Home » Opinion » Book review
Debunking modern myth of mobile global population
By Wang Yong |
January 14, 2012, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE world is not as flat as celebrity columnist Thomas Friedman would have us believe.
Geographer and philosopher Harm De Blij from Michigan State University argues that globalization - the force that's supposed to make the world flat - has an uneven reach.
"Mantras of globalization are often at variance with reality," says De Blij in his book, "The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape." "For all the liberating changes that have already occurred, place of birth still has a powerful influence over the destinies of billions."
De Blij's book debunks the modern myth of a mobile globe. The prevalence of English as a global language and of Internet as a symbol of modernity has glossed over the hard truth that most of Earth's inhabitants speak the tongue, wear the garb and observe the religion of their native land.
De Blij observes: "Many hundreds of millions of farmers in river basins of Asia and Africa live their lives much as their distant ancestors did, still remote from the forces of globalization."
"'The Power of Place' is a tour-de-force, a fascinating and deeply knowledgeable account of the crucial ways in which 'place,' Earth's physical geography, shapes global society," concurs Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "The world, we learn, is not flat but is indeed a rugged terrain, in which climate, topography, natural hazards, pathogens and much more, shape economy, politics, language, culture, and power."
De Blij's book merits attention from globals. In selling a culture or a model of growth from one country to other, it's naive to believe that the world is flat, that there's something universally applicable.
Cars, for example, suit America better than China, simply because of America's terrain, urban patterns, superior natural endowments and smaller population. On the economic front, globalization is often blind to the power of place; it has focused mainly on cost reduction, meaning globals (multinational companies and global-trotting business people) outsource manufacturing and service jobs to wherever labor costs are lowest.
Profit maximization
China has overtaken America as the world's largest automobile market not because China is a better place for cars, but because it costs much less to make a car in China than in America.
Globalization in this sense is the maximization of globals' profits at the expense of locals' environment and health.
China's air was not always as bad as it is today. An old US banker told a public forum that I attended in Hawaii in 1995 that he had planned to retire in old Beijing in the 1940s, because the city was one of the world's greenest places.
Even when I first went to college in Beijing in 1984, its sky was still crystal blue as there were virtually no taxis or private cars. Buses and bicycles dominated the capital. In a country as populous and mountainous as China, cars should give way to public transport.
In hindsight, the past three decades of globalization, with China's joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 as a milestone, largely witnessed a sale, or an attempted sale of Western models - economic and cultural - to the rest of the world.
From cars to Hollywood movies to high-rises, it was all about Westernization in the guise of globalization.
But it was often willingly embraced and not imposed. Even during the Opium Wars in the 19th century, China only opened a few treaty ports in coastal areas, but later China flung open its doors to the West in the 1980s, while largely closing the door to its own past.
While opium was forced on China, we alone have pulled down our own ancient houses to make way for Western-style modernization.
Have the Confucian values of frugality and traditional Chinese architecture found their way into modern-day China or the West? Hardly.
In crucial ways, globalization has been borrowed as a convenient excuse for one-way export of culture and commodity.
In contrast, author De Blij treats each place and people with due respect. It's a wake-up call against the risks inherent in the single-minded pursuit of a flat world - risks arising from the misbelief that technology prevails over terrain.
In De Blij's view, technology may virtually connect millions, but place defines billions. "Earth may be a planet of shrinking functional distances, but it remains a world of staggering situational differences. From the uneven distribution of natural resources to the unequal availability of opportunity, place remains a powerful arbiter."
If the world's politicians believed in the power of place, instead of a flat world, global harmony would ensue.
Geographer and philosopher Harm De Blij from Michigan State University argues that globalization - the force that's supposed to make the world flat - has an uneven reach.
"Mantras of globalization are often at variance with reality," says De Blij in his book, "The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape." "For all the liberating changes that have already occurred, place of birth still has a powerful influence over the destinies of billions."
De Blij's book debunks the modern myth of a mobile globe. The prevalence of English as a global language and of Internet as a symbol of modernity has glossed over the hard truth that most of Earth's inhabitants speak the tongue, wear the garb and observe the religion of their native land.
De Blij observes: "Many hundreds of millions of farmers in river basins of Asia and Africa live their lives much as their distant ancestors did, still remote from the forces of globalization."
"'The Power of Place' is a tour-de-force, a fascinating and deeply knowledgeable account of the crucial ways in which 'place,' Earth's physical geography, shapes global society," concurs Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "The world, we learn, is not flat but is indeed a rugged terrain, in which climate, topography, natural hazards, pathogens and much more, shape economy, politics, language, culture, and power."
De Blij's book merits attention from globals. In selling a culture or a model of growth from one country to other, it's naive to believe that the world is flat, that there's something universally applicable.
Cars, for example, suit America better than China, simply because of America's terrain, urban patterns, superior natural endowments and smaller population. On the economic front, globalization is often blind to the power of place; it has focused mainly on cost reduction, meaning globals (multinational companies and global-trotting business people) outsource manufacturing and service jobs to wherever labor costs are lowest.
Profit maximization
China has overtaken America as the world's largest automobile market not because China is a better place for cars, but because it costs much less to make a car in China than in America.
Globalization in this sense is the maximization of globals' profits at the expense of locals' environment and health.
China's air was not always as bad as it is today. An old US banker told a public forum that I attended in Hawaii in 1995 that he had planned to retire in old Beijing in the 1940s, because the city was one of the world's greenest places.
Even when I first went to college in Beijing in 1984, its sky was still crystal blue as there were virtually no taxis or private cars. Buses and bicycles dominated the capital. In a country as populous and mountainous as China, cars should give way to public transport.
In hindsight, the past three decades of globalization, with China's joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 as a milestone, largely witnessed a sale, or an attempted sale of Western models - economic and cultural - to the rest of the world.
From cars to Hollywood movies to high-rises, it was all about Westernization in the guise of globalization.
But it was often willingly embraced and not imposed. Even during the Opium Wars in the 19th century, China only opened a few treaty ports in coastal areas, but later China flung open its doors to the West in the 1980s, while largely closing the door to its own past.
While opium was forced on China, we alone have pulled down our own ancient houses to make way for Western-style modernization.
Have the Confucian values of frugality and traditional Chinese architecture found their way into modern-day China or the West? Hardly.
In crucial ways, globalization has been borrowed as a convenient excuse for one-way export of culture and commodity.
In contrast, author De Blij treats each place and people with due respect. It's a wake-up call against the risks inherent in the single-minded pursuit of a flat world - risks arising from the misbelief that technology prevails over terrain.
In De Blij's view, technology may virtually connect millions, but place defines billions. "Earth may be a planet of shrinking functional distances, but it remains a world of staggering situational differences. From the uneven distribution of natural resources to the unequal availability of opportunity, place remains a powerful arbiter."
If the world's politicians believed in the power of place, instead of a flat world, global harmony would ensue.
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