The Heritage Foundation is often good for a laugh, perhaps simply on account of how they manage to take themselves so seriously. In my news surfing today I came across the findings of the Heritage Foundation’s 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. I got a kick out of it, and hope you’ll enjoy it too. It’s only four pages and well worth the reading. From just scanning the survey, the methodology employed seems to be very suspect, although I wasn’t able to really examine it since all of the links to the methodological information were not operative (how convenient!). What was most interesting to me, though, was a little accompanying booklet that had entries from a few guys on the Heritage crew. Chapter 3, written by Guy Sorman cleverly titled “How Globalization is Making the World a Better Place,” was particularly clear in its proclamation of Globalism as a deliverance from all the worlds evils, from war to poverty to boredom. This soteriology has six major characteristics: economic development, democracy, cultural enrichment, political and cultural norms, information, and internationalization of the rule of law. To go through the fallacies of this poor writing would just be too exhausting, but there is really no need to. A quick skim of these raving adulations of the universalization of the free-market will make his self-dissociating denunciation of terrorists as “people driven by ideological passions” one of the funnier things you’ve read all day.
Sorman’s blindness to his ideological presuppositions allows him to praise phenomena that from other perspectives appear absolutely horrific. A clear instance comes in the blurb on “Cultural Enrichment,” where he argues that globalism, far from destroying ethnic integrity, actually adds to the richness of culture through the universalization of the melting pot.
“Through popular culture, people from different backgrounds and nations discover one another, and their “otherness” suddenly disappears….Furthermore, this process of better understanding allows us to keep our identity and add new identities. The Koreans absorb a bit of the American culture, a bit of the French, a bit of other European societies. Perhaps they have become a different sort of Korean, but they remain Korean nonetheless. It is quite the illusion to think you can lose your identity….We do not lose our identity. We enter into the world that I call the world of multi-identity, and that is progress, not loss.”
I cannot help but be appalled that Sorman here is able to advocate the notion of a stable identity in the era of globalization by turning the self into a consumer of identities, where selves are put on the market to be bought and sold, turning culture, heritage, and community into base commodities. Having already presupposed the necessity and fitness of a stable identity, Sorman locates that stability in the self’s capacity for consumption, for commandeering and appropriating the foreign until there is none left, and all is me.
The Heritage Foundation is always good for a laugh (albeit a sort of horrified and disbelieving one).
Perhaps the only thing that surprises me about the discourse of Mr. Sorman is the fact that it’s still being disseminated (and to some degree, bought into) in the face of ever-accumulating data to the contrary. This rationale was frequently cited in the ramp up for NAFTA, WTO and MFN talks (for what better way to increase human rights in China, but to grant them MFN status, increase trade and thereby increase Western influence?). The mid 1990s produced an abundance of research among sociologists, anthropologists and scholars from the Global South showing the cultural and psychological devastation that can result from certain forms of globalization (I have some great books if you’re interested . . . )
What I think is interesting, and perhaps illustrative, is the seemingly interchangeable use of “culture” and “identity” by Sorman. The two influence each other, to be sure, but are certainly not the same. Is this then merely the case of the appropriation of a culturally “hot” discursive word in “identity,” or does it illustrate something else? What do you think?
I think capitalism absolutely thrives on the commodification of culture, especially in terms of globalization. Through the commodification of cultural artifacts and rituals we are presented with choices, choices that are supposed to reflect and indicate the identity we choose (interesting that we buy our identity, eh?). Sorman’s “multi-identities” I suppose. But at what cost, and at what insult?
Take henna, for instance. In South Asia, henna body art is part of a sacred marriage ritual. In the US, anywhere there is a People’s Market, you’ll find artists selling henna tattoos. They’re attractive and exotic and people are willing to pay for them. They have been commodified, and–one could argue–profaned in the process. How would we in the Christian community react to the selling of holy water, or the eucharist?
Additionally, it’s always lovely to hear globalization described as a value-neutral and power-equal force, almost as if it’s a “natural” phenomenon. Which, it certainly isn’t. Oh, Heritage . . .
Okay, enough of my ramblings. Off to the airport I go. . .
Hey Lindsay. That example of the Henna tattoos is a great one. The selling of holy water and communion bread – I’m worried that that would only be symbolic of what we already are in fact doing, commodifying the church.
I’d love to get ahold of those books from you.
I think the real problem with Sorman’s notion of identity is that it is a stable one. There is no real sense of otherness, since his notion of the self is endlessly capable of expanding and consuming other identities into itself. It consumes others rather than engaging.
I absolutely agree that we are commodifying the church, and that is both tragic and repulsive. However, I would argue that in some sense that is happening from the inside, at least culturally, and the point that I was attempting to illustrate is that of commodification from the outside–such as the West commodifying henna tattoos. For some reason it seems easier for us to accept the commodification of our own culture when it is appropriated from within that same culture (the West), but does it shift things at all for us were we to think of China selling the eucharist, with us powerless to stop it? So, in essence, asking how does power (economic, political, social) affect our standpoint (there it again!) and corresponding understanding and interpretation of globalization? Sorman’s assertion of “multi-identities” corresponds with his social standpoint of being at the core of the relations of ruling, while adopting the social standpoint of others on the margins of the relations of ruling allows us to see how ludicrous his assertion really is.
I’m not exactly sure that I agree with you on Sorman’s notion of the self (probably because I don’t think he really gives you enough to go on in that blurb). First, though, what do you mean by “stable” (not defined in terms of “otherness”?) and “expanding” (as opposed to static? or shrinking?) ? I think his statement doesn’t necessarily reveal the consumption of identities, but rather the consumption of culture. And I’d say that he would argue that engaging happens through consumption, that, in essence, they are one in the same.
Also, how do you define a sense of “other?” In terms of power, social hierarchy, culture . . . ???
I’ll pull together the books for you. . . .