about this concentration of power at the global and
national center. The issue is the provision of really existing everyday
material and social equality and power to ordinary people, both at the
national and the global levels, without which meaningful changes at the
community levels – as advocated by risk society theory – cannot be mean-
ingful. In the absence of measures which address this concentration of
real power at the center, it is difficult to see how any attempt to construct
a modern ‘organic solidarity’ will be effective. Recent evidence indicates
that this failure to address basic production relations is already having a
predictable effect. Under the Blair regime, Third Way policies have led to
a significant expansion of inequalities, to the persistence of major social
problems and to a significant undermining of the Blair project itself. 22
It is unlikely that the $65 billion social expenditure program of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in 2000 affected the trend
towards growing income inequality. 23
Giddens senses that his approach may not be viable. This is the sig-
nificance of the priority which he gives to the concept of ‘risk’. But this
24
notion minimizes, even trivializes, the enormity of the challenge which
hundreds of millions of people around the world face today at the global,
national and local levels. For these millions, it is far from being the
case that life in the main is positive but there are some clouds on the
horizon – some ‘risks’. For these millions, the crises of impoverishment,
unemployment, hunger and disease are not at all secondary features of
life which can be avoided by careful calculation – by ‘reflexivity’. On the
contrary, poverty and hardship are the very core of their life experience.
Oppression and exploitation inhere intractably in the basic structures and
processes of global society and cannot be so easily disposed of by concepts
such as ‘risk’.
Giddens argues that in the main the opposition to globalization derives
from the fact that it necessarily undermines non-rationalistic traditions and
ancient ways of life sanctioned by age-old customs and religions. This is the
explanation which he presents for the growth of fundamentalism – either
Islamic or Christian. Fundamentalism is presented as a reaction against
modernity. There is obviously an element of truth to this argument but it
by no means emphasizes the main truth. The truth of Giddens’s argument
lies in the fact that both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism in fact face
a common enemy: the national and globally dominant finance capital. Still,
politically, these are two radically different phenomena. Christian funda-
mentalism in the United States arises in a highly developed capitalist society
among groups – often sections of the white working class – who have been

73