In this unit our focus returns to the local community, but here we emphasize the local community in the global context.  We examine communities that appear to be alienated from the world of global trade and industry but actually are tightly linked to global processes. The readings highlight small, South Asian communities whose self-sufficiency is being threatened by the interdependent global economy and by centralized national governments.  The global linkages that enmesh these local communities include those created by the Green Revolution, those evident in industrial disasters such as that at Bhopal, and the linkages involved in large-scale development projects such as dams.  These three types of linkages are explored further in this unit.

Perhaps the few people in the United States and Western Europe who can best recall belonging to such self-sufficient communities are Native Americans, the Inuit of Canada, and the Laplanders of Arctic Scandinavia. Most of us cling to an idealized myth of village life in which the linkages between a small village or town and other places are minimized.  Even the earliest colonists of North America, however, were defined by their place within the interdependent imperial economies that transformed Europe.

Morally, the self-sufficient village possesses enormous appeal. Fifty years ago the major thinker in this domain was Gandhi, who taught the world non-violence as he led India to free itself from British control and who based his teaching on the moral need for communal self-government in every sphere -- economic as well as political. His ideology lives on in South Asian communities currently fighting to preserve their self-sufficiency, communities where women play a leading rather than a subordinate role in the fight against the westernizing of local cultures.

These moral teachings come at a high price, however, particularly in the eyes of those who wish to maintain the material standard of living that the interdependent global economy offers its beneficiaries. By comparison, life in self-sufficient village communities looks terribly stunted and poor.

 The integrated global economy appears to benefit everyone. Inherently expansive, it presses for ever-widening markets to absorb the production of developed countries and of newly industrialized countries (NICs) like Taiwan or South Korea.  But in many places this newly created wealth has done little to benefit the large portion of the population who owns no land and has little but its labor. Furthermore the majority may find itself pressured into giving up valued elements of its own culture while having to adopt others’ cultural traits it finds unpalatable.

The readings for this unit can be grouped into two sets. Those in the first set -- Barber (1992), Stavrianos (1981), and Dak (1989) -- concern the Green Revolution.  The second group of readings -- Gupta (1991), Morse and Berger (1992), and Thukral and Sakate (1992) -- reviews  the positive and negative effects of technology. The cases of Bhopal and Sarovar detail the grim realities of what can go wrong when First World nations administer development projects in the Third World. The case of Baliraja, by contrast, demonstrates how development projects, when initiated and monitored within the local community, can be extremely successful.  These readings are summarized briefly below.

Barber, Benjamin.: “Jihad vs. McWorld”
Benjamin Barber is professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, where he developed a research center on the culture and politics of democracy. This essay argues that the world is being pulled in contradictory directions by two forces, parochial hatreds and universalizing markets.  Are these forces, as Barber suggests, anti-democratic? Do you agree with the remedy he proposes (borrowing from the Green movement), "Think globally, act locally"?

Stavrianos, L.S.: “Multinational Corporations and the Green Revolution in the Third World.”
The Green Revolution involved the transformation of agriculture in Third World countries through new strains of food crops, along with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and other more capital-intensive agricultural technologies developed in the laboratories of First World corporations and research centers. While many see the Green Revolution as a beneficial use of science and technology in order to feed the world's poor, historian L.S. Stavrianos takes a more critical view. Stavrianos sees the Green Revolution as creating international markets for U.S. multinationals interested in selling agricultural machines and chemicals. Within Third World countries, Stavrianos claims, the Green Revolution has benefited a minority of large and wealthy landowners who can afford the machinery, chemicals, and irrigation that allow them to get the most out of the new seed varieties.  These farmers tend to grow cash crops for export in order to make a profit on the world market. As they have expanded, they have displaced small-scale peasant farmers growing subsistence crops that fed their families; these displaced farmers are then often forced into urban slums and shanty towns where they join the increasing masses of the impoverished and unemployed. Was the Green Revolution, then, on balance, a good thing for the Third World?

Dak, T.M. : “Green Revolution and Social Change:  Some Reflections”
T.M. Dak is an associate professor of Sociology at Haraa Agricultural University in Hisar, India. Dak provides an account of the history of the Green revolution in India.  He also discusses associated social changes and evaluates the results.

Gupta, Ashis:  “Bhopal, The Forgotten Tragedy”
Gupta describes and analyzes the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster both from a "local" Indian and a recently updated (1991) perspective. Can Bhopal be viewed as a local community "victim?" What is the connection between Bhopal and the Green Revolution?  Has this tragedy been forgotten so quickly because it represents a failure of the predominant international economic system?

Morse and Berger:  Sardar Sarovar
The members of this review included Bradford Morse, a former U.S. Congressman and the former Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, Thomas Berger, a Canadian lawyer known for his work on human rights, indigenous peoples, and the environment; Donald Gamble, a Canadian engineer whose expertise is in environmental policy and water development issues; and Hugh Brody, a British-educated anthropologist, now living in Canada, who has done studies of indigenous peoples and land use areas in northern North America including an impact study on the Alaska pipeline.

The reading encompasses three short chapters from this report. The first, the letter to the President of the World Bank, represents the actual document provided to the World Bank administration, summarizing and highlighting the conclusions of this review. Chapter 1 details the origins of the Sardar Sarovar project. Pay special attention to the roots and the escalation of this conflict. Finally, Chapter 5 is about the indigenous people in this valley.

Thukral and Sakate:  “Baliraja: A People's Alternative”
This chapter is based on a study done by Sakate, a member of the faculty at Rajshri Shahu college, Kolhapur, India. Thukral, the co-author, is the project coordinator at the Multiple Action Research Group (MARG) in New Delhi, India. This reading presents a contrast to the case of Sardar Sarovar. In the case of Baliraja, the local people initiated the project based upon the farmers' need for water, which had become scarce because of repeated droughts. Besides the local initiative, participation, and use, also note that the project was much smaller in scale than Sardar Sarovar and that water was distributed equally to all.