The term “Globalization” has been widely used in the last fifteen years.

It is a controversial
term and has been defined in several different ways. Globalization indicates that the world
today is more interconnected than before. Globalization in its basic economic sense refers to
the adoption of open and unfettered trading markets (through lowering of trade barriers,
removal of capital controls, and liberalization of foreign exchange restrictions). Large volumes
of money movement, increased volumes of trade, changes in information technology and
communication are all integral to a global world. There is also a significant movement of
people from one country to another for trade and work. Such increases in the movement of
goods, labor, and services have weakened national barriers and restrictions that are imposed by
a nation state. Some identify a new emergence of a “global village.” In the past two decades,
economic globalization has been the driving force behind the overall process of globalization.

Here is what Amartya Sen a Nobel Laureate and Economist has to say:

“Global interaction, rather than insulated isolation, has been the basis of economic progress in
the world. Trade, along with migration, communication, and dissemination of scientific and
technical knowledge, has helped to break the dominance of rampant poverty and the
pervasiveness of ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives that characterized the world. And yet, despite
all the progress, life is still severely nasty, brutish and short for a large part of the world
population. The great rewards of globalized trade have come to some, but not to others.”

Globalization and Its Impact on People: Families and Mental Health:

For the purpose of this presentation, I will discuss globalization and its impact on people at
social, cultural, and psychological levels. As a social scientist, I am interested in how societies
and people change because of this economic phenomena and how the process of change can
impact families, individuals and communities. Globalization is associated with rapid and
significant human changes. The movements of people from rural to urban areas has
accelerated, and the growth of cities in the developing world especially is linked to substandard
living for many. Family disruption and social and domestic violence are increasing. For example,
2004 New Delhi police reports indicate that deaths in the city of about six women everyday are
dowry-related suicides.

Concepts of national identity, and of family, job and tradition are changing rapidly and
significantly. There is concern that competitiveness introduced by globalization is leading to
more individualistic societies. On the other hand, rapid change can encourage fundamentalism,
a desire for the past, and a loss of tolerance for differences in religion and culture. The nation
state is losing influence relative to global economic pressures, and in some countries there is a
failure or hesitation to develop social policies. All of these changes increase the likelihood that
vulnerable people will be exploited, and threats to the human rights of less able people will
increase.

It is believed by economists that the crash of the stock market in Asia in 1994 was an example
of the rapid spread of adverse human consequences because of the interdependence of
economies and people. Millions of people lost prosperity and livelihoods, and education and
health services were among those cut across the region. The effects, including social unrest and
poverty, are still evident. Domestic violence and suicide increased in this period in several of
the countries in the region. It is believed that the illicit drug trade has grown in recent years to
form a significant proportion of the total business volume in the world.

Let me revisit the business perspective of globalization: In a capitalistic market, multinational

companies are taking the lead in establishing themselves and creating a major presence in
almost every part of the world. Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Nike are examples of such growth
and proliferation. The media then plays a major role in advertising the benefits of new
products and services as being BETTER AND SUPERIOR to what the local market has. And slowly
but steadily the food that we eat, the clothes we wear and the life style we lead begins to
change. This process becomes consumerism within a capitalistic culture.

So people as consumers are being studied for their patterns and behaviors of spending. At
one level it may appear that globalization has no significant impact on families and that our
lives are ‘normal’ in most circumstances. Many people are not totally aware of how they form a
crucial part of this phenomenon. The reality is that every single individual is affected in one way
or another. These changes affect people’s identities and cultural values, which sometimes
become altered significantly. Whether it is between generations, or intra-personally, new
values can cause dissonance and conflict with existing deeper-rooted values. Sometimes such
transitions and changes can further cause difficulty with internal growth and development.

Psychological Impact of Globalization:

The most significant psychological consequence of globalization is that it transforms one’s

identity: in terms of how people think about themselves in relation to the social environment.
According to Jeffrey Arnett (2002), there are four major issues related to identity, which
develop due to globalization:-.
The first is the development of a bicultural identity or perhaps a hybrid identity, which means
that part of one’s identity is rooted in the local culture while another part stems from an
awareness of one’s relation to the global world. The development of global identities is no
longer just a part of immigrants and ethic minorities. People today especially the young
develop an identity that gives them a sense of belonging to a worldwide culture, which includes
an awareness of events, practices, styles and information that are a part of the global
culture. Media such as television and especially the Internet, which allows for instant
communication with any place in the world, play an important part in developing a global
identity. Yet, along with this new global identity people continue to retain and develop their
local identity for daily interactions with their family, friends and community.

