globalization and its ethical challenges essay

Globalization and Its Challenges Essay

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Globalization is a complex phenomenon which came into existence in the end of the twentieth century. Several decades ago it took days or even weeks for companies located in different countries to make a deal. Now it can be a matter of several hours. Interestingly, the word globalization is not new for people living in the twenty-first century, but sometimes the word is misused or misinterpreted.

Therefore, it is crucial to define the notion. Ukpere (2011, p. 6072) notes that globalization is “a state whereby national boundaries turn totally porous with respect to the movement of goods and capital and, to an extent, porous with respect to people, which is viewed… as cheap labor or, in some cases, cheap human capital”.

In other words, globalization presupposes no boundaries to business activity. The business activity is not confined to purely running business worldwide. Globalization also penetrates in such spheres of people’s life as education and even politics. The development of technology has enabled people to share information without paying any attention to location.

Many companies located in the developed countries shifted their facilities to developing countries. On the other hand, people from developing countries can look for jobs in developed countries. Basically, globalization has made the world smaller and more accessible, so to speak.

However, there are quite many negative effects. For instance, many people argue that globalization led to the global financial crisis in 2000s. These people state that various economies have become too interrelated. It is argued that some countries simply ‘shared’ their financial constraints with the rest of the world. There are many more challenges associated with globalization.

In the first place, people discuss problems developed countries face due to globalization. Thus, Rattner (2011) states that many people in developed countries lose as availability of workforce across the globe (e.g. China, India, Mexico, etc.) contributes greatly to the increase of unemployment within the country.

Rattner (2011) provides an example of the impact of globalization. The author focuses on such manufacturers as General Motors and Volkswagen. These giants shifted their capacities to other countries to reduce their expenditures. Admittedly, Americans are forced to work for lower wages as they understand that manufacturers can easily operate abroad.

Rattner (2011, n.p.) estimates that some workers will get $30,000 per year which can hardly be “the American dream of great middle-class jobs”. In fact, this is the major challenge for developed countries. Businesses are under constant pressure as growing economies of developing countries become more and more competitive.

Seemingly, developing countries benefit from globalization, but in reality globalization leads to great disproportions. On the one hand, many plants and factories are being built on the territory of these countries. Of course, this leads to new working places. However, these people do not obtain very big salaries. The conditions people have to work in are often very difficult or sometimes simply intolerable. Besides, the big enterprises coming to developing countries often become monopolies which dictate their own rules.

Ukpere (2011) also notes that globalization has led to increased levels of poverty and inequality. Admittedly, well-paid jobs are not available for the majority of people living in the developing countries. Those who manage to get a good job soon become much wealthier than the rest. This disproportion is caused by different opportunities. Thus, some people have access to information, knowledge, education, while others remain far from these ‘achievements of civilization’.

Therefore, it is possible to state that globalization has quite controversial effects. It helps some countries develop whereas other countries experience certain decline in their economy. Of course, economies have become interrelated, which is quite dangerous. As the global crisis has shown all economies become vulnerable if some country fails to keep the necessary balance.

It is also important to note that globalization contributes to marginalization of some countries (Ukpere, 2011). It is acknowledged that some countries lag behind due to some factors. They can be unattractive for investment. These countries may lack for professionals in some fields due to inaccessibility of education and training. Scarce resources also make countries unattractive for investors. Thus, it is possible to state that one of the major negative effects of globalization is that it creates disproportions.

Nonetheless, globalization should not be seen as something negative. People who simply oppose globalization (arrange protest walks) waste their time. First of all, the process is inevitable. Globalization can be regarded as a synonym to development. The development of technology has already removed boundaries. Besides, globalization has many positive effects which cannot be ignored. Thus, it is necessary to take advantage of positive effects, while trying to diminish negative effects of globalization.

Of course, government should cooperate to work out specific policies concerning global market. It is important to allocate funds wisely. No country should be left aside. Admittedly, all countries have something particularly valuable for the global market. Though, at first not all the countries can be involved in the operations on the global market. However, the boundaries should expand gradually. The example of the European Union is one of the illustrations that global market can be real. The experience of the EU can also be really valuable when developing the policies. Admittedly, these policies should be quite strict to make businesses comply with the rules.

In this case, all countries will benefit from globalization. All countries will be involved in the development of the global market. This will lead to equal development of countries. Thus, developing countries will be able to reach the level of developed countries. Admittedly, such problems as famine or unemployment can be solved. It is only necessary to allocate resources (natural as well as human) appropriately. It has been acknowledged that people produce enough food and goods for the entire planet, but these goods are distributed disproportionately. Globalization will address the problem.

On balance, it is possible to note that globalization presupposes no boundaries for economic activities. Globalization is seen differently by different people. Some say it is a process which should be stopped. Some claim that globalization is a positive process which should be fostered. People have not come to a single conclusion on the matter. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that globalization is still a promising process.

It can help people address such problems as disproportion of various resources. Eventually, globalization will help humanity develop. Of course, people will have to work together to benefit from globalization. This process presupposes mutual work of all governments. This may seem somewhat idealistic but people have no other choice. It is a fact that if a country in some part of the world experiences financial constraints, other countries of the globe will eventually experience the same problems. Thus, to succeed people will have to cooperate.

Reference List

Rattner, S. (2011). Let’s admit it: Globalization has losers . The New York Times . Web.

Ukpere, W.I. (2011). Globalization and the challenges of unemployment, income inequality and poverty in Africa. African Journal of Business Management, 5 (15).

• The Trend in America's International Trade
• Managing Cultural Integration and Change Processes
• Globalization and Its Discontents
• Globalization and the World Economy
• Globalization Positive and Negative Impacts
• Stability Strategies - Global Business Management
• Management of New Establishment in China
• Cultural Variation Across International Organisations
• Safety Management Systems in the Aviation Industry
• Recruitment Strategies - Global Business Management
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 22). Globalization and Its Challenges. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-and-its-challenges/

"Globalization and Its Challenges." IvyPanda , 22 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-and-its-challenges/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Globalization and Its Challenges'. 22 April.

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1. IvyPanda . "Globalization and Its Challenges." April 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-and-its-challenges/.

Bibliography

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10 Moral Issues in Globalization

Carol C. Gould is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Hunter College and in the Programs in Philosophy and Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

• Published: 02 January 2010
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This article considers the key normative issues raised by globalization and describes the implications of these issues for business ethics and public policy. It considers various philosophical approaches to global justice and identifies the consequences of globalization, which include global poverty and outsourcing. It analyzes three additional values posed by globalization: the need for improved transparency and accountability of multilateral institutions, the emphasis on labor standards and the idea of sustainability and environmental justice.

