Using the Future to Explore Visions of Globalization

Sohail Inayatullah ¹

  "Today's Utopian is Tomorrow's Nightmare,” ²

"We shape the future, and thereafter it shapes us.” ³

GLOBALIZATION AND THE FUTURE  

This essay reviews globalization and is alternative futures in the aftermath of events of September 11th 2001. It does this drawing from the epistemological and methodological focus of futures studies. Thus the future is visited in a disciplined fashion with the hope of moving away from idiosyncratic "how I see the future" discourses.

This means seeing the future not only in temporal space as forward time, that is, we are unable to remember the future, as we can the past, but to see the future as an asset, a resource.

THE FUTURE AS A TOOL

In this sense there are a range of ways the future can be used. These include:

(1)   Strategic -this is essentially about using the future for competitive purposes, gaining special access to what the future will be like. Strategy is rational based, one thinks this through, indeed, strategy is considered central to nation-craft and commerce.

(2)   Educational – what are the futures of globalization, how might globalization transform because of 9/11 are leading questions?. This is a discussion of competing globalisations. Strategy is less important than educating, helping others and understanding the history of globalization, how it has become hegemonic, and what the alternatives might be.

(3)   Capacity development. The future ceases to be something out there but rather is a resource organizations and movements can use to address the problem of the present and the possibility of the future. Capacity building is deeper than education as action or consciousness transformation is assumed to follow. Moreover, while education may be private, aligned to what one personally learns, capacity building is group or collective based.

(4)   Memetic Change. Memes- here being reductionist -function similar to genes. They become defining ideas. Globalization qua economic rationalism has become defining in the last decade, part of the challenge is to develop (and here not in conferences solely but throughout the full sphere of where we learn) different notions of globalization or use the resources of other linguistic traditions to develop new compelling images of the future. Certainly, Glo-calization is one. Khalifate is another though perhaps less appreciated outside the Islamic world. Memes that have begun the process of legitimation but died quick deaths include "the end of history" and “the clash of civilizations”. This does not mean they have disappeared but rather in the cycle of gaining full legitimation they have fallen short.

(5)   Emergence- is about qualitative shifts in awareness and action. Emergence derives from complexity theory, that is, that organizations, indeed, systems, change almost irrespective of strategy. They change at the edge of order and chaos, at spaces in between. Emergence cannot be planned for, but conditions for emergence are possible.

(6)   Microvita change. This notion is borrowed from the Indian philosopher, guru, activist, P.R. Sarkar. He considers microvita change fundamental to emergence and creating different futures. Microvita function as wave and particle but more important as mind and matter. Thus, microvita -or loosely, positive energy -can create better societies. They can be harnessed through meditation, good works, clean environment, good thoughts -essentially an epistemological and "scientific" framework for understanding and “ scientific” framework for understanding and creating a more spiritual feature.

Thus, as we begin to think of a better future, we need to contextualize this in terms of how we use the future. Rephrasing McCluhan, we shape the future, and thereafter it shapes us. And, of course, this is why we need to remember, Nandy's comment that utopia have doors of entry but few have exits. Thus, the use of the future as well begins to touch upon achieving an alternative future.

THE FUTURES WORKSHOP- a small step forward

The future thus can be seen in technical terms as forecast, or as I have argued above, as a resource for transformation. Within this framework, there are a series of efforts, both small and big, that can be used to create alternative futures. At the small level, the method par excellence is the futures workshops. These consist of workshops where a series of steps are followed to achieve a pathway forward. These consist of the following.

(1)    Creating a shared history -this is crucial as, first, by remembering the past, we can understand what part of the future is known, as well, we can collectively share what has happened -the stories, the facts and the meanings we give to them

(2)    Mapping the future- what are the main economic, demographic, technological trends that are likely to impact us?

(3)   Unpacking the future -while the map gives us the likely future, it does not probe in depth how the future is constructed. Who owns the future? How is the future constructed across different ways we know, for example, from a fact base (rise in Asian and African populations), the systemic base (the relationship to population growth and resource depletion) and the worldview base (ie is population a problem or is it our ecological footprint, or is it lack of security in older age, or is it lack of women's power, or ...) and the myth base (that is, what is the underlying myth or metaphor of the future -is it fear of the other, fear by the West of the teaming masses).

(4)   Developing alternative scenarios. Once the future is unpacked, part of finding a way out of the current predicament is developing alternatives to the present. These could be in the form of what-if questions or more foundational archetypes of scenarios. There are four.

·        Continued growth -the present continues but more of it

·        Collapse- the limits are reached (environmental, population, imagination, equity)

·        Return to imagined past ( a simpler time prior to current problems, or an earlier utopia as the Medina state for wahabi muslims or Ram Rajya or extremist hindus or the 1950s and 1960s for the West -when there was growth without the social movements that emerged from that era)

·        Transformation. This can be of two types -technological or spiritual. For the world system, this could mean a move to artificial societies or a move to a planetary gaia of civilizations

 

ARCHETYPAL SCENARIOS FRAMEWORK

 

TRANSFORMATION   (Technological or Values Shift)                                        Growth                                Collapse     RETURN TO IMAGINED PAST

   

(5)   From a discussion of the cost of each future -not merely the cost of creating it, but the epistemological price -we move to a vision of the future. The preferred. This is crucial as this can awaken hope; hope that is often repressed by the realism of today, the reality of politics as power and economics as competitive survival.

