Arquivo de etiquetas: Globalização

Sobre a Nova Recomendação da UNESCO sobre Museus Colecções sua Diversidade e Função Social (I)

Os postais deste séria são constituídos pela notas preparatórias para Conferencia do ICOM Portugal, que se ralizou no passados dia 28 de março de 2016, no Palácio Nacional da Ajuda  por Pedro Pereira Leite

Sobre a UNESCO:

A UNESCO (Organização das Nações Unidas para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura) é uma organização internacional constituída em Paris em 4 novembro de 1946 com o objetivo de “contribuir para a paz e segurança no mundo mediante a educação, a ciência, a cultura e as comunicações”.

Tem uma missão diversificada, habitualmente centrada nos três domínios que cosntam do seu nome (educação, ciência e cultura), a que mais tarde se junta aquestão da comunicação. É necessário ter em conta o contexto em que a UNESCO se constitui, em 1946, no âmbito duma reconfiguração das Organizações Internacionais no pós-guerra, assumindo a ONU o papel da antiga Sociedade das Nações, e a UNESCO o antigo Comité dessa Sociedade para a Educação e Cultura (constituído em 1921). Um tempo que é marcado pela necessidade de reconstruir a Europa e vastas áreas da Ásia desvastadas pela guerra. Os valores da Paz são uma das essências na UNESCO, sendo que os seus 4 campos de atuação eram vistos como as ações que facilitavam a construção e manutenção da Paz.

Em primeiro lugar o campo da Educação: Constitui um dos seus principais objetivos que se concretiza na necessidade de reduzir e eliminar o analfabetismo no mundo. A UNESCO é responsável pelo primeiros processos de planeamento educativos em muitos países do mundo, contribuindo, numa primeira fase para a universalização do acesso aos sistema educativo, e, num segundo momento, pela reflexão sobre a qualidade do sistemas educativos. A escola e a formação de professores são atividades que a UNESCO apoia de muito perto.

Diretamente associado à Educação, mas com uma crescente autonomia, a UNESCO desenvolve várias atividades na área de ciência e tecnologia. Considerada a ciência em sí e a sua aplicação prática (a tecnologia) como uma das chaves do futuro, a UNESCO desde cedo desenvolve uma reflexão sobre os benefícios para toda a humanidade da extensão e aplicação dos conhecimentos científicos, alertando ao mesmo tempo para os compromissos éticos que é necessário ter na aplicação dos avanças da ciência para benefício da sociedade.

Esta questão ganhará entretanto uma crescente autonomia no âmbito das organizações internacionais por via a relação com o ambiente e o uso dos recursos naturais, ligando-se com isso a outras organizações nas nações unidas, ganhando mesmo alguma centralidade no âmbito da política da própria ONU.

As atividades culturais, ganhara relevância através da emergência das políticas culturais, políticas que se orientaram para a promoção da leitura, para a literacia científica e para a a salvaguarda do património, natural e cultural, e ao estímulo a criação artística, seja ela erudita ou popular (na altura referenciada como folclore), o estímulo da criação e a criatividade e a preservação das entidades culturais e tradições orais, assim como a promoção dos livros e a leitura. . O Programa do WHC (World Heritage Centre) é uma dos programas com maior visibilidade no campo da cultura, coordenando a preservação e a conservação do património da humanidade.

Originalmente ligada à liberdade cultural, a comunicação foi ganhando progressiva autonomia, à medida em que a comunicação social foi ganhando relevância social. A livre circulação de ideias e expressões culturais e a garantia de acesso à pluralidade de meios audiovisuais, é considerada uma das bases da liberdade. A liberdade de imprensa e a independência, o pluralismo e a diversidade dos meios de informação, através do Programa Internacional para a Promoção da Comunicação constituem uma das referências base da UNESCO

A atividade da UNESCO é hoje variada e complexa. Fazem-se encontros de peritos, escrevem-se recomendações e declarações, encontros temáticos, regionais, sectoriais. Pela sua relevância na produção de conhecimento contemporâneo, é hoje uma organização que não pode deixar de ser considerada quando se trabalha sobre as questões do conhecimento, cultura e ciência. Os principais instrumentos de difusão das suas posições, tomadas em Assembleia Geral são três: Convenções, Recomendações e Declarações. Entre estes instrumentos existe uma hierarquia, sendo que a Convenção é um instrumento que deve ser seguido por todos os estados membros que a retificam; a recomendação, traduz normas e indicares a serem seguidos por todos os Estado Membros; e a declaração, mostra a relevância dum assunto a ser tomado em consideração.