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• > The Globalization of Ethics
• > Introduction: The Globalization of Ethics

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: The Globalization of Ethics
• 2 Global Ethics and the International Law Tradition
• 3 Morality and Universality in Jewish Thought
• 4 Globalization and Christian Ethics
• 5 Buddhism and the Globalization of Ethics
• 6 Muslim Perspectives on Global Ethics
• 7 Confucianism: Ethical Uniformity and Diversity
• 8 Natural Law, Common Morality, and Particularity
• 9 Liberalism and the Globalization of Ethics
• 10 Feminist Perspectives on a Planetary Ethic
• 11 Ethical Universalism and Particularism: A Comparison of Outlooks
• Appendix: Key Documents on Global Ethics
• Bibliography

1 - Introduction: The Globalization of Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2009

A great deal has been written lately about the ethics of globalization, understood as the intensification of interactions across national boundaries, particularly in the areas of trade and investment, but also the transfer of technology, the movement of peoples, and the global diffusion of a Western consumer lifestyle embodied in products such as Hollywood movies and McDonald's. There have been many impassioned ethical debates about the benefits and costs of these processes of globalization, including their effect on inequality both within and between societies, their consequences for the environment, and the way they are uprooting and displacing traditional ways of life.

One striking aspect of these ethical debates about globalization is that they are themselves globalized. These debates take place across national boundaries, bringing together activists, academics, and government officials from all parts of the world, who must therefore find a common vocabulary to discuss their ethical concerns about globalization. People from Western liberal societies must find a way to discuss ethical issues with people from Buddhist societies in Southeast Asia or from indigenous communities in Latin America. Such transnational debates about ethics are increasingly unavoidable, given the intensity of interaction amongst the world's cultures. As globalization increases, ethics must itself become globalized.

Our aim in this volume is to explore the globalization of ethics, which is a surprisingly neglected phenomenon. In particular, we examine how some of the world's most influential ethical traditions think about the task of constructing moral conversations and moral norms at a global level.

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• Introduction: The Globalization of Ethics
• By Will Kymlicka , Professor of Philosophy, Queen's University; Visiting Professor, Central European University, Budapest
• Edited by William M. Sullivan , Will Kymlicka , Queen's University, Ontario
• Book: The Globalization of Ethics
• Online publication: 03 September 2009
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498701.001

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Making Globalization Good: The Moral Challenges of Global Capitalism

• Book Review
• Published: 22 February 2005
• Volume 36 , pages 119–121, ( 2005 )

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Buckley, P. (2002) ‘Is the international business research agenda running out of steam?’, Journal of International Business Studies 33: 365–373.

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Doh, J.P. and Teegen, H. (eds.) (2003) Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

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Shenkar, O. (2004) ‘One more time: international business in a global economy’, Journal of International Business Studies 35(2): 161–171.

Teegen, H., Doh, J.P. and Vachani, S. (2004) ‘The importance of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in global governance and value creation: an international business research agenda’, Journal of International Business Studies 35(6), in press.

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Doh, J. Making Globalization Good: The Moral Challenges of Global Capitalism. J Int Bus Stud 36 , 119–121 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400115

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Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化

Journal of Global Cultural Studies

Accueil Numéros 4 Why do Cultures Change? The Chall...

Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization

This essay explores cultural change in the context of the economic globalization currently underway. It aims at analysing the role that theoretical inventiveness and ethical value play in fashioning broader cultural representation and responsibility, and shall explore issues of cultural disunity and conflict, while assessing the influence that leading intellectuals may have in promoting a finer perception of value worldwide. The role of higher education as an asset in the defence of democracy and individual self-development shall be discussed with a view to evaluating its potential for an altered course of globalization.

Texte intégral

• 1  Ralph Waldo Emerson “Napoleon; or, the man of the world” in Joel Porte, Essays and Lectures , New Y (...)

2  Emerson, p. 731.

1 We are always in need of definitions whenever we want to explore why cultures change. We are pressed to come up with answers as to what culture might be and how the idea of culture might fit into a nutshell. The general applicability of the answer we struggle to devise invites theoretical formulas and abstraction from specific historical developments. It also, as a result, cautions us to choose fields from which to cull situations and conflicts that may help deliver the concepts we want to grasp, and invites to understand the theory of culture as shaped by how events unfold, and how society moves along. In particular, one may have in mind what the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about Napoleon (our favourite dictator, to us French people) in a book he devoted to figures of historical importance ( Representative Men ): “Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born” 1 . This strikes a negative note, as does a quote from Napoleon himself that Emerson has unearthed from the vast body of memoirs the Napoleon era has handed down to us. Emerson is reported to have once declared: “My hand of iron […] was not at the extremity of my arm; it was immediately connected with my head” 2 . The remark and the quote hold a tentative definition of culture. Culture begins when sheer force is mitigated by intellect, intellect itself being shaped by a response to facts, and, we hope, as Emerson hopes, abstracted from fact by ethical imperative. On top of this, we feel Emerson’s attempt at rationality is run through by doubt: what if one might never discriminate between intellect and action? What if one might never grasp how ethics can disengage us from the cogs of history and were incapable of controlling an ongoing process that leads to disaster and apocalypse? Whenever one tries to define culture, culture breaks down into its many components: it splinters into action and responsibility, and we feel there might never be a connection between them. There lies Emerson’s historical pessimism, which it is hard to tone down.

• 3  Hubert Damisch, “A Crisis of Values, or Crisis Value ?”, in Daniel S. Hamilton (ed.), Which Values (...)

2 In recent years, a debate has been brought to the foreground, for reasons that have to do with our increasingly globalized world. Are there any values left? If such a thing as culture exists, then, there might be precise contents of an ethical sort that we want to pin down. Might not this sense of emptiness be the result of a crisis of value, as if the very idea of value had been swept away? This is what the French cultural critic Hubert Damisch thinks has happened, in a recent contribution to a volume aptly titled Which Values for our Time , published by the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon. Damisch rounds up his interrogation as follows: “Crisis of values, or crisis value?” 3 The suggestion is of course that value is no longer visible on the horizon of our history to be, that the trend should be resisted, and that intellectual resistance is what we need. It is by no means new to be aware, among philosophers and cultural critics alike, that values are hard to come by. In Plato’s Republic , book seven, humankind is looking at the walls of a cave, noting the shadows dancing there, and being taught that our poor sight precludes the perception of good and evil, and the difference between them. Now that the walls of the cave have turned into television screens, one image is chased away by the next one, while our sense of global responsibility dissolves into thin air even though all the fields of human action hold perspectives of responsibility within them. Culture, like values, is a plenum and a void, a constant expectation and in the end something impossible when one looks at results and facts.

• 4  Peter Fenves, (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy  ; Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative (...)

3 We should keep in mind Jacques Derrida’s anthropology of culture, and the degree to which it identifies conflict as the prime-mover within our cultural narratives. In a major contribution at a Cerisy conference in Normandy in 1980, titled “On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy” 4 , Jacques Derrida opposes two sets of attitudes: seeking rationality, and seeking mystery. Derrida views culture as the competition between the Aüfklarer and the mystics, and suggests there are possibilities that the two trends in cultural discourse might eventually reach some kind of truce achieved as a result of an interaction between them. No doubt he was trying to hold historical pessimism at a distance by suggesting gain might be reached in the historical development of cultures if rationality were capable of reading through the language of mysticism, and curb the influence of those he chose to call the mystagogues, in whom he saw a danger for democracy and human dignity. Cultures change, and when they do, they are pulled in opposite directions if we abide by Derrida’s critical thinking. They change to eliminate reason, even, as Derrida puts it, to emasculate it, and we must, as a result, apply pressure to preserve amity, and to uphold the values of democracy. To be sure, Derrida’s onslaught upon mystery is no onslaught upon religious values: there are many other targets we might think of in the current context of globalized liberal economies and environmental overuse, such as religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and the emergence of a global self-appointed elite, although Derrida’s inquiry was started some thirty years ago, and he never gets that precise about what should be indicted.