A good example of bicultural identity is among the educated youth in India who despite being
integrated into the global fast paced technological world, may continue to have deep rooted
traditional Indian values with respect to their personal lives and choices such as preference for
an arranged marriage, caring for parents in their old age. Although developing a bicultural
identity means that a local identity is retained alongside a global identity, there is no doubt that
local cultures are being modified by globalization. As traditional cultural practices and beliefs
change, a bicultural or a hybrid multicultural identity likely develops to include the elements of
the native, local and global culture. This is especially true with immigrants.

The second issue is identity confusion, which individuals from non-western cultures experience
as a response to globalization. While people may adapt to changes and develop bicultural or
hybrid, multicultural identities, some may find it difficult to adapt to rapid changes. The ways
of the global culture may seem out of reach, too foreign, or even undermining their own
cultural values and beliefs. Instead of becoming bicultural, they may feel isolated and excluded
from both their local culture and the global culture, truly belonging to neither. The terms
delocalization and dis-placement have been used to describe these processes. For some young
people, however, delocalization may result in an acute sense of alienation and impermanence
as they grow up with a lack of cultural certainty, a lack of clear guidelines for how life is to be
lived and how to interpret their experience. Identity confusion among young people may be
reflected in problems such as depression, suicide, and substance use. A variety of cultures have
experienced a sharp increase in suicide and substance use among their young people since their
rapid move toward joining the global culture.

The third change brought about by globalization is the growth of the self-selected culture,
which means people choose to form groups with like-minded persons who wish to have an
identity that is untainted by the global culture and its values. The values of the global culture,
which are based on individualism, free market economics, and democracy and include freedom,
of choice, individual rights, openness to change, and tolerance of differences are part of
“western values.” For most people worldwide, what the global culture has to offer is
appealing. One of the most vehement criticisms of globalization is that it threatens to create
one homogeneous worldwide culture in which all children grow up wanting to be like the latest
pop music star, eat Big Macs, vacation at Disney World, and wear blue jeans, and Nikes. This
outcome is unlikely since most people will develop a bicultural identity that includes a local
identity along with their global identity. Besides, while most young people may jump with
accept globalization and its changes, there will e other who will remain out of it by joining a
self-selected culture of fellow dissenters. Such groups can have a religious basis, which can
result in fundamentalism or espouse clear non-religious anti-global views

The fourth consequence of globalization is the spread of emerging adulthood. The

timing of transitions to adult roles such as work, marriage and parenthood are occurring at later
stages in most parts of the world as the need for preparing for jobs in an economy that is highly
technological and information based is slowly extending from the late teens to the mid-
twenties. Additionally, as the traditional hierarchies of authority weaken and break down
under the pressure of globalization, the youth are forced to develop control over their own lives
including marriage and parenthood. The spread of emerging adulthood is related to issues of
identity. Where a period of emerging adulthood is present, young people have a longer period
for identity explorations in love and work before they commit themselves to long-term choices.
By experiencing different love relationships, different educational possibilities, and different
jobs, they learn more about themselves and they clarify their preferences and abilities.
Emerging adulthood is possible only in societies where economic development is high enough
that the labor of young people is not urgently needed.

