Globalization and Cultural Conflict: An Institutional Approach (original) (raw)

2000, Conflicts and Tensions Conflicts and tensions

Introduction What is the impact of globalization on social cohesion and political integration? Does globalization nourish social and political integration and tear down cultural barriers that divide people? Does it signal a 'vital step toward both a more stable world and better lives for the people in it' (Rothkop, 1997)? Or does it hasten social disintegration and exacerbate social conflict? Is there really a link between globalization and cultural conflict or harmony? If so, what is it? Migratory flows, the tidal wave of global information, and the imperatives of economic liberalization and fiscal reform-the markers of globalization-have reshuffled social relations all over the world. As the flood of immigrants to the industrial West has given birth to a nascent multiculturalism in previously homogeneous societies, social pressures and plummeting income levels accompany it. In some European countries, a spike in hate crimes against foreigners seems to correspond to the influx of immigrants. And people have watched in horror, as a few Islamic radicals have committed brutal acts of violence, justified as revenge against cultural oppression. Although globalization has been called an integrating force, cultural conflict has became the most rampant form of international violence as globalization has accelerated. Of the 36 violent conflicts raging around the world in 2003, the Iraq invasion was the sole international war. The remaining 35 were internal wars within the territory of 28 countries, and all but four of these were communal conflicts, inspired by ethnic, sectarian, or religious grievances (Marshall, 2005). Nonetheless, the number of those conflicts has begun to decline, and many have ended. Indeed, in vast areas of the world, conflicts are resolved peacefully, and different cultures live together or side by side without hostility or prolonged violent conflict. But as some conflicts ended, new conflicts ignited. Despite the end of the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, continued violence plagues Kosovo and Bosnia. Even in the presence of foreign peacekeeping troops, violence in Kosovo took between 4,000 and 12,000 lives between 1998 and 2004. And between 1999 and 2004, Chechnya erupted in a war of secession, causing the deaths of close to 30,000 civilians. Attacks on dark-skinned people, often identified as Chechens or Dagestanis were reported in Moscow and other major Russian cities beginning in 1994, and escalated as the conflict continued (Human Rights Watch). Between 1989 and 2003, more than 65,000 people, mostly Muslim civilians were killed in Kashmir and the conflict there continues to take over 2,000 lives per year. These examples suggest significant differences in the kinds and levels of cultural violence and the conditions under which it breaks out. In this essay, I present a conceptual framework for understanding these differences. It relies on the role of economic forces triggered by globalization that drive both 'cultural conflict' and cultural integration. It looks to the role and strength of political institutions as the key to conflict provocation, exacerbation, and mitigation. It focuses on those institutions that channel economic forces to create cultural winners and losers in the globalization process, and those that channel political participation and treat group 'rights' in ways that mitigate or intensify the violence that members of one culture perpetrate against those who belong to another.