Womens Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 243 259 www.elsevier.

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Wild Politics: Beyond Globalization

Susan Hawthorne
Department of Communication, Culture and Languages, Victoria University, St. Albans Campus, Melbourne, Australia

Synopsis In this article, I argue that globalization harms women, and that it does so in gender-specific ways. Further, as globalization contains many elements of violence and violation in its systemic targeting of the poorest members of society, because women are the poorest members of society, they are also negatively affected through poverty. I discuss the impact of globalization on women working in export processing zones in poor countries and in the service sector in rich nations. I examine the impact of globalization on Indigenous women, in particular on their knowledge systems, and on women working in primary production. Finally, I draw some comparisons between the bodilessness of global cyberculture and its impact on those framing a disembodied postmodern feminist response, while at the same time the Internet is used to exploit women further through making them continuously accessible to mobile men. I link this phenomenon with the commodification of womens bodies through the export of women for prostitution and for domestic labor. Finally, I suggest some broad outlines of ways in which feminists could engage in a philosophy of connection and through the development of a wild politics: a politics enlivened and inspired by biodiversity. D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The last decade has seen a growth in understanding among some in the left of the way in which globalization has a negative impact on the lives of people. What is often neglected is how globalization affects women. Although there are numerous examples of feminist scholarship on the topic, these are rarely the focus of stories reported by the globalized media giants. In this article, I argue that women are not only the hardest hit, but that in many ways it is womens experiences which expose the methodology of globalization as a complex system of oppression, one which overlays others kinds of oppression including that of women, of working poor people (mostly women), the underemployed or unemployable, of people of color, of ethnic or religious groups who are targets of hate,
0277-5395/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2004.05.002

of Indigenous peoples, of lesbians and sexual orientations other than heterosexual, of people with chronic illness or disabilities. In this article, I refer to this group as the diversity matrix . What they share is vulnerability to macroeconomic policies, new systems of trade rules and the structures of violence that exemplify globalization. Members of the diversity matrix are distinguished from the group who benefit from globalization in the main coming from elites including the rich and mobile, from the group who dominate media cultureprimarily white men, although men from elite groups from many cultures benefit also, and from those who are active participants in corporate culture, either as owners or as managers and workers who accept the benefits of corporate culture.

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In some instances, these groups overlap, for example, the rich woman from a traditionally upper class family with corporate wealth; the black man who has climbed the corporate ladder or has a position of power in government or the military. Other examples could be cited. What they show is the permeability of these groups, but they do not contradict the general conclusions that I draw about the way in which globalized systems of power operate. I argue that not only are poor women from poor countries negatively affected by globalization, but that globalization also has a detrimental effect on women who are educated, middle-class and for the most part reasonably well-off in all parts of the world. Globalizationas economics, as international homogenized culture, as industrial, financial and agricultural practice, as close as your email or your Internet browseris a powerful force. Against this force, I contend that the disciplines that criticize from the marginssuch as Womens Studiesare well placed to provide innovative, thorough, and insightful research.

The origins of global economic ideologies Globalization is a force that rides on the back of earlier waves of global exploitation, including European colonization spanning the previous 500 years. A new kind of globalization began to emerge in the years following World War II. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank were created.1 As the process of decolonization moved across nations, capital became institutionalized in all but the remaining socialist and communist countries (Mies & Shiva, 1993, p. 298). Through colonization and decolonization, countries which had been previously oriented towards self-sustainability became, instead, export-oriented. Vandana Shiva points out, bin the Third World, most small farmers are womenQ (Mies & Shiva, 1993, p. 231; see also Seager, 1997, pp. 6263), and small farmers have borne the brunt of the brestructuring of power around foodQ (Seager, 1997, pp. 6263) which came with the ratification of GATT. The bgreen revolutionQ caught any nation which had slipped though the net, providing poorer

nations with a false promise of bcatch-up developmentQ (Maria Mies term, in Mies & Shiva, 1993, pp. 5569). As Mies (1994, pp. 4548) so cogently points out, there can never be a catch-up by the poor nations. Even if productive and consumptive growth were not limited, she estimates that it would take 500 years2 for the poor nations to catch up to the rich ones, and that this figure assumes no further growth in those rich nations. In other words, the rich nations of the world have become rich through the free, or at best exploitative, use of resources from the poor nations.3 Colonialism ensured access to cheap resources for the rich nations. In the 1990s, with political colonialism on its way out, bio-colonialism paved the way for a new range of resources for the rich nations to harvest from the poor. The debt cycle, which, through orientation toward export, began with increased inputs of fertilizers, hybrid seeds (Shiva, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997), pesticides (Bertell, 1985; Carson, 1962/1986; Hynes, 1989; Steingraber, 1999), and the development of transport systems, is now culminating in bioprospecting (Shiva, 1997) and genetic engineering of food crops (Ho, 1998). Nowhere in the calculations of the globalizers is there the concept of bcommon goodQ (Griffin, 1999; Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen, 1995, 1999; Roy, 1999), common property or even the idea of a common future. Everything is accelerated, everything is measured; no one has time simply to experience anything (unless it is sold to them as a commodified experience (Hawthorne, 1999), no one has time for processes or connection (only processors and virtual connection). As Wichterich (1999, p. 3) points out: bThe heart of globalization is abstract: it is a finance market made up of shares, currencies and derivatives which every day, to the tune of three billion dollars, are speculatively moved around on dealers computer screens in e-mail time.Q But as she also states, for women bit is concrete and actualQ (1999, p. 3) and played out in the conditions of their daily lives, as workers and consumers. As producers of most of the worlds food, and as decision makers on who eats what food, womens role in the global economy is enacted daily.4 The question is: does globalization have anything to offer women? Wiseman (1998, p. 1) calls globalization bdangerousQ and bslipperyQ, and points out that although it might seem an unstoppable force, there are

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decisions to be made which could be unmade with a shift in political will. During 2003, we saw even more clearly how the systems of globalizationthe World Trade Organization (WTO) the International Monetary Fund and the World Bankhave rejected the pleas of poor nations at the Cancun meeting of the WTO where the G21 countries, and another grouping of four countries from West Africa with a particular focus on US cotton subsidies, 5 protested against the one-sided bnegotiationsQ. In spite of much publicity about the Doha negotiations by former Secretary General of the WTO, Moore (2003), about just how generous the rich countries would be, this has not eventuated and the G21 instead has challenged the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Community to stop tilting the playing field to a steeper gradient. These developments have a direct impact on women farmers who comprise most of the worlds small farmers. One wonders just how far patriarchal capitalism will go to ensure the dispossession of more and more women. The next 5 years will prove crucial in shaping international relations for the 21st century. As the General Agreement on Trade in Services comes into force in 2005, and as a number of other bilateral free trade agreements (Hawthorne, 2003a, 2003d) and multilateral free trade areas (FTAA) also come into force, all our lives will be deeply affected by these changes. The changes that will accompany these shifts will affect our health care, our education systems, ways in which culture is developed or demolished. It will affect access to water, the health of the oceans and seas, the diminishing or sustainability of biodiversity, as well as how we work, play, and die.

