Welmer

Globalization was a euphemism for progress for decades, but now that the world is coming face to face with the problems it has created people are beginning to see what they’ve lost as their connection to local communities weakens and loses relevance. The big issues created by globalization, such as outsourcing, loss of industry and mass immigration, are already well-known and highly unpopular, but these are, for the most part, national issues that reverberate throughout the entire country. Casualties of globalization that are much smaller in scale are not broadcast far, and therefore never generate the kind of mass protest that launches an issue to national prominence. However, in sum their effects are equally profound, and they explain much of the social alienation bemoaned by civil society proponents such as Robert Putnam.

Because it promotes economic interdependence between far-flung corners of the world, globalization is the enemy of local sustainability. Trade agreements penalize local self-sufficiency and promote widely distributed supply and consumption networks, necessarily giving an advantage to larger operations with highly developed corporate infrastructure. Even fairly large local factories and businesses are at a serious disadvantage if they have only a regional distribution capacity, which is why, here in Seattle, we have seen a number of local institutions, such as Frederick and Nelson’s and the Rainier Brewery, go out of business in recent years. This also explains why newer companies with explicitly international ambitions – including Amazon, Starbucks and Microsoft – have soared. Economically speaking, this hasn’t been a disaster for our region (yet), but it’s been a serious blow to the local soul and sense of identity. The economic advantage provided by having international corporations located in the Seattle area is by no means something we can count on permanently — the flight of the Boeing corporation to Chicago has been followed by a slow, but steady increase in the outsourcing of Boeing factory jobs. And consider that the Rainier Brewery was local by definition, but Tully’s is not, so which one can easily pack up and leave without hurting the bottom line?

Although globalism is widely thought to promote variety the end result is often a depressing uniformity amongst major cities. Opposition to globalism is not a reaction against Capitalism or economic progress; there is a similar uniformity of design in Communist structures throughout the former Soviet Union and China, and dull, indistinguishable Marxist architecture, despite its lack of color and signage, results in roughly the same déja vue effect as the facsimile strip malls that litter the highways of America. It is not the commerce that is abhorrent, but rather the subjugation of regional identity and culture to international brands.

For all the concern about biodiversity and ethnic diversity, there appears to be little support for cultural diversity. Just as the existence of numerous species and a wide range of life in a given ecosystem is used to gauge the health of an ecosystem, a diverse collection of communities and regional cultures and subcultures reflects the health of a greater society. Seattle’s unique music scene of the 1980s and early 90s developed in a somewhat isolated provincial culture, but soon after it went global it vanished, leaving the city’s music scene devoid of the vitality in which the “Seattle Sound” thrived. The agricultural community in the Kent Valley south of Seattle was tragically sold off to developers and converted from highly productive farmland to office parks surrounded by acres of asphalt, effectively erasing an established rural culture on the outskirts of Seattle.

To natives these losses are tangible, but one might make the argument that the mobility of both people and information renders these kinds of outcomes inevitable. Could it be that distinct communities and regional cultures are passé — relics of a pre-cosmopolitan culture that cannot be reasonably sustained? If one considers the interest people continue to have in their local communities, probably not. The democratization of mass communication appears to have played a large part in sparking renewed interest in regional culture, cuisine and environmental issues. Monopolies are inherently elitist, and perhaps the most oppressive of all are cultural monopolies. Rather than reinforcing the trend toward a dull uniformity, mass communication is spawning more effective means to reach out to one’s neighbors about topics of interest, and as it turns out, many people are highly interested in their immediate surroundings.

Global trade and cross-fertilization of cultures – an ancient and vital part of the human experience – will never disappear, but the sprouting of many small regional movements will eventually put enough pressure on those who benefit from globalism the most to alter its practice so that its benefits are more widely distributed and the harm it does to local communities is alleviated. People are happiest when living their lives in harmony with their surroundings, so the movement toward a regionally based way of life is a constant force that can only be resisted with sustained, costly effort. Eventually, even these efforts will be exhausted, and distinct cultures will flower once again.