The us uses economic engagement as a disguise to hide their colonialist efforts towards Latin America

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Discussion
The alternative solves by opening up a space for discussion without the influence of imperialism
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A2 Zapatistas Bad
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Mexico/Zapatista Alt Evd

The Zapatista antiglobalization movement is unique in its focus on discourse and symbolic strength

Wagner and Moreira 2003 [Valeria Wagner and Alejandro Moreira, Towards a Quixotic Pragmatism: The Case of the Zapatista Insurgence, PDF Academic Journal, 2003, http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/boundary/v030/30.3wagner.html]

"As Che Guevara would have said: ‘When the dream of evolution dissipates, the time of revolutions returns.'" It is on this optimistic note that Ignacio [End Page 185] Ramonet ends an editorial article marking the thirtieth anniversary of the revolutionary's death in the magazine Manière de voir. 2 The issue is significantly titled Amérique Latine: du Che á Marcos, thus framing the analysis of Latin America's predicament upon the death of one charismatic revolutionary figure and the advent of another. 3 According to the editorial, this period is characterized by an apparent political "evolution" that is undermined by the failure of democracies to guarantee economic development and, above all, to attend to economic justice: even when countries grow richer, inhabitants still grow poorer. As a result, for most Latin Americans the situation is definitely worse than it was thirty years ago. Hence the "spectacular" irruption of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), the Zapatista National Liberation Army, in Chiapas in 1994, which Ramonet reads as "the first response, weapons in hand, of the south against economic globalization [mondialisation] and neoliberalism." This implies, of course, that it will not be the last response: "social revolts will multiply"; the time of revolutions is back.¶ Three years later, Ramonet sees at least part of his prophecies fulfilled: the dawn of the new millennium "glows" with the victory of what "seems to be the embryo of an international civil society" over the World Trade Organization (WTO), after massive demonstrations against the November 1999 summit in Seattle. 4 Ramonet does not hesitate to qualify this [End Page 186] international protest against globalization as a "turning," thus recalling the "time of revolutions" he had announced in Che's voice and seen heralded by the 1994 Zapatista uprising. The continuity between the 1994 uprising and the Seattle demonstrations is suggested from the outset by his account of the motives of the protesters, who, echoing the now famous Zapatista "Ya Basta!" have had enough of globalization and of the passive role to which it assigns them. And in March 2001, following the Zapatistas' march to Mexico, Ramonet decidedly argues that, having chosen the date of the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for the Zapatista uprising, "Marcos signs . . . in a sense, that day, the first symbolic revolt against globalization." 5¶ The reader will have noticed the change of status of the Zapatistas' insurgence: it is the first armed and local response to globalization, announcing similar local responses throughout the South; then it lends its voice ("Ya basta!") to the antiglobalization movement; finally, it becomes the first symbolic revolt marking not just the beginning but the mode of struggle of the antiglobalization movement. Whether considered as the "model" for antiglobalization movements or as representing the transition from armed to symbolic struggle that characterizes them, the Zapatista insurgence clearly emerges as paradigmatic of the new forms of resistance, political organization, and transformation that have been called for, with growing consensus, to understand and cope with globalization. This has not gone unnoticed by the Zapatistas themselves: "We have learned," Marcos tells Ramonet, "that we are a kind of mirror and that we reflect, in our way, other movements of resistance throughout the world." 6 Their "way," as Ramonet points out, is with words, and it is indeed undeniable that, having secured the attention of the Mexican government and the international community through the impact of their weapons, the Zapatistas owe their longevity mainly to the force of their discourse. 7 It is their discourse that now sustains their weapons, and it is in their discourse that other movements find their "reflection," as Marcos says. If, however, the Zapatista discourse functions as a mirror, it is as much because it offers, as mirrors do, the image of oneself as another—that foreign look, the expression surprised with a sidelong glance—as because it gives an image to the self, which can then be corrected, adapted, the hair combed back, the jacket redressed. If a mirror, then, the Zapatista discourse transfigures what it reflects, and what it reflects and transfigures, as we will argue, is the prevailing political and historical imaginary—in particular, in its formulation of the relationship between power and praxis. If the "time of revolutions" has "returned" with the Chiapas uprising, it is not, as we will see, the same time, nor the same revolution, that is associated with the image of Che.

Zapatista’s movement is k2 fighting neoliberalism around the world- growing networks on the internet means the indigenous movement has grown to encompass all issues of democracy, neoliberalism, and grassroots movements

Cleaver 2k [Harry Cleaver, “The Zapatista Effect: The internet and the rise of an alternative political fabric”, Ciberlegenda, 2000, PhD em Economia pela Universidade de Stanford, é professor do Departamento de Economia da Universidade do Texas em Austin. É também um dos mais destacados analistas das estratégias políticas e ações comunicacionais desenvolvidas na Internet pelo Exército Zapatista de Libertação Nacional, do México, e por simpatizantes de vários continents]