Matsui, among others, are in agreement that globalization is the latest in a stream of powerful forces arraigned against women. Colonization and domination in all its forms are familiar to women almost everywhere. Globalization, like catch-up development of two decades ago, is presented as a great boon for all people. bOnly winners, no losersQ claimed the last director of GATT, Peter Sutherland (cited in Wichterich, 1999, p. 4). It promises great wealth, increased public hygiene, freedom to buy whatever the consumer wants (in every color and size), freedom to communicate across borders and a choice of foodstuffs from every part of the globe. Like the QbenefitsQ of colonizations (dependency on the colonizer, theft of natural resources, appropriation of culture, and disappearance of the local language and traditions), globalization heralds dependency on transnational companies, theft of Indigenous knowledge7 and indigenous plant stocks to be sold back at profit, the exploitation of women for the benefit of mobile men, further appropriation of cultural resources and a flattening of the culture through the domination of American cultural productsfrom McDonalds and South Park to Coca Cola and Microsoft.

How globalization divides women Because women are still the largest class of poor people in the world,8 as a social group they represent an important touchstone for the effects of globalization. Women are the invisible victims of so many of these new systems of structural violence. Work, for example, is promoted as one of the areas in which, through globalization, women have most to gain. Plant (1997, pp. 4243) suggests that women, because they are bbetter culturally and psychologicallyQ prepared for the work habits of the new millennium, will outdo their male counterparts in a more highly technologized world. Plants argument is echoed by Wichterich (1999, p. 5) who, writing with a different intention, states: bCheap, dexterous and flexible, they [women] have a competitive advantage over men in meeting the new requirements of the labor market.Q The women of the Mexican maquiladoras,9 although they may well fit both these descriptions,

Globalization and its impact on women Japanese journalist Yayori Matsui summarizes the impact of globalization on women as bviolenceQ (1999, pp. 175179). She cites incidents of globalized violence against women factory workers, against womens sexuality promoted as a bproductQ, and against the natural environment through pollution and deforestation. But she also suggests in her book, Women in the New Asia , that Asian women are a force of resistance to be reckoned with.6

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might wish they did not. The maquiladoras, like the tax havens of South Korea, Bangladesh, Philippines, and Nigeria, are centers of exploitation and death, mainly of women. Mitter (1986) and Cravey (1998) have both looked at the example of the maquiladoras of Mexico. Cravey (1998) points out that the Mexican economy has shifted from ba state-led import substitution emphasis to a neo-liberal export-orientation based on transnational investmentQ (Cravey, 1998, p. 1). This shift is comparable in the agricultural sector to the shift from subsistence to cash and export-oriented economies.10 Similar industrial shifts are occurring in many countries and they represent a significant change to the way in which global economics is conducted. The assumption in much writing on globalization, even in those that are critical, is that the shift to export-orientation is positive. What I want to argue here is that export-orientation benefits powerful economies more than it does those economies on the margins, many of which are heavily in debt. It is not women in poor or rich nations who benefit from export, although the profits made come from the labor of women. The connection between womens poverty and the poverty of nations is horribly clear when one looks at pictorial representations. In Joni Seagers The State of Women in the World Atlas (1997, pp. 7879), the map of poverty shows just how widespread the equation women=poverty is. The UN estimates that women hold title to about 1% of all land (Seager, 1997, p. 120), and that women bare among the poorest of the poor. Poor men in poor countries have even poorer wives and childrenQ (Seager, 1997, p. 121). The rhetoric of globalization, like Peter Sutherlands formula of ball winners, no losers,Q is that the workforce of the 21st century will have to be highly educated, adaptable to change, and capable of having several careers in a single lifetime. These are the winners in the globalized economy. Women working in maquiladoras, are the big losers. They make the electronic equipment for medical and scientific companies headquartered in the USA, and that equipment in the main is intended for the global winners. Women in the maquiladoras work for companies like General Instruments, Tyler Science and Technology, Electro Mech, Honeywell Bull, Stackpole Components and many others (Biemann,

1999; Hawthorne, 2002, pp. 27778). They live in towns where serial murder of women has left 124 women dead from violence between 1993 and 1999 (Biemann, 1999). There are no shelters for battered women and the needs and demands of the transnational sector are structurally more important than the life requirements of the people who work in the plants (mostly women). These women cannot get continuing education; they are expected to do the same jobs year in and year out; and when they are too sick to continue, they are retrenched. As Farida Akhter explains the situation in Bangladesh: . . . garment factory owners dont want women over 30 years of age. That is because these women cant see as much, because they have had to work with an electric machine and their eyesight is already affected. They have back pain. So they are not as efficient as they could be before. So whatever happens in the international market, women over 30 are going to lose their jobs in the garment factories anyway. (Akhter, 2003a) It is not only women in the export processing zones whose lives are negatively affected by globalization. Under the GATS agreement, women working in service industries in the rich countries will also feel the impact of the new open trading system. In the health care systems, for example, women will lose out on several fronts. Women are the ones who predominantly look after sick people; they are the ones who raise children, stay home with them when they are sick and buy their medicines; because women live longer than men, they are also the majority of the chronically ill and elderly who depend heavily on prescription drugs. In Australia, the chronically ill and the elderly account for more than 80% of pharmaceutical purchases (Lokuge & Denniss, 2003, p. 30). Furthermore, bas a proportion of income, the poorest 20 per cent of Australians spend seven times as much on medicines and other health products than the richest 20 per centQ (Lokuge & Denniss, 2003, p. 31). Women are over-represented in both categories. The impact of privatization on health will be catastrophic for many women. The shift from a universal health care system as, for example, it currently exists in the UK, Canada, and Australia, to a two-tiered system, will be the outcome for those