Ameaças Globais

xxiSaíu a 13 de junho o nº 5 da Revista XXI, relativo ao segundo semestre de 2015. Editada pela Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, com o tema geral dos Riscos

Apresenta como temas central o artigo de Phillipe Petit o sociólogo que tem trabalhado as questões das sociedades do risco.

chamou-nos a atenção o artigo  “As 12 ameaças globais” com uma entrevista a Stuart Armstrong, a propósito do relatório do Global Chalanges Foundation e o livro do “Future of Humanity institute ” sobre os riscos da humanidade.

Os autores, Dennis pamlin e Sturat Armstrong e sua equipa identificaram 12 riscos, com elevado impacto na humanidades e elevada probabilidade de ocorrência.

São eles: Alterações Climáticas,  Guerra Nuclear, Pandemia Global, Colapso Ecológico, Impacto dum asteróide, Supervulcão, Biologia Sintética, Nanotecnologia, Inteligência Artificial, Consequencias Desconhecidas e Má governação global e Futura.

Alguns deles temos vindo a trabalhar e aqui desenvolveremos alguns postais brevemente, tal como as alterações climáticas.

A revistas apresenta ainda um artigo de  José Pacheco Pereira sobre “O risco bom do poder e o risco mau da liberdade”, a banda desenhada “Riscar o céu” (de André da Loba e João Paulo Cotrim), o texto “Perigo, risco e preocupação” (de Miguel Nogueira de Brito), o ensaio de Afonso Cruz “Breve dicionário dos medos” e a pré-publicação de “Mundo em Risco” (Ulrich Beck).

Como diz  José Pacheco Pereira, do ponto de vista objectivo, o risco é fácil de definir: “shit happens”.

 

Human Rights and Gender Equality IV

Forces of Widening Inequalities

Social inclusion means prosperity that is widely shared and we’ve noted that large groups in society, because of the forces of history. Cultural exclusion, violence have entered the 21st century in situations that are often extraordinarily difficult and challenging. We know that women in many parts of the world continue to face. Major barriers to their economic participation, their prosperity, their ability to prosper. Young girls have faced the difficulties of achieving and gaining access to the education. The health that they need for their own well-being as future adults and future citizens in their country. We know also that economic forces putting aside for the moment gender and ethnic divisions. Are also playing a role in widening inequality and undermining social inclusion in many parts of the world. I’d like to focus for a few minutes on the economic and political drivers that are causing larger and larger class differentiation within societies.

741We have at least three fundamental forces that have been playing a role in widening economic inequalities in the United States, in many European countries, and in many of the emerging economies. Around the world. One is the rising gap between high-skilled and low-skilled workers that has resulted from forces of globalization. A second phenomenon is changing technology that is having a differential effect on different Income groups, different classes within society. And the third force is the political system often amplifying the widening inequalities caused by globalization and by technological change. So. Perhaps the useful starting point to understand these changes is a frequently viewed graph. This case for the United States, but one would find similar though perhaps not as stark conditions like this in other places in the world. This is a graph of the premium in income, the extra income, that is earned by college graduates in the United States, relative to high school graduates. So take the population, the labor force that has a four year college degree or higher, could include those with an advanced degree. Look at the earnings of that group. And then compare it with those that have a high school diploma, but not more. And this is what we observe in the case of the United States, from 1973 until the recent decade. What you observe is that for all of this period, having a higher degree, not surprisingly, means more income.

In 1973, a college grad had a 30% premium relative to a holder of a high school diploma as the top level of educational attainment. That actually dipped. During the 1970s so that that premium fell to under 25%. But then from roughly 1979 onward, we see in this graph, that the college wage premium, as it’s called has soared. And has increased to around 45% wage premium compared with a high school degree holder. It’s interesting that, that increase started around 1979, because that’s also a period when many powerful forces of globalization linking together the high-income world and the emerging economies really started to develop.