In the last few years concern with the ability of such non-governmental networks to undercut national governments and international agreements has grown. This concern has derived, in part, from the growing strength such networks have derived from the use of international computer communications. The extremely rapid spread of the computer "Net" around the world has suggested that such networks and their influence may grow apace.¶ Surprisingly, no catalyst of that growth has been more important than the indigenous Zapatista rebellion in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and the widespread political mobilization to which it has contributed. The computer networks supporting the rebellion have evolved from providing vehicles for the familiar, traditional work of solidarity (e.g., material aid and the defense of human rights against the policies of the Salinas and Zedillo administrations) into a kind of electronic fabric of opposition to much wider policies. Today those networks are providing the nerve system of increasingly global challenges to the dominant economic policies of this period and in the process undermining the distinction between domestic and foreign policy and even the present constitution of the nation-state. Whereas the anti-NAFTA coalition was merely North American in scope, the influence of the pro-Zapatista mobilization has reached across at least five continents and dozens of countries generating a much, much wider activism. This activism has spread so rapidly, to such a degree and in such a way as to call for the most careful scrutiny.¶ At first the Zapatista uprising appeared primarily to be a challenge to domestic policies in Mexico, those having to do with land and indigenous affairs. The EZLN did point to NAFTA as sounding a "death knell" for indigenous peoples, but their main orientation was towards gaining recognition and standing within the Mexican nation. The state's initial response sought to isolate the Zapatistas through a variety of means. Militarily it sought to crush the rebellion if possible and at least confine it to Chiapas. Ideologically, its control of the mass media in Mexico was used to limit and distort news about the uprising. In part, the government attempted to portray the Zapatista movement as a threat to the political integrity of the Mexican nation. The government's first, and quickly aborted, effort to mobilize public sentiment against the Zapatista uprising was to portray it as the result of foreign subversive manipulation of the indigenous. Once it was forced to recognize that the source of the uprising was the indigenous themselves, it shifted to an argument that played on ignorance of the specificity of Zapatista demands --an ignorance which the government did its best to maintain. The government conjured the threat of a pan-Mayan movement embracing both Southern Mexico and much of Central American. Evoking the horrors of the Balkans, the Mexican government equated indigenous autonomy with succession and the break-up of country. As the Zapatista movement succeeded in communicating to the rest of Mexico and the world that it sought indigenous autonomy within the framework of the Mexican nation, that ploy was rendered useless. Although the government stopped evoking Pan-Mayan phantasms, it has continued to pretend that national integrity must be defended¶ against indigenous autonomy. Such autonomy, it claims, would rupture the political, juridical and cultural cohesiveness of the Mexican nation. Given the reiterated emphasis by the Zapatistas on autonomy within, not against, Mexican society --dramatically symbolized by the flying of giant Mexican flags at virtually all Zapatista gatherings-- this argument has been difficult to sustain in the current debates in Mexico.¶ But if changes demanded by the Zapatistas do not threaten the integrity of the Mexican nation, they certainly do threaten the integrity of the Mexican state as it is currently constituted. The basic thrust of their political demands, and one reason for their wide- spread popularity, has been for a recasting of democracy in ways which would break the power not only of the central government but of the political parties in Mexico. The demands for autonomy involve a relocation not only of authority but of resources to much more local levels. The search for wider citizen participation in public policy making involves not only more direct democracy at the local level, but a liberation of electoral politics from the grip of the parties from which all candidates must currently come. Such changes have been clearly perceived by the ruling party as a threat to its now fading hegemony but also by the oppositional parties as a threat to their recent advances in sharing power with the PRI. Such radical ideas coupled with other demands for reform energized by the rebellion itself have caused a profound crisis of the Mexican political system. Beyond plunging the political system into crisis in Mexico, the Zapatista struggle has inspired and stimulated a wide variety of grassroots political efforts in many other countries. For reasons I spell out below, it is perhaps not exaggerated to speak of a "Zapatista Effect" reverberating through social movements around the world -- homologous to, but ultimately much more threatening to the New World Order of neoliberalism than the "Tequila Effect" that rippled through emerging financial markets in the wake of the Peso Crisis of 1994. In the financial case, the danger was panic and rapid withdrawal of hot money from speculative investments that could collapse¶ markets. In the case of social movements and the activism which is their hallmark, the danger lies in the impetus given to the active rejection of current policies, to the rethinking of the institutions and functioning of democracy and to the development of alternatives to the status quo.¶ While it has become commonplace to discuss social movements and their activism in terms either of NGOs or of "civil society", these two terms are highly problematic and vague. They are often used in ways which include everything from groups of villagers who have organized themselves for some local purpose through the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations to multinational corporations. The term often includes corporate-spawned entities, truly autonomous organizations and those which have become inextricably tied to the state. In this essay, therefore, I use the term "grassroots" instead. It is also vague, but by it I mean all of those member-funded efforts at self-organization which remain autonomous of either the state or corporate sectors. Such organization often includes independent NGOs but is more broadly inclusive of various informal networks of activists and community organizations. The grassroots movements catalyzed by the Zapatistas include everything from human rights and environmental NGOs through local community governments to loose networks of political, media and labor activists who have linked other movements to those of the Zapatistas.¶ In what follows I sketch this mobilization, the role of computer communications has played in it, and then consider some possible implications for the future of the nation-state and foreign policy.

