Education, Globalization and the State in the Age of Terrorism

Michael A. Peters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781594510724
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317260660
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Education plays an important role in challenging, combating and in understanding terrorism in its different forms, whether as counter-terrorism or as a form of human rights education. Just as education has played a significant role in the process of nation-building, so education also plays a strong role in the process of empire, globalization and resistance to global forces-and in terrorism, especially where it is linked to emergent statehood. This book focuses on the theme of education in an age of terrorism, exploring the conflicts of globalization and global citizenship, feminism post-9/11, youth identities, citizenship and democracy in a culture of permanent war, and the relation between education and war, with a focus on the war against Iraq.

Chapter One

The Conflicts of Globalization and Restructuring of Education

Douglas Kellner

The September 11 terrorist attacks have generated a wealth of theoretical reflection as well as regressive political responses by the Bush administration and other governments (Kellner 2003b). The 9/11 attacks and subsequent Bush administration military response have dramatized once again the centrality of globalization in contemporary experience and the need for adequate conceptualizations and responses to it for critical theory and pedagogy to maintain their relevance in the present age. In this article, I want to argue that critical educators need to comprehend the conflicts of globalization, terrorism, and the prospects and obstacles to democratization in order to develop pedagogies adequate to the challenges of the present age. Accordingly, I begin with some comments on how the September 11 terror attacks call attention to key aspects of globalization, and I then provide a critical theory of globalization, after which I suggest some pedagogical initiatives to aid in the democratic reconstruction of education after 9/11.¹

September 11 and Globalization

The terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and the subsequent Terror War throughout the world dramatically disclose the downside of globalization and the ways that global flows of technology, goods, information, ideologies, and people can have destructive as well as productive effects.² The disclosure of powerful anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalization divides the world just as it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants. The events reveal explosive contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that facilitate globalization can also be used to undermine and attack it, and to generate instruments of destruction as well as production.

The experience of September 11 points to the objective ambiguity of globalization, that positive and negative sides are interconnected, that the institutions of the open society unlock the possibilities of destruction and violence, as well as destruction of and violence against democracy, free trade, and cultural and social exchange. Once again, the interconnection and interdependency of the networked world was dramatically demonstrated as terrorists from the Middle East brought local grievances from their region to attack key symbols of U.S. military power and the very infrastructure of Wall Street. Some see terrorism as an expression of “the dark side of globalization,” while I would conceive it as part of the objective ambiguity of globalization that simultaneously creates friends and enemies, wealth and poverty, and growing divisions between the “haves” and “have nots.” Yet the downturn in the global economy, intensification of local and global political conflicts, repression of human rights and civil liberties, and general increase in fear and anxiety have certainly undermined the naïve optimism of globophiles who perceived globalization as a purely positive instrument of progress and well-being.

The use of powerful technologies as weapons of destruction also discloses current asymmetries of power and emergent forms of terrorism and war, as the new millennium exploded into dangerous conflicts and military interventions. As technologies of mass destruction become more available and dispersed, perilous instabilities have emerged that have elicited policing measures to stem the flow of movements of people and goods across borders and internally. In particular, the U.S.A. Patriot Act has led to repressive measures that are replacing the spaces of the open and free information society with new forms of surveillance, policing, and restrictions of civil liberties, thus significantly undermining U.S. democracy (see Kellner 2003b).

Ultimately, however, the abhorrent terror acts by the bin Laden network and the violent military response by the Bush administration may be an anomalous paroxysm whereby a highly regressive premodern Islamic fundamentalism has clashed with an old-fashioned patriarchal and unilateralist Wild West militarism. It could be that such forms of terrorism, militarism, and state repression will be superseded by more rational forms of politics that globalize and criminalize terrorism, and that do not sacrifice the benefits of the open society and economy in the name of security. Yet the events of September 11 may open a new era of Terror War that will lead to the kind of apocalyptic futurist world depicted by cyberpunk fiction (see Kellner 2003b).

In any case, the events of September 11 have promoted a fury of reflection, theoretical debates, and political conflicts and upheavals that put the complex dynamics of globalization at the center of contemporary theory and politics. To those skeptical of the centrality of globalization to contemporary experience, it is now clear that we are living in a global world that is highly interconnected and vulnerable to passions and crises that can cross borders and can affect anyone or any region at any time. The events of September 11 and their aftermath also provide a test case to evaluate various theories of globalization in the contemporary era. In addition, they highlight some of the contradictions of globalization and the need to develop a highly complex and dialectical model to capture its conflicts, ambiguities, and contradictory effects.

