Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

Andy, thanks for expanding on Robinson. I was not aware that Robinson was
using a Gramscian mode of geo-political analysis, since I was sceptical of
the concept "polyarchy". In political science jargon, this concept has
been largely used to justify a pluralist mode of analysis by liberal
theorists, such as Robert Dahl. It seems Robinson has a different
kind of conceptualization, the one that emphasizes the dominant ideology..
in any case, his observations seem to confirm my points about the
ideological underpinings of the modernization theory and transnational
capitalism. Mary's question makes much more sense now.... 

I will also check out the article posted by Michael a while ago. let me
read what the man says...

Mine



 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 23:51:32
-0400 (EDT)  From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu> To: 
md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu Cc: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: new
paradigm in pop policy (fwd) 

Mine,

Robinson uses a modified Gramscian mode of geopolitical analysis to reveal
the underlying structural imperatives and the
collective-behavioral/ideological orientation of polyarchic-style
transnational policy formation. His is a historical materialist theory of
globalization that conceptualizes a post-national hegemonic political
dynamic driven by the transnational corporation. He theorizes the end of
the cycle of hegemons as reflective of a global capitalist class that
transcends the nation-state framework (which is not to say that
nation-states are irrelevant). The policies of the global elite are
popularly articulated as "democratization" and their theoretical
underpinnings are modernization and structural-functionalism.

The relevance of his theory and method for the question of population, and
this emerges from his book but I know this mostly from our conversations,
is that population control is based on modernizationist ideology, a
component of which is the universal application of sledgehammer
abstractions like the demographic transition, and is imposed upon "third
world" people. Thus population control and other policies of this sort
flow from the theory advanced by the global elite - and this is not
speculation, since elites articulate this point of view (some of our list
members advance the same oppressive line) - that the poor breed because
they still struggle under a cultural idiocy, i.e., "traditional culture,"
and that the key to lowering their birth rates is to put in the place of
their backward/primitive institutions a modern industrial system with
polyarchic political structures (bougeois democracy). Through their
institutions they provide loans to the nations of the periphery, organize
EPZs, a domestic police force, birth control regime, etc. All of their
policy masquerades under the authority of bourgeois science.

I would not think it necessary to point out, but after the discussion on
the list of late it is crystal clear that one cannot proceed on the
grounds of shared understanding, that the "traditional culture," i.e.,
extreme poverty, is the creation of the core through centuries of
imperialism, that EPZs and the modern machinery of liberal republicanism
are the reorganized mechanisms of neoimperialism under conditions of a
global civil society and a nascent transnational state. Their "scientific
ideas" embed in popular consciousness because of their power to distribute
their propaganda through the mass media and through the university system
where professors and graduate students then indoctrinate their undergrad
and grad students. Again, we have clear instances of their success in
creating a legion of the faithful on this very list. The frame is the
uncritical mind.

Incidentally, it was Robinson who pointed out to me (and this follows
logically from the facts he presents at the end of his book, which are
incontrovertable) that the "third world" could be eliminated and the
pending ecological holocaust would not be averted because it is the core
who are burning up the earth. I think that many would profit from reading
Bill's book and articles.

Andrew Austin
Knoxville, TN