Zapatista protest has snowball effect- increased Kritical discussion and concessions generate momentum for both counter-movement and pro-Zapatista activity

Inclan 12 [María Inclán, Zapatista and counter-Zapatista protests: A test or movement—countermovement dynamics, Journal of Peace Research , Vol. 49, No. 3 (may 2012), pp. 459-472, Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. María Inclán is Assistant Professor at the Division of Political Studies at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City. Her research interests include social and indigenous movements, cycles of protests, and democratization processes. ]

The analysis of this study offers interesting and unexpected results. First, the results confirm that regardless of political conditions, protests by pro- and counter-Zapatista groups had a positive and statistically significant effect on their opponent’s protest activity. If one more counter-Zapatista protest event occurred in a given municipio in a given month, pro-Zapatista protest activity increased in that locality by 0.53 during the following month. Similarly, more than one monthly pro-Zapatista protest triggered a 0.21 increase in counter-Zapatista activity the following month in that same locality (See marginal effects in Tables II and III.).¶ The results regarding the effects of political conditions on protest behavior are unexpected. Hypothesis 2a proposed that the Mexican federal system, which allows different political parties to govern at different levels of government, should have triggered more protest activity from movement and countermovement actors alike. The results show that all possible combinations had a negative but statistically insignificant effect on pro-Zapatista protest activity. For counter-Zapatista protests, the sign of the relationship varied from case to case, but it also never reached statistical significance.¶ Hypothesis 2b suggested that protest groups will be more active when their political opponents are in power. Given the assumption that Zapatistas were more aligned with the leftist PRD and counter-Zapatistas were more aligned with the PRI, it was expected that pro-Zapatistas would have protested more frequently in PRI-ruled localities, while counter-Zapatistas would have protested more frequently in PRD-ruled localities. The results, however, tell a different story. Both pro- and counter-Zapatistas tended to protest more frequently in PRI-ruled localities; protest frequency for both groups had a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with the presence of PRD-run local governments. These results suggest that all groups had a tendency to protest the party in power at the national level, in this case, the PRI. During the period studied, PRI hegemony was crumbling, but it was still the dominant political force in the country. It was the PRI who the Zapatistas first targeted with their uprising, and it was the PRI that was responsible for compensating the aggrieved landowners. Both pro- and counter-Zapatistas had a specific interest in targeting PRI governments to press for their demands.¶ Hypothesis 2d proposed that protest groups tend to target local governments during their first year in office in order to impact the new government’s agenda. This did prove the case for PRI-led local governments. Both pro- and counter-Zapatista groups conducted more protest events during a PRI government’s first six months in office than they had during the previous months, even when the PRI was in office during the previous administration. Five months into a PRI-led local government, pro-Zapatista protest activity increased by 0.52, and, six months into a PRI-led local government, counter-Zapatista activity increased by 1.51.15 The fact that a significant increase in pro-Zapatista protest activity occurred five months into a PRI administration, and counter-Zapatistas activity increased during the sixth month, suggests that the counter-Zapatista protests were linked in part to the government’s response to the pro-movement actors. Neither group’s protest activities increased in the six months after the PRD won control of a municipality. This may be because, after 70 years of PRI rule, citizens were more likely to view opposition parties with more sympathy and tolerance. Results on the effects of the ‘election variable’ provide some support for this claim: while pro-Zapatista protestors continued to mobilize during campaigns and elections, counter-Zapatistas significantly decreased their protest events around elections.¶ Finally, both types of procedural concessions were expected to increase movement and countermovement protest activity. Indeed, both types did positively correlate with an increase in counter-Zapatista protests. A single additional partial concession to the Zapatistas in a given month increased counter-Zapatista protest by 0.10 the following month in a given municipio. Although statistically significant, the increase in counter-Zapatista protest activity due to an increase in local government expenditures was negligible. For an increase of 3,591,337 pesos (one standard deviation) (approx. 292,000 USD) in local government expenditures on public works and social programs, counter-Zapatista activities increased by 0.009 in that municipio the following year.¶ Pro-Zapatistas did not respond to procedural concessions the same way as their counterparts. Procedural concessions granted to the Zapatistas during negotiations with the federal government had the expected positive effect of triggering further pro-Zapatista protests. A single additional partial concession granted to the Zapatistas in a given month led to a 0.49 increase in pro-Zapatista protests in a given municipio the following month. However, procedural concessions granted in the form of social program and public works expenditures had a negative but statistically significant effect on pro-Zapatista protestors. The same increase of 3,591,337 pesos in local government expenditures decreased pro-Zapatista protests in that municipio by 0.005 events the following year.

Discussion

Creating a counter-project to US hegemony solves imperialism by rejecting its support structure

Slater ‘08

[David Slater, “Chapter 8. ‘Another World is Possible’: On Social Movements, the Zapatistas and the Dynamics of ‘Globalization from Below’”, Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, January 14 2008, Wiley interscience]