Consequently, I argue that in order to properly theorize globalization one needs to conceptualize several sets of contradictions generated by globalization’s combination of technological revolution and restructuring of capital, which, in turn, generate tensions between capitalism and democracy, and “haves” and “have nots.” Within the world economy, globalization involves the proliferation of the logic of capital, but also the spread of democracy in information, finance, investing, and the diffusion of technology (see Friedman, 1999 and Hardt and Negri, 2000). Globalization is thus a contradictory amalgam of capitalism and democracy, in which the logic of capital and the market system enter ever more arenas of global life, even as democracy spreads and more political regions and spaces of everyday life are being contested by democratic demands and forces. But the overall process is contradictory. Sometimes globalizing forces promote democracy and sometimes they inhibit it; thus, either equating capitalism and democracy, or simply opposing them, are problematical.

The processes of globalization are highly turbulent and have generated intense conflicts throughout the world. Benjamin Barber (1996) describes the strife between McWorld and Jihad, contrasting the homogenizing, commercialized, Americanized tendencies of the global economy and culture with anti-modernizing Jihadist movements that affirm traditional cultures and are resistant to aspects of neoliberal globalization. Thomas Friedman (1999) makes a more benign distinction between what he calls the “Lexus” and the “Olive Tree.” The former is a symbol of modernization, of affluence and luxury, and of Westernized consumption, contrasted with the Olive Tree that is a symbol of roots, tradition, place, and stable community. Barber (1996), however, is too negative toward McWorld and Jihad, failing to adequately describe the democratic and progressive forces within both. Although Barber recognizes a dialectic of McWorld and Jihad, he opposes both to democracy, failing to perceive how they generate their own democratic forces and tendencies, as well as opposing and undermining democratization. Within Western democracies, for instance, there is, not just top-down homogenization and corporate domination, but also globalization-from-below and oppositional social movements that desire alternatives to capitalist globalization. Thus, it is not only traditionalist, non-Western forces of Jihad that oppose McWorld. Likewise, Jihad has its democratizing forces, as well as the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who are now the most demonized elements of the contemporary era, as I discuss below. Jihad, like McWorld, has its contradictions and its potential for democratization, as well as elements of domination and destruction.³

Friedman, by contrast, is too uncritical of globalization, caught up in his own Lexus, high-consumption life-style, failing to perceive the depth of the oppressive features of globalization and the breadth and extent of resistance and opposition to it. In particular, he fails to articulate the contradictions between capitalism and democracy, and the ways that globalization and its economic logic undermine democracy as well as encourage it. Likewise, he does not grasp the virulence of the premodern and Jihadist tendencies that he blithely identifies with the Olive tree, and the reasons why globalization and the West are so strongly resisted in many parts of the world.

Hence, it is important to present globalization as a strange amalgam of both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and heterogeneity, difference, and hybridity, as well as a contradictory mixture of democratizing and anti-democratizing tendencies. On one hand, globalization unfolds a process of standardization in which a globalized mass culture circulates the globe creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere. But globalized culture makes possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world, thus proliferating hybrids, difference, and heterogeneity.⁴ Every local context involves its own appropriation and reworking of global products and signifiers, thus proliferating difference, otherness, diversity, and variety (Luke and Luke 2000). Grasping that globalization embodies these contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization and heterogeneity, is crucial to articulating the contradictions of globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions.

My intention is to present globalization as conflictual, and contradictory and open to resistance and democratic intervention and transformation, and not just as a monolithic juggernaut of progress or domination as in many other discourses. This goal is advanced by distinguishing between “globalization from below” and “globalization from above” of corporate capitalism and the capitalist state, a distinction that should help us to get a better sense of how globalization does or does not promote democratization. “Globalization from below” refers to the ways in which marginalized individuals and social movements and critical pedagogues resist globalization and/or use its institutions and instruments to further democratization and social justice.

Yet, one needs to avoid binary normative articulations, since globalization from below can have highly conservative and destructive effects, as well as positive ones, while globalization from above can help produce global solutions to problems like terrorism or the environment. Moreover, on one hand, as Michael Peters argues (in chapter 8 of this book), globalization itself is a kind of war, and much militarism has been expansive and globalizing in many historical situations. On the other hand, antiwar and peace movements are also increasingly global; hence globalization is marked by tensions and contradictions.

Thus, while on one level globalization significantly increases the supremacy of big corporations and big government, it can also give power to groups and individuals that were previously left out of the democratic dialogue and terrain of political struggle. Such potentially positive effects of globalization include increased access to education for individuals excluded from sharing culture and knowledge and the possibility for oppositional individuals and groups to participate in global culture and politics through gaining access to global communication and media networks and to circulate local struggles and oppositional ideas through these media. The role of information technologies in social movements, political struggle, and everyday life forces social movements and critical theorists to reconsider their political strategies and goals and democratic theory to appraise how new technologies do and do not promote democratization (Kellner 1995b, 1997 and 1999b; Best and Kellner 2001; Kahn and Kellner 2003).

