The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
The alt is critical NOW - current trends in globalization reiterate Capitalist ideals of “winners and losers”, causing unjustified norms in international order
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The alt is critical NOW - current trends in globalization reiterate Capitalist ideals of “winners and losers”, causing unjustified norms in international orderPadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “The Cosmopolitan Approach of Ulrich Beck,” Ch. 6.2, p. 290-291] SPark What are these cosmopolitan realities that intrude and demand a new cosmopolitan methodology capable of preventing social sciences “becoming a museum of antiquated ideas”, to quote Beck? First of all, national state borders have become porous, interdependences are growing exponentially, and restrictive immigration policies are trapped in contradictions: on the one hand the rich industrialized countries of the Global North are suffering a “spectacular demographic regression, with ageing populations that threaten to overwhelm pensions and health systems” and reinforce political conservatism - like the growing neonationalism and populism of the European extreme right and the former Trump administration - and on the other hand these very countries are busy “building ramparts to ward off both the feared and the real immigration flows from the poorer South”. Indeed, as social, economic and political interdependences are growing worldwide, leading to new forms of migration (of both migrant workers and refugees escaping from war and armed conflicts) these circumstances condemn anti-migratory policies as counterproductive and unable to stop human mobility, as happened in the aftermath of terrorist attacks of September 11, because “it is precisely this repressive impulse that undermines the necessary readiness to authorize more immigration, which could counter falling demographic curves and rejuvenate the population” (Beck 2003: 53). Interestingly, that lucid forecast about the ills of “methodological nationalism” was made by Beck in 2003! Another “cosmopolitan reality” is that certain cosmopolitan issues, such as human rights, have been internalized in nation states. As these standards become part of the universal jus cogens widely accepted as enforceable international law - regardless of whether or not its main instruments have been duly subscribed to and ratified by member states2 - the judges and courts of all UN member states are obligated to accept and apply these norms whether dealing with nationals and foreigners. In other words, to quote Beck (2003: 53), “Human rights are increasingly detached from citizenship status and are no longer bound by national contexts,” and “examples of this trend” can similarly be seen in educational curricula; the growing number of bi-national marriages and families; the increasing number of transnational work and private life connections; the growing mobility of communication, information, cash flows and risks (such as the pandemic and climate change catastrophes, products, services, and so on); trade agreements; diaspora cultures (the ‘re-ethnification’ or recuperation of ethnic identity, religion, culture and national customs revived in the daily life of people living in guest countries); and what Beck calls the “internationalization of national models of inequality”. To put it another way, the permeability of national boundaries entails a distribution of globalization winners and losers (according to the production sectors that are either shielded from the world market or exposed to it) in such a way that in some situations this can produce a contradiction between national and transnational elites “who fight over positions and resources within national power spaces” (Beck 2003: 64). Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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