With reference to the WSF, the above theme can be looked at in terms of the coalescence of a point of arrival and a point of departure. The siting of the WSF in Porto Alegre was a reflection of a range of influences. The governmental presence of the Brazilian Workers’ Party at state (regional) and local (municipal) levels was an enabling presence in terms of providing a political space as well as needed financial support, together with progressive civil society associations mentioned above. The setting up of the WSF in Porto Alegre also flowed out of the struggles of social movements in Latin America, the activities of the Hemispheric Social Alliance and the global wave of anti-neoliberal mobilizations. These mobilizations, even before Seattle in 1999, were beginning to impact on the decision-making centres of capitalist power, most notably reflected in the derailment of the transnational corporations’ MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) initiative, which if implemented would have given greater power to big firms over nation-states. But Porto Alegre and the World Social Forum are not only a point of arrival for these diverse influences and flows of resisting power – they have also become a point of departure for a further broadening of counter-sites to globalization from above. This is clearly reflected in the inauguration of an African Social Forum in 2001, which met again in Addis Ababa in 2003 (Robert 2003), and a European Social Forum in 2002, as well as plans to host the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai as part of the formation of an Asian Social Forum. While theWorld Social Forum’s point of arrival and point of departure may be based in the struggles against neo-liberalism, the meetings and activities generated by the WSF as a counter-site of protest and an alternative, counter-hegemonic globalization are motivated by a desire for more democracy, more social justice and more dignity for the peoples of the world. Not only, as the Zapatistas have done, do they place onto the agenda the right to have rights, but also the movements and associations belonging to the WSF are involved in Foucault’s three kinds of social struggles, mentioned in the first part of the chapter. But they go further. They are not only against ethnic and religious domination, capitalist exploitation and new forms of subjection and subordination, but they are against new forms of imperialist power, of ‘global colonialism’, and moreover they have a vision for an alternative kind of global politics based on redistribution and recognition – the drive towards greater equality together with a greater recognition of difference. This requires respect for the autonomy of different movements while seeking out what may be held in common and what might bring movements together in new forms of cooperation. Differences are to be respected, but commonalities discovered. As Santos (2001) suggests, common ground needs to be identified in, for example, an indigenous struggle, a feminist struggle and an ecological struggle, without cancelling out in any of them the autonomy and difference that sustain them. The autonomy and the difference, the commonality and the connectivity, have to be held in creative tension. This can be done through a struggle for greater democratization which includes an articulation of struggles rather than a passive acquiescence of their separation (Laclau & Mouffe 2001).22 The idea of a counter-hegemonic globalization, a globalization from below that not only challenges the neo-liberal doctrine of capitalist expansion and a resurgent imperialism, but at the same time offers an alternative vision of how the world could be organized, also can be viewed as offering the possibility of a counter-geopolitics. A transnational project for global justice and participatory democracy which does not prioritize any one spatial level, and does not downgrade the relevance of the national level (Glassman 2001), offers a real alternative to the current hegemony of neo-liberalism. The actual practice of opposition has also been innovative, as the previous director of the World Development Movement, Barry Coates, has pointed out. Face-to-face lobbying, alliance-building, the arrival in politicians’ mailboxes of thousands of letters, cards and emails from the public, stories placed with sympathetic journalists, working through trade union and political party structures, and the production of alternative proposals on world trade and investment done through international coordination via the internet, all came together in a successful campaign to block the MAI initiative (see Green & Griffith 2002). A similar campaign is now underway against the attempt to revive the MAI initiative, which is linked to another ongoing campaign against the GATS proposal on the privatization of services (see WDM 2003). But also street protests and demonstrations are a key part of the resistance movement, as was vitally clear on 15 February 2003, when over 8 million people marched on the streets of the world’s five continents, protesting against the imminent invasion of Iraq. The counter-geopolitics that I have invoked above is rooted in an optimism of the will that goes beyond national boundaries, that encompasses activists across borders, and provides a new kind of globalization. It is taken forward by grassroots activists, progressive NGOs, civil society organizations, pressure groups and critical writers and intellectuals like Eduardo Galeano, Walden Bello, Vindana Shiva and Martin Khor. An archipelago of resistances that engenders new spatialities of solidarity and hope for a more emancipatory politics of the future.

Alternative text: engage in scholarly analysis of imperialism as it relates to micro and macro level politics. This allows us to see the origins of imperialism within the political and education realm and separate ourselves from them

Shome ‘06

[Raka Shome, “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An “Other” View”, Communication Theory, March 17 2006, Wiley interscience]