Disaster and Apocalypse

• 5  See in particular Making Globalization Work , New York, Norton, 2007, chapter 7, “The Multinational (...)
• 6  Richard Rorty, “Globalization, the politics of identity and Social Hope” in Philosophy and Social (...)

4 Our globalizing societies offer alternatives to an ideal world. In particular, market mechanisms and the rise of global capital have impoverished some non-European nations, while Europe has, in recent years, worked to thin the immigration flux while downsizing out of their jobs the low-skilled workers of a once predominantly industrial economy that has now turned to services. As a result, local communities have been struck, either in Europe or the United States, by being impoverished within the more glitzy context of affluence. In China as elsewhere, industrial activity has surged, while working conditions have never been worse among the former peasants driven to urban areas. Globalization may well pass for an agenda of disaster and social apocalypse, as Joseph Stiglitz has demonstrated 5 . Welfare and human rights have hardly benefited from the promise economic liberalism keeps harping on, and human development has been restricted to the rising middle-classes of China, or India, if we look at the most significant examples. Richard Rorty, meditating on social hope, has brought home the idea that globalization has been a blow to democracy. He wrote the following in an essay published in 1993: “We now have a global overclass which makes all the major economic decisions, and makes them entirely independently from the legislatures, and a fortiori of the will of the voters, of any given country” 6 . Rorty’s remark comes as an apposite reminder that there is no such thing as a world government, a fact that we all tend to overlook. The ideology of economic growth heralds human development, but delivers little in terms of the strengthening of local communities, both in rising nations as well as in Western ones. Might not this ideology form the most recent embodiment of some pseudo-thinking the mystagogues parade as rationality for us to kneel to?

5 Communities, we hear, have gone global, which means they are now glocal. The portmanteau word means more than it seems to say. On the one hand, the buzzword suggests that local communities may be strengthened by globalization; on the other, it suggests that local communities are shaped, in ways that cannot all be positive, by the advance of global liberalism. However, one of the unsought effects of glocalization may well be that cultural interference with distant or unknown communities might emerge from the pressure of global liberalism, by dissolving national, or even nationalist perspectives, and favouring international contacts. Let us be cautious in this: international interaction, in the context of globalizing economic exchange, may well be no other than buying and selling, and one more version of materialism without national values being cross-fertilized.

• 7  Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s debate , Cambridge, M (...)

6 Globalization cannot control the rise of a new conservatism, in spite of the surge in optimism that comes with it in some areas, if we look at the poor condition of welfare systems across developed countries and elsewhere. As Habermas has pointed out, “modernity sees itself as dependent exclusively upon itself” 7 , and utopian ideals are increasingly wiped out of the Zeitgeist. Globalization is in dire need of strengthening, not exhausting, utopian energies. If it proves incapable of effecting this, renewing utopian energies, the road down globalization may well be what one supposes it to be from recent evidence: a hurdle-race, with one winner, a few good athletes, and vast crowds of anonymous losers. Jacques Derrida has pointed out that we need peace in culture, and that peace can be achieved when the mystagogues accept to interact with rationality. Rationality however, to him, is not an empty bottle, or an instrument by which societies may solve practical questions. Rationality involves moral choice, and one may well suggest that the Habermas notion that utopian ideals have to be upheld is the best way to reorder, and refashion global liberalism. No doubt, the culture wars must go on, to stay the current backlash and its related traumas, terrorism East and West, the political violence within national borders and without, the religious fundamentalism which has found in globalization its ecotope, in Israel, in the Arab world, in the United States, and elsewhere, while environmental disasters from North to South take their toll upon communities. Cultures, as a result of globalization, change, for reasons that have to do with the innate systemic risks that globalization runs through them, risks which are supra-human, but which, for that very reason, have to be identified, deconstructed, and eliminated, although we do know that this process cannot be the work of one sole generation. Indifference as well as naïveté ought to be avoided. If, as Habermas thinks they are, utopian values are used-up, because they are targeted, then, they must be invigorated.

• 8  Emery Roe and Michel J.G. Van Eeten, “Three – Not Two – Major Environmental Counternarratives to G (...)

7 No doubt any such invigoration, if we want it to have pragmatic efficiency, we need specific measures, and precautions. Intellectual clarity can help. And meditation upon what is and what is not scientific can be an asset. It is true odium has been cast on the precautionary principle by some scholars of environmental studies. In a fairly recent issue (2004) of the M.I.T. Press quarterly Global Environmental Politics, scholars Emery Roe and Michel Van Eeten have condemned the precautionary principle in matters of environmental policy on the grounds that scientific evidence is not sufficient, calling for empirical knowledge, supposed to be an index to what is and what is not scientific 8 . Is it that globalization has reshaped the image of science in academia, making us wistful once again, and inviting us to find peace of mind in a belated version of science which is reminiscent of the nineteenth century, when science was largely considered to rely on empirical observation, whatever this might mean? Empiricism and dogmatic thinking are birds of a feather flocking together. More open intellectual attitudes are necessary to face the risks of globalization upon our environment. Doubt, in particular, may be protective, in this respect. Without it, scientific thinking can be stultified. Science cannot be independent of general interest and social respect, and requires critical detachment to shelter us from the systemic dangers inherent in its objects of inquiry and the applicability of its fundamental findings. In scientific knowledge as well, the culture wars loom large, though they tend to be overlooked. These wars may lead both ways: to cultural changes that will crush social hope, and to cultural changes that will uplift a sense of community and cooperation.

The Secularization of Value

9  Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Petite Métaphysique des Tsunamis , Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 85.

8 The values of science, therefore, should be secularized, and scientists should avoid generating systems which hold dangers in them that might express their potential for destruction. The French philosopher and Stanford scholar Jean-Pierre Dupuy has pointed out that the atomic bombing of Japan was the result of systemic danger, in an amazing remark: “Why was the bomb ever used? Because it existed, quite simply” 9 . The implication of what he says is that science too, and what was at one point presented as an advance of the civilized mind, may lead to pragmatic consequences that reshape thinking and emasculate it, if we want to harp on the Derrida proposition that the mystagogues are able to emasculate rationality (let us pardon Derrida’s male chauvinism if we can). Human thinking involves systemic dangers, and one therefore has to rethink thinking in different terms, which has been the task of modern philosophy. Perhaps we might suggest at this point that cultural change involves the thinking of rationality in secularized terms. This means that technology may well lead us astray, tethered as it is to scientific knowledge which we tend to view as total, whereas any inquiry into the results of science tends to demonstrate that science is provisional, and that its propositions will sooner or later be refined, or redefined, and that intellectual inquiry, whatever its field, rarely comes to conclusions that will never be reworded, or revised. Knowledge is an ongoing process, and if we keep this in mind, we secularize science, instead of projecting it onto the higher plane of superior frozen truths. Science, like any other human adventure, unfolds through time, and taking this into consideration helps science respond to social needs.