(6)   Once a vision is reached, then one can backcast the future, that is, what needed to have happen to realize this preferred future. From here, action learning steps forward can begin. This is crucial, a grand strategic plan is not necessary, rather small steps are required. The march forward of creating a better future needs small victories, small realizations, each becoming a source of strength. A strategic plan merely reinforces the power of planners and instrumental rationality, often reinscribing what led to the crisis in the first place.

Essentially the futures workshop becomes a small step forward. It works well because it is glo-cal in its approach. It is global in that an aspirational vision emerges and local in that an overall program – a world utopia – is not the goal, but realizable steps. These steps than return us full circle to the shared history, that is, a shared future begins to be created.

As a case in point , in 1996 at an Islamic Development Bank meeting in Kuala Lampur comprised of muslim economists, bankers, scholars, and students after a three day process of content on the future, Zia Sardar and myself led the group through a visioning and backcasting workshop. The outcome was a the following vision for the ummah:⁴  

• self-reliant ecological communities
• electronically linked khalifa, politically linked
• gender partnership -full participation of females
• an alternative non-capitalist economics that takes into account the environment and the poor
• the ummah as world community as guiding principle based on tolerance
• leadership that embodies both technical and moral knowledge

This then became an organizing vision of the future, and certainly can be seen as an antidote to the Bin Laden Wahabi vision which consists of the following

• World government under a wise Caliph
• Islamic socialism
• Shariat Law
• Father as ruler
• Non-muslims excluded from decision-making

While both are pan-islamic, indeed, globalist, searching for alternatives to modernity and Western hegemony, the former is more partnership based, more glo-cal oriented compared to the latter. The role of history is far more foundational in the latter as well searching for an imagined past. The West is seen as the house of evil, with the ends justifying the means.

This should be contrasted with the Bush Doctrine. It is based on a vision of the USA as fulfilling God's will, as an "empire" with heart. However, the key is that the basic universal principles apply to others but not necessarily to the USA, and certainly not consistently.

• USA hegemony with global governance when it threatens the West
• Capitalism as the only economic system (open borders for trade when it suits)
• National law and nation-states as primary
• State has hegemony on violence
• Father as ruler but Gender cooperation
• Immigration leading to innovation

And, finally these should be contrasted with the globalist techno-utopian vision of the future, which can be described in its extreme as the right to plastic surgery and an airplane for each person. Generally, the vision is of endless travel and shopping, and a global society where we find fulfilment through all our desires being met. It is the western vision of paradise.

More specifically, this scenario of the future can be defined as:

• Genetic Prevention, Enhancement and Recreation-New Species, Germ Line Engineering and the End of ‘Natural’ Procreation.
• Soft and Strong Nano-technology- End of Scarcity and Work.
• Space Exploration-Promise of ET Contact or at Least, Species Continuation in case an Asteroid hits Earth.
• Artificial Intelligence and ultimately the Rights of Robots-development of personal artificial bots.
• Life Extension and Aging-Gerontocracy and the End of Youth Culture.
• Internet and the Global Brain.

The main notion behind this perspective is that technology can solve every problem

  WEIGHTS

But lest we become too fascinated by the drivers creating the future, it is important to consider weights, or structures that impede notions of progress, the heaviness of history, if you will.. When discussing the future of globalization, or the future of anything, it is crucial to envisage the forces creating this future. I use the futures triangle as an organizing method. 

The triangle consists of three dimensions- the pulls, the pushes and the weights. 

The pulls at this stage in our history consists of: globalization qua capiltalism (freedom of capital, realist strategic discourse, USA hegemony, progress via science and technology); sustainability to gaia of civilizations (triple bottom line accounting and approaches, that is prosperity plus social justice plus environmental sustainability; ecology of cultures and nations, identity becoming softer and more and more fluid and planetary, the emergence of global governance); collapse (nuclear disasters, endless wars, terrorism, coups, weak states) and Artificial societies (the victory of genomics and the geneticist worldview followed by nano-technology; world governance through bureaucracies; new life forms created). The pull has been the notion of empire, coming in the form of the Islamic caliphate, ie wahibism writ large, the sultan with the mullah defining morality and strategy.

The pushes are many and best developed at endless UN conferences -population growth, the internet revolution, the genomics revolution, values shift in OECD nations; the rise of the sustainability movement; poverty, for example.

GLOBALIZATION FUTURES

 

COMPETING PULLS OF THE FUTURE

REALIST NATION-STATE

GAIAN

ARTIFICIAL SOCIETIES

COLLAPSE

PUSH OF THE FUTURE                                          WEIGHT

 

GENOMICS                                                   ?                      GENDER

 

GLOBALIZATION                                                                 VARNA

 

AGING                                                                                    LEADERSHIP

 

NET                                                                                         SHAPE

 

RISE OF ASIAN AND AFRICAN                                         CLASS

 

POPULATIONS                                                                     HEGEMON

 

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES                                                EPISTEME

But there are deep weights as well. These are around a host of vectors indeed those that define the shortcomings of globalization. I develop these from the works of marcohistorians - those focused on the grand patterns of change.⁵  

These include gender - globalization hits the most vulnerable. Riane Eisler asks in any vision of the future, is it based on dominator or partnership principals? This takes a step further than merely focused on gender, male or female, or even feminine and masculine. 