They are allowed to spend their late teens and early to mid-twenties exploring possibilities for
self development because there is no pressing need for them to contribute to the economic
well-being of their families (Arnett, 2000). For young people in developing countries, emerging
adulthood exists only for the wealthier segment of society, mainly in urban areas, whereas the
rural poor have no emerging adulthood and may even have no adolescence because they begin
adult-like work at an early age and begin relatively early. Young people who are poor and/or
live in rural areas are more likely to suffer from what Amartya Sen (1999) has called the
“unfreedoms” of poverty, lack of education, and restricted, economic opportunities. Social
scientists (Saraswathi and Larson, 2002) observe, that the lives of middleclass youth in India,
South East Asia, and Europe have more in common with each other than they do with those of
poor youth in their own countries.
 globalization appears to be a significant force in the psychological development of the people
of the 21st century. Globalization has been going on in some form or another for centuries:
Cultures have long influenced each other through trade, migration, and war. As a consequence
of globalization, the challenges of creating a viable identity are perhaps greater than they have
been in the past. According to Giddens (2000), “when globalization alters and erodes traditional
ways, identity “has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before” (p. 65).
Identity is less influenced by prescribed social roles and based more on individual choices, on
decisions that each person makes about what values to embrace and what paths to pursue in
love and work. Some people react to this responsibility with identity confusion or seek refuge in
a selfselected culture that offers more structure and takes over some decisions. Social and
Cultural Impacts of Globalization: The Impact on FamiliesUp to now, my discussions on the
psychological impact of globalization have described changes and influences only at an
individual level. The study of families and changes they experience as a system although rich
and complex can be very time consuming and expensive and perhaps best obtained one family
at a time through clinical counters.

However, the study of social changes is extensive and often support the impact of changes in
families. Allow me to present a general view of how globalization has impacted families and
family life for Indians. As a native of India, who moved to study in United States in the early
1990’s, I have been interested how changes impact the two bicultural worlds that I am a part
of, as well as understand the experiences of Indians in India as globalization occurs. Today, as I
work and live in the United States, India seems to be one of the two “talked about” countries,
the other of course being India’s neighbor, China. Let me briefly say a few salient points about
India. India:

India is a culturally diverse country. Sixteen per cent of the world’s population lives in the
country. There are over 826 languages and thousands of dialects spoken. The difference in
regions, topography and climate allow for different types of lifestyles and culture. Although
about 70 per cent of the populations live in rural areas, India is rapidly urbanizing with more
than 225 cities with over 100,000 population, and at least ten cities alone with over a million
people.

By United Nations standards, Indian has begun to age. Over 7.7% of the population is above 60
years and this number is expected to reach 12.6% by the year 2025. . Improved sanitation,
increased attention to maternal health and better childcare facilities greatly reduced infant
mortality rates. Globalization is hardly a new force affecting India. To think so is to ignore a
diverse and pluralistic long-standing civilization that was shaped by a long list of "invading"
(globalizing) cultures that became what we now know as India. The previous globalizers of India
include the Aryans, Greeks, Turks, Afghans, Muslims and most recently, the Europeans,
Portuguese, French, Dutch and finally the English.
 The former globalizers that came with invading armies have increasingly been replaced by less
violent but equally powerful globalizers. Television is arguably the most dominant gateway
of globalization affecting India today. While TV was launched in India in the late 1950s it only
became widespread in the 1980s, after the governments ended their monopoly as the only
broadcaster. Satellite TV arrived in 1991, bringing with it far reaching consumerism. In terms of
people, India faces some resource and infrastructure constraints. Increased longevity has led to
the emergence of many health and social issues. Fragmentation of the traditional family
network is leading to an erosion of the available support within the immediate and extended
family.

Migration of younger generations from rural to urban areas and from one urban center to
another as well as transnational migration has resulted results in the elderly being left to fend
for themselves at a time when family support becomes more crucial. With more women joining
the workforce system, the care of aged within families has declined. For those who live within
extended families the elderly have to live in harmony with the younger generation that has to
face a highly competitive world of globalization. While the nuclear family system is increasingly
becoming the norm, modern life-styles, changing professional and personal expectations are
impacting relationships of marriage and commitment. In cities young people are starting to
choose their own partners. Arranged marriages, however, continue. Meanwhile, as divorce
rates increase especially in cities, the concept of single parenthood has not caught on in the
Indian culture. According to the India’s Ministry of Health reports (1997), teenage pregnancies
are reaching an all-time high. In the southern state of Kerala, teenage abortions rose by 20 per
cent in a year, while the western state of Maharashtra, one-fifth of all abortion were with girls
less than 15.