9 Political scientists are struggling for secular views, as John Rawls has amply demonstrated. Behind his eulogy of democracy as a condition and an effect of economic and political liberalism, one finds an attempt to define the nature of rationality as the mainspring of social hope. It is striking, when reading John Rawls, to realize the extent to which rationality is assessed in conjunction with its effects upon social organization, which yields workable political conceptions of justice. John Rawls, in his second major opus, Political Liberalism , defines political rationality as outcome-centered, and this leads to a list of primary goods, which reads as follows:

basic rights and liberties […];

freedom of movement and free choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities;

powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of responsibility in the political and economic institutions of the basic structure;

income and wealth;

• 10  John Rawls, Political Liberalism , New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 181. Joseph Stigli (...)

and finally, the social bases of self-respect. 10

• 11  Slavoj Zizek, “Le Tibet pris dans le rêve de l’autre”, Le Monde Diplomatique , n° 650, mai 2008, p. (...)

10 Rawls’ agenda relies on the traditions of the common-sense philosophy of the English-speaking world and the theoretical culture of pragmatism, which he found ready for use in his New-England intellectual environment. Nowhere do we find perspectives that would be disconnected from and independent from day-to-day preoccupations. Rawls wants to harness human development to democracy, to wring democracy out of economic growth, while there is an increasing belief, in this century, that our globalized economies hold a promise of democracy as an expectation which will always be contradicted by fact. Just recently, in a major contribution to the debate, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has pointed out that China allies a vicious use of the Asian bludgeon in Tibet with the logics of the European stock-market, and that this betrays the belief that democracy is an obstacle to economic growth. As a result of this, Zizek’s assumption is that our global culture might be brought to understand that democracy is no longer needed to back human development, which might lead global cultural change in the wrong direction 11 . Democracy has to be maintained as a horizon of belief, and as the sole teleology worthy of respect. Rawls helps us understand that teleology should be one version of practicality, though we tend to think that any political teleology is an empty promise. His contribution to political philosophy views rationality not just as a belated version of theology, but as a tool that may help deliver collective results, following in the footsteps of American intellectual traditions which assess value in terms of their pragmatic consequences rather than in terms of otherworldly conceptual exploration.

• 12  Samuel Huntington, “Foreword” in Lawrence E. Harrison & Samuel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: (...)

11 What if, beyond this sound conception of political values, and the organic laws that go to frame them, human culture was unresponsive, thus precluding cultural change, and sustainable development? It is this situation that Samuel Huntington examines, leaving little room for hope, suggesting that cultures cannot change, or will change slowly or with difficulty, on the grounds that society will not change and that there is no connection between assumptions, beliefs, and the economic and political opportunities that the modern liberal state offers if we are willing to grasp them. Huntington’s dream is to get rid of cultural obstacles to economic development, while it is yet unclear whether there is any strong belief in the virtues of democracy in what he has to say. Huntington’s answer does not intend to demonstrate that it is democracy which has to be left out of his global picture. In his case, if progress is not fast enough, it is because those cultures which resist progress as seen from Massachusetts are obstacles which one must remove, but Huntington is no clear analyst of how culture and democracy might hinge. “[…] We define culture, Huntington writes, in purely subjective terms as the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society” 12 . His vision of culture has left one notion unmentioned: what about solidarity, the cornerstone of Richard Rorty’s vision of social hope? It may well be that this is one value that the modern liberal state has eroded, and that solidarity is a basic asset to those communities forming the lesser developed countries of Africa, Latin America and parts of the Asian world, where welfare is weak, and institutionalized education poorly developed, where, for political reasons, states are not ready to reach out to populations and areas left to their own resources and inventiveness in terms of welfare. Huntington’s discourse, as a result, is a perfect illustration of the New Conservatism that Habermas has targeted. Modernity, in Huntington’s world-view, is seen as totally dependent on itself. Beliefs, in particular, are taken to task, in Huntington’s definition of culture. What if beliefs were an adequate instrument of the progress Huntington has in mind, one notion which is empty enough, and which Huntington parades to conceal his conservative views? Inherited ideas and attitudes are more of a survival-kit than an obstacle to social cohesiveness. One hardly knows, when reading Huntington, whether progress, the norm of his perspective, is one serious academic case of mystagogic thinking, or whether it may have practical applicability. It is arguable that progress, with Samuel Huntington, is an abstract notion.

13  Lucian W. Pye, “’Asian Values’: from dynamos to dominoes?”, Culture Matters , p. 249 .  

• 14  On this consider Françoise Lemoine, L’Economie de la Chine , Paris, La Découverte, 2006, esp. pp. 6 (...)

12 Asian culture turns out to be an epistemological obstacle to many political scientists. Once considered incapable of generating economic growth, Asian values are seen as an asset in the ongoing economic race, with growth rates that belittle Europe and the United States alike in some quarters of the Asian world. Can one blame economic stagnation on them yesterday, and now say that some basic values of Asian cultures are the leverage of change helping those so-called miracle economies make some headway? There may well be an emphasis on hard work in Chinese culture, but one cannot see how this is specifically Chinese, or American, or British. Lucian Pye, one prominent M.I.T. scholar in Chinese studies, has suggested that Taoism and the belief in good fortune, supposed to be specific to Chinese culture (although I am aware this might be challenged), has produced outgoing dynamic character in the Chinese people, which makes them ready to grasp any opportunity likely to turn to their advantage. Pye’s view of Chinese culture may easily be taken to task, as he implies that Chinese culture leaves no room for introspection. This is most probably a typical misconception such as New-England protestant culture wants to bring home. Lucian Pye, in particular, writes the following when considering the reasons for China’s rapid expansion: “This stress of the role of fortune makes for an outward-looking and highly reality-oriented approach to life, not an introspective one” 13 . This is, we guess, one academic version of prejudice insisting that the Chinese have no soul, and no interest for an inner life. Economists, on the other hand, go for a more mundane vision of China’s development, insisting on the capacity to attract foreign investors 14 . This is also quite true of many other rising Asian economies besides China.

13 However, these observations lead us to want to extend our definition of culture. Culture is not just simply a cluster of beliefs and attitudes outside the realm of economic and political development. Culture is probably much more than beliefs and attitudes. It encompasses what we might call material culture, in the sense that attitudes matter in economic development, which is no big news, if we refer to Max Weber’s understanding of the ethic of capitalism, shaped as it is by the sense of insecurity that goes with the necessity to devise for oneself advancement in this world, the better to advance in the next one, or the higher or more sophisticated one in the rich oriental spiritual heritage. No wonder then that Derrida should suggest that between rationality and mystery, there is one connection to be established. And, in Derrida’s view of how rationality and mystery interact, one finds an abiding agreement occurring, and this is of course desirable to establish peace in what he calls culture, which to him is more of a socially encompassing substance than a mere individual determinant of behaviour.