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countries who sign up to GATS, and for countries like Australia seeking a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with the USA. As Sarah Sexton points out, in the UK the National Health Scheme is the largest employer of women; 6 out of 10 health workers are women; 8 out of 10 of the non-medical staff are women: administrators, clerical staff, cleaners, caterers (Sexton, 2001, 2003, p. 2). These changes to the economies of the rich world, which share significant features with the Structural Adjustment Policies imposed on poorer countries over the last two decades, will have a profound effect on the common good quotient in these societies. Many of these women, like the women in Mexico and Bangladesh are also left out of the loop of education, mobility, and high living standards so often rhetoricized by apologists of globalization. The result will not be of benefit to women in the main. Instead, the benefit will be the economic bottom line of pharmaceutical companies and the flow on benefits of this to richer people in those societies (a few of whom will be women). I have looked at the impact of globalization on women in the electronics trade, in garment manufacturing and in the health-care system because these are significant sectors of womens work. Electronics, fashion, and medicine conjure up images of wealth, but such images apply only to those who occupy the high end of these industries. These industries rely heavily on the labor of women in poorly paid jobs that support the industries: components manufacturing, hand-made clothing and cleaning, for example. There are other areas that I want to touch on. Indigenous women, women involved in traditional practices in fishing, farming and forestry, and women whose servicesand bodiesare either trafficked across borders or whose work is considered an export commodity.

Indigenous womens knowledge Among Indigenous populations, many women hold knowledge of medicinal plants, in particular but not restricted tomedicines for what in Australia is called bwomens businessQ. Women have proven quite resistant to passing on this knowledge to transnational bioprospecting companies and we can

expect increased pressure on women to do so over the coming decades.11 The Ngarrindjeri women of South Australia were subjected to enormous pressure when they resisted bdevelopmentQ in an area sacred because of womens business (Bell, 1998). Mogina (1996) in Papua New Guinea talks of the importance of women sharing knowledge with girls outside of the villages because the villages bhave earsQ. Among women engaged in fishing, in farming, in forestry, are many who have resisted the entry of transnational companies into their zones of activity. Think of the Chipko women in India who protested the destruction of their forest (Shiva, 1989), or the Bangladeshi women who value not only the tree and associated plants but also the shade a tree gives (Akhter, 1990, p. 25); think of the Kenyan farm women who resisted the growing of coffee and eventually uprooted the coffee trees replacing them with bananas, vegetables and food crops (Turner & Brownhill, 2001); think of the fisherwomen in Fiji who resist the gross overharvesting of tuna for commercial uses, and instead continue a way of life which involves collecting shellfish or handlining from the shore for sale at a local level (Slatter, 1994, 1995; Hawthorne, 2002, p. 232). Womens knowledge of cultivation cannot be underestimated. In many cultures, women are the primary producers of food. In Sri Lanka (Wickramasinghe, 1994) and New Guinea (Mogina, 1996), the forest is the source of food; in Fiji, women harvest the sea (Slatter, 1994, 1995); in Nigeria and Kenya, cassava and Njahe beans, respectively, are womens domain. And it is precisely these crops that are most under threat from the cash and export orientation of global economics. In Nigeria, cassava is replaced with rice, in Kenya Njahe beans are displaced by other more exportable varieties. While womens crops are displaced, the men tend to be pulled into the cash economy as the new planters and harvesters with machines bought by development agencies. Tractors in Africa (Robertson, 1997), speedboats in the Pacific (Slatter, 1994, 1995), off-road vehicles and rifles in Australia become mens tools. Hard-earned cash is spent maintaining or replacing them and becomes part of the increased inputs required by export orientation. Gender roles are supported by the attitudes of those institutions providing loans and resources (Hawthorne, 2003b).

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Privatizing and globalizing knowledge The history of patents is the history of the privatization of knowledge. It has accompanied radical shifts in the concept of property as a private benefit to those who can afford its maintenance. Patents, therefore, constitute a crossroads of power based on class, on colonization by Europeans and those of European descent, and on male domination. Arising out of this cluster is the newer capitalist form of corporate domination. The appropriative power of patents first came to prominence in the colonization of the Americas, and they followed hot on the heels of the Enclosure Acts in England which deprived poor people of land. Both systems resulted in the dispossession of peoples outside the dominant elites. Throughout the 20th century patents have been progressively extended from the concept of invention through to including organic and naturally occurring substances. In 1931 and 1970, respectively, plants first asexually reproducing plants and secondly some sexually reproducing plantswere allowed inclusion in patents. The 1970s saw the patenting of microorganisms under the spurious argument that oil-eating microorganisms would solve a host of environmental problems. During the 1980s, animals became eligible for patent protection, culminating in the manufacture of the oncomouse in 1988. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, new laws came into force which insisted that universities and public institutions had a responsibility to protect innovations through patents in order to retain public funding (Kirby, 2003). Combined with the shifts in patents law a new era began, one in which science was no longer public, but rather was to be a matter of private property. Governments argued that this move would ensure the viability of universities into the 21st century and even make some of them profitable. The effect, however, has been to make research more expensive and more difficult and more and more private. Once these shifts in patents law had been achieved, and science was moving out of the public arena and into the world of corporations (universities have become corporations with marketing departments), the next hurdle was to make these laws universally applicable. Corporations could then be assured of