From P.R. Sarkar, a number of questions can be derived. Which varna (socio-psychological class) is being privileged: worker, warrior, intellectual or capitalist?⁶ Second he asks, does the theory allow for the creation of balanced leadership that includes the characteristics of all the varnas but has a spiritual dimension, ie the sadvipra. The issue of leadership raises the question of the vanguard. Who will create the new future? Is it Toynbee's notion of the creative minority that needs the current global challenge of environmental crisis, world terrorism, or is it Weber's charismatic leader?  

Finally, from Sarkar, the notion of the shape of the future is paramount. He suggests that the vision of the future needs to move outside of the dichotomy of linear (development theories of unending progress) and cyclical (rise and fall of dynasties and civilizations) and embrace the spiral (moving forward but inclusive of the “other” the most vulnerable).

 

Along with the weights of gender and vama, Sorokin offers us the supersystem. He sees three -the sensate materialistic system; the ideational mental system and the dualistic sometimes integrated system. Which system does the vision of the future focus on? Of course, Sorokin offers two more models (the nihilistic and the unknowable) but these cannot create societies even if these are reasonable answers to the question of what is the real. Thus, is the global system that is desired to be sensate based, ideational-based or dualistic-based? 

Of course, there is Marx's class -what is the level of equity in the system? Does it favor bourgeois or proletariat? Furthering Marx is Wallerstein and Galtung both focused on core-periphery distinction. Who is in the center? Who in the periphery? Are other formulations explored? Eg, multiple centers, or a circulation of centers (borrowing from Pareto) or a tensegrity notion of Buckminister Fuller's wherein there is no particular center, all nodes are linked to each other (the emerging network model of globalization-informatics). Following this line of thinking, we can borrow Gramsci's notion of hegemony and ask: who is the hegemon in the system? Or are there no hegemons?  

This of course leads to the Foucauldian question of the episteme. This perhaps is the deepest weight. Which episteme is dominant in our preferred vision of the future? Is it still modernity? A return to tradition? Postmodernity with multiple traditions but still defined by the sensate? Or is it the transmodern? Or? 

These suggested weights -gender, varna, leadership, class, episteme -are foundational in defining which future is possible. That is, merely developing a vision is not enough, as the vision is pushed by demographic, technological and economic trends and is structured by foundational weights, which define what is possible. 

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS AND GLOBALIZATION

  While the Future Triangle is one way to explore the possibilities and preferences of the future, Casual Layered Analysis⁷ seeks to develop a vertical aspect to the future. CLA assumes four levels. The first level is the “litany” – quantitative trends, problems, often exaggerated, often used for political purposes – (globalization as free trade with benefits for consumers worldview as well as globalization as an evil which leads to horrendous inequity destroying local systems, eg) usually presented by the news media. Events, issues and trends are not connected and appear discontinuous. The litany level is the most visible and obvious, requiring little analytic capabilities. It is believed, rarely questioned.  

The second level is concerned with social causes , including economic, cultural, political and historical factors (new technologies allowing for increased trade, the important of WTO to create  the institutional grease for enhancing productivity throughout the world or alternatively new technologies allowing multinational to expand their presence thus hurting local traders with WTO giving large multinationals and larger/stronger states legal standing). This type of analysis is usually articulated by policy institutes and published as editorial pieces in newspapers or in not-quite academic journals. If one is fortunate then the precipitating action is sometimes analyzed (the fall of the communist world, failure of dependency model, or alternatively, the need for capital to expand, for example). This level excels at technical explanations as well as academic analysis. The role of the state and other actors and interests is often explored at this level. The data is often questioned, however, the language of questioning does not contest the paradigm in which the issue is framed. It remains obedient to it.  

The third deeper level is concerned with structure and the discourse/worldview that supports and legitimates it (capitalism, progress, Spencerian notions of a good society or alternatively, socialist notions of a fair society, coming from the indigenous, a Gaian world, the feminist, a partnership world, the liberal, Internationalization and not globalization, or the spiritual, the re-enchantment of the world, that is, the notion of planetary consciousness, for example). Discerning deeper assumptions behind the issue is crucial here as are efforts to revision the problem. At this stage, one can explore how different discourses (the economic, the religious, the cultural, for example) do more than cause or mediate the issue but constitute it, how the discourse we use to understand is complicit in our framing of the issue. Based on the varied discourses, discrete alternative scenarios can be derived here. For example, alternative scenarios of globalization can be developed that have depth: 1. The recovery of traditional notions of globalization as the planetary ecumene (social plus economic); 2. Globalization qua gaia -the ecology of civilizations in the context of the world environment 3. Glo-calization -globalization where appropriate to help consumers but as well localization as well where appropriate to ensure that traditions, local ways, local economic patterns are not destroyed just to create better linkages with the global. 4. Globalization as usa hegemony -the current likely future and 5. globalization with multiple hegemonies -that is, Europe, China, India, Australia, the USA all being political hegemons; USA being the military hegemon and multiculturalism being the cultural framework.  