Consumerism has permeated and changed the fabric of contemporary Indian [Link]
fashions are coming to India: the traditional Indian dress is increasingly being displaced by
western dresses especially in urban areas. Indian MTV, soap television, and films set a stage for
patterns of behavior, dress codes and jargon. Despite prohibition of child labor by the Indian
constitution, over 60 to a 115 million children in India work. While most rural child workers are
agricultural laborers, urban children work in manufacturing, processing, servicing and
repairs. Globalization most directly exploits an estimated 300,000 Indian children who work in
India's hand-knotted carpet industry, which exports over $300 million worth of goods a year.
Uncounted other children work in less formal sectors, such as the incense industry, used both
domestically and exported. Reports indicate that urban Indian children and youth face
significant competition and pressure to succeed
The growth of the computer and technology sector has provided middle class educated women
with better wages, flex-timings, and the capacity to negotiate their role and status within the
household and society. On the other hand, women continue to work in poorly paid, mentally
and physically unhealthy, and insecure situations.

For most women, their domestic responsibilities are not alleviated. Wage gaps have not
showed any significant changes in most employment sectors other than information
technology. Additionally, prostitution, abuse and dowry related suicides are on the increase
despite globalization and some say that the materialistic greed is one of the main causes.

Conclusion

At last we can conclude that Globalization and marginalization go hand in hand in India. With
millions of poor farmers, rural laborers, urban unemployed, slum-dwellers, 3 million refugees,
100 million street children, and the millions displaced by ‘the development’ projects, poverty in
this era of globalization has assumed new dimensions. The question of “are the poor getting
poorer?” related to inequality both nationally and internationally. It is apparent that in order to
ensure that the potential gains from globalization are shared among all groups (rich and poor
countries and between groups within a country) major reforms may be needed. As Amartya Sen
states, “Even if the poor were to get just a little richer, this would not necessarily imply that the
poor were getting a fair share of the potentially vast benefits of global economic
interrelations.”

AMARTYA SEN'S OPINION ON GLOBALIZATION

GLOBALIZATION IS OFTEN SEEN AS GLOBAL WESTernization. On this point, there is substantial

agreement among many proponents and opponents. Those who take an upbeat view
of globalization see it as a marvelous contribution of Western civilization to the world. There is
a nicely stylized history in which the great developments happened in Europe: First came the
Renaissance, then the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and these led to a massive
increase in living standards in the West. And now the great achievements of the West are
spreading to the world. In this view, globalization is not only good, it is also a gift from the West
to the world. The champions of this reading of history tend to feel upset not just because this
great benefaction is seen as a curse but also because it is undervalued and castigated by an
ungrateful world.

From the opposite perspective, Western dominance--sometimes seen as a continuation of

Western imperialism--is the devil of the piece. In this view, contemporary capitalism, driven and
led by greedy and grabby Western countries in Europe and North America, has established
rules of trade and business relations that do not serve the interests of the poorer people in the
world. The celebration of various non-Western identities--defined by religion (as in Islamic
fundamentalism), region (as in the championing of Asian values), or culture (as in the
glorification of Confucian ethics)--can add fuel to the fire of confrontation with the West.

Is globalization really a new Western curse? It is, in fact, neither new nor necessarily Western;
and it is not a curse. Over thousands of years, globalization has contributed to the progress of
the world through travel, trade, migration, spread of cultural influences, and dissemination of
knowledge and understanding (including that of science and technology). These global
interrelations have often been very productive in the advancement of different countries. They
have not necessarily taken the form of increased Western influence. Indeed, the active agents
of globalization have often been located far from the West.

To illustrate, consider the world at. the beginning of the last millennium rather than at its end.
Around 1000 A.D., global reach of science, technology, and mathematics was changing the
nature of the old world, but the dissemination then was, to a great extent, in the opposite
direction of what we see today. The high technology in the world of 1000 A.D. included paper,
the printing press, the crossbow, gunpowder, the iron-chain suspension bridge, the kite, the
magnetic compass, the wheelbarrow, and the rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items were
used extensively in China--and were practically unknown elsewhere. Globalization spread them
across the world, including Europe.