their ability to be active across many countries, all using the same patents laws. In 1992, two important multilateral agreements were entered into by those involved in the GATT negotiations in Uruguay: the Convention on Biological Diversity (with important loopholes) and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPs). The TRIPs agreement in particular ensures the universalization of US patent lawsthe most wide-ranging and liberal patent laws in the world. With the creation of the WTO in 1995, the privatization of knowledge, begun in the 16th century has almost reached its zenith. All that remains is for it to be successfully implemented and for the poor, the Indigenous, the colonized and those dependent on the land not to resist its further entrenchment. The privatizing of knowledge is not only an appropriation of non-European systems, it also represents the appropriation of a great deal of womens knowledge. It is disrespectful, it violates basic principles of life. Patents go hand in hand with violence. The critiques which concern the structural violence of globalizationits violation of poor women in the maquiladoras, of claiming to solve world hunger through the introduction of GM crops, the connection between free trade and warthese critiques can be replayed in relation to patents. The result of the TRIPs agreement is that US patent and copyright laws are internationalized so that they apply around the world. And since the US patent laws are much broader, and allow for the patenting of life forms,12 they leave the way open to the exploitation of the bio-resources of poorer nations. This is effectively an infringement of national sovereignty, and protects, not the labor and knowledge of ordinary people, but the property of transnational corporations. The TRIPs agreement represents a false universalization13 of laws applying to trade. An agreement such as the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (the MAI)and its young sibling the GATS agreementwould mean that corporations have only a single set of laws to negotiate. The laws would be internationally consistent, and would not change according to the vagaries of internal political shifts in government policy. This is, effectively, the imposition of a trade monoculture. Monocultures invar-

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iably benefit the powerful. And trade monocultures operate in the same way. What TRIPS means for genetic materials developed traditionally through a number of generations is that these previously public resources can now be used by private companies as the starting point for their research. After they isolate a component of the genetic resource, it is then privatized and sold back to the same farmers who might have developed the original stock. Local access to the stock is lost, and further, the multinational companies do not even pay royalties to the people who originally developed the resource. And as Mahadev Bhat notes: bTraditionally, the unimproved genetic material or genetic materials that have been partially developed by farmers through field trials and common-sense knowledge are treated as open-access resourcesQ (Bhat, 1996, p. 210). Colonization in what was called the age of exploration and discovery made it possible for the colonizing prospectors to pick up large tracts of land for nothing or very little cost. In a similar way, a host of potential biological resources are currently being screened by bioprospectors, the new colonizers and pirates, who are picking up plants and selling them on to pharmaceutical companies.14 If they turn out to be commercially viable, the plant products could return income to the region from which they came, even if they have not been used by the original community. Michael Dove who has worked with forest peoples in Indonesia argues that the dominant members of the culturethe transnational sectorappropriate the valuable resources while leaving those considered worthless in the hands of the powerless forest peoples. He writes: [In Indonesia] forest people develop a resource for the market, and if and when this resource attains sufficient importance, central economic and political interests assume control of it, based on self-interest rhetorically disguised as the common good. (Dove, 1993, p. 20) Doves observation applies to resources developed by women, often developed because there is a domestic or local need for the product or for the ways of spreading knowledge. This is not surprising given the origins of TRIPs. As Vandana Shiva points out, the TRIPs regime was developed by three major bodies based in the

United States,15 Europe and Japan. Three companies, involved in the US organization, bPfizer, Bristol Myers and Merck already have patents on Third World biomaterials collected without payment of royaltiesQ (Shiva, 1997, p. 81). Piracy is an unlawful activity. But piracy by multinational companies is not only allowed, it is enshrined in and protected by international trade agreements such as GATS and TRIPs. The need to preserve biodiversity is something that should concern us all. It is not about individuals or the profit of companies, it is a collective good for all of ushuman beings, animals, plants and the planet and legislation should be moving in the direction of preservation, not exploitation. A useful place to start is the recognition of just how dependent the wealth of western countries is on access to the bfreeQ resources of the poorer countries (Swanson, 1996). Among the plants threatened by these globalizing moves are many which women have managed. Such plants make up some of the few resources poor women still control. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, developed in the lead up to the World Environment Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Article 8(j),16 suggests that innovations which have been developed by particular communities or by Indigenous peoples should be given protection. Such protection must ensure open access to seed lines and other resources, as well as the payment of royalties from any wild stock removed from a region. Wild stock and genetic resources are equivalent to ore bodies that are subject to leases and payments to local, state or national governments. But while commercial exploitation may return income to communities, it should not be at the risk of extinction of particular living organisms. Just as forests and fishing grounds can be harvested to exhaustion, the harvesting of wild species should be connected to enforceable safeguards (see COICA/ UNPD, 1994, Wallach & Sforza, 1999, pp. 1250). Industrial diversity and inventiveness are at risk. The products of indigenous plant varieties are at risk. Cultural diversity is at risk. And even our legal frameworks that have an impact on environmental codes, labor rights and social justice programs, are at risk. In developing countries and former colonies, the state will have a significantly reduced role over their own economies. Where does that leave the citizens of these countries? Given the importance of the role

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women have in maintaining the stocks of wild plants, as well as of cultivated plants bred over generations, we run the risk of losing yet more of womens cultural heritage.17 Conventional economics does not sit easily with ecological concerns, since the dominant economic theories, such as neoclassical economics, assume biophysical constancy.18 Such economic theories take little store of context sensitivity, and they tend to posit a homogeneity that simply does not exist. Since biodiversity is the touchstone of the biophysical sphere, and local knowledge the most important feature in its management, I contend that an economic theory that takes no account of complexity and context is never going to adequately describe environmental systems. Further, the continuing universalizing of economic strategies for globalized markets is going to threaten the eco/social systems that most need protection from exploitation on a global scale. Just as womens role in farming, fishing and forestry is frequently not regarded as work (Slatter, 1994; Wickramasinghe, 1994), is not counted as contributing to the national economy (Nelson, 1996; Smith, 1999; Waring, 1988), so too womens knowledge is overlooked. Mogina (1996) points out that the women take their knowledge into the forest and intentionally do not share it with outsiders. And the Ngarrindjeri women of South Australia refused to speak about their knowledge in a court of law, as they did not recognize its jurisdiction.19 A great deal of womens knowledge is related to the use of plants for medicinal purposes, particularly its use in relation to womens sexuality and fertility. With bioprospectors combing Indigenous lands for new pharmaceutical breakthroughs, silence may be the best protection.20