The foundations for how the litany has been presented and the variables used to understand the litany are questioned at this level. 

The fourth layer of analysis is at the level of metaphor or myth. These are the deep stories, the collective archetypes, the unconscious, of often emotive, dimensions of the problem or the paradox (seeing globalization as an archetype, humanity's desire to spread its concrete allover the world; humanity's desire alternatively to connect at a deeper level; globalization as a program of homogenization; and globalization as a bouquet of flowers, for example). This level provides a gutlemotionallevel experience to the worldview under inquiry. The language used is less specific, more concerned with evoking visual images, with touching the heart instead of reading the head. This is the root level of questioning, however, questioning itself finds its limits since the frame of questioning must enter other frameworks of understanding -the mythical, for example.

This fourth level takes us to the civilizational level of identity. This perspective takes a step back from the actual future to the deeper assumptions about the future being discussed, specifically the "non-rational." For example, particular scenarios have specific assumptions about the nature of time, rationality and agency. Believing the future is like a roll of dice is quite different from the Arab saying of the future: "Trust in Allah but tie your camel" which differs again from the American vision of the future as unbounded, full of choice and opportunity. For the Confucian, choice and opportunity exist in the context of family and ancestors and not merely as individual decisions. 

Let me know further illustrate CLA first though analyzing the Palestinian suicide bomber and second through the work of Ivana Milojevic on poverty futures. 

CLA AND TERRORISM 

Merely listing problems and solutions without exploring how the solutions themselves are part of the problem and visa versa leads to failed policies. Policies do not succeed, not because we do not see the solutions, but because solutions are presented in a flat-land framework, ignoring that individuals hold different worldviews. Exploring how these different interests create certain solutions and problems thus becomes a way to unveil and unpack the present, and thus the future. 

We can see this well in discourses on terrorism. For example, stopping Palestinian suicide bombers through collective punishment, more high-tech surveillance and occupation is informed from a perspective that assumes that the sole problem is the bomber. Certainly this is the case at the litany level, but at the systemic level, it is perhaps the complex web of passes, security relations, checkposts and other political, economic and social subsystems that define Israeli and Palestinian relationships. Essentially, this is unemployment and no hope for the future. There is no agency thus suicide. As important is thus a solution that seeks to give Palestinians dignity or that allows their movement, or that ensures that the system works for everyone -that offers an economic future to the Palestinian. Thus, while the bomber is certainly a problem so is the political-economic system in which the bomber exists within. At the worldview level, at issue is the Israeli sense of being the chosen people, who must defend their homeland again evil. For the Palestinian, at the worldview level it is the notion of paradise - jihadist islam. Since there is no hope in this world -no compelling but realistic image of the future - it is to the next one aspires toward. At this level, leadership is required to undermine the sense of “Chosenness" among the Israeli and the jihadism among the Palestinian. A bright future must be offered and built with each side in this world. This means challenging or at least beginning a conversation of the worldviews of jew and muslim. Focusing on the "father" of each religion, Abraham, is certainly one way to begin this questioning. 

But, of course, far more important is the myth-metaphor level. Both sides suffer from trauma. Israeli jews from the Holocaust. Palestinian suicide bombers have all witnessed collective punishment, or the death of their parents. The trauma congeals identity, making transcendence nearly impossible. Healing and reconciliation are required as well as a new story of what it means to be Israeli or Palestinian. The antidote to trauma is transcendence, built peacefully a step at a time. Again, leadership is required here. 

What this means is that while a state of the world's future problems or issue is an excellent effort in pointing attention to the future, unless these problems address or unpack worldviews and underlying stories, they will only reinscribe the present. This is not to say the litany should be avoided. Quite the opposite. CLA seeks to move up and down levels, asking how might the litany look like through different lenses. It seeks to move beyond technocratic solutions, that is, those devised at the systemic level. As well, it seeks to move beyond the worldview to the mythic level. However, the challenge is to engage all levels. Solutions to world's issues require no less. Solving terrorism, for example, is both an issue of better intelligence to catch the criminals, as well as, creating better and safer systems (marshals on airplanes) but as well as a dialogue of worldviews. This is a dialogue between civilizations and within each civilization (eg, between wahibi and other forms of islam). Finally, it is an understanding of divergent traumas, moving to a gaian position that we are all in this together, that the terrorist is part of our existence, whether pathological or evil, it is a litany that must be dealt with at multiple levels. 

Thus, there are no simple ten or so megatrends to list and grab attention (the PowerPoint and overhead transparency view of the world). There is no list of global problems we must align the world's research institutes to. There is no simple global solution without worldview transformation. 

CLA AND POVERTY 

The following is an extensive quote of Ivana Milojevic's unpacking of poverty using CLA⁸

^“At the litany level poverty is measured only through economic and other quantitative indicators. The discourse tends to focus on the overwhelming nature of global poverty, for example, estimates that currently 53% of the world population is classified as poor and that around 3 billion of people live on less then 2US$ a day.” 

“At this level, the strategies for elevation of poverty mostly focus on the poverty relief and aid packages. The common response among the affluent is either apathy -the problem of poverty is so huge that it cannot be resolved; helplessnecss -I wish there is something I/we could do; or projected action -the government, UN or NGO's should do something! Sometimes, magical solutions, such as genetically modified rice and other crops, are also discussed.”  