A similar movement occurred in the Eastern influence on Western mathematics. The decimal
system emerged and became well developed in India between the second and sixth centuries;
it was used by Arab mathematicians soon thereafter. These mathematical innovations reached
Europe mainly in the last quarter of the tenth century and began having an impact in the early
years of the last millennium, playing an important part in the scientific revolution that helped to
transform Europe. The agents of globalization are neither European nor exclusively Western,
nor are they necessarily linked to Western dominance. Indeed, Europe would have been a lot
poorer--economically, culturally, and scientifically--had it resisted the globalization of
mathematics, science, and technology at that time. And today, the same principle applies,
though in the reverse direction (from West to East). To reject the globalization of science and
technology because it represents Western influence and imperialism would not only amount to
overlooking global contributions--drawn from many different parts of the world--that lie solidly
behind so-called Western science and technology, but would also be quite a daft practical
decision, given the extent to which the whole world can benefit from the process.

A GLOBAL HERITAGE

In resisting the diagnosis of globalization as a phenomenon of quintessentially Western origin,

we have to be suspicious not only of the anti-Western rhetoric but also of the pro-Western
chauvinism in many contemporary writings. Certainly, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and
the Industrial Revolution were great achievements--and they occurred mainly in Europe and,
later, in America. Yet many of these developments drew on the experience of the rest of the
world, rather than being confined within the boundaries of a discrete Western civilization.
Our global civilization is a world heritage--not just a collection of disparate local cultures. When
a modern mathematician in Boston invokes an algorithm to solve a difficult computational
problem, she may not be aware that she is helping to commemorate the Arab mathematician
Mohammad Ibn Musa-al-Khwarizmi, who flourished in the first half of the ninth century. (The
word algorithm is derived from the name al-Khwarizmi.) There is a chain of intellectual relations
that link Western mathematics and science to a collection of distinctly non-Western
practitioners, of whom al-Khwarizmi was one. (The term algebra is derived from the title of his
famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah.) Indeed, al-Khwarizmi is one of many non-Western
contributors whose works influenced the European Renaissance and, later, the Enlightenment
and the Industrial Revolution. The West must get full credit for the remarkable achievements
that occurred in Europe and Europeanized America, but the idea of an immaculate Western
conception is an imaginative fantasy.

Not only is the progress of global science and technology not an exclusively West-led
phenomenon, but there were major global developments in which the West was not even
involved. The printing of the world's first book was a marvelously globalized event. The
technology of printing was, of course, entirely an achievement of the Chinese. But the content
came from elsewhere. The first printed book was an Indian Sanskrit treatise, translated into
Chinese by a half-Turk. The book, Vajracchedika Prajnaparamitasutra (sometimes referred to as
"The Diamond Sutra"), is an old treatise on Buddhism; it was translated into Chinese from
Sanskrit in the fifth century by Kumarajiva, a half-Indian and half-Turkish scholar who lived in a
part of eastern Turkistan called Kucha but later migrated to China. It was printed four centuries
later, in 868 A.D. All this involving China, Turkey, and India is globalization, all right, but the
West is not even in sight.

GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCES AND MOVEMENTS

The misdiagnosis that globalization of ideas and practices has to be resisted because it entails
dreaded Westernization has played quite a regressive part in the colonial and postcolonial
world. This assumption incites parochial tendencies and undermines the possibility of
objectivity in science and knowledge. It is not only counterproductive in itself; given the global
interactions throughout history, it can also cause non-Western societies to shoot themselves in
the foot--even in their precious cultural foot.

Consider the resistance in India to the use of Western ideas and concepts in science and
mathematics. In the nineteenth century, this debate fitted into a broader controversy about
Western education versus indigenous Indian education. The "Westernizers," such as the
redoubtable Thomas Babington Macaulay, saw no merit whatsoever in Indian tradition. "I have
never found one among them [advocates of Indian tradition] who could deny that a single shelf
of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," he
declared. Partly in retaliation, the advocates of native education resisted Western imports
altogether. Both sides, however, accepted too readily the foundational dichotomy between two
disparate civilizations.
European mathematics, with its use of such concepts as sine, was viewed as a purely "Western"
import into India. In fact, the fifth-century Indian mathematician Aryabhata had discussed the
concept of sine in his classic work on astronomy and mathematics in 499 A.D., calling it by its
Sanskrit name, jya-ardha (literally, "half-chord"). This word, first shortened to jya in Sanskrit,
eventually became the Arabic jiba and, later, jaib, which means "a cove or a bay." In his history
of mathematics, Howard Eves explains that around 1150 A.D., Gherardo of Cremona, in his
translations from the Arabic, rendered jaib as the Latin sinus, the corresponding word for a
cove or a bay. And this is the source of the modern word sine. The concept had traveled full
circle--from India, and then back.