How export harms women I argued in an earlier section that globalization divides women and that it does so through exploiting women in poor countries, especially those working in export processing zones, who are engaged in making goods which will be bought by women in rich countries, although as Enloe (1983) points out the women purchasing those goods might not be from the richer sectors of rich countries. Furthermore, the benefit of export accrues not to the poor women from

poor nations but to the rich corporations and (mostly) men of rich nations. Export is presented as a panacea for economies where deficits are greater than surpluses. Export, it is claimed, will help offset the national debt and will contribute to the countrys balance of payments. While all of this is true on paper, no consideration is taken of the inputs required to create an exportbased economy, nor the sacrifices expected of the domestic economy in order to sustain export. The dominating global ideology is one in which the brightsQ of capital take precedence over the brightsQ of citizens and the nation states which represent their needs. The push from the IMF and the World Bank up to the time of the Asian economic crisis in 1997, was that other economies in the so-called Third World would be able to emulate the growth patterns by opening their domestic markets and moving towards production for export. Dropping tariffs for Third World economies allows a greater bpenetrationQ21 of goods from North America and Western Europe. The goods imported by Third World nations are frequently non-essential items such as Coca Cola, McDonalds, branded fashion items and pharmaceuticals no longer marketable in the home markets. In return, the Third World nations export foodstuffs and raw materials for the European and North American markets, reducing the amount of arable land available for sustainable and essential local food products. Labor restructuring is also a feature of export orientation. The factory systems, previously in place in industrialized centers, were predominantly based in large cities and relied on primarily male labor, protected to some extent by oldfashioned active trade unions. The new export processing zones tend to be located outside metropolitan centers (and therefore outside support services and metropolitan infrastructures), on borders (either literally or near ports), and they rely on a labor force which is bfemale, very young, and with little or no work experienceQ (Cravey, 1998, p. 6) and is not unionized. A further badjustmentQ to the practices of the owners of capital is that in export zones, including the maquiladoras, environmental regulations are brelaxedQ, resulting in a much higher turnover of workforce due to unhealthy work practices and high rates of injury. These are the adaptable and flexible

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women, who have bless disposable income, spending more on transportation and food than non-maquiladora householdsQ (Cravey, 1998, p. 14). Their homes are often temporary, the extreme of this is represented by bhousesQ made of cardboard boxes (Foreign Correspondent, 1998). The level of poverty experienced by those with jobs is not only heartbreaking, but breaks all the promises of a better life propounded by the purveyors of globalization. Free trade zones and export processing zones are likely to increase in number under an international agreement such as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). These zones are specially designated economic areas where multinational companies can produce, unfettered by regulations on work practices, taxation or environmental controls. The enclaves are open only to those people who work there, guarded by security services and frequently surrounded by high fences. They are the work version of the walled communities.22 Safe, sterile, and all the same. But they are not necessarily safe for workers, since health and safety provisions are not abided by. Child labor is common, and high levels of toxic waste are found. The maquiladoras of Mexico and Central America, for example, are very profitable enterprises, but the living conditions of workers, who are bussed in each day are appalling.23 The corporations do not pay any taxes and do not contribute anything to the community in which they are located. Indeed, it is easily argued that they are contributing to the demise of the welfare of those living in these communities. Such conditions prevail in every country where export processing zones draw in foreign capital. Export processing zones displace large numbers of people, in some instances alienating large tracts of land (in the Philippines 40% has been set aside for leases to mining companies (Clarke & Barlow, 1997, pp. 100101). Tax holidays are offered to investors,24 local environmental laws are unenforceable, and labor unions are generally illegal. The host country government distances itself from all regulation of activities in export processing zones, trading the health of the people for the investment of foreign capital. The increased inputs required by building the infrastructure for the use of foreign capital outweighs the profit made from activities within them.25 With women making up the highest proportion of workers in these zones, precisely because they are flexible,

young and cheap, it is women on whom this side of globalization is having such a significant negative impact.

Globalized bodies The ideology of wealthy Western nations masks the existence of any of the above-mentioned problems in these countries. But globalization affects each and every person. The Internet has become an instant source of global communication situated either in our workplaces or in our homes. Our bodies have become globalized whether we are impoverished or wealthy. Among the impoverished, prostitution has become a major site of oppression. Philippine activist and writer, Rosca (1998), citing official figures, posits that the trade in women is the third most lucrative criminal activity, after the arms and drug trades.26 Farida Akhter points to the prostitution of women in Bangladesh where coercive population control policies have resulted in very low birth rates of girls. The result is prostitution of women into those areas for the single purpose of having children. The women have no rights, they do not learn the language, they cannot own property (Akhter, 2003a). There is an interesting intersection in the global economy between the international mobility of elites and the increasing availability of women. The World Sex Guide Home Page has a header: bWhere do you want to fuck today?Q (Hughes, 1999, p. 159). Like the lands the colonizers acquired so cheaply, and like the bioprospectors of the 1990s, mobile men want to pick up women wherever they are. They can even find out about the local conditions, and like the other prospectors,27 report back to their colleagues over the Internet. Donna Hughes points out that: bThis economic and electronic globalization has meant that women are increasingly bcommoditiesQ to be bought, sold, traded and consumedQ (Hughes, 1999, p. 158). And not only in domestic markets. Women are also export commodities (Akhter, 2003b, p. 5) as trafficked brides (Hughes, 1999, p. 168 ff), as a cash crop (Hughes, 1999, p. 167), generating income to pay foreign debt (cited in Hughes, 1999, p. 167) at the recommendation of the UN, the World Bank and the International Labor Organization (ILO).

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Although it may appear that bodies are very different from farming and factories, many of the same principles are applied to womens bodies. Governments have not been slow in recognizing this and as Raymond (1998, p. 2) points out, in 1998 Belize bRecognized prostitution. . .[as] a gender-specific form of migrant labor that serves the same economic functions for women as agricultural work offers to men, and often for better pay.Q Women from the Philippines are bexportedQ as domestic workers to Japan and Saudi Arabia where they are often subjected to violence while living and working in conditions without rights. Like the violence endured by the women in the maquiladoras, the violence against domestic workers and prostituted women is sometimes extreme. In Italy in 1999 alone, 189 prostitutes were killed. Women trafficked from countries such as Nigeria bare often starved, subjected to domestic servitude, tortured or raped into acquiescenceQ (Olaniyi, 2003, p. 50). In recent years, research on the effects of abuse and sexual violation have provided new insights. Lepa Mladjenovitch (Copelan, 1994, p. 202) describes this as being b. . . homeless in her own bodyQ. This phrase that describes dislocation from the self, is an important clue. Just as the local is important in issues around land and biodiversity, the personal, the connection with the body, the place, the space, is important close to home: in the way in which we perceive the body, the way we use it, the way we inhabit ourselves. Dislocations are a signal that something is wrong. And they are a signal in many contexts. Being bhomeless in the bodyQ, is a signal of psychic dissociation. Geographical displacement through exile or refugee status is a signal that something is wrong. I suggest that any strand of feminism, including any represented as bcorporeal feminismQ that takes up dislocation as a positive attribute has major problems. Corporeal feminism without the body is like the seed which can produce only sterile seeds,28 or the knowledge stolen from Indigenous people, now without context and reproduced in the laboratories of pharmaceutical companies for sale around the world. Bodilessness in cyberspace is the ultimate in export, an extreme experience commodified and sold to those who have everything. To risk losing our

