Unit 5: Global Issues | The Socjournal

In this unit, we jump right into an analysis of social movements by taking a whirlwind tour of some of the economic, political and social issues (and movements) relevant to developing nations, and asking you to research and discuss some social movements of your own choosing.

The movements we look at are interesting and you will notice once you’ve read this week’s assigned reading that, compared to Western social movements, the issues and concerns facing those in developing nations are rather more basic and fundamental. As Vandana Shiva points out throughout the book, one of the biggest problems and threats facing developing nations is Western corporate attempts to destroy traditional methods of farming and production, and replace them with technology-intensive methods controlled by, and profitable for, large multinational corporations. You see it over and over again throughout the book, as governments and corporations collude to remove people’s food independence and expertise, and replace their traditional diets with processed and unhealthy alternatives that allow for mega-profits to pour into the hands of corporations, and out of the pockets of those who are often the poorest people in the world.

Fortunately, there is not a lot that needs to be said about this week’s reading. The material is straightforward and well documented. Still, in the context of this course on social movements, a couple things can be highlighted.

First, it is important to notice the power that corporations have to modify and alter social and political realities to suit their own desire for expanded profitability. The bottom line is, corporations have much more power than you or I to organize reality in their favour. This truth is contrary to what we have been taught. We are brought up in a system that emphasizes individuality and personal power. We are taught that we all have an equal opportunity and that we all move on a playing field that, for all the faults and failures of society, we strive to make level. But in this week’s reading, we can see that that is clearly not the case. In all of the cases cited by Shiva, major global corporations, when they flex their economic and political muscle, are singularly effective in modifying laws, conventions, expectations (i.e., ideas) and even government rubrics¹ in their own financial interests, and they often do this in spite of organized resistance from the local people whose resources and labour they exploit.

This question of the distribution of political and economic power is an important one when considering the sociology of social movements. We have seen that access to the media and the means for distributing ideas is critical in the early stages of social movement formation. You have to be to able to define what is right and wrong if you are going to organize (much less mobilize) a social movement, and those with access to the media have a leg up when it comes to this process. However, in this unit, we see farther and get a glimpse of power beyond the ability to define ideas. This “power beyond” is manifest in the actual activities of corporations, who lobby governments, modify laws and engage in punitive litigation (i.e., law suits) to keep critics and protesters silent. That is, we don’t just think about what is right and wrong, or about the way we want things to be, we must also act on these ideas. This is so on both sides of the political fence. Corporations act to secure their own interests, however they may be defined, and as we see in Shiva’s book, individuals act to resist and protect their own interests. In the area of social movements and social change, action must follow ideology.

A second thing to note about this week’s reading is how it challenges our notions of what is real and true about this world. While most of us have been trained to think that corporations are benign entities, with dancing clowns in yellow suits or funny animal mascots offering services and even “progress” to the people, this week’s reading provides a very different view. Corporations may be good at public relations, and may have the money to spin things in their own way, but they serve the interest of profit, and this fact means that people’s livelihoods sometimes (often?) take a back seat. This reality is made quite clear in the multiple cases of corporate interference in Indian agriculture and economics that Vandana Shiva lays before us. In India (and elsewhere) corporations go so far as to monopolize access to resources, destroy water supplies and patent natural resources, thereby ensuring corporate control over the agriculture and “life world” of the people.

Nowhere is this incursion of corporate interests into the life world of a people made more obvious than in the case of Coca-Cola. Coke’s activities in India, including misuse of local water resources, have allegedly jeopardized local subsistence agriculture, and have drawn intense local and international criticism. A website has been set up by the India Resource Centre to disseminate information, and you can browse that website to bring yourself up to speed (see the DRR for this unit). And abuse of water resources is not the worst of it. Recently, a Coca-Cola bottling company has been in the alternative news for allegedly being linked to violent and anti-union activities in Coca-Cola bottling plants in Columbia, where union leaders and organizers have been literally murdered for trying to organize factories and bring worker’s rights to the foreground (see the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke in the DRR for this unit).

I suppose at this point a question must be raised. If these allegations are true, if Coke cares more about the water it uses to bottle its soft drink, or the profits it makes by exploiting non-unionized employees in Columbia, than about people’s lives and livelihoods, where is the Western media attention? Surely materials like this deserve as much air play as Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the war in Iraq or the adoption practices of some glossy Hollywood couple? The answer is mostly obvious: corporate media play their own interests out, shaping Western opinion by providing biased and preformed opinions in the interests of the social class that owns them.

Of course, and as you can see when you look at the websites for this week’s unit, the mainstream media is not the only way to get information—there are alternative media outlets. Traditionally, magazines like Mother Jones have provided a forum for those critical of the dominant corporate discourse, but such channels are supplemented by a wealth of resources on the Internet, where people interested in various issues can engage in their own definitional process. In this unit and the next, we are going to take a closer look at the Internet and its potential as a locus for social movement activity.

Before we get into that, however, I want to point out once again that corporate power extends beyond the ability to use the media to define things. Put another way, when faced with the threat of alternative media, the Internet and the WWW, corporations just don’t lie down and play dead; instead, they fight back, and they often do this by attempting to force silence on those who would otherwise take issue with corporate actions, or try to define what is right and wrong. The reality is, when dealing with major international corporations, the boundaries of public discourse are carefully controlled (i.e., corporations attempt to control what it is we talk about). Corporations will sue to prevent people from saying bad things about them, even when those bad things are true. For example, consider that Coke threatened a two-million-rupee law suit just because cause they didn’t like a photograph (Dabitch, 2005).Or consider McDonalds’ attempt to slap defamation lawsuits against private citizens who criticized them (McSpotlight, n.d.).²

Obviously, actions like these provide a chilling effect on public discourse, and raise questions about whether free speech and democracy can function under the threat of civil law suit. When a major corporation with deep financial pockets targets regular citizens who are speaking out, democracy takes a hit.