742So this is a, a puzzle for us. Why did the Gap between those with higher education and those with a high school diploma suddenly widen. What happened? And, I would argue that the three forces that I mentioned, globalization, technological change, and politics have all played an important role. How would globalization work? Well, consider the US suddenly, becoming a trading partner with countries like Mexico or Korea, or Taiwan. Remember those Asian Tigers. Which were the first of the emerging economies in Asia to achieve rapid, economic growth by dint of their export-oriented strategy relative to the U.S. and European market. Or consider the fact that soon after, 1979 China opened its economy to international trade. And opened its border regions in particular to host foreign Companies that would locate in China to produce goods, some of our favorite electronics products for example, to be assembled in China and then reexported to the US and Europe. This kind of globalization is economic integration. Made possible by improvements in technology such as mobile phones, and computer assisted design and manufacturing. Containerization and radically lower transport costs, suddenly put US workers and Chinese workers into the same labor market. Now, the Chinese workers at the time made much less than $1 per hour whereas American workers might have been earning $10 to $20 an hour. And yet suddenly both sets of workers would have the same technologies at their disposal.

743The Chinese workers, after all, would be working in factories using the very machinery, the specifications, often literally the same companies, as the American workers. And so suddenly, the relatively low-skilled Chinese workers, may, maybe with a. A high school education would be using machinery to put together electronics products. Or to cut and sew apparel. Or to make plastic objects, extrusion objects and components of vehicles. That American workers had been employed to do up to that point. This joining of the labor market through the internationalization of the production technologies and the role of multinational companies in bridging. Between the high wage US market and the low wage emerging economies, transformed the labor market globally. In the US, there began a quite significant decline of jobs in traditional manufacturing sectors. The apparel sector, for example, was displaced. Whether to Mexico or the Caribbean, or Honduras, or to East Asian low-wage sites. The electronics assembly industry which used to be part of an integrated electronics operation. Was separated from the R&D base or the the production of the semiconductors themselves so that the relatively lower skill part of the work of assembling. The mother boards of electronics, devices, and household appliances. Could be moved to China, or moved to Vietnam, or to places where the wages were a tenth or a twentieth or a fiftieth of those that might prevail in the U.S. Suddenly the downward pressure on the wages, especially of the relatively lower-skilled workers in the United States. With their High School diplomas suddenly facing competition from abroad became intense. And I think that’s why 1979 is this turnaround time. Deng Xiaoping came to power in China in 1978, threw the Chinese economy into openness and market institutions. And while that took a process of three decades subsequently to build China as the great workshop of the world.

744The dynamics of an integrated global market began to really play a powerful role at that point. And we know in the United States that. The US just about time of 1979 had the peak of its  employment in the manufacturing sector, around 19 million workers. And from 1979 onward there has been a significant decline. Of manufacturing sector employment. A loss of jobs. Partly a displacement to lower wage economies. For those low wage economies, a huge benefit. A key part of the rapid economic growth that is lifting people from abject poverty. By no means a bad thing. But with a real impact, in the high wage labor markets, putting downward pressure on the wages of the relatively lower skilled workers. Now even if it weren’t for globalization, another force certainly is at play. And that is the information revolution, and all that it signifies. Meaning a progressive automation of many production processes, another force leading to higher productivity, but fewer jobs of the traditional sort. In many key sectors. So put China out of mind from the US perspective for a moment. And just think about how technological change has re-made the shop floor of major manufacturing sectors. Automobiles probably being among the most dramatic. I’ve toured many automobile factories. Some absolutely stunning and amazing. One in Japan of Toyota where we entered a very, very large assembly line completely clean. Completely quiet. And almost no workers around. Vehicles were going their merry way until you looked closely, no drivers. Because the vehicles were being directed automatically to deliver components from one place to another. And the whole assembly line all the way down this large cavernous hall. Robots. Very clever. Very sophisticated seemingly tireless robots with the great precision. Reaching into a basket, taking a component, putting it just where it should be on the automobile chassis coming down the assembly line. Next automobile, often of a different make, and the robot knowing through, of course, its programming. To put that component in a somewhat different place on the chassis of a somewhat different vehicle. All remarkably automated. The robotics are one of the most visible, remarkable aspects of the information technology revolution and the computerization revolution. That we are enjoying in the 21st century. It’s raising productivity dramatically it is of course lowering the costs of many, many goods and services. That kind of automation even when it’s not literally a robot handling a physical product. But is simply a computer making massive payrolls or processing orders that thousands of clerks might have done in an earlier day, is part of a modern high productivity economy. But, just like the off-shoring of jobs. It’s taking a toll on workers who used to do exactly that kind of labor. And so technology also drives income differences across countries. And we are seeing the combination of globalization and technological change, in an intertwined way, putting a special pressure on lower skilled workers. We can’t even separate these two phenomena with any precision, though you can image economists have written hundreds of articles, I’ve added a few myself. To the debates how much is globalization, how much is technological change. Well since globalization itself is enabled by the same technological change making a clear difference between the two is not possible analytically. But what is discernible is the fact that this rising wage premium has absolutely come from both of these phenomena. Now, I’ve stressed that there is a third factor that is part of this story, and that is politics. And this is extremely important for us to understand.