To see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas and beliefs (as the rhetoric often
suggests) would be a serious and costly error, in the same way that any European resistance to
Eastern influence would have been at the beginning of the last millennium. Of course, there are
issues related to globalization that do connect with imperialism (the history of conquests,
colonialism, and alien rule remains relevant today in many ways), and a postcolonial
understanding of the world has its merits. But it would be a great mistake to
see globalization primarily as a feature of imperialism. It is much bigger--much greater--than
that.

THE ISSUE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC GAINS and losses from globalization remains
an entirely separate question, and it must be addressed as a further--and extremely relevant--
issue. There is extensive evidence that the global economy has brought prosperity to many
different areas of the globe. Pervasive poverty dominated the world a few centuries ago; there
were only a few rare pockets of affluence. In overcoming that penury, extensive economic
interrelations and modern technology have been and remain influential. What has happened in
Europe, America, Japan, and East Asia has important messages for all other regions, and we
cannot go very far into understanding the nature of globalization today without first
acknowledging the positive fruits of global economic contacts.

Indeed, we cannot reverse the economic predicament of the poor across the world by
withholding from them the great advantages of contemporary technology, the well-established
efficiency of international trade and exchange, and the social as well as economic merits of
living in an open society. Rather, the main issue is how to make good use of the remarkable
benefits of economic intercourse and technological progress in a way that pays adequate
attention to the interests of the deprived and the underdog. That is, I would argue, the
constructive question that emerges from the so-called antiglobalization movements.

ARE THE POOR GETTING POORER?

The principal challenge relates to inequality--international as well as intranational. The

troubling inequalities include disparities in affluence and also gross asymmetries in political,
social, and economic opportunities and power.
A crucial question concerns the sharing of the potential gains from globalization--between rich
and poor countries and among different groups within a country. It is not sufficient to
understand that the poor of the world need globalization as much as the rich do; it is also
important to make sure that they actually get what they need. This may require extensive
institutional reform, even as globalization is defended.

There is also a need for more clarity in formulating the distributional questions. For example, it
is often argued that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. But this is by no means
uniformly so, even though there are cases in which this has happened. Much depends on the
region or the group chosen and what indicators of economic prosperity are used. But the
attempt to base the castigation of economic globalization on this rather thin ice produces a
peculiarly fragile critique.

On the other side, the apologists of globalization point to their belief that the poor who
participate in trade and exchange are mostly getting richer. Ergo--the argument runs--
globalization is not unfair to the poor: they too benefit. If the central relevance of this question
is accepted, then the whole debate turns on determining which side is correct in this empirical
dispute. But is this the right battleground in the first place? I would argue that it is not.

GLOBAL JUSTICE AND THE BARGAINING PROBLEM

Even if the poor were to get just a little richer, this would not necessarily imply that the poor
were getting a fair share of the potentially vast benefits of global economic interrelations. It is
not adequate to ask whether international inequality is getting marginally larger or smaller. In
order to rebel against the appalling poverty and the staggering inequalities that characterize
the contemporary world--or to protest against the unfair sharing of benefits of global
cooperation--it is not necessary to show that the massive inequality or distributional unfairness
is also getting marginally larger. This is a separate issue altogether.

When there are gains from cooperation, there can be many possible arrangements. As the
game theorist and mathematician John Nash discussed more than half a century ago (in "The
Bargaining Problem," published in Econometrica in 1950, which was cited, among other
writings, by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences when Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in
economics), the central issue in general is not whether a particular arrangement is better for
everyone than no cooperation at all would be, but whether that is a fair division of the benefits.
One cannot rebut the criticism that a distributional arrangement is unfair simply by noting that
all the parties are better off than they would be in the absence of cooperation; the real exercise
is the choice between these alternatives.