autonomy, losing our knowledge of the bodily experience, even if distorted by prevailing cultural norms, is too much to lose and it plays into the hands of the globalizers.29

The raw material of globalization Globalization and its attendant ideologies of homogenization, increased shareholder profit, free flow of capital, increased inputs and export orientation are having an impact on women in vastly different settings. In farming, womens crops are marginalized and cash crops that are less nutritious are grown for the bAlmighty Foreign ExchangeQ (Nwapa, 1986, p. 86). Alongside this, womens knowledge of the environment is either overlooked or capitalized on by bioprospectors, once again ensuring that if the resources are sold back to the community from whence they came, it will be at a profit. Women are used up, turned over at a high rate under conditions that threaten their future wellbeing. In the atopic zone of cyberspace, women are commodified once again. In the trade in women through prostitution and trafficking, it is womens bodies that are the raw material, to be picked up by mobile prospectors and discarded after the use by date has passed. That postmodern feminists should then propose a disembodied and fragmented approach to bcorporeal feminismQ is a new way of participating within the dominant ideology of free markets, free flowing capital, and global exploitation. Although it is clear that both women and men are affected by the movements of global capital, it is my contention that the impact on women is greater, and that this links to the ways in which women have traditionally worked, and to the new ways in which womens work practices have been appropriated, dislocated and commodified. Flexibility is appropriated in the maquiladoras, womens knowledge is appropriated for pharmaceutical developments. Womens farming practices and bodily experiences are dislocated. And in each case, the application of capital creates a new commodity. There can be no question that feminist challenges to globalization are needed. As feminists, it is imperative that we think up alternatives, that we be innovative and creative, as we have been in our

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resistances to the forces of power in the past. This is a challenge that we all need to take up. What follows is an outline of Wild Politics. It is intended as a starting point, and as an antidote to the allpervasive globalization talk of the beginning of the millennium.

Wild politics: Toward a Bio/Diverse future My analysis of globalization highlights a series of patterns that emerge when one looks deeply into the processes involved in its spread. Globalization is not a development that could easily have arisen from within societies with different features. It is a distinct outgrowth of western capitalist and patriarchal systems that is manifested in the salient features which characterize the global economic system. Challenges to globalization have come from many quarters. My focus is on critiques based on feminist, ecological and Indigenous insights. The attribute of connection is what distinguishesand unitesthese three movements for me and makes them powerful challengers of the dominant culture. Following on from Morgan (1990, p. 51), it is disconnection that characterizes not only patriarchy, but also globalization. Disconnection is structured into the system of neoclassical economics. It is disconnected from the world, or as Ida Dominijanni puts it, it is bimmunization from contact with othersQ (2003, p. 2). It pays little attention to the relationships between economic players, including relationships of power, knowledge, access to resources and the like. Disconnection from the biophysical world and from land also characterizes industrial and biotechnological farming systems, a system currently undergoing huge expansion through the proliferation of agribusiness, aquaculture and plantation forestry corporations. Not only do corporate industrial and biotechnological farming industries pay scant attention to sustainability, they also regard every failure of the environment as a new business opportunity. So land affected by salinity opens the way for salt-resistant crops; the Kyoto Protocol opens the way for carbon trading by companies such as Toyota who are investing in fastgrowing GM trees, allowing them to trade double the number of carbon credits rather than attending to emissions problems (Langelle, 2001).

Disconnection is structured into urban environments, and the architecture and transport systems reflect the overwhelming importance of cars with entertainment, shopping and sporting venues widely separated from one another. In the global economy, work is disconnected, dislocated and dehumanized. It matters little whether people are employed, unemployed or over-employed, disconnection still holds sway. Continuous war, free trade agreements and a host of new multilateral agreements based on universalizing western systems of thought are becoming the final arbiters of what is and is not possible in the world (Hawthorne, 2003c). These agreements affect cleaners, farmers, women in export zones, trafficked women, refugees, the chronically ill and disabled, as well as the poor and the unemployablewhatever national or indigenous group they belong to. I propose a new politics, wild politics, one which signals a culture whose inspiration is biodiversity. I have used the word wild because it brings together a range of possibilities for a developing politics. In genetics, the term bwild typesQ refers to unregulated genetic structures. It is a characteristic shared by most members of a species under bnatural conditionsQ. This commonality is also the source of our diversity. Diversity, unconstrained by human interference, is critical to the continuing biological diversity of the planet. The idea that culture has inspiration emerges from the work of Marimba Ani (2000). She identifies inspiration as one of a triad of forces that shape culture. Alongside inspiration are the logos of culture and the way in which thought is culturally structured. Ani traces how institutions and ideological approaches develop out of these structures. The first concept, asili , is what she calls the logos of a culture (p. xxv). It is the seed at the center of a culture, its driving force, or the bgerminating matrixQ (p. 498). It is the ideological stance that makes sense of the behaviors of the people in the culture, and of its major institutions and creations, and the kind of cultural ethic supported by various rewards and sanctions. Law, religion and worldview emerge from the chrysalis of the asili . In Western culture, the asili is characterized by separation and universalismwhat I have named disconnection. Implicit in the notion of separation is