15  Pye, “’Asian Values’: from dynamos to dominoes?”, p. 250.

16  Pye, p. 250.

14 Lucian Pye is interesting as an analyst of Chinese social development, not for what certainties he may have in store for us, but for the scepticism which his propositions will cause in most areas of the academic world, and across disciplines. Examining the reasons for China’s economic advance, he writes that “[...] the driving force in Chinese capitalism has always been to find out who needs what and to satisfy that market need” 15 . One might meditate for quite a while to determine whether markets are out there for anyone to grab, or whether one should shape markets, create needs, and respond to one’s ambition to grow by being inventive. Nevertheless, Lucian Pye views Chinese economy as a simplistic answer to world needs, and the capacity to adapt to them, whereas the West is seen as technology-driven, and culturally more sophisticated: “Western firms seek to improve their products, strengthen their organizational structures, and work hard to achieve name recognition” 16 . We wonder whether Chinese firms have not always tried to do precisely this, which can only be generalized with a vast highly educated workforce, which China is trying to obtain by adequate investment in higher education. This path is promising, from what we can judge when considering our Chinese students in our higher learning European institutions.

Cultural Change and Universities

17  Habermas, The New Conservatism , p. 104.

18  Jacques Derrida, L’Université sans condition , Paris, Galilée, 2001, p. 16.

19  See “The Idea of the University”, The New Conservatism , pp. 100-127.

15 If therefore, cultures change, not just private cultures, but also public ones, as we increasingly suspect cultures to be collective assets, university education has a major role to play in this process. We, as academics, either experienced or aspiring ones, must address the issue of what a university education ought to be like. So far in this discussion, we have acknowledged that academics should avoid voicing social prejudice, and this has not always been accomplished, to say the least. Jacques Derrida has meditated extensively on this, with a view to promoting the role education might play in defending the values of democracy, no doubt because Derrida’s understanding of the effects of academic training is combined with the idea of a political education for youth. This may be easily understood when one looks at the moral paralysis of the German university system and its many graduates embracing Nazism and providing the Nazi regime with its most destructive propagandists and functionaries. However, Habermas is clear on this point. German universities cannot be blamed for what befell. Habermas, in particular, points out that the number of students was halved during Nazism in Germany, dropping from 121 000 in 1933 to below 60 000 right before the Second World War 17 . One reason why this happened, although Derrida is not explicit on this point, is that universities tend to over-specialize knowledge. This has caused the decline of humanistic study. Habermas offers similar views, though they are cast in a more sociological mould. To Derrida, higher education should be critical of whatever rationality wants to assess. He calls this “the university without conditions”, which to him involves an ambitious agenda thus defined: “the primal right to say anything, be it in the name of fiction and of knowledge as experiment, and the right to speak publicly, and to publish this” 18 . Habermas offers a more accurate version of what ought to be done, and has been insufficiently accomplished so far: integrating humanistic study and technical expertise to curb the specialization of knowledge 19 .

20  Derrida, L’Université sans condition , p. 69.

16 This may sound vague enough, and we wonder where it might lead, because one doubts whether knowledge, in various disciplines, might efficiently refrain from becoming specialized. This is why Derrida comes up with more practical propositions as to the contents and orientations of higher education in the book he published in 2001, L’Université sans condition . There are seven such propositions, all having to do with what one might call the architecture of knowledge, all answering the need to redefine humanistic study, which should come alongside more specialized training, either in established scholarly disciplines, or the training of students towards professions outside the academic world. The new humanities should, according to Derrida, deal with what he calls “the history of man”, which calls us to devote more attention than has so far been devoted to human rights, be they for men or women. To him, these rights are “legal performatives” 20 , which sounds otherworldly owing to the weight of abstraction in the phrase. However, this might basically mean that these rights are to be upheld because they can be applied to the various fields of human activity. Furthermore we must bear in mind that these so-called “legal performatives” are performatives because they hold within them an applicability that may be constantly expanded, in practical terms, to various areas of cultural practice, among which of course science and business, two areas of higher education that are growing to meet the social needs of human development.

17 The idea of democracy comes second in Derrida’s architecture of the new humanities. It comes second for reasons of clarity in the presentation of the programme he has in mind. Yet the idea of democracy is not a second-thought, because it runs, let us be reminded, through all his oeuvre as a philosopher. Let us note that democracy, as far as what Derrida has to say about it, is not tethered to nationhood. Nationhood is dangerous, and one may easily understand this in the light of European history, and also of Asia. From this, we can easily infer that cultural change in the future should not rely on national traditions, and that, in this respect, globalization offers opportunities for positive cross-fertilization. Derrida’s meditation on this hinges on the concept of sovereignty. While sovereignty is a desirable goal for each and every one of us; the idea is viewed as misleading, as it has often been a concept without practical consequences, while we may still hope that sovereignty will remain a horizon of belief for individuals, and a value that will guide collective decisions. Yet, if Derrida invites us to abide by this concept (sovereignty), he also believes that any collective formalization of the idea of sovereignty should avoid reliance on the nation-state, which may too easily lead to a betrayal of individual dignity.

21  Derrida, p. 72.

18 Derrida then focuses on the necessity to recuperate the authority of teaching, and of literature, whose proposals cannot be easily understood. One suspects, when reading Derrida’s proposals, that teaching as well as literature have to do with amity, a concept that emerges from Derrida’s body of works. This is not a norm, neither is it prescriptive, nor can it be strictly defined as a doctrine or a set of mandatory rules. We gather this is to be understood as an opening to otherness on the part of the teacher, and a eulogy of respect for the other person, which involves inventiveness and the by-passing of any sort of regulation that defines the other person in some way or other that might lead to a position of authority of a colonial or exploitative nature. It certainly is an attitude of respect, which elbows aside the very notion of authority, “routs it”, as Derrida says 21 . Universities, therefore, should constitute an idea that transcends any specialized discourse on the technicalities of education; it consists in letting the other reach out for his or her potential towards self-development. The institutional strength of higher education springs, in Derrida’s view of it, from the interaction of the person who teaches and the one being taught, to live to the full his or her aspirations. Derrida’s ideal is so elevated that it transcends any definition one might come up with. It certainly is a call to confront the normative nature of higher education in order to recuperate a lost sense of human warmth that has been eliminated by the technocratic complexities of institutions seeking intellectual identity in the measurement of student skills and their willingness to comply to them. One also cannot rule out that a backlash has been underway in higher education itself owing to the rising number of first-generation graduates from the less educated groups of our national cultures. This has been more of an opportunity for universities to fulfil their cultural mission from the sixties onwards than a serious obstacle to the growth of higher education, and one can argue that Derrida was balking away from the pessimistic discourse one hears in most academic circles today – ill-grounded as it is on the relative accessibility to higher education.

• 22  On this, consider Daniel Parrochia, La Forme des crises : logique et épistémologie , Seyssel, Champ (...)