Market forces alone would widen inequalities. The wage premium is a real phenomenon coming from the combination of globalization and technological change. What you see in this picture of the income levels by a more detailed classification of educational attainment. Showing that those with an advanced degree have had the biggest gains of earnings. Those with the bachelor degree next. Those with some college, high school, and no diploma basically flat, or even declining income levels, but something more has been at play. When that market inequality starts, starts to rise, politics then enters the scene. In some political systems, government forces would lean against this by saying, well lower skilled workers are facing a problem. They need some extra help. Maybe some new job training. Maybe a cut in their taxes. Maybe added family benefits. High-skilled workers are receiving a bonanza, both because of technological change and because of globalization. And maybe they should receive fewer benefits or pay higher taxes. And in that way, government would, as we say, lean against the wind. If market forces are tending to widen inequality, political forces would tend to narrow it. But in some places, and my own country, the United States is definitely one, political forces amplified the market forces, took a widening inequality, and made it even more. Of a steeply widening inequality as a result of politics, rather than helping the poor and perhaps taxing the rich to do so. In the Unites States, the poor lost even more of their social support as government cut back. And the rich gained government support as their taxes were reduced. Rather extraordinary. And one can even date this, I’ve argued, though some disagree with me, to a specific political event and that starts in my opinion on January 20th, 1981. When Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. And came into office reflecting various political forces which said, that they should implement the libertarian philosophy. Get government out of things. And reduce taxes, reduce social support. The libertarian view does not agree with the basic needs philosophy that everybody’s needs should be represented. The libertarian philosophy more takes the point of view that government should not play a role, that taxes should be cut. That’s argued both on a philosophical base that freedom and liberty are the number one goal. It’s argued on a pragmatic base that, that will free up the dynamism of the entrepreneurs in society and through a kind of trickle-down effect, make everybody better off. But whatever it’s argued in the US, starting in 1981, and really continuing since that time, the rich and powerful have had advantages of politics. Their taxes have been cut. Their even as their wealth has soared they have faced a diminishing share of their income being paid in taxes. Various restraints on their behavior, whether it’s cultural norms that say don’t take so much money or whether it’s practical limitations of how companies operate, have been relaxed. Deregulation in the financial markets for example, enabling the top management of the financial system to pay itself mega bonuses and massive compensation. And so in addition to the market forces suddenly in the United States as well starting in the 1980’s, the incomes, the total compensation package of the. Top management of the big companies, and especially on Wall Street and in the financial companies, began to soar. And so the United States faced not only downward pressures on the low-wage workers, but upward pressures at the very top, what became known in the American. Political parlance as the top 1%, though sometimes it’s even a fraction of that top 1%. The income levels soared, and this is illustrated in a graph showing the ratio of compensation of Chief Executive Officers, CEOs in American companies to average workers. What you see is that that ratio was maybe 10 or 20 times higher in the 1970s, but suddenly, the compensation packages went out of sight. The regulatory constraints, the cultural norms were, went in the direction of saying pay the top everything, let them take huge amounts. And suddenly, these CEOs were earning hundreds of times the income of the workers. And the result is shown in a curve that illustrates the income share taken by the top 1%. Of America’s richest households, the blue curve. And what you see is over the course of a century, the income share was between 15 and 20% up to the time of 1929 when the great depression started. The new deal era of the United States came in, government cracked down on a lot of abuses in the financial sector, for example. And the income share at the top went down sharply. Tax rates faced by the top went up sharply. The income share of the top 1% was around 10% of total income between 1940 and the late 1970s. Still pretty good. 1% of the households taking 10% of the total household income. But then the curve starts straight up and it’s not just market forces doing that because this isn’t observed in this extreme way in almost any other country in the world. It’s politics amplifying the market forces. Reducing the taxes paid at the top as President Reagan did. And as was subsequently confirmed by later administrations. Reducing the political constraints and the regulatory constraints on top managers to take home big take home pay. Suddenly the top income share in the US, the top 1% were taking home 20% of the total household income. And whats quite remarkable is the top of the top of the top, the top 1% of the 1% that is the top .01 % of US households around 12,000 in total because they are, are around a 120 million households. So 1% of those is about 1.2 million households, and 1% of that is about 12,000 households. They are now taking home 5% of the total income of American households, and so the inequality at the top, aided by the political process, also soared. And, in this sense we could say that the challenge of social inclusion is very well illustrated in the US context, though the story up until today is not a very satisfactory one for many, many Americans. On the one hand, market forces have amplified the inequalities. On the other hand, the political system not only did not come to the rescue of the poor, but reacted in a quite stark way. Coming to the backing of the rich. Pulling away some of the social support of the poor. Taking the libertarian view that the Government’s not going to address the issues of inequality. Making it harder rather than easier for society to meet its basic needs. Setting up an even bigger challenge for social inclusion as one of the key pillars of sustainable development. We will look at what can be done in this context because there are ways to reestablish social mobility and social inclusion. But the the political system has to participate in that if those methods of achieving social inclusion are to be effective.