The importance of a postcolonial position to any scholarly practice is that it urges us to analyze our academic discourses and connect them to the larger political practices of our nations. This means that in examining our academic discourses, the postcolonial question to ask is: To what extent do our scholarly practices-whether they be the kind of issues we explore in our research, the themes around which we organize our teaching syllabi, or the way that we structure our conferences and decide who speaks (and does not speak), about what, in the name of intellectual practices - legitimize the hegemony of Western power structures? In posing this question, the postcolonial perspective does not suggest that as scholars writing in the West all that we do is legitimize the imperial political practices of Western nations. Rather, the argument is that we need to examine our academic discourses against a larger backdrop of Western hegemony, neocolonial, and racial politics. We need to engage in “contrapuntal lines of a global analysis” where we see “texts and worldly institutions . . . working together” (Said, 1993, p. 318). In the pursuit of our scholarly goals, we often do not stop to think or ask questions about why, for example, research agenda A seems more important to us than research agenda B? What is the ideology that operates in us that makes research agenda A seem more significant than research agenda B? How are we always already “interpellated” into examining A but not B? What does that interpellation say about our role in reproducing and participating in the hegemonic global domination of the rest by the West? What does it mean, for instance, when I am told that there is a market for research agenda A but none for research agenda B? Or that if I did pursue research agenda By I would have to do it in a way that would make it marketable? And what way would that be? Whose way would that be? Who decides what is marketable? What does the decision have to do with the political practices of our nations? How does this market serve the capitalistic and racist hegemony of Western nations? And what is my position, as an intellectual, in reproducing this hegemony? The point in asking such questions is to recognize the latent ideological structures that inform our scholarship and practices. As Van Dijk (1993) puts it, often “under the surface of sometimes sophisticated scholarly analysis and description of other races, peoples, or groups . . . we find a powerful ideological layer of self-interest, in-group favoritism, and ethnocentrism” (p. 160). In fact, even when we do sometimes try to break out of the Eurocentric canons informing contemporary academic scholarship by including alternate cultural and racial perspectives in our syllabi, we often do not realize that instead of really breaking free of the canon, all that we do is stretch it, add things to it. But the canon remains the same and unchallenged. Our subject positions in relation to the canon remain the same and challenged. Instead of examining how the canon itself is rooted in a larger discourse of colonialism and Western hegemony, we frequently use the canon to appropriate “other” voice^.^ The question than arises, so what is to be done? Perhaps the first step here is to do what Spivak (1990) suggests: to unlearn our privilege (p. 9). And the first step toward that unlearning requires self-reflexivity; it requires seeing ourselves not sequestered in an academic institution but connecting things that we think or not think, say or not say, teach or not teach, to the larger political and ideological practices of our nations in their interactions with the rest of the world. The solution, however, is not merely to do more rhetorical studies on nonwhite people (e.g., Campbell’s, 1986, study on African American women speakers), for that only becomes a matter of extending, instead of displacing or challenging, the canon by adding “others.” Rather, the solution is to critically examine and challenge the very value system on which the rhetorical canon and our scholarship is based. For instance, rhetoric as a discipline has been traditionally built on public address. But historically public address has been a realm where imperial voices were primarily heard and imperial policies were articulated. The colonized did not always have access to a public realm, or if they did, their speeches were not always recorded in mainstream documents, since the means of production rested with the imperial subject. All this perhaps means that we have built a lot of our understanding of rhetoric, and the canon of rhetoric, by focusing on (and often celebrating) imperial voices. This calls for a reexamination of our paradigms. The move here is parallel to that made by feminists in their challenges of the masculinist biases of the discipline. If rhetorical scholars are to reexamine the discipline in relation to issues such as imperialism, neocolonialism, and race, then they need to perhaps do what Spivak (see explanation) suggests, “unlearn” a lot of the rhetorical tradition and evaluate critically what kinds of knowledge have been (and continue to be) “privileged, legitimated [and] displaced” in our texts and theories and “what configuration of socio-political [and racial] interests” this privileging, displacing, and legitimizing has served (and continues to serve) (Conquergood, 1991, p. 193). For one thing, this means engaging in some serious “soul searching” to uncover why scholarship in our discipline has been and continues to be so white (Rakow, 1989, p. 2l2).’ It is through such postcolonial self-reflexivity of our discipline, as well as our individual scholarship, that we will be able to continue the task of pushing the traditional paradigms of rhetoric further in order to create spaces for racially and culturally marginalized voices and perspectives on rhetoric to emerge - voices and perspectives that would comprise sensitive postcolonial responses to the neocolonial and racist circumstances of our present time. Second, the postcolonial critique of Western discursive imperialism that constructs racial “others” and that legitimizes the contemporary global power structures has important implications for rhetorical criticism, in that it beckons us to recognize postcolonialism as a timely and important critical and political perspective. As Williams and Chrisman (1 994) emphasizes with great urgency in their introduction to Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, it is alarming “how many of the attitudes, the strategies, and even how much of the room for manoeuvre of the colonial period [still] remain in place” (p. 3) in contemporary social, cultural, and I would add, academic practices. Given this, it is unfortunate that in our literature we hardly find articles, especially in our mainstream journals, that examine neocolonial representations of racial “others” or that analyze, for instance, the discursive processes through which the (white) “West” gets constantly legitimized in political, cultural, and social discourses.

The alternative solves by opening up a space for discussion without the influence of imperialism

Coupland ‘10

[Nikolas Coupland, “Chapter 3. The Global Politics of Language: Markets, Maintenance, Marginalization, or Murder?”, The Handbook of Language and Globalization, October 7 2010, Wiley interscience]