19 The challenges that higher education has to face, in the context of an ever-increasing cross-fertilization of cultures, points to one underlying question that surfaces from an examination of current economic and social trends. Is what we call culture tethered to social and economic factors? The question is by no means new, and was handed down to us by the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, and by Marxist theory. We now tend to believe that culture is one mode of collective representation that one may disengage from submission to social and economic facts. On this point, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to real structures , that he saw as disconnected from institutions or working facts . 22 There is still much thought to be devoted to whether the degree of autonomy of culture as collective representation involves radical or relative autonomy from economic factors. We are also hard pressed to determine whether, in this framework of analytical thinking, autonomy is or is not hampered by the necessities of those real structures and the institutions that shape them, and even perhaps discreetly justify them. Hence, Stiglitz’s view that one must respond to a democratic deficit, and Derrida’s view that one must face the serious issue of a democratic deficit in higher education. The question is not benign, and it calls forth an autonomy of the mind to bend social realities and economic factors to purposes that do not derive from them.

1  Ralph Waldo Emerson “Napoleon; or, the man of the world” in Joel Porte, Essays and Lectures , New York, The Library of America, 1983, p. 731.

3  Hubert Damisch, “A Crisis of Values, or Crisis Value ?”, in Daniel S. Hamilton (ed.), Which Values for our Time, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Center for Transatlantic Relations, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, p. 57.

4  Peter Fenves, (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy  ; Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida , Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 117-171; French edition : « D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie » in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe et Jean-Luc Nancy (ed.), Les Fins de l’Homme: à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida , Paris, Galilée, 1981, pp. 445-479.

5  See in particular Making Globalization Work , New York, Norton, 2007, chapter 7, “The Multinational Corporation”.

6  Richard Rorty, “Globalization, the politics of identity and Social Hope” in Philosophy and Social Hope , London, Penguin, 1999, p. 233.

7  Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s debate , Cambridge, Mass., The M.I.T. Press, (1989) 1997, p. 48.

8  Emery Roe and Michel J.G. Van Eeten, “Three – Not Two – Major Environmental Counternarratives to Globalization”, Global Environmental Politics , 4:4, November 2004; see in particular pp. 36-39.

10  John Rawls, Political Liberalism , New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 181. Joseph Stiglitz follows suits with a set of more technical criteria in Making Globalization Work; s ee the section“Responding to the Democratic Deficit”, pp. 280-285.

11  Slavoj Zizek, “Le Tibet pris dans le rêve de l’autre”, Le Monde Diplomatique , n° 650, mai 2008, p. 32.

12  Samuel Huntington, “Foreword” in Lawrence E. Harrison & Samuel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress , New York, Basic Books, 2000, XV.

14  On this consider Françoise Lemoine, L’Economie de la Chine , Paris, La Découverte, 2006, esp. pp. 67-68.

22  On this, consider Daniel Parrochia, La Forme des crises : logique et épistémologie , Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2008, esp. pp. 104-128.

Pour citer cet article

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Alain Suberchicot , « Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization » ,  Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 , 4 | 2008, 5-17.

Référence électronique

Alain Suberchicot , « Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization » ,  Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 4 | 2008, mis en ligne le 20 septembre 2009 , consulté le 01 août 2024 . URL  : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/237 ; DOI  : https://doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.237

Alain Suberchicot

Professor , American Studies, University of Lyon (Jean-Moulin)

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The Ethics of Globalization and the Globalization of Ethics

Jun 27, 2013

Michael Ignatieff

Carnegie-Uehiro Centennial Chair; Central European University

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Part of the Council's Centennial programs, Global Ethical Dialogues is a multi-year project that engages societies across the world in the quest for a global ethic--shared values with which to tackle problems that transcend national boundaries.

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In this rousing and eloquent speech in Rio, given during the biggest protests there in 25 years, Michael Ignatieff salutes the protesters' "patriotic anger" and discusses how to combat corruption, a 2,000-year-old problem common to societies worldwide.

Carnegie Council Centennial Chair Michael Ignatieff gave this public speech at Universidade Estácio, Rio de Janeiro,as part of the Council's first Global Ethical Dialogues .

It's a great pleasure to be here. I want to thank Professor Rafael , I want to thank Judge Fernanda . I want to thank all our Brazilian colleagues for their warmth and their welcome.

We are in the middle of a two-year project in which Carnegie Council goes around the world looking at ethical problems and understanding what we have in common; the problems we have in common and the language we have in common to solve them. And we started our journey two weeks ago in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, then we went to Montevideo, but we saved the best for last. We came to Rio.

When we planned to come to Rio, we had the following idea: we would study a problem that every society has, which is the problem of corruption and public trust. It is a problem in every society. I'm from Canada, I'm a Canadian, a proud Canadian. But on Monday of this week, the mayor of Montreal, one of our biggest cities, was arrested for corruption. So you have a problem, I have a problem, we all have a problem.

How do we solve it? That's what we're trying to understand in the Carnegie project. When we came to Rio, we had no idea that in starting a dialogue about corruption and public trust, it would coincide with the biggest demonstrations in 25 years. We had no idea that these demonstrations would make corruption the center of the demonstration. And so this Canadian and that American [ Devin Stewart , Carnegie Council] have witnessed the awakening of Brazil. The coming awake of the whole society to the true nature of the political world you live in.

I see three crises here , one overlapping the other.

I see a crisis of development. You're awakening to the gap between your enormous economic developments, 40 million new members of the middle class, abolition of absolute poverty, so they say. You're now the 10th largest economy of the world, and you have huge multi-nationalism. Vale Inco, a Brazilian company, runs my little town of Sudbury in northern Ontario. So you have a crisis of development. A gap has opened up between your economic progress and your political progress. And the gap is expressed in the fact that you believe your political class has the wrong priorities. You've invested in the Olympics . You've invested in the World Cup . You haven't invested in hospitals. You haven't invested in education.

The second crisis is during the middle of a crisis in public goods, the middle class of this country is tired of paying twice. First you pay high taxes. Then you have to pay private to compensate for the failures in public provision, and you're fed up with it.

Then you have the biggest crisis of all, which is the crisis of representation. You've lost confidence in the politicians you choose to represent you. You feel they do not represent you at all. You're not alone in this. There is a crisis of representation around the Western world. I ought to know, I used to be in politics. I know something about this. But it's especially acute here. It's been especially triggered by the Mensalão trial and the recent discovery of corruption in your political class.

So you have a crisis in development, a crisis in public goods, and a crisis of representation. But you have a fourth crisis that is even more important. You've taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers, and I was in those demonstrations the whole week walking in the streets, talking to students, talking to librarians, talking to lawyers, talking to journalists, talking to the citizens of Rio. You don't trust the politicians, but you also aren't certain whether you trust each other. Last night, there was a feeling of empowerment in the streets, and then a majority wanted those demonstrations to be peaceful, but a tiny minority of you did not. And now you don't know who to trust. Can you trust the people to go out to those streets again, or will it end in violence? So there's this fourth crisis of trust, which is in some sense the most difficult problem of all.