 

A Short History of Economic Development V

Economic Development Since World War II: The Making of Globalization

Modern economic growth took off in the middle of the 18th century, and like the ripples on a pond after a stone has fallen into the water, the ripples of economic growth spread to other parts of the world through the 19th century. The closer to the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, the closer to England, the faster were countries to receive that ripple, to take off on their own, and escape from extreme poverty. The more that countries were proximate to ports the more that they could trade internationally, the better their climate, the more productive their agriculture. All of these were conducive to a faster takeoff into modern economic growth. And of course politics played an enormously important role. Independence and sovereignty was essential for modern economic growth in the 19th century. Those countries that were unfortunate to succumb to imperial rule did not have the basis for economic takeoff because the imperial powers, typically the European imperial powers, weren’t very much interested in educating the population, building the kind of infrastructure needed for their own industrial take off. Instead they were interested in seeing their colonies as places for primary commodities to build the home industry. And the result is that by the beginning of the 20th century, one could say the following. First, it was a miraculous age because waves of technological change had led to unprecedented breakthroughs in the ability of humankind to produce, to meet material needs, to extend life to, solve long-standing problems of public health, to make breakthroughs in transport, in quality of life in so many ways through electrification, modern transportation, mass industrial production. It was already an age of huge variation between the rich and powerful on the one side and the poor and vulnerable on the other side. Modern economic growth had come to Europe. It had come to the lands of new settlement, the United States and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It had spread to other places mainly in the temperate zones of the world like Argentina, Uruguay, Chili. It had not spread to Africa. It had not spread to much of Asia which was under the pressures of European imperial rule. None-the-less, it was a most remarkable age. And as you know, I’m such a fan of John Maynard Keynes because of the power of his economic and political vision in the 20th Century. But one of the things he wrote about this age is worth us recalling. At the end of World War One, he looked back to the period just before World War One, and described this unique global circumstance. He said, and I’m quoting from his famous work, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man, that age was which came to an end in August 1914 with World War One. He writes, the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole Earth in such quantity as he may see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep. He could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world and share without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages. But most important of all, writes Keynes, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it is aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. Of course, Keynes was speaking as an Englishman, and a quite brilliant and privileged Englishman. He was the one sitting in bed, sipping his tea, and ordering commodities from all parts of the world. Those under colonial rule could not do so. But he was also expressing the uniqueness of an age where modern economic growth had broken out and had taken hold in many parts of the world and had created a global economy. But, of course, that economy came crashing apart tragically, unexpectedly, with the onslaught of World War One. Such a destructive war that historians still today, a hundred years later, are trying to figure out what could have caused that, because there were no deep motives for that war. That war was massively destructive. It unleashed chaos, deaths from violence of course, epidemic diseases such as the flu epidemic at the end of the World War One. It unleashed the Bolshevik Revolution that gave birth to Soviet era communism. It unleashed a tremendous economic forces that led to huge instability in the 1920s. And it played a key role, though complex role, in the onset of  the Great Depression in 1929. And of course, that depression gave rise to horrific political forces, none other than the rise of Adolf Hitler. In January, 1933, in the rise of fascism and thereby the birth of the second devastating world war that which broke out in Europe in 1939 and in Asia, lead by Japan the industrial power of Asia around the same time to create a truly world war. By 1945, technology had continued to advance, but many of the technological leaders were in ruins, though they would quickly rebuild. One technological leader, the world’s technological leader was not in ruins, because other than one attack on Pearl Harbor