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dividing the world from the person. So there is bthe EuropeanQ and bthe otherQ, there is bmanQ and bnatureQ, there is btruthQ and bfalsehoodQ. Such division and dislocation lead to the systematic negation of the existence of bthe otherQ and the redefinition of bthe otherQ as having as its sole purpose to serve the desires and needs of bmanQ (European man). Universalism extends this separation, and applies the same cultural logic to all people everywhere as if all contexts were the same. On this principle, bas people become more brationalQ, they become more buniversalQ (p. 512). Indeed, the entire idea of liberal democracy is based on an ethic of sameness and equality. And although this idea has led to some degree of bfreedomQ, it has done so most effectively in those cultures that are culturally part of the European world. But within that world, those who have lost out in the equality stakes are those who fall outside the European culture: Africans, Indigenous peoples, gypsies, borientalsQ,30 as well as women, the poor, the disabled, lesbians, and gays. Universalism implies that context is irrelevant, and that all people strive to become a part of, be assimilated into, Western European culture (Dominijanni, 2003). The normative status of European culture is what drives the strategies of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and a host of other international bdevelopmentQ projects. It is also what drives the three major unethical and illegal trades: in arms, in people (refugees, slavery and trafficking for prostitution), and in drugs. Ani goes on to describe the construction of thought forms and practices within European culture. She uses the term utamawazo (pp. 1415) to describe bculturally structured thoughtQ (p. xxv). Utamawazo bis structured by ideology and bio-cultural experienceQ (p. 15). It creates cultural authority and explains the ways in which different cultural perspectives come about. Her third concept, utamaroho (pp. 1517) is what she characterizes as the inspiration of a culture, its ethos, its emotional responses. Utamaroho can be thought of as the spirit of the culture. Ani argues that the utamaroho , or inspiration, of European culture is domination. She suggests that domination is carved into all of the structures of European culture. It is present in every institution and in every sanctioned behavior, especially in those which dispossess bthe

otherQ or which offer a means of control over nature, land and resources. Ani critiques the way in which western culture has been imposed on peoples all around the world and made out to be a higher and more evolved form of bcivilizationQ, thereby justifying the wholesale destruction or appropriation of languages and other aspects of culture. The inspiration of wild politics is biodiversity. An appeal to biodiversity allows one to systematically weigh up whether any action or behavior or way of seeing the world results in the possibility of long-term sustainability of the world. Watson in 1984, in a talk on bAboriginal Women and FeminismQ, commented that for Aboriginal people in Australia the future extends as far forward as the past. In that case, she said, we have a 40,000-year plan. Such a long-term view is part of a vision of a world based on wild politics. Wild politics is the view that diversity is central to the existence of life, to the sustenance of the planet, and to the health of human society. Biodiversity implies activity and participation, as opposed to disconnected domination. The bwild typeQ in the genetic sense cannot be genetically modified, for to do so results in it no longer being a bwild typeQ. Resistance to appropriation is structured into the philosophy of wild politics. Biodiversity takes account of each and every player in a system, no matter how small. Ecologically speaking, the microorganisms in the soil are as important as the peak predators. The system of globalization rewards only the peak predators. Indeed, interconnectedness is central to a system based on biodiversity. No part of the whole can be changed without it affecting every other part, nor can biodiversity be easily reversed. Such a view is anathema to the biotechnology industry that would have us believe that humanity can constantly intervene in and control nature (including biodiversity) without any concern for consequences. In a world enlivened by wild politics, work could become an activity that leaves the world a richer place, in much the same way that the earthworm, by aerating the soil through which it passes, leaves the soil enriched. If bbiodiversity [were] the logic of productionQ (Shiva, 1993, p. 146), the nature of production would change. Export processing zones would be unthinkable. Inhuman wages and working conditions would be counterproductive. Biotechnol-

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ogy would not fill the spaces of previous technological and social failures; instead, self-sustaining systems could be developed, systems which contribute to the community rather than leading to social, cultural and economic impoverishment. In such a world, trade would not cease. And consumption would take place as a means of generating relationship rather than profit. The international rules of trade and the dynamics of negotiation would need to be overhauled, and the language of equal access changed to reflect equitable outcomes. The actions of the G21 nations could be seen as a first step in this approach.31 If the wild were the driving force of culture, the asili , the world would function in very different ways. In this new world, biodiversity would become the inspiration for the culture, the defining spirit, or what Ani calls utamaroho . This spirit would result in very different behaviors and institutions at both local and global levels, and the creation of a particular kind of thought, or utamawazo . It would result in a very different relationship with the world, one that would make it difficult to destroy land by mining, bombing, industrial farming or commercial development, all of which are predicated on profit and disrespect. With relationship considered more important than profit, there would be great reluctance to exploit simply for short-term gain. It would be against the culture. In a world of wild politics, it would not be possible to develop and market terminator seeds, GMOs, molecular colonization, biotechnologies and reproductive technologies which violate womens bodies, since these would be perceived as deeply destructive. The vicious cycle of technological failure followed by a business opportunity followed by yet another technological fix/failure would be broken. These and other cycles of violence would be replaced by a system which focuses instead on life-oriented outcomes, on systems which are premised on a germinating matrix, asili , wild type. In a world enlivened by wild politics, members of the diversity matrix are the hope for the future. Within wild politics are new ways of thinking, and in this quest for new behaviors and institutions are also the seeds of a future which will hold dear to the driving force of wildness, and a politics that grows out of this longing. What I hope for is a world filled with richness, texture, depth, and meaning. I want diversity with all

its surprises and variety. I want an epistemological multiversity which values the context and real-life experiences of people. I want a world in which relationship is important and reciprocity is central to social interaction. I want a world that can survive sustainably for at least 40,000 years. I want a wild politics.

Acknowledgements My gratitude goes to Farida Akhter, Maria Mies, Gena Corea, Diane Bell, Prue Hyman, Coleen Clare and Renate Klein for inspiration and engagement with the issues raised in this paper.

