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The Strength of Thinking and Acting Locally
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- Escaping Parochialism
- Decentralization vs. Decentralism
The Strength of Thinking and Acting LocallyEsteva argues that often the impulse for those resisting colonization by development or other forces is to form coalitions with outside allies and a global, equally sizeable strategy. In fact, he and Prakash argue that local thinking is needed while forging solidarities with other movements in opposition to global forces. Failing to continue to focus on the local level moves resistance on to a global stage where it can only be a minor player. That is, the “global project” includes, in Esteva’s estimation, a range of institutions including governments, corporations, and NGO’s. Relative to the power of these projects, grassroots movements have little power. However, community-based resistance offers a way to encounter globalization on the community’s ground. Esteva explains this concept using the myth of David and Goliath. He explains that if the Goliaths of global development are to be contested it has to be by battles with hundreds of little David’s, or localized resistances. He believes that attempting to act globally will only move the fight to ground on which only Goliaths can win. Individual consumers can say no to Coke in their local markets and free themselves and their communities from its control quite easily. Esteva believes that at the global level the actions available for local opposition is less decisive and less effective. An example is the community-based activism and social projects launched by the Black Panthers in the United States to pressure the USFG. Rather than lobby the government for free school breakfast, the Panthers created a program that provided it without the government. Soon, the government conceded to the local pressure providing a similar system around the country. Similarly, the Panthers forged solidarities with other resistance organizations while retaining their roots in the community in which they emerged. Challenging Universalism Esteva also contends that human rights, which is representative of the type of actions undertaken by the “Global Project”, reflects the need to challenge Universalism. Born of a specific cultural context and the response to abuses of power, Esteva concedes that the rights included in the notion of “universal human rights” may have been appropriate for the overwhelming European interests that forged them. However, he and Prakash suggest that they also institutionalize an individualistic ethic that dissolves “the very foundations of cultures which are organized around the notions of communal obligations, commitment and service. More importantly, what for some people is a right is for others a torture, Esteva contends. For example, punishment by prison in the US is considered appropriate in response to criminal acts. In some of Mexico’s indigenous communities such a practice is considered torturous and instead require individuals to repay the community by providing some service. Thus, Esteva argues that global concepts like human rights risk contaminating local, indigenous communities and contends that opposition to “human rights” is consistent with resistance to abuses of the dignity of a community member by someone or something else. Escaping ParochialismEsteva and Prakash contend that global solutions and the promise of global economic integration is parochial and unfulfillable. Instead of improving the quality of life that development and globalization promise to help, they observe, “most people on Earth are clearly marginalized” from any global life. The economic practices of the global economy, i.e. Eating at McDonalds, access to schools, a family car will never be available to those marginalized. They note, “Globalists will have depleted the world’s resources long before that could ever happen.” Thus such proposals are necessarily parochial. Esteva explains that they inevitably express the interests of a small group, the Global North, even when formulated in the name of humanity. Local solutions on the other hand, grounded in the communities and specific places they affect can account for the radical pluralism of people’s and their concomitant diverse needs. Likewise, Esteva suggests these actions have wide scale implications. Local solutions allow diverse groups to say “No!” to the project of global development while affirming one another in the creation of ways of living grounded in their local communities. A contemporary example is the food-not-lawns program through which individuals plant gardens in place of their grass thus refusing the efforts by corporations to control the food that they eat. In other places, communities establish community gardens or otherwise utilize their common resources to oppose the same global interests. In this way local action both resists development and creates the potential for solidarity with other activists. Decentralization vs. DecentralismIn Grassroots Postmodernism, Esteva summarizes his argument by articulating two ways of viewing development. He suggests that “Global Projects” pursue a decentralized model of development. Through programs that promise to bring progress to communities, this project creates outpost to serve the economic interests of those who benefit from the globalization at the expense of its supposed beneficiaries. That is, a top down distribution controls the development. On the other hand, decentralism refuses altogether the authority of global institutions. Instead, decentralism posits a network of communities each of which generates communal solutions through interactions with members of their community. Likewise, these intiatives reclaim local autonomy. The consequence is rather than having one’s food supply subject to the development plan of a MNC, local thinking and local action allows communities to reclaim that ability and avoid its control by the economic whim of globalized economies. By reducing the size of the political and economic bodies with which individuals interact, decentralism balances the power between forces of development and individual persons in the community. 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