it was not directly touched in its own territory by the war. That of course, was the United States which far and away by the end of World War Two was the world’s leading economy, the most powerful, the technology leader. And the one that would have the greatest influence on the world economy basically until now. But in very powerful ways, throughout the second half of the 20th century. In technology, in forging markets, and in geopolitics. What’s important for us in understanding how the ripples of modern economic growth diffuse after World War Two, is to understand that by the end of World War Two, the world was divided in three parts. And those three parts gave rise to a kind of division of the world economy that would persist for some decades, and then finally, themselves, give way to a unified global economy. The first part was the US led part. It was the US, it was Europe, it was vanquished Japan which became and ally of the United States after World War Two. This part is sometimes called the first world. It was the richest part, especially after rebuilding. It was mainly a market economic system. It traded among each other and it was the leading engine of technological change through to the end of the 20th century. The second world, so-called, was the world of Soviet communism. This was the Soviet Union itself which had 15 republics  which, after 1991, became 15 independent  ountries. It was the world conquered by the Soviet Union in central and eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia at the time Hungary Bulgaria, Romania and, other countries of the region where the Red Armies sat and created Soviet style government and economies. It included the People’s Republic of China after 1949, which adopted a communist system. The one that soon enough would be very different from the Soviet style communism.  The third division of the world was the former colonial powers because one of the mega results of World War Two, was that the imperial European countries, themselves in ruins, were certainly in no shape to run empires. And the former colonies had had enough of it. They not only had the ideology, the sense, the awareness that independence was theirs to grab but they saw how destructive their imperial masters had been. The legitimacy of empire was over and the ability of the imperial powers to continue to maintain empire was gone as well, although many of them didn’t notice it because they continued to try to fight rear guard wars to defend imperial possessions. And so the period of decolonization which began around 1947 with the, India, and then with Indonesia, and it followed on throughout Africa, Asia, and other places. That stretched out over a course of decades. But, it created a kind of third world. Third world is a term we sometimes use to mean poor and middle income countries, but it meant something more literal back when the phrase was invented. It meant not the first world of the United States, not the second world of the communist era, but the post-colonial world. Sometimes also a grouping called the non-aligned countries. They said we don’t want US domination, we don’t want Soviet domination, we want to be on our own. And a little bit less formally, a fourth world was sometimes also brought into the mix. That’s the group of countries, basically, that we call the least developed countries today, the countries in absolute abject poverty. Well these were quite the sharp divisions and the world economy evolved under these geopolitical divides for several decades. The first world recovered from the damage of World War Two remarkably quickly by the 1950s. And endogenous technology driven economic growth took hold and the process of modern economic growth and rising living standards took hold in the first world very, very powerfully. In the second world, the communist world, there was industrialization and it seemed pretty dynamic for awhile, but already by the 1960s it was coming into crisis. And by the 1970s, economic development under a non-market communist system was basically screeching to a halt. Countries began to reform. China was the first great reformer in the communist group in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping came to power and said we need to market economy. We need to open China to trade. And that unleashed China’s own catching up growth with remarkable success to the point where China became by far the fastest growing major economy in the world in, in history. Now other parts of the communist world took longer to break free, because the Soviet Union wasn’t having it for a very long time. And it was only when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the middle of the 1980s and began his own market reforms and then came the revolutions of Eastern Europe in 1989. And then the end of the Soviet Union itself at the end of 1991 did the second world, basically stop being its own self-contained economic unit, and become part of the world economy. The third world, and the fourth world, included dozens, and dozens of countries, and each had their own economic