2008-04-08 - 7:45 a.m.
This is a paper for one of my classes. It keeps getting marked as spam when I email it to my professor, so I�m posting it here. I was very dissatisfied with it at first because I�d said globalization was a good thing. But eventually I realized there was no way I could alter what I�d written without changing the substance of my message. Here it is:
Globalization is a positive for people with disabilities. The phenomenon of transnational interconnectedness is frequently painted in a bad light by those fearing local jobs will be exported overseas*. However, people with disabilities who need support services which may be inefficient or lacking entirely in less-developed countries unquestionably benefit from increased contact with more-developed countries where service provision may be (while by no means perfect) far more common. Knowledge about how to best enact supports for people with disabilities can be best shared with nations that need this understanding in a globalized world.
People with disabilities are nothing if not power-users of community services. Indeed, one historian with a disability (Longmore) noted that disability creates its own value system and that one such value is the importance of inter-dependence rather than independence. While playing up the strength of communal connections should be kept in mind even by those without disabilities (after all civilization is advanced enough that we should not all be Mountain Men anymore, chopping our own firewood and hunting our own game), this idea emphasizes the vital need for people with disabilities to use public services.
One author (Davis 2006) notes that cities are gaining in size on a scale unprecedented in human history. Much of this urban growth is taking place in �Third World� countries: �the combined urban population of China, India, and Brazil already equals that of Europe and North America�. One suspects that, given the author�s background as a print journalist intent on shocking readers, he intends people to be horrified that these unwashed masses dare to move to cities instead of remaining simple farmers like they should.
It is further said in Planet of Slums that some newly-growing cities roughly mirror the traditional development process of urban areas fed by industrial power that evolved earlier, like (in America) Chicago. Some new cities have indeed taken this route, but some have not. The author cites (again in America) Los Angeles as an example of a place that has followed suit. However, what Davis does not say is that such cities � both the older Chicago and the more contemporary Los Angeles � have seized on their ability to manufacture physical goods and exploited the market seeking such things.
There is a finite capacity for such manufacturing, though. Many of the places which have not recapitulated the path to economic success through industrial prowess were unable to do so simply because there was no further need for more manufacturing. But formerly industrial cities do not just simply roll up the sidewalks and call it a day. Chicago and Los Angeles have done quite well with the fading importance of manufacturing in the America. Certainly they experienced hard times during the transition to a post-industrial economy (as a waggish friend said �the dark quarter-century between Kitty Genovese and the Central Park jogger�), as did most municipalities. But they nonetheless persevered and gained new employment sectors.
Chicago for one is no longer Carl Sandburg�s �hog butcher to the world� and �city of big shoulders�. But its employment base has moved on and expanded. There are in fact a whole series of jobs now that did not even exist during the peak of the city�s manufacturing-dominated days. Indeed, some would say that no longer being tied to the primary extractive industries (in the 19th- and early-20th centuries it was a center of distributing lumber, milling steel, and yes, butchering hogs) is a net positive, as all eggs are no longer in one basket.
Even the very term �Third World� used extensively by Davis can be seen as rather pejorative. �Third World� originally indicated nations that had no (or only nominal) association with the �First World� (Western countries) or �Second World� (Soviet bloc). However, the conflict between these two �Worlds� ended almost two decades ago, so referring to a place by its ideological affiliation by calling it First, Second, or Third World is purely a historical legacy.
Furthermore, many �Third World� countries are indeed very poor, but using this term to connote this poverty is equally pejorative. One textbook (Glesne 2001) amusingly refers to the �two-thirds world�. Such a name seems quite fitting, as it not only suggests the constraints of limited national finances, but the �sub-one� nature of a country�s power. This reduced voice can also easily be read into the appellation �Third World� � a nation is a political afterthought, superfluous entirely.
Part of the reasoning behind the urbanization of less-developed countries is traced to political upheaval. In Africa, for example, strong governmental regimes in earlier times had a vested interest in keeping the population in rural areas where it could be taxed heavily. In fact, some regimes went so far as to actively denounce urbanization, with Zaire�s President Robert Mugabe railing against �the dangers of hypertrophic urbanization and the attendant evils of unemployment and crime� (p. 58-59). When such restrictive regimes were overturned however there was a mass influx to cities.
It is noted that generally these newly-populated cities in less-developed nations are unfortunately not very good at providing services.
Even common public uses like mass transportation may be lacking. It has been observed (Charlton 2008) that in some recently-populated Mexican cities where the municipal government does not provide sufficient mass transit the private sector has improvised solutions, such as pesito buses or vans. Needless to say, these vehicles are not at all boardable by people with physical disabilities, as they are not overseen by public authority and there is obviously no desire on the part of the businesses that operate them to incur any additional expenses for accessibility upgrades unless mandated.
Organizations for people with disabilities in such cities often receive financing from foundations based in wealthier countries. To take just a small example, a group in Managua, Nicaragua, used international funding to establish a wheelchair assembly and repair shop (Charlton 1998 p.143). While helpful, such efforts are only the all-too-common charitable contribution. Charities tend to keep the targets of their giving at a safe arm�s length. Indeed it is suggested that the pity inherent in this distancing makes charities one of the institutions that upholds the social oppression of people with disabilities (p. 94).
The effects of charitable contributions from a distance do not begin to approach the power of the effect that could be created through increased close globalized contact between nations. For example, there was a tremendous positive impact on education for deaf students from the single visit of a lecturer from the UK to a university in South Africa (Charlton 1998 p. 90). She trained 80 people in sign language interpretation during her short stay. Such interpretation for students was previously unknown in South Africa, but contact with the more-developed world brought it.
It is further noted (Davis 2006 p. 150) that some causes of acquired disability (most notably HIV/AIDS, although the author points to a book he wrote warning of an impending avian flu epidemic...) affect those in multiple nations. There is thus a vested interest in resource-rich countries reaching out to less-well-off ones to protect their own citizens. �[E]conomic globalization without a concomitant investment in a global public-health infrastructure is a certain formula for catastrophe.�
Disability has been referred to by former U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar as �the silent emergency� (Charlton 1998 p. 23). It may not seem so silent to those experiencing it viscerally every day, whether people with disabilities themselves, their families and loved ones, or those engaged in supporting them. However, it is unquestionably a global issue, cutting neatly across national borders. As a universal problem, it calls for attention from everywhere. Increased globalization means places that know better how to fill the needs of people with disabilities will be in closer contact with places that need this knowledge.
Works cited:
J. Charlton (1998), Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment, U. of California Press
J. Charlton (February 18, 2008), lecture in DIS 502 at the University of Illinois at Chicago
M. Davis (2006), Planet of Slums, Verso Books
P. Longmore (?), The Second Wave: From Disability Rights to Disability Culture,
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