The present - day strength of English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese in the Americas, in Africa, in Asia, in Australasia and in the Pacific is a direct consequence of European expansion throughout the world since 1492 and of successive waves of colonization. The languages have accompanied political and economic influence, being invariably backed up by military might. The promotion and hierarchization of languages often dovetailed with missionary activity: Christianity thus accompanied several European languages world - wide, just as Arabic has been an integral part of the spread of Islam, and Russian of Soviet communism. While Europeans were experiencing industrialization and the consolidation of ‘ national ’ (that is, dominant) languages, they were deeply involved in overseas expansion, which contributed to economic boom in Europe. Many of the features of what is now known as globalization were presciently described by Marx and Engels in their Communist Manifesto of 1848 (1961) . This text stressed global economic markets, class interests, and ideological legitimation of an oppressive world order. The project of global dominance has been articulated since before the USA achieved its independence; for instance George Washington saw the United States as a “ rising empire ” (Roberts 2008 : 68). US national identity was forged through massive violence, the dispossession and extermination of indigenous peoples, the myth of unoccupied territory, the surplus value extorted from slave labor, and an active process of national imagination used to form a common identity, one deeply permeated by religion (Hixson 2008 ). The project of establishing English as the language of power, globally and locally, is central to this empire. The ‘ manifest destiny ’ that colonial Americans arrogated to themselves has been explicitly linked, since the early nineteenth century, to English being established globally: “ English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French in the present age ” (John Adams to Congress, 1780, cited in Bailey 1992 : 103). “ The whole world should adopt the American system. The American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system. ” (President Harry Truman, 1947, cited in Pieterse 2004 : 131). The role of scholars in facilitating US empire is explored in Neil Smith ’ s American Empire. Roosevelt ’ s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (2003) , which traces the shift through territorial, colonial dominance (the invasion of the Philippines in 1898) to the attempt to dominate globally through “ a strategic recalibration of geography with economics, a new orchestration of world geography in the pursuit of economic accumulation ” (2003: xvii – xviii). Academia services the “ global needs of the political project, perpetuating a system in which [ … ] global power is disproportionately wielded by a ruling class that remains tied to the national interests of the United States ” (ibid., p. xix). In US colonies and in the British Empire, English was privileged and other languages marginalized. Today ’ s global ruling classes tend to be proficient in English. In the twenty - first century, ‘ empire ’ has increasingly figured in the political discourse of advocates and critics. Engler’s How to Rule the World. The Coming Battle over the Global Economy (2008) distinguishes clearly between the “ corporate globalization ” of the final decades of the twentieth century and its successor, “ imperial globalization ” based on military dominance. Alternatives to Economic Globalization ( 2002 : 19) lists the following eight key features of economic/corporate globalization (neo - liberalism): 1 promotion of hypergrowth and unrestricted exploitation of environmental resources to fuel that growth; 2 privatization and commodifi cation of public services and of remaining aspects of the global and community commons; 3 global cultural (and, we would add, linguistic) and economic homogenization and the intense promotion of consumerism; 4 integration and conversion of national economies, including some that were largely self - reliant, to environmentally and socially harmful export - oriented production; 5 corporate deregulation and unrestricted movement of capital across borders; 6 dramatically increased corporate concentration; 7 dismantling of public health, social and environmental programs already in place; 8 replacement of the traditional powers of democratic nation – states and local communities by global corporate bureaucracies. Alternatives to Economic Globalization fails to mention language among the features listed under “ cultural homogenization, ” despite referring to a global monoculture and to the unrestricted flow of production and marketing, “ needed ” by large multinational corporations. It seems that not even the best globalization experts are aware of the tendencies toward linguistic homogenization and of the threats to linguistic diversity mentioned above. Much of the literature on English as a “ global ” or “ international ” language has tended to be celebratory and failed to situate English within the wider language ecology or to explore the causal factors behind its expansion (on these subjects, see Phillipson 1992 and 2008a and Pennycook 1998 ). Influential work by Crystal, Fishman, and Graddol is critically analyzed in Phillipson 2000 , and books on the world language system by De Swaan and Brutt - Griffler are critically analyzed in Phillipson 2004 . One of the controversial questions today is to what extent corporate globalization is leading toward greater homogenization or greater diversification (for instance through localization), as some researchers claim. For instance Mufwene ( 2008 : 227) claims that McDonaldization does not lead to uniformity because the “ McDonald menu is partly adapted to the local diet. ” Even if McDonald ’ s in India may serve vegetarian burgers in Hindi, this reduction to superficial adaptation disregards completely the structural and process - related aspects of homogenization (see n. 3 for examples; also, for a discussion of McDonaldization, see Hamelink 1994 ; Ritzer 1996 ; and Defi nition Box 6.3 in Skutnabb - Kangas 2000 ). 3 Linguistic globalization needs to be discussed in a politico - economic framework which relates the hierarchization of languages to global and local power relations. A typical example of special pleading for English can be found in a book by a political scientist who argues for the formation of an EU “ super - state ” and cites the familiar trope of English as lingua franca, along with young people ’ s consumerism and global business integration (Morgan 2005 : 57). He seems unaware that there are many ‘ lingua francas ’ in Europe; or that the “ common transnational youth culture ” is essentially American and that the convergence of “ business practices ” derives from the US corporate world and from the conceptual universe it embodies. It is false to project English as though it is ‘ neutral, ’ English as a mere tool that serves all equally well, in whatever society they live. The phrase ‘ English as a lingua franca ’ generally decontextualizes users and seems to imply symmetrical, equitable communication, which is often not the case. It conceals the actual functions that the language performs, English as a lingua academica , lingua bellica , lingua culturalis , lingua economica , and so on (Phillipson 2008b ). It also ignores the Anglo - American