history, and their own strategies. A very few of the countries early on said, we like that first world model. We’re pretty much interested in integrating with the first world economies. And they figured out something that most of the rest of the developing countries did not figure out until later, and that was that diffusion, the arriving of those ripples, could lift them into a very special kind of industrialization. Mainly where new industries in their own countries, many foreign owned, would become part of global production systems so that a company in Korea or in Taiwan would begin to produce the electronics goods, or the shirts and, and, pants on the racks of, of retailers in the United States and Europe. According to the technology designs and the in, intellectual property of the so-called first world companies. The early developers of that new strategy for catching up were called the Asian Tigers, Korea, Taiwan China, Hong Kong, Singapore. The four of them already by the 1960s and then by the 1970s were growing extremely rapidly by integrating their new young industrial base with the high tech industries of the first world. And as that happened other developing countries watched and said, wait a minute, that’s pretty interesting. Maybe we shouldn’t stay quite so non-aligned, politically yes, but economically maybe we should open our own doors to trade and to foreign investment and try to attract those new multinational companies that could use our country, and our labor force, and our natural resources as a base for their global production systems. This is how globalization came into being. Globalization came into being as this diffusion process created a new kind of catching up after World War Two. Especially starting in countries that opened their trade and opened their borders to foreign investment, so that new global industry centered around multinational companies, could use those countries as basis for global production systems. And that process backed by big breakthroughs in technology, better transport, intermodal transport, so called, from ships to the to the backs of trucks in a very smooth process, containerization of trade through the standard 20 foot containers. And of course the advent of modern computer-assisted design and manufacturing. And the enormous breakthroughs made possible by the internet and by mobile telephony revolutionized the ability of companies to engage in global production systems. And thereby create globally integrated companies, often with hundreds of thousands of employees, operating in more than one hundred countries. And the world’s multinational companies thereby became the main agents for the continuing transmission of those ripples around the world and the continuing diffusion of modern economic growth. Japan was a leader in its own region in this. And they developed a,a wonderful, visual metaphor for this called the flying geese model. Have a look at these geese in formation. You have a goose flying in front and then yeah, in back are others following the lead. And this is how economic development in Asia started as well with the industrialization first of Japan, and then flying in formation just behind came Korea and Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Behind them, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. Behind them, China, Vietnam. Behind them, Cambodia, Laos. But, as the leading country moves from textiles to electronics, then from electronics to automobiles, then from automobiles to advanced information technology, the country just behind it moves from agriculture, to apparel and textiles, from apparel and textiles to electronics, from electronics onto its own technology innovation of information technology, and one goose after another, to use Japan’s metaphor follows along the way. This map that you’re looking at now shows where the textile firms located. And every red dot is essentially a node of multinational production, where often low wage labor is hired to produce in a global production network of textiles and apparel. You’ll see virtually that every dot in Asia is on the coast just like Adam Smith said in 1776 before he could know anything about such global production chains. You’re looking at a map here of China attracting foreign direct investment. Again China’s great breakthrough after 1978 when Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world was to attract foreign investment that made China an export base for world manufacturing production. And, you can see, also, that the wave goes from darker provinces where its foreign direct investment is the highest, into the interior. Moving from coast to the interior just as Adam Smith had told us. And, the result is by the end of the 20th century and into the early years of the 21st century, what had started as the preserve of England, and then had spread across the English Channel and the North Sea into Western Europe, that had spread to the lands of new settlement first, that had then spread to other temperate zones, then it spread to Central and Eastern Europe, that had been taken up by