Still, as this week’s reading and short list of additional websites attest, people do struggle, organize their social movements and win, even in the face of social, economic and political disadvantage. As you will see in the next unit, the Internet has proven to be a valuable resource for movement organizers wishing to distribute information, organize in the interests of their constituents—and win! Consider, for example, the rather stunning victory of movement organizers in Plachimada, India, who were not only successful in shutting down a Coca-Cola plant, but successfully sued the Coca-Cola company for $48 million dollars in damages to the local water supply (see India Resource Centre, March 22, 2010; July 2, 2010)! The battle is not over for them, of course, since they still have to collect the cash, but it does show that when the information can be distributed, and right and wrong defined, either in a shoulder-to-shoulder fashion, or through some form of media distribution, social movements can be successful.

In any case, as I have said, the reading for this unit is relatively straightforward, and short. Thus, in addition to this week’s reading you are required to investigate several alternative social movement sites on the Internet. Browse through the sites listed in the “Reading and Browsing Assignment” below, and find two social movements that you find intriguing. They can revolve around related issues, or can present issues that are unrelated. Once you have chosen your two movements, spend a few hours investigating them, going over the websites, and familiarizing yourself with some of the issues involved. When you get to this week’s assignment (Study Question 7), you will be asked to write short essays about the movements you have chosen. You will also use what you learn in this week’s assignment to write your final paper, so be attentive and thorough! Finally, as you read through the readings and do the online research, keep in mind the things you’ve learned about the importance ideas, the meaning of indoctrination and socialization, and the impact of the ideology of competition on our ability to cooperate in the common interest.

Objectives

On completing this unit, you should be able to

1. describe the strategies used by global corporations to hijack the world’s food supply.
2. describe the costs of these strategies to peasants, farmers and consumers, in terms of lost livelihoods, exposure to unhealthy and overprocessed foods, etc.
3. discuss the environmental costs of corporate interference and corporate profiteering.
4. explain the difference between a monoculture and traditional food cultivation.
5. define, in your own words, and use in context, each of the key terms and concepts introduced in this unit.

Key Terms and Concepts

• biopiracy
• blue revolution
• Convention on Biological Diversity
• ecological capital
• export agriculture
• FAIDA Report
• food security (myth of)
• Green Peace
• green revolution
• monoculture
• “Roundup Ready” soybeans
• seed exchange
• seed monopoly
• Union of Concerned Scientists
• white revolution
• World Bank
• World Trade Organization

Reading and Browsing Assignment

Note: You may wish to read through the “Study Questions” provided at the end of this unit, and keep them in mind, along with the unit objectives, as you complete this reading assignment.

Read the textbook identified below; it is included in your course package.

Shiva, V. (2000). Stolen harvest: The hijacking of the global food supply. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Select two websites related to social activism, and explore them in preparation for answering Study Question 7. You may start by exploring the first site listed, or select two from the other items given below. Note that links to these sites are given in the Digital Reading Room for this unit. All sites were retrieved January 18, 2011.

• SocioSite. (2008). Activism, collective action, social movements, utopianism. http://www.sociosite.net/topics/activism.php
• United for a Fair Economy. (2009). Home page. http://www.faireconomy.org/
• Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. (n.d.). Unthinkable! Undrinkable! www.killercoke.org: Murder . . . it’s the real thing. http://killercoke.org/
• Lamb, A. & Johnson, L. (2002). 4 2 eXplore. The topic: Labor movement. http://www.42explore2.com/labor.htm
• Little Warriors. (2011). Home page. http://www.littlewarriors.ca/

You will recall that, in Social Movements, Suzanne Staggenborg discussed aboriginal protest, the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the environmental movement, and the global justice movement. If any of these issues is of special interest to you, please explore the web and find sites that deal with them. Some sample sites are given below; all were retrieved January 18, 2011.

• Survival International. (2011). Survival: The movement for tribal peoples. http://www.survivalinternational.org/
• Friends of Peoples Close to Nature. (n.d.). fPcN interCultural Home page. http://www.fpcn-global.org/
• Cultural Politics. (2011). Social movements and culture: Women’s movements and feminist sites. http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/women
• Cultural Politics. (2011). Social movements and culture: Gay/lesbian/bi/trans/queer movements. http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/gay
• Cultural Politics. (2011). Social movements and culture: Environmental movements. http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/environment
• Cultural Politics. (2011). Social movements and culture: Global justice. http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/global

Study Questions

Answer each of the questions below, and submit your answers to your tutor for marking. Expected word counts are provided in brackets after each question. Two hundred words equals a paragraph or two, 400 words is a page, 800 words is two pages, and so on. Use these word estimates as guides only. The goal is to right a lucid, grounded and comprehensive answer for each question.

1. What is the “green revolution”? What is the “blue revolution”? (100)
2. Who patents seeds, and why? Who benefits from the patenting of foodstuffs? (200)
3. What is “forced trade”? Give specific examples of how trade is manipulated in favour of global multinationals. (200)
4. What is “biopiracy”? Give some specific examples. Who benefits from biopiracy? (400)
5. What is “biosafety”? (200)
6. What are “structural adjustment policies”? What are they intended to accomplish? What is “trade liberalization”? How are structural adjustment and trade liberalization related? (600-800)
7. Undertake web research on grass-roots social movements, and give two examples. Describe the issue or issues they are concerned with, the geographical span of their activities (e.g., local or global), and the strategies they use. Do you find much mention of these social movements, or the issues they are concerned with, in the mainstream media? Why or why not? (800). Post your discussion on the unit forum, and respond to the discussion presented by another student.