semantics and grammar embedded in the language (Wierzbicka 2006 ; M ü hlh ä usler 2003 ). It fails to explore the hegemonic practices of the currently dominant capitalist language or to theorize English linguistic neo - imperialism. Imperialism needs careful definition if it is to be used analytically. This principle guided the definition of linguistic imperialism as a variant of linguicism (Skutnabb - Kangas 1988 : 13) operating through structures and ideologies and entailing unequal treatment for groups identified by language (Phillipson 1992 ). For Harvey ( 2005 : 26), capitalist imperialism is a contradictory fusion of ‘ the politics of state and empire ’ (imperialism as a distinctively political project on the part of the actors whose power is based in command of a territory and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources towards political, economic, and military ends) and ‘ the molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time ’ (imperialism as a diffuse political – economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy). (Emphasis added) The first of these components of the “ contradictory fusion ” is the top - down process of what a state, a combination of states, or an institution such as a corporation or a university does to achieve its goals – which includes the way it manages linguistic capital. The second is the way “ economic power flows across and through continuous space, toward or away from territorial entities (such as states or regional power blocs) through the daily practices of production, trade, commerce, capital flows, money transfers, labour migration, technology transfer, currency speculation, flows of information, cultural impulses, and the like ” (ibid.). Most of these processes are crucially dependent on language, and constituted by language. English can be seen as the capitalist neo - imperial language that serves the interests of the corporate world and of the governments it influences (Phillipson 2008a , 2009 ). This dovetails with the language being activated through molecular processes of linguistic capital accumulation in space and time , in a dialectic process at the intersection of economics, politics, and discourses. So far as linguistic neo - imperialism is concerned, the ‘ political mode of argumentation ’ refers to decision - making, language policy, and planning, whereas the ‘ economic mode of argumentation ’ refers to the working through of such decisions at all levels, to the implementation of language planning decisions, to the actual use of English in myriad contexts. When English increasingly occupies territory that hitherto was the preserve of national languages in Europe or Asia, what is occurring is linguistic capital accumulation , over a period of time and in particular territories, in favor of English. When Singaporean parents gradually shift from an Asian language to the use of English in the home, this represents linguistic capital accumulation. If users of German or Swedish as languages of scholarship shift to using English, similar forces and processes are at work. When considering agency in each of these examples, the individuals concerned opt for the neo - imperial language because they perceive that this linguistic capital will serve their personal interests best, in the false belief that this requires the sacrifice of their own language. When language shift is subtractive, and if this affects a group and not merely individuals, there are serious implications for other languages. If domains such as business, the home, or scholarship are ‘ lost, ’ what has occurred is in fact linguistic capital dispossession . Analysis of the interlocking of language policies with the two constituents of Harvey ’ s “ contradictory fusion ” can highlight both the corporate agendas, which serve political, economic, and military purposes, and the multiple flows that make use of English for a range of purposes. New discourses and technologies are adopted and creatively adapted, but in a rigged, so - called ‘ free ’ global and local market. The active promotion of other major international languages such as Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish also aims to strengthen the market forces and the cultures associated with each language; but at present the linguistic capital invested in these languages does not seriously threaten the current pre - eminence of English. A Chinese global empire may be on the way. International language promotion itself needs to be seen in economic terms, dovetailing as it does with media products and many commercial activities. TESOL (the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) – teaching materials, examinations, know - how, teachers, and so on – is a major commercial enterprise for the British and for the Americans and a vital dimension of English linguistic neo - imperialism. “ The English language teaching sector directly earns nearly £ 1.3 billion for the UK in invisible exports and our other education related exports earn up to £ 10 billion more ” (Lord Neil Kinnock, Chair of the British Council, in the Foreword to Graddol 2006 – a work that charts many variables in the global linguistic mosaic, challenges British monolingual complacency, and aims, as Kinnock stresses, to strengthen “ the UK ’ s providers of English language teaching ” and “ broader education business sectors ” ). The major publishing houses are now global. For instance “ Pearson Education ’ s international business has been growing rapidly in recent years, and we now have a presence in over 110 countries ” ( http://www.pearson.com/index.cfm?pageid=18 ). The website of Educational Testing Services of Princeton, NJ, which is responsible for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) for language profi ciency, declares as their mission: “ Our products and services measure knowledge and skills, promote learning and educational performance, and support education and professional development for all people worldwide ” ( www.ets.org , About ETS). The entrenchment of English in many countries world - wide and for many cross - national purposes leads Halliday (2006) to make a distinction between indigenized and standardized Englishes, which he categorizes as “ international ” and “ global ” : English has become a world language in both senses of the term, international and global: international, as a medium of literary and other forms of cultural life in (mainly) countries of the former British Empire; global, as the co - genitor of the new technological age, the age of information. [ … ] they obviously overlap. [ … ] International English has expanded by becoming world Englishes, evolving so as to adapt to the meanings of other cultures. Global English has expanded – has become ‘ global ’ – by taking over, or being taken over by, the new information technology, which means everything from email and the internet to mass media advertising, news reporting, and all the other forms of political and commercial propaganda. Halliday ’ s “ international ” is an unfortunate label, since he is in effect referring to local forms and uses of English, comprehensible within a country, for instance. His terms also elide the anchoring of global English in the English - dominant countries, where this is the primary national language and one that also opens international doors. This terminology is a minefield which obscures power relations and hegemonic practices, nationally and internationally.