Endnotes
1 GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was established in 1944 along with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). GATT was subsequently dissolved and replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO). 2 500 years is also the estimated time it will take women to catch up and earn equal pay with men, if the current rate of progress remains stable. 3 bThe richest fifth of the worlds population, by nation, now earns over 60 times more than the poorest fifthQ (UNEP, 1992; cited in Daly and Goodland, 1994, p. 85). 4 For further reading on the issue of women and food security see, for example, Allen (1996), George (1996), Seager (1997), and South Asian Workshop on Food Security (1996). 5 The G21 countries are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Venezuela. The G21 argued that the profligate subsidizing of farmers in the rich world has led to increased poverty in their countries which represents around half the worlds population and two thirds of its farmers. The four West African countriesBenin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Malispecifically targeted US subsidies of cotton farmers as unfair trade practices. 6 In the area of globalization, the research conducted by Asian women has become an important foundation for any feminist critique of globalization. See, for example, Akhter (1990), Ho (1998), Matsui (1999), Mitter (1986), Roy (1999), Shiva (1989), Sittirak (1999), and Wickramasinghe (1994) among many others. 7 For two interesting discussions of the ways in which feminism and Indigenous knowledge can intersect, see Bell (1998) and Smith (1999). 8 People with disabilities also suffer high levels of poverty, as do any people who belong to minorities, despised or marginalized groups. In all of these groups, however, women are usually more affected by poverty than are men.

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S. Hawthorne / Womens Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 243259 with. Teaiwa (1997) provides a critique from the point of view of the Banaban people. There are, of course, parallels here in the way in which women were deprived of medicinal knowledge in Europe during the witch-hunts of the so-called bRenaissanceQ. And the globalizing of womens bodies through the trade in reproductive medicine which accompanies IVF, surrogacy, and international adoptions (Klein, 1989; Raymond, 1994). 21 I dislike the term bmarket penetrationQ, but I use it intentionally here because of its connotations of violation and violence. 22 This is a relatively recent phenomenon in contemporary cities. They exist in Los Angeles and Houston. I am reminded of an Eric Clapton song I heard in the 1970s about the effects of the plague on a 17th-century city. Fear, however, kept the walled inhabitants still starving inside their walls well after the plague had vanished from the among the poorest who lived outside its walls. For a view on cities which uses diversity as its organizational principle, see Rogers (1997, pp. 2563). 23 See also Mitter (1986, pp. 4354) who describes the working conditions for women in Export Processing Zones in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. 24 On a trip to Bangladesh in 1993, traveling on Bengal Airlines, there were advertisements in the airline magazine informing potential investors that they would receive a 10-year tax holiday. 25 Mitter (1986, p. 68) points out that from 1973 to 1982 in the Philippines total profit from the Export Processing Zones was $82 million, but the cost of inputs was $192 million. This is not an isolated case. 26 For recent figures on the US, see Hughes (1999, pp. 176181). 27 The term prospector has some interesting resonances. A prospector is one who makes a claim, and is associated with claiming parcels of land, ore bodies or goods with prospects. A prospectus is an account showing the forthcoming likely profits of a venture as a means of obtaining support. As a noun, a prospect is a view of the landscape from any position; and when applied to time it is a view which looks toward the future. 28 The so-called bterminator geneQ developed by Monsanto, and now cancelled due to reduced share-market prices. 29 I am not suggesting a conspiracy theory here, although it is tempting. Rather I am pointing to the fact that those in favor of globalization have parallel interests, not competing ones as the rhetoric would suggest. 30 I use this term intentionally, bearing in mind Saids (1995) critique of orientalism. 31 For other views on some alternative future structures, see Bennholdt-Thomsen, Faraclas and von Werlof (2001) and Monbiot (2003).

The maquiladoras of Mexico are a variation on the Export Processing Zones of other developing countries. Originally restricted to foreign investment in the border region between the US and Mexico, between 1970 and 1972 the system was opened up to enable foreign investors to establish their businesses anywhere in the country. They receive exemption from customs duties and a host of other benefits (see Mitter, 1986, pp. 4143). 10 For a discussion of this, see Hawthorne (2002, pp. 20818). 11 For a discussion of the impact of multilateral trade and the Convention on Biodiversity and on Traditional Resource Rights, see Hawthorne (2002, pp. 32430 and pp. 34959). 12 Among Indigenous and minority peoples around the world, the most controversial of these programs is the Human Genome Diversity Project, nicknamed by activists as the Vampire Project. In 1995, the US government bissued itself a patent on a foreign citizenQ (cited in Horvitz, 1996, p. 34). The foreign citizen was a member of the Hagahai tribe in Papua New Guinea. Similar cases have been reported concerning cell lines from Solomon Islanders, and an Indian woman living in Panama (Horvitz, 1996, p. 35). Debra Parry, an advocate for Indigenous peoples, herself a Pauite from Nevada, says: bNow its colonialism on a molecular level. . . For us, genes are our ancestry, our heredity and our future generations. They are not to be tampered withQ (Horvitz, 1996, p. 34). For an excellent discussion of the issues, see Awang (2000). 13 It would be a false universalization in Fukuyamas sense, in that corporate freedom bto pursue their selfish private interest is absoluteQ (Fukuyama, 1992, p. 203) is a perversion of the concept of freedom. The universalization of trade rights does not increase the freedom of the poorest individual, therefore it is not universal even in theory. For a short critique of universalization, see Dominijanni (2003). 14 One example is a company called Shaman Pharmaceuticals who bioprospect native flora and fauna for previously unexploited drugs (Lemonick, 1995, p. 51). 15 The Intellectual Property Committee is the US organization involved, and it has 12 members: Bristol Myers, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Monsanto, Pfizer, Rockwell, and Warner (Shiva, 1997, p. 81). 16 The Convention on Biodiversity is reproduced in full as an Appendix in Shiva, 1993, pp. 161184). 17 For discussions of womens knowledge and cultural heritage, see Akhter (1990), Bell (1998), Mogina (1996), Tuhiwai Smith (1999), and Wickramasinghe (1994). 18 Three useful references which outline both neoclassical principles, and provide either an environmentalist or feminist approach to the subject, are Goudy and OHara (1995), Hyman (1994, pp. 5560), and Waring (1988). 19 Bell (1998) documents the battle fought by a group of Indigenous women from the Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia in seeking to protect their culture from developers who want to build a bridge to connect Hindmarsh Island to the mainland. For a discussion on clashes of knowledge systems in respect to law, see especially pp. 361417. 20 Although the Body Shop is widely admired for its challenges to mainstream business practices, appropriation of Indigenous peoples knowledge is something they are yet to come to terms

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