The violence has opened up a gap of trust within the people. You don't trust the politicians. You're not sure whether you trust each other and restoring trust will require leadership. A movement in the streets can't stay without leadership forever. The only way you can get trust is to have leaders you trust in the street, and that hasn't happened. Trust is a two-way street. You have a two-way challenge. The politicians have got to listen to the street. The streets have to talk to the politicians. The politicians have to listen. The street has to present coherent demands. Otherwise, this goes in a bad place.

If the solutions aren't political; if the people can't find politicians to represent them and present their demands; if the people cease to trust each other, you know who solves this? The police solve this. The police have a solution. And it will be a bloody solution. And so, as someone who has been so impressed, so moved, by what I saw in the streets, I hope this ends in politics; in good politics; in trust renewed with a political class; in trust renewed in the people themselves.

But let me stand back a little because I want to connect what happened in the streets this week to the deeper ethical issues, the moral issues connected with the issue of corruption.

Before this speech this afternoon, I was talking to some of you, and you all know what's at stake. I've learned so much from you this week. And I'm not telling you something you don't know. I'm telling you what you told me. And what you're telling me is this is a test of what it is to be a free people. It's a test of who you are as citizens. When you think about what it means to be a citizen, all of us, whether you're born in Canada, or born in Rio de Janeiro, whether we're born in America, or born in London, or Paris, or Germany, or Buenos Aires, we are all the children of the oldest globalization, moral globalization, that there is. We are all the child of the republic idea. We are all the children of Cicero , and Justinian , and the Roman lawyers. I was in your courthouse this week. You have Cicero and Justinian on the walls in Brazil, here, in Rio.

What is Brazil? It is a republic. What is a republic? It's people running the public life. And public life is not the state. The public life is the life you have in common as citizens. And in this system in thinking about what it is to be a citizen, what it means to be in a republic, ethics is not personal, or individual, it's how you run your common life together. The object of ethics is the public good, the res publica .

And what is the res publica ? It's the ordered freedom of public life. And politics is the struggle to preserve the res publica . To preserve it from private greed and the lust for power. And that's where corruption comes in. The idea of a republic is paired historically with the idea of corruption from the beginning, from 2,000 years ago. Read your Cicero. Read where your constitution comes from, the Brazilian constitution. It comes from people who understood what it means to live in a republic. And the chief danger to a republic, that is, to a democracy, is corruption.

Now this Roman ideal, this old ideal of the republic that you see in Cicero, excluded most of the people in this room. It excluded women. It excluded black people and slaves, and it excluded the poor. The modern republic, of which you are a part, is a republic of full inclusion. Everybody's included. That's the starting condition, or should be the starting condition, for Brazilian life, for Canadian life, for German life, for French life, for any life. That's what the human rights revolution is — guaranteed that the republic is a republic for all. Period. For all.

And so when we speak of a global ethic, when we speak of what we have in common — what Canadians have in common with Brazilians, with the Germans, with the French, with South Africans — we don't forget the poverty. We don't forget the inequality. We don't forget the fact that I'm speaking to you in English and your first language is Portuguese. We don't forget the fact that you can all dance the samba, and I can't dance it at all. We don't forget the differences, but we do remember that we hold in common the idea of a democratic republic for all. It's a value that we all share. And therefore, if we share it, the threat to us all is the threat of corruption. And corruption is not just the bribery of this individual; the brutality of that policeman; the favoritism, nepotism, patronage of one individual. The classical tradition of the republic understood corruption in much bigger terms — as a moral problem that threatened republican life itself.

And that's what I want to put an emphasis upon. When you were saying to me this week, this is a test of our democracy, you weren't just saying this is a test of our institutions, our judges, our Supreme Court. It's a test of us. It's a test of our deepest values. So democracy is not just elections every four years. It's not just majority rule. It's not just the rule of all. It's a way of life — a moral way of life. And it implies the ideal of equality — equality of voice, equality of respect. It includes the ideal of law. No one is above the law, not even the president. It includes the ideal of reason. Democratic life is the life of persuasion, not the life of manipulation; argument, not indoctrination; discussion, not ideology. And it's also the idea of nonviolence. Everywhere yesterday, as I walked through the streets, people said, " Não-violência ." That is what it is to be a democrat. That is what it is to have a democratic life. Violence is excluded.

And the idea that violence is excluded includes another idea, which is there are no enemies among citizens. There are opponents. There are adversaries. We disagree. But there are no enemies. At one point during the week, the press reported that a man was attacking a policeman. And another demonstrator came in and said, "He's a Brazilian," of the policeman. That's the idea. There are no enemies among citizens. There are people you oppose, there are people you disagree with, there are people you're angry with. But there are no enemies to be driven out of society, to be denied their rights.

So you have the idea of equality, the idea of law, the idea of nonviolence, and the idea of responsibility. The idea of the republic is the idea that it's our republic. We are the people. Brazil doesn't belong to the state. Brazil doesn't belong to the president . Brazil belongs to the people, and the people have a responsibility for Brazil, for Canada, for Germany.

And finally the ideal of the public good — putting the public good first and private interest second. And the ethics of democracy goes beyond that. Because the ethics of democracy implies the control of money. In a democracy, there are some things that money cannot buy, is not allowed to buy : justice. You can't buy justice. You can't buy votes. And you can't buy public offices. And there are some things you can't sell in democratic life. Some things money can't buy, and some things money can't sell.

Public reserves held in common cannot be reserved for the private use of politicians or the rich and the powerful. And this requires a discipline that is very difficult for all of us because it requires this democratic value. It requires us to act against some of our most praiseworthy instincts. It's good to love your family. It's good to do favors to your friends. It's good to be loyal. But in democratic politics, loyalty, love of family, and friendship are dangers. There are the sources of corruption. You do a favor to your friend. You promote your son, or grandson. You're loyal to your neighbors, so as a judge, you do a favor to a neighbor.

What's interesting about corruption is that often corruption is justified by some of the best principles we have. Loyalty to family. Loyalty to friends. Loyalty to neighbors. A democratic life requires us to struggle with some of the best things inside us. And you know all this. I was talking to a judge this week who said, "It's interesting being a judge. A doctor should do a favor to a neighbor. But a judge does a favor to a neighbor, he's done something wrong."

Every profession has to decide what its ethics are. And sometimes its ethics require struggle against some of the best natural instincts we all have. So when you think about corruption in this way, when you think about democratic life in this way, you begin to see that corruption is not just a matter of, as we say in English, "a few bad apples." It's a moral threat and a political threat to democratic life itself. Corruption is more than favoritism, it's more than patronage, it's more than bribes. It's a threat to the virtue of the people. And it's a threat to the freedom of the state. And so, democratic life is a struggle against the constant temptation of corruption, a struggle to preserve the res publica from private greed, from a lust for power.