Vote Neg

Voting negative reveals the gaps and omissions of the knowledge produced by the aff, this is the first step to a true understanding of the world and eliminating imperialism

Tikly ‘04

[Leon Tikly, “Education and the New Imperialism”, Comparative Education, May 2004, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4134648]

The question remains, however, as to whether there can be an alternative to the¶ 'regime of truth' that operates around the education and development problematic¶ and whether alternative visions of the future, of education and even of 'development'¶ itself are possible? After all, as Mudimbe (1988) reminds us in relation to Africa,¶ even in the most Afrocentric of perspectives on change, the western epistemological¶ order remains as both context and referent. Indeed, it will not have escaped the¶ attention of the reader that the present article, like so much 'postcolonial' scholarship,¶ is also written largely within a western frame of reference, whatever its¶ intentions or commitments! For critics of the new imperialism this poses a dilemma-¶ is it possible to conceive of a critical social theory and epistemology on¶ which an alternative to western hegemony can be built, and what ought the role of¶ education to be in this endeavour assuming it were possible?¶ To some extent, this is not a new problem within the social sciences. It is a¶ problem of how to go beyond the existing order of knowledge whilst being obliged¶ simultaneously to work within its frameworks. For some critics this has meant¶ abandoning the whole 'development' problematic entirely. Against this kind of¶ nihilism, however, another view is that such an abandonment is itself a betrayal of¶ the poor and marginalized. As Tucker (1999) points out, 'If we were to follow this¶ logic, we would also need to abandon concepts such as socialism, cooperation and¶ democracy because they have also been abused and manipulated for purposes of¶ domination and exploitation' (p. 15).¶ In relation to formal education in particular, it is often the poorest and most¶ marginalized communities that have struggled hardest, both during the period of¶ European colonialism and subsequently, to create educational opportunities for¶ their children because formal schooling is still perceived by those with the most to¶ lose as a way out of poverty and destitution.¶ At a theoretical level I find Santos' (1999) work to be particularly useful in¶ beginning to reconstruct a role for education. He sets out what he describes as a¶ postmodem critical theory (but for our purposes might equally be described as a¶ new anti-imperial critical theory). Santos starts by pointing out that Foucault's great¶ merit was 'to show the opacities and silences produced by modem science, thus¶ giving credibility to alternative "regimes of truth", for other ways of knowing that¶ have been marginalised, suppressed and discredited by modern science' (1999,¶ p. 33). Part of this process or silencing has been to obscure the nature and origins¶ of western science itself. To begin with, modern science developed in the crucible of¶ Enlightenment thought owes much to the Islamic world of scholarship. Secondly,¶ modern science from its inception has had both emancipatory and regulatory¶ dimensions. It was emancipatory to the extent that it sought to bring the threatening¶ chaos of unmastered natural forces under control in relation to an emerging liberal¶ notion of freedom and equality. It was regulatory because it excluded from this and¶ indeed sought to dominate and regulate large sections of humankind including¶ slaves, indigenous peoples, women, children, the poor, etc.¶ Santos' (1999) plea is for a reinvention of 'knowledge as emancipation' based on¶ the principle of solidarity, and a commitment to praxis. That is to combine a new¶ knowledge as emancipation with a commitment to meeting localized needs (here his¶ theory intersects with that of other scholars such as Freire). The principles of¶ knowledge as emancipation are firstly, that it must move from monoculturalism¶ towards multiculturalism based on the recognition of the 'Other' (indigenous and¶ colonized peoples, women, rural dwellers etc.) as producers of knowledge. This¶ means recognizing the silences, gaps and omissions within and between hegemonic¶ and counter-hegemonic systems of knowledge so as to begin to unearth alternative¶ ways of knowing the world. However, this also entails a recognition of difference¶ (see also Crossley & Watson, 2003). Rather than posit one 'knowledge as emancipation'¶ it requires recognizing a multitude of voices of the historically marginalized¶ and to work towards a theory of translation, a hermeneutics that makes it possible¶ for the needs, aspirations and practices of a given culture to be understood by¶ another. Thirdly, knowledge as emancipation involves developing greater awareness¶ and links between the production of knowledge and its likely impact, that is, in¶ contextualizing knowledge production rather than separating it off as a technical¶ area of expertise and in creating an ongoing critical and deconstructive approach¶ towards forms of knowledge power. Finally, however, and going beyond deconstruction,¶ Santos (1999) urges us to reconstruct the idea of emancipatory social action¶ and to 'inquire into the specific forms of socialisation, education, and work that¶ promote rebellious, or on the contrary, conformist, subjectivities' (p. 41).Within the educational sphere and within the context of this article, Santos'¶ challenges lead us to inquire as to what conditions are necessary for transforming¶ education as a disciplinary technology into a potentially liberatory institution based¶ on a view of knowledge not as a means of western control and of regulation of¶ non-western populations but of emancipation from the new imperialism. A few brief¶ points, however, are relevant here. Firstly, as Sardar (1999) has pointed out:¶ Resistancet o Eurocentricisma, and hence development, can only come from non-Western¶ concepts and categories. The non-Western cultures and civilisations have to¶ reconstruct themselves, almost brick by brick, in accordance with their own world¶ views and according to their own norms and values. This means that the non-West has¶ to create a whole new body of knowledge, rediscover its lost and suppressed intellectual¶ heritage, and shape a host of new disciplines. (p. 57)

A2 Zapatistas Bad

Other normal revolutions only lead to more repression- Zapatistas unique

In response to this insidious understanding of power and the practices it sustains, and with an attention to words that testifies to an awareness of their [End Page 189] complex relationship to acts, the Zapatistas propose "the concept of mandar obedeciendo [to order with obedience] as one of the cornerstones of a new democratic culture" (EZLN II, 390). 12¶ The precept, it is worth stressing, does not conform to the practice of power that characterized Latin American revolutionary guerrillas of the seventies, and it is definitely incompatible with the model of the revolutionary avant-garde leading the masses forward toward the realization of a project they cannot fully grasp. In the revolutionary avant-garde, power is hierarchically distributed and decisions are taken by a select group that, however well intended, is bound to reproduce sooner or later the pattern of repression it struggles against. The principle of "ordering with obedience" seems capable of precluding this kind of slippage, because it posits a circular structure of subordination through which power flows. In such a setup, the "ordering" instance is delegated to organize the implementation of the people's decision, so that the people ultimately follow the "orders" they themselves give. Familiar as it sounds, the Zapatistas' motto has the merit of formulating clearly the nonauthoritarian foundations of democracy and of articulating an understanding of power in terms of the power to do or to accomplish, that is, of power as exercised in the actual fulfillment of the people's decision and with the people's willing participation.

A2 Vague Alts

Our alternative’s vagueness is a pragmatic and sensible option in recognizing the fundamental indeterminacy of the future

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