“At the level of social causes, processes such as colonisation, modernisation, globalisation, capitalism, urbanisation, as well as national and international governance are discussed. Other indicators of poverty, such as access to education, health care, are included but poverty is still primarily measured through economic indicators, such as GNP and income per capita.” 

“Strategies usually include suggestions on how to increase economic growth rate or labour productivity and how to encourage foreign investment. Other suggested strategies include investments in agricultural research, education, health, creation of welfare safety net and so on.” 

“At the worldview discourse, the main debate is whether economy needs to be regulated. Libertarians and conservatives argue against any or against any significant interference into the free-market economy, and maintain that poverty can only be elevated through the free flow of capital and labour. Some also argue that the widening gap between the rich and the poor is “a natural, necessary and even desirable component and hallmark of the improvement of the human condition”⁹ That is, poverty is the normal condition of men and if the rich were not allowed to get ever richer the poor would never have any chance to improve their conditions at all. This they could do through ever- increasing access to tools of ever-increasing productivity, through acquiring advanced technology and by “jumping on the bandwagon" of the general development and economic growth that entrepreneurs create.”¹⁰  

“Left-liberals, environmentalists and socialists argue that the global Casino capitalism is directly complicit in creation of poverty where previously there was none as well as that the unregulated, “free” economy/markets is a myth. They stress that poverty is not created through production (or the lack of it) but because of the way profits are distributed. They argue that although global economic activity has grown at nearly 3% each year and doubled in size twice over the past 50 years the number of people living in absolute poverty hadn't been reduced at the same pace. In regard to the widening gap between rich and poor they argue that this indeed is a problem because in the future world where “two-thirds are poor and deprived of basics and promise, there will not be any peace and security”¹¹. Contrary to the focus only on the competitive aspects of the human nature it is the cooperation that is seen as the only possible way out. The future is seen as a collaborative enterprise in which “well-being of the poor demands on the cooperation of the rich, and the safety of the rich relies on justice for the poor””¹²  

“Discussions on this level also allow for an analysis of the ways in which the discourses themselves not only mediate issues but also constitute them. Or how discourses we use to understand poverty directly influence strategies that are being put in place. For example, if poverty is understood predominantly in terms of economic indicators, only economic measures are going to be suggested. The strategies will therefore not include measures that work against oppressive social structures that are complicit in creation and sustenance of poverty, such as, patriarchy, for example.” 

“At the myth/metaphor level deeper cultural stories are discussed. For example, in which ways western advertisement or other propaganda makes indigenous populations believe that their own culture, dress, food, or language are inferior as well as how are needs for products and lifestyles produced elsewhere created. Or, in which ways are local and global narratives creating a situation in which some become easy prey for economic exploitation by others.”

“At this level, we can see how deep beliefs, such as the belief that humans are inherently competitive and selfish, create a worldview that informs discussions that formulate policies that determine the actions (or the lack of it). Or how these actions and policies differ from those that are formed by the worldview that emphasizes the role of communication, cooperation, altruism, caring and nurturing as the main themes in human evolution.”

“At this level we can also investigate deep cultural myths and their relevance for poverty creation and elevation. For example, in the western history two basic narratives about the relationship between men and nature exist. One is the myth of “The Land of Cockaygne”, the land of milk and honey, the “golden age” where the nature provides abundant resources and the magic bowl of porridge never empties. This is the land of unlimited consumption, limitless choices, and ever increasing growth and progress. The current version is consumer based global capitalism where new wealth and products are constantly being created. This is being done both through technological and economic innovations as well as through the colonisation of nature, lands, peoples, and space."

“Another myth is that of Arcadia, where nature is bountiful but humans do not indulge themselves beyond their needs. It is the idea and the image about the harmony between humanity and nature rather then the image of domination and control of the nature by humanity so as to produce society and civilisation. Throughout European history, the Land of Cockaygne was especially popular during medieval ages and among lower classes which sought to relieve the drudgery of their everyday lives “through the pure satisfaction of sensual pleasures” ¹³ Arcadia, on the other hand, originated in ancient Greece and was revived by Renaissance humanists that were “seeking to restrain the selfish tendencies of the rich and powerful classes”¹⁴. Its modern version are today's ecological, New-Age and anti-globalisation movements.”

Milojevic thus begins with the data of poverty and then moves the discourse vertically to what she considers the foundational myths that structure the social. Using CLA she provides an integrated and layered reading of how to understand poverty and how to create poverty free futures. As she writes: “the worst thing that the mainstream discourse and both the ‘left’ and ‘right’ worldviews do is to describe poverty in such terms that it becomes unthinkable to imagine poverty-free futures.” ¹⁵

CLA AND STRATEGY

What CLA suggests is that “strategy” must seen as multi-pronged, going up and down layers, from the litany, the most visible (alternative forums, social development forums) to the systemic, This means challenging extending conventional notions of society, technology, environment, economy and political and developing alternative to conventional renderings of society: (moving from Spencerian versions to Sarkar’s notion of society as a caravan, for example); technological (linking development to technology, both as an impediment and a way forward); environmental (extending UN environmental forums through deep ecology and the rights of animals and plants), economy (new models of the economy); and political (challenging nation-state politics).