AN ANALOGY WITH THE FAMILY

By analogy, to argue that a particularly unequal and sexist family arrangement is unfair, one
does not have to show that women would have done comparatively better had there been no
families at all, but only that the sharing of the benefits is seriously unequal in that particular
arrangement. Before the issue of gender justice became an explicitly recognized concern (as it
has in recent decades), there were attempts to dismiss the issue of unfair arrangements within
the family by suggesting that women did not need to live in families if they found the
arrangements so unjust. It was also argued that since women as well as men benefit from living
in families, the existing arrangements could not be unfair. But even when it is accepted that
both men and women may typically gain from living in a family, the question of distributional
fairness remains. Many different family arrangements--when compared with the absence of
any family system--would satisfy the condition of being beneficial to both men and women. The
real issue concerns how fairly benefits associated with these respective arrangements are
distributed.

Likewise, one cannot rebut the charge that the global system is unfair by showing that even the
poor gain something from global contacts and are not necessarily made poorer. That answer
may or may not be wrong, but the question certainly is. The critical issue is not whether the
poor are getting marginally poorer or richer. Nor is it whether they are better off than they
would be had they excluded themselves from globalized interactions.

Again, the real issue is the distribution of globalization's benefits. Indeed, this is why many of
the antiglobalization protesters, who seek a better deal for the underdogs of the world
economy, are not--contrary to their own rhetoric and to the views attributed to them by
others--really "antiglobalization." It is also why there is no real contradiction in the fact that the
so-called antiglobalization protests have become among the most globalized events in the
contemporary world.

ALTERING GLOBAL ARRANGEMENTS

However, can those less-well-off groups get a better deal from globalized economic and social
relations without dispensing with the market economy itself? They certainly can. The use of the
market economy is consistent with many different ownership patterns, resource availabilities,
social opportunities, and rules of operation (such as patent laws and antitrust regulations). And
depending on these conditions, the market economy would generate different prices, terms of
trade, income distribution, and, more generally, diverse overall outcomes. The arrangements
for social security and other public interventions can make further modifications to the
outcomes of the market processes, and together they can yield varying levels of inequality and
poverty.

The central question is not whether to use the market economy. That shallow question is easy
to answer, because it is hard to achieve economic prosperity without making extensive use of
the opportunities of exchange and specialization that market relations offer. Even though the
operation of a given market economy can be significantly defective, there is no way of
dispensing with the institution of markets in general as a powerful engine of economic
progress.
But this recognition does not end the discussion about globalized market relations. The market
economy does not work by itself in global relations--indeed, it cannot operate alone even
within a given country. It is not only the case that a market-inclusive system can generate very
distinct results depending on various enabling conditions (such as how physical resources are
distributed, how human resources are developed, what rules of business relations prevail, what
social-security arrangements are in place, and so on). These enabling conditions themselves
depend critically on economic, social, and political institutions that operate nationally and
globally.

The crucial role of the markets does not make the other institutions insignificant, even in terms
of the results that the market economy can produce. As has been amply established in
empirical studies, market outcomes are massively influenced by public policies in education,
epidemiology, land reform, microcredit facilities, appropriate legal protections, et cetera; and in
each of these fields, there is work to be done through public action that can radically alter the
outcome of local and global economic relations.

INSTITUTIONS AND INEQUALITY

Globalization has much to offer; but even as we defend it, we must also, without any
contradiction, see the legitimacy of many questions that the antiglobalization protesters ask.
There may be a misdiagnosis about where the main problems lie (they do not lie
in globalization, as such), but the ethical and human concerns that yield these questions call for
serious reassessments of the adequacy of the national and global institutional arrangements
that characterize the contemporary world and shape globalized economic and social relations.

Global capitalism is much more concerned with expanding the domain of market relations than
with, say, establishing democracy, expanding elementary education, or enhancing the social
opportunities of society's underdogs. Since globalization of markets is, on its own, a very
inadequate approach to world prosperity, there is a need to go beyond the priorities that find
expression in the chosen focus of global capitalism. As George Soros has pointed out,
international business concerns often have a strong preference for working in orderly and
highly organized autocracies rather than in activist and less-regimented democracies, and this
can be a regressive influence on equitable development. Further, multinational firms can exert
their influence on the priorities of public expenditure in less secure third-world countries by
giving preference to the safety and convenience of the managerial classes and of privileged
workers over the removal of widespread illiteracy, medical deprivation, and other adversities of
the poor. These possibilities do not, of course, impose any insurmountable barrier to
development, but it is important to make sure that the surmountable barriers are actually
surmounted.

OMISSIONS AND COMMISSIONS

The injustices that characterize the world are closely related to various omissions that need to
be addressed, particularly in institutional arrangements. I have tried to identify some of the
main problems in my book Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). Global policies have a role
here in helping the development of national institutions (for example, through defending
democracy and supporting schooling and health facilities), but there is also a need to re-
examine the adequacy of global institutional arrangements themselves. The distribution of the
benefits in the global economy depends, among other things, on a variety of global institutional
arrangements, including those for fair trade, medical initiatives, educational exchanges,
facilities for technological dissemination, ecological and environmental restraints, and fair
treatment of accumulated debts that were often incurred by irresponsible military rulers of the
past.

In addition to the momentous omissions that need to be rectified, there are also serious
problems of commission that must be addressed for even elementary global ethics. These
include not only inefficient and inequitable trade restrictions that repress exports from poor
countries, but also patent laws that inhibit the use of lifesaving drugs--for diseases like AIDS--
and that give inadequate incentive for medical research aimed at developing nonrepeating
medicines (such as vaccines). These issues have been much discussed on their own, but we
must also note how they fit into a general pattern of unhelpful arrangements that undermine
what globalization could offer.

Another--somewhat less discussed--global "commission" that causes intense misery as well as

lasting deprivation relates to the involvement of the world powers in globalized arms trade.
This is a field in which a new global initiative is urgently going beyond the need--the very
important need--to curb terrorism, on which the focus is so heavily concentrated right now.
Local wars and military conflicts, which have very destructive consequences (not least on the
economic prospects of poor countries), draw not only on regional tensions but also on global
trade in arms and weapons. The world establishment is firmly entrenched in this business: the
Permanent Members of the Security Council of the United Nations were together responsible
for 81 percent of world arms exports from 1996 through 2000. Indeed, the world leaders who
express deep frustration at the "irresponsibility" of anti globalization protesters lead the
countries that make the most money in this terrible trade. The G-8 countries sold 87 percent of
the total supply of arms exported in the entire world. The U.S. share alone has just gone up to
almost 50 percent of the total sales in the world. Furthermore, as much as 68 percent of the
American arms exports went to developing countries.

The arms are used with bloody results--and with devastating effects on the economy, the
polity, and the society. In some ways, this is a continuation of the unhelpful role of world
powers in the genesis and flowering of political militarism in Africa from the 1960s to the 1980s,
when the Cold War was fought over Africa. During these decades, when military overlords--
Mobuto Sese Seko or Jonas Savimbi or whoever--busted social and political arrangements (and,
ultimately, economic order as well) in Africa, they could rely on support either from the United
States and its allies or from the Soviet Union, depending on their military alliances. The world
powers bear an awesome responsibility for helping in the subversion of democracy in Africa
and for all the far-reaching negative consequences of that subversion. The pursuit of arms
"pushing" gives them a continuing role in the escalation of military conflicts today--in Africa and
elsewhere. The U.S. refusal to agree to a joint crackdown even on illicit sales of small arms (as
proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan) illustrates the difficulties involved.

FAIR SHARING OF GLOBAL OPPORTUNITIES

To conclude, the confounding of globalization with Westernization is not only a historical, it also
distracts attention from the many potential benefits of global integration. Globalization is a
historical process that has offered an abundance of opportunities and rewards in the past and
continues to do so today. The very existence of potentially large benefits makes the question of
fairness in sharing the benefits of globalization so critically important.

The central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is it the use of the market as an
institution, but the inequity in the overall balance of institutional arrangements which produces
very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization. The question is not just whether the poor,
too, gain something from globalization, but whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity.
There is an urgent need for reforming institutional arrangements--in addition to national ones--
in order to overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission that tend to give the
poor across the world such limited opportunities. Globalization deserves a reasoned defense,
but it also needs reform.