And the key point about democratic life as a moral system is it's an ethical system without alibis. It's a democratic system without excuses. It's not someone else's responsibility. It's our responsibility as citizens. And shouldering that responsibility for the corruption at the heart of the civic life for any country is the most difficult problem for citizens. Because corruption is not just a problem for citizens. It's a moral disease that infects people themselves and it creates a culture of excuses, a culture of justification, and a culture of fatalism that infects institutions. And in the classical tradition, going right back to Rome, the fear was that corruption would lead to the degeneration of public virtue. The erosion of public institutions, the detachment of the people from politics. And it would end in tyranny. It would end in authoritarianism. If the people can't rule themselves, they will look for someone to rule them in their place.

So the end conclusion of corruption is authoritarian rule. And Latin American countries have a particularly sharp experience with tyranny and authoritarian rule. Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Columbia know how real the threat of tyranny is. Tyranny and authoritarianism are the end state of a corrupted democracy. Some populist savor arises who says , " Fini com os candidatos — finished with parties, finished with corruption. I will come clean up the house." And this has been a risk and a danger to democracy and republics since the Romans, since Romans lost their liberty. So we all have been here before. And Latin America has been here quite recently. So in some sense, this is still as stake here in Latin America.

As Lenin said — and I am no friend of Mr. Lenin, but he did ask the right question of politics — he asked, "What is to be done?" Everybody knows what is to be done. I have nothing to tell you that you don't already know. Judges, prosecutors, journalists, professors know what has to be done. And they are doing it. The standard answers, the old answers, are the right answers. If there is a risk that power will be corrupted, separate power. Break it up. Destroy concentrations of power. Use power to check power. If you don't have an independent judiciary, if you don't have an independent media, if you don't have institutions to stand up and hold the power to account, you haven't got any solution to the problem of corruption.

And everyone in Brazil knows that, knows it has to happen. Everybody in Brazil knows you have to end impunity. If you don't end impunity, you can't stop corruption. If judgments are made against corrupt politicians — and we are awaiting the judgments of the Supreme Court of a famous trial — but if those people who have been convicted by due process of law do not serve jail time, the people of Brazil will know that impunity has not stopped.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but that has to happen. You also know — and you have legislation on the books about this — that politicians convicted of crimes should be barred from public office. By due process of law, you should not hold public office again. The term is called lustration. It's a technical term, but you have to have lustration and you have to have an end to impunity. And you have to have an independent institution so that when you ask what is it that has to be done, the key development in every society — in my society, in your society, in Argentina and Uruguay, and France and Germany — is the development of free institutions.

Corruption is not a problem that will be solved by legislation in Brasilia. Corruption is a problem that has to be solved by the development of free institutions that are tough enough to hold power to account. And that means professionals that have their own professional standards and enforce them — doctors, lawyers, engineers, who enforce codes of conduct and who punish professionals who engage in corruption. You want to have independent NGOs, civil society organizations who are not funded by the government, that derive the funding from the people, who can hold government to account. You need a free media. A free media that promotes free information against manipulation and propaganda and the social media revolution gives the people unbelievable power to put new information into the public arena. You need, finally, representatives who serve the people and not their parties, and you need public servants. A public bureaucracy who uses security of tenure, not to enhance their privileges, but to serve the people.

But the point about democracy, finally, is that democracy is self-government. Government for the people, by the people, of the people. So the responsibility for preserving the freedom of a republic is a responsibility that falls not on the president, not on the politicians, it falls finally on the people, in the classical tradition that I am talking. The battle against corruption is a battle by citizens against abusive power. It's a battle to defend public virtue against private abuse. It's a battle inside yourself against a culture of excuses and justification and fatalism. It's a battle for political involvement instead of political passivity. And if the political parties won't listen, they will have to make way.

I'm not giving you a civics lesson. I'm not giving you a moral lesson that you don't know. I'm trying to surface and put into words what's in our hearts already. What we know already. And what we sometimes forget — what I forgot often when I was in politics and what a week of demonstrations in Brazil has made me remember. Democracy is a struggle without end, and each country's struggle is specific to its own history, which is why I can't tell you what to do. This is your struggle, not mine.

The norms, the global norms against corruption, have been globalized — Transparency International, Global Equity, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. If you want to see how the world sees Brazil, just go online. That's what globalization means. If you want to learn, go onto the Internet, and it's all there. And the standards are the same everywhere. People maintaining free government. And in this battle, these are not alien norms imposed on you by the outside. This is in your own tradition. This is what it is to be a republic. This is where a republican tradition needs to be strong in your country because it's based on the idea that self-government requires us to keep what is public free from the corruption of private interests. And I don't think, when we think of the globalization of norms, that there's even a disagreement about the norms, or that there's even a disagreement about the traditions that we share.

The challenge for all of us, for me as well as for you, is to live up to the values that we set ourselves. I refuse to make excuses. To refuse to shift the blame to others. To take the issue of corruption as a personal responsibility. To defend free and independent institutions in our daily life. To live democracy as our daily life. The way we treat our neighbors, the way we treat our friends, the way we treat minorities, the way we treat people different than ourselves. To treat democracy not as a set of institutions, but as a way of life that belongs to us the people. The preservation of institutions that keep us free. Understanding that corruption threatens not just a few but threatens us all.

There was anger in the streets of Brazil this week. A particular kind of anger, which I think is a noble anger — patriotic anger. The anger of people who say, "Don't treat us like fools. We're not fools. We're adults, we're citizens, we're equals." That patriotic anger is an anger based on an instinctive understanding of what democracy as a way of life really is. And I want to just end by saluting that patriotic anger. I want to salute the pride that is connected to the anger. I want to signal the pride that heralds a research and devotion to the republic, to democracy, to democracy as a way of life, that we defend together. We defend it here, we defend it in Canada, we defend it wherever we find it. Because if we don't defend it, needless to say, nobody will.

Thank you so much for listening.

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• Corpus ID: 154630781

THE ETHICS OF GLOBALIZATION

• Published 2012

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The ethical challenges of globalization, globalisation and global justice - a thematic introduction, globalization and democracy- a framework for discussion, unity in church and society theological reflections on an ongoing challenge in south africa today, strategic and moral dilemmas of corporate philanthropy in developing countries: heineken in sub-saharan africa, rethinking global business ethics: the north‐south paradigm, is global equality the enemy of national equality, from babel to pentecost: using the soteriologies of gustavo gutierrez and aloysius pieris to challenge facets of the project of neoliberal globalization and nurture the development of new liberation theologies, a brief sketch of the possibility of a hegelian cosmopolitanism, the ethical duty of physicians to strengthen their own immunization and childhood vaccination, 10 references, in search of the good life: the ethics of globalization.

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Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives

The samaritan's dilemma: should government help your neighbor by deborah stone. new york: nation books, 2008. 304p. $25.95., compassion: loving our neighbors in an age of globalization . by maureen h. o'connell. maryknoll, ny: orbis: 2009. x + 242 pages. $32.00 (paper)., fair trade: a beginner's guide, the use of international development type projects in cdio programs, the samaritan's dilemma: should government help your neighbor, developing human-centered design practices and perspectives through service-learning, [the conscious consumer]., waste for life: socially just materials research, related papers.

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