While litany and systemic changes are short term oriented (strategy, education and capacity building), worldview and myth-metaphor are longer term, requiring memetic emergency and microvita change.

Strategy to transform globalization therefore must be short and long term oriented focused on the litany, the system, the worldviews and the organizing myths and metaphors.

 

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS

 

Visible                                                                                                              Short Term

 

 

 

					LITANY
					SYSTEM
				WORLD VIEWS
				MYTH-METAPHOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depth                                                                                                                                                    Long Term

 

THE PREFERRED FUTURE

  I now move to the preferred vision of the future.¹⁶   It has the following as its basis:

 

(1)   The spiral (progress with history) as its key metaphor, thus some things return but there is a conception of an improvement of living conditions, however, these should not just be material, but intellectual and spiritual as well. Instead of the linear language of progress (which is often related to perfection, and the elimination of the not-so-perfect), the softer term progressive might be better. While it would be difficult to maintain that we have had progress over the last few thousand years given the world poverty, we can argue that certain technologies, cultures, economic policies are progressive, creating conditions for the possibility of a better--physical, mental and spiritual--life. There thus has been an important progression in human rights (from merely rights for the kings, to rights for aristocrats, the bourgeois, labor, women, children, the third world, nature, and even possibly, one can imagine the rights of robots.  

(2)   Ecologiaclly sensitive. We can no longer continue to export our problems, our waste, to others. We must find ways to internalize what we don't like and thus reverse the thousand year strategy of exporting from centre to periphery, from male to women, adult to child, rich to poor, powerful to weak, conscious to unconscious. Ecologically sensitivity means that we need a new ethic of life that gives respect to plants, animals and the cultures of technology. This does not mean we should not have a hierarchy of living but it does mean that we must walk softly on the Earth, recognizing that we must walk softy on the Earth, recognizing that existence, like us, is living. The triple bottom line movement in OECD nations is certainly a movement in a right direction.  

(3)   Gender Cooperation. Any vision of the future must find ways in which genders can  cooperate. A world with women empowered would be a dramatic different world, where symptoms of the world crisis like overpopulation would not exist. This means finding ways to include women's ways of knowing the world in science, polity and economy. It also means a post-patriarchal world where women can finally end the many centuries of abuse from all sorts of men and male structures at local and civilizational levels.  

(4)   Growth and Distribution. We need to implement theoretical models that have found ways to both create economic growth and to distribute this growth. These would be models that encourage incentives but provide for social welfare, and models that create fluid yet integrated forms of; that allow for mobility (for capital, ideas and labor) so that individuals and collectivities can more effectively choose their paths into alternative futures; that create more wealth (and expand the definition of wealth beyond the merely economic) and ensure basic needs for all. Resources thus must be stewarded and expanded to include material and non-material. It is the use of resources not their over-accumulation or stagnation that would be a central principal.  

(5)   Epitemologically pluralistic. We need to end the last five hundred years of monoculture and imagine a world where many civilizations co-exist, where there is a grand dialog between cultures, where we live in a world of many possibilities, of many cultures including post-human cultures, such as plants, animals, angels and robots. We must find ways to include the many ways humans know the world: reason, authority, intuition, sense-inference and love, as well as the many ways in which humans learn: scentia (empirical understanding), techne (knowledge that creates and expands on nature), praxis (action) and gnosis (self-knowledge).  

(6)   A range of Organizational Structures. We need to rethink how we organize ourselves. We need to expand our thinking beyond mere vertical organizational structures or only participatory structures to collaborative and tensegrity structures that use tensions and dialectics to enhance creativity. Cooperative structures, for example, where there is efficient management and economic democracy, promise to solve the problems of worker alienation and loss of local control.  

(7)   Transcendental.  We need to return the transcendental to social and economic theory but base it in the individual not the State or group (where it can be used for cultural imperialism). We need to include the idea of the transcendental, the mysterious force, presence in the universe but not in the territorial sense of the nation but in the individual and cosmic sense as the intimate force that gives meaning and is given meaning to.  

(8)   The individual in the context of collective, we need to envision worlds in which both are balanced, where both cooperate and are needed for each other. This would different from both market and methodological individuals or State and collectivism. Both must be balanced, seeing, perhaps, the society as a family on a journey, then competing and maximizing individuals.  

(9)   A balance between agency and structure in the context of a vision of the future. We need to recognize what can be changed and what is more resistant to change, whether because of history or deep structures. Theories that privilege agency, as in conspiracy theories (for good and bad) make structures (that is, actor and culture invariance) invisible. Structural theories while showing us how episteme, class, gender limit our futures do so at the expense of transformation. While massive social transformation is not always possible, there are periods in history, moments of chaos, where new forms of complexity are possible, where evolutionary struggle resolve themselves in new social, transcendental and individual arrangements. At these times what is needed is not one vision that ends the creative project but visions that promise still more visions. Casual layered analysis, as developed above, provides one way to do this.  

