Xavier Rambla Sociologia

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febr. 09 2015

Students’ open debates on globalisation

Posted in Canvi social i globalització |

Who decides on taxes? While empirical evidence shows that governments mostly do so, recent proposals are opening the debate on global taxes. Should a global tax on wealth be implemented? Thomas Piketty has made this suggestion, which at least could be implemented at the scale of the European Union. However, a wider debate on legitimacy starts immediately. Do taxpayers have to fund authorities who are not directly accountable by means of ellections?

The bulk of debates on the global civil society are normative. What should NGOs and social movements do? To what extent should governments and international organisations be receptive to their vindications? However, a couple of crucial research findings should be introduced in the debate. On the one hand, the global civil society is not only dealing with the agenda of international organisations but also with an array of transnational economic activities. This point is clearly supported by the evidence on the growing interest of NGOs and social movements on the implications of the standards whereby global value chains are managed for an array of environmental externalities and social issues such as decent labour and child development.

 The cultural and ideological consequences of colonialism cannot be overlooked to understand the current world. Not only socio-economic development but also war and debates on intersectional inequalities (e.g. those on gender) are involved in this debate. How to enable communication in multilingual settings is at stake too. Although “global English” may seem a pragmatic solution, it is far from obvious in normative terms.
Rescaling is also relevant for the debate on growth and de-growth. Globalisation studies have convincingly provided evidence of emerging complex interaction between social agents operating at the local, national and supra-national geographical scales. Globalisation is not a zero-sum game where global transformation automatically neutralise the political capabilities of states and local communities. Then, if we are to save energy and build new social relations beyond productivism, we must create a new type of local economies. Most agricultural and industrial goods must produced as close as possible, but some activities such as financing and financial regulation or fighting climate change must be conducted globally. As a consequence, promising solutions cannot only prioritise local face-to-face relations regarding global anonymous institutions but have to build a new pattern of geographical re-scaling.

This entry was posted on Dilluns, 9 febrer, 2015 at 9:01 and is filed under Canvi social i globalització. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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