In their book Empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of “Empire” and an assortment of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-filled situation. As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a multidimensional mixture of expansions of the global economy and capitalist market system, information technologies and media, expanded judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.⁵ Combining poststructuralism with “autonomous Marxism,” Hardt and Negri stress political openings and possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent process of the restructuring of capital.

Many theorists, by contrast, have argued that one of the trends of globalization is depoliticization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and the end of traditional politics (Boggs 2000). While I would agree that globalization is promoted by tremendously powerful economic forces and that it often undermines democratic movements and decision-making, one should also note that there are openings and possibilities for a globalization from below that inflects globalization for positive and progressive ends, and that globalization can thus help promote as well as destabilize democracy.⁶ Globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism, a turbulent structuring process, which creates openings for progressive social change and intervention as well as highly destructive transformative effects. On the positive ledger, in a more fluid and open economic and political system, oppositional forces can gain concessions, win victories, and effect progressive changes. During the 1970s, new social movements, new nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and new forms of struggle and solidarity emerged that have been expanding to the present day (Hardt and Negri 2000; Burbach 2001; Best and Kellner 2001; and Foran 2003).

The anticorporate globalization of the 1990s emerged as a form of globalization from below, but so too did al-Qaeda and various global terror networks, which intensified their attacks and helped generate an era of Terror War. This made it difficult simply to affirm globalization from below while denigrating globalization from above, as clearly terrorism was an emergent and dangerous form of globalization from below that was a threat to peace, security, and democracy. Moreover, in the face of Bush administration unilateralism and militarism, multilateral approaches to the problems of terrorism called for global alliances and responses to a wide range of global problems (see Kellner 2003b and Barber 2003), thus demanding a progressive and cosmopolitan globalization to deal with contemporary challenges.

Moreover, the present conjuncture is marked by a conflict between growing centralization and organization of power and wealth in the hands of the few, contrasted with opposing processes exhibiting a fragmentation of power that is more plural, multiple, and open to contestation. As the following analysis will suggest, both tendencies are observable, and it is up to individuals and groups to find openings for progressive political intervention, social transformation, and the democratization of education that pursue positive values such as democracy, human rights, literacy, equality, ecological preservation and restoration, and social justice, while fighting poverty, ignorance, terror, and injustice. Thus, rather than just denouncing globalization, or engaging in celebration and legitimation, a critical theory of globalization reproaches those aspects that are oppressive, while seizing upon opportunities to fight domination and exploitation and to promote democratization, justice, and a forward looking reconstruction of the polity, society and culture.

Against capitalist globalization from above, there has been a significant eruption of forces and subcultures of resistance that have attempted to preserve specific forms of culture and society against globalization and homogenization, and to create alternative forces of society and culture, thus exhibiting resistance and globalization from below. Most dramatically, peasant and guerrilla movements in Latin America, labor unions, students, and environmentalists throughout the world, and a variety of other groups and movements have resisted capitalist globalization and attacks on previous rights and benefits.⁷ Several dozen people’s organizations from around the world have protested World Trade Organization (WTO) policies, and a backlash against globalization is visible everywhere. Politicians who once championed trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA are now often quiet about these arrangements; for example, at the 1996 annual Davos World Economic Forum its founder and managing director published a warning entitled: “Start Taking the Backlash Against Globalization Seriously.” Reports surfaced that major representatives of the capitalist system expressed fear that capitalism was getting too mean and predatory, that it needs a kinder and gentler state to ensure order and harmony, and that the welfare state may make a comeback (see the article in New York Times, Feb. 7, 1996, A15).⁸ One should take such reports with the proverbial grain of salt, but they express fissures and openings in the system for critical discourse and intervention.

Indeed, by 1999, the theme of the annual Davos conference was making globalization work for poor count...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Education in the Age of Terrorism
• 1. The Conflicts of Globalization and Restructuring of Education
• 2. Citizenship and Global Chaos: Education, Culture, and Revolution
• 3. Globalization and Critical Feminisms Post-9/11
• 4. Technologies of the Self and Parrhesia: Education, Globalization, and the Politicization of Youth in Response to the Iraq War
• 5. Globalization, the Third Way, and Education Post 9/11: Building Democratic Citizenship
• 6. Terrorism and the Culture of Permanent War: Democracy Under Siege
• 7. Education and War: Primary Constituents of the Contemporary World-System
• 8. War as Globalization: The “Education” of the Iraqi People
• Postscript
• Index
• About the Contributors