These nine points provide the basis for a new vision. There are three organizing concepts in the seeds of the future mentioned above. The first is prama or dynamic balance: balance between regions, balance between the spiritual, material and the intellectual within ourselves and in society; balance between genders, between epistemological styles. And of course this balance must be ever transforming, chaotic. The second is neo-humanism. What is needed is a post-human model of society where rights are given to all, thus flattening centre-periphery distinctions, creating a world where the self is no longer located strictly in religion, territorial nation, or historical race but as part of a co-evolutionary mix of plants, animals, other life forms and technologies. The third is a progressive use of resources and capabilities, individual and group, of material, intellectual and spiritual potentials and their just distribution among each and every one of us.  

Central to these points is an overarching concern to find new ways to resolve the classic tensions of the individual and collective; agency and structure; mind and body; science and culture; progress and equilibrium; the material and the spiritual; and ethical, critical and technical thought. 

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude by returning to globalization. In my imagination of globalization, I would hope for a world government or at least a world governance system to address issues we cannot nationally understand.

I would hope for a further weakening of the nation-state making it as porous as possible. This is not to forget that the nation-state has often been the best way to address issues of equity and cultural difference but more to understand that it has reached its use by date. I would favor the glo-cal notion -local communities linked physically and electronically. 

However, community I would see not in a traditional sense in terms of exclusion but more a space for like-minded but very much in the context of a global regime of rights and responsibilities – for humans, for animals and nature. 

Thus, I would not want to imagine a world based on eating meat. As much as possible, would see this increasingly restricted, part of our barbaric past, much as we see cannabalism now.

I imagine this world far more integrated with the spiritual not marginalized but central to life. This does not mean a return to puritanism but rather that there would be spaces for meditation, reflection in our design of airports, cities and social spaces. 

The spiritual would be balanced with the material -both becoming foundational projects -a higher standard of living with a deeper consciousness and reflection about who are. Perhaps one might call it a microvita vision of the future. 

It would certainly be a world where the future was far more important. Policy decisions would need to take into account future generations. But this does not mean an atechnological world. Rather, technology could be nature-oriented, social oriented, focused on finding real solutions to current and future problems and not just creating illusory notions of technotopia. 

This would mean over the long run moving away from industrial notions of work and towards play, art, sports, or spiritual fulfilment. 

Creating this world could not begin without gender partnership. Nor could it begin without a real attempt to deal with the authentic needs of various communities -chechans, Palestinians, kashmiris to mention a few. I would favor increased localization but in the context of a world system of rights. Palestinians could secede but rights for Israelis could not be sacrificed, for example. Ultimately, of course, I would hope for a vision of self that was neo-humanistic, where identity based on geography would become far less important as compared to planetary identity. I understand that this movement is possibly when at the structural level issues of justice are resolved. Indeed, this becomes one of the pressing issues for dealing with the post-9/ll world. Terror is caused by the complex equation of perceived injustices (residue of colonialism), identity dogma and world imbalance. The first must be resolved by the first world, in a grand apology. Of course, I don't see George W. Bush apologizing to Iran for giving chemical weapons to Iraq nor do I see John Howard apologizing to Australian aborigines, but we can hope and we can imagine. The second must be resolved within traditional identity structures -religions and nation-states primarily. This means a spiral movement out of tradition, step by step, perhaps into the transmodern, avoiding the perils of the ethical vacuum of the postmodem. The third must be resolved by everyone but the hope will come from international worker and social movements.

Moving back to a higher level, in terms of the two potent images of the future, that of Gaia and that of Spaceship Earth, I would certainly want a vision of both. Gaia providing the home, but knowing one day we will need to leave home, and travel elsewhere. 

Thus, a balance of the foundational dichotomies would be my vision -between stability and mobility (or identity and freedom), between growth and distribution (wealthy and a social welfare)) and between technology and nature. 

Can we create such a future? Small steps…. 

Do “we” desire to? 

I am not sure. One the national website of www.ninemsn.com, I regularly participate in the polls (on refugees, on terrorism, on economic policies, for example). I have never, not once, found myself in the majority.  

It may my vision is too far ahead in the future. Or it may be it is simply idiosyncratic and that we want the present continued, or a return to the past, or gaian vision or some techno-utopian vision. If so, I hope I will have some place in these future.

 

 

¹ Sohail Inayatullah, Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan; University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia; and, Queensland University of Technology. www.metafuture.org. Inayatullah is the author/editor of a dozen books and over 250 journal articles, book chapters and popular magazine pieces. He is a theme editor (Globalization and World Futures) of the Unesco Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Paris, Unesco, Oxford, Eolss, 2002-3). Inayatullah is co-editor of the Journal of Futures Studies and associate editor of New Renaissance.

² Ashis Nandy, Tradition, Tyranny and Utopias. Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1987 ³ To paraphrase Marshall McCluhan's famous dictum: “we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.”

⁴ Sohail Inayatullah, “Leaders envision the future of the Islamic Ummah,” World Futures Studies Federation Bulletin (June 1996, front page).

⁵ See Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Wesport, Praeger, 1997.

⁶ For more on this, see the trilogy on Sarkar. Sohail Inayatullah, Situating Sarkar. Maleny, Australia, Gurukul Press, 1999. Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Fitzgerald, eds. Transcending Boundaries. Maleny, Australia, Gurukul Press, 1999. Sohail Inayatullah, Understanding Sarkar. Leiden, Brill, 2002. Sarkar takes the classical vedic notion of varna but uses it as a macrohistorical variable, as a way of knowing.

⁷ Sohail Inayatullah, The CLA Reader. Forthcoming 2003.

⁸ Sohail Milvolevic, “Creating Spaces for Poverty Free Futures,” Development 2001, 44(4), 19-23.

⁹ www.libertarians.org quoted in Ivana Milojevic, “Poverty-Free Futures.”

¹⁰ www.libertarians.org quoted in Ibid.

¹¹ Udayakumar, SP, "The Futures of the Poor," Futures 1995,27 (3),347 quoted in Ibid.

¹² Udayakumar, 347 quoted in Ibid.

¹³ OW Hollis, The ABC_CLIOI World History Companion to Utopian Movements. Santa Barbara, California, 1998,14 quoted in Ibid.

¹⁴ Hollis, 14, quoted in Ibid.

¹⁵ Milojevic,23.

¹⁶ This is drawn from Sohail Inayatullah, "From Development to Prama," Development, no. 4, 1994.

PERSONAL BOX

 

Our family was globalized, long before globalization came into vogue. I left the stability (at that time, now certainly no longer) of Peshawar for Bloomington, Indiana when I was six years old. My father, earlier, had been the first to leave his Punjabi farming village of Bavracona (the village of the mad people). Eventually on an East- West Centre scholarship he landed in Indiana. We followed later. In the USA we routinely moved back and forth from New York UN headquarter to Bloomington graduate school headquarters. What I saw as a young child was the pursuit of knowledge and international development discourse at work.  

Later we moved to Geneva and then to Islamabad, Pakistan. There after a terrible stint in a local school, St. Mary's we enrolled at Islamabad International School. Where even in privilege I realized how other I had become. I was the good Pakistani, unlike the other masses. My first memory, of course, of this was in Indiana, in the third grade, where the teacher asserted that poor countries were lazier because of the heat. This hit hard, and, of course, was my first official engagement with the development discourse. Why I work so hard to this date, may perhaps be based on this. 

From Islamabad, we moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and then I went to Hawaii to study. There I discovered futures studies, and eventually did an MA in Political Science focused on Applied Futures. This meant an internship in an organization, wherein one was to help the organization develop more future oriented policy, that is, a long term, sustainable, view. I eventually did my PhD in Hawaii, on the Indian philosopher P.R. Sarkar¹  

Hawaii became a home in that plurality was more than tolerated, it was encouraged. There are more children from marriages of partners of different ethnicities than from similar ethnicities. Hawaii was multi-cultural more multiculturalism too became theorized. But behind the gloss of aloha was always the US military presence and as well the distorted tourism economy. Indeed, Noel Kent in Islands Under the Influence has argued that Hawaii, even with all is wealth, can be seen as an underdeveloped economy.  

However, even with all my border crossings, borders have to me been about fear. Whether this was because of comments heard from my parents as we traveled or the endless checks in Hawaii, Pakistan, Malaysia, questioning my passport, asking where was born, and more. I still remember at the citizenship test in Hawaii, the examiner asking me if I wished to change my name. “I am fine with Sohail Inayatullah.” But she insisted, asking again. I suggested Saddam Ayatollah. But no laughter came from her. We even argued over my skin color. She asked me what my color was: fair, medium or dark. I said, “medium.” She said, no I was dark. 

Or the FBI visiting my house in Hawaii claiming that I was part of  a passport for drugs gang. They later apologized. 

The lesson I did learn was that even as capital can be free, passing through seamlessly all borders, labour was not. Certainly though I have been privileged, holding citizenship and residency in numerous countries, however, and especially since 9/11, landing at airports is always a time of trepidation. It does not matter if I am citizen, I am routinely second checked. 

Of course, labour too should have responsibility. Just as we now expect capital to behave with responsibility, the movement of labour, should, I believe, be free but the new migrant has a responsibility to the new nation, especially the locale but more so the planet Earth. 

This is one of the lessons I have learned from 9/11, that is, the notion of rights plus responsibilities. New migrants are face three choices. Assimilate and become like the host nation. This usually a denial of their history and culture. The second is to imagine the past, that is, recreate traditional culture. This ends up meaning a denial of the future, that is, as with Indians in Fiji, they locked onto only one version of India- brahmanical, caste based, and singularistic. There is a third choice, and that essentially has been what we have sought to do- a local plus a global responsibility, keeping one’s traditional cultures, learning form the new, but moving beyond both. 

Of course, none of the easy, but behind it is a notion that culture should be vital, innovative, learning from others, and not necessarily glorifying the deeds of the past. 

We now live in Australia. My children are a mixture of Punjabi, Serbian, Slovenian and Russian. While they hold a number of passports, when I ask them where they are from, they respond Australia. 

We have now come a full circle- our children grow up in a globalized world, having visited Pakistan, Yugoslavia and Hawaii numerous times, and yet, home is where they live. When I ask them their vision of the future, they said “I want to design multicultural educational cd-roms for kids." "I want a world where people do not kill animals" "I want a world where people are treated fairly." "I want a world where nature is not destroyed, even if that mean's a bit of a harder life for us." "Above, all, I want a world full of love."

                                                                                     

¹ Sohail lnayatullah, Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory and Transformative Knowledge. Leiden, Brill, 2002.