| Subject: Thoughts on _Globalization_ |
Author:
Matt
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Date Posted: 18:52:44 10/29/02 Tue
Well, here goes:
First off, I would have to say that many of Bauman's arguments are interesting, but many are just as sketchy as his authority is. The back cover of the book says that he is a professor at the University of Leeds (apparently in Poland) and the U. of Warsaw. That makes me wonder: how much of an authority is he on American society? Although he doesn't always seem to be talking only about America, there are many times that he does seem to be. This limited view also makes me question the applicability of his ideas to other nations.
As I was reading this work, I started thinking about how it could relate to my project for this class. I am working on a theoretical view of the US-Mexico border (I know that is hopelessly vague, but so are my thoughts at this point). The concept of the border itself has changed drastically as the world has become more globalized, so some of the things that Bauman talks about are directly relevant to the things I will be exploring in my project. However, I'm not sure of the extent to which I can use his ideas because many of them seem to be so limited. For example, his concept of tourist vs. vagabond is interesting, but it seems to be based almost solely on the US. His idea of tourist seems to be someone who has the financial ability to 1) pick up and move to a desired location out of sheer desire, not necessity, and 2)is not tied to any one location for making money. Vagabond seems to mean someone who is more-or-less enslaved, i.e., is bound to one locale (mostly inner cities, it seems) and has limited opportunities for making money. If these are the definitions he intends to get across, then they seem to work to a certain extent, at least in the US's case. Even then, however, they seem to either ignore the middle class or group the middle class with the upper class, either of which creates enormous problems with his logic.
These ideas in relation to Mexico, however, work even less well. In particular I mean in relation to the Mexican workers (as well as workers from other Latin American countries) who cross the border to find work in America. They definitely do not fall into the tourist category and, for the most part, they probably have it worse off than the inner-city-locked "vagabonds" in the US. But they do have mobility; they cannot afford to be tied to one place so they have to keep moving. Mobility to them equals profit. If anything, they suffer from not having a place to be tied to because their homelands cannot offer them one. Considering that there is predicted to be millions of undocumented workers in the US (this figure varies drastically, of course, depending on which group is doing the estimating), this is a large group for Bauman to not consider in his ideas.
Perhaps I am misreading the text and have a faulty understanding of his ideas, but I re-read it again to prevent that. From what I can tell, his ideas do seem to be rather limited. I'm also annoyed by the fact that he doesn't have a concluding chapter to tie everything together and come to some actual conclusions, or at least some cohesive possibilities (his quasi-mea culpa in the introduction doesn't satisfy me either). If nothing else, I can probably incorporate _Globalization_ into my project by challenging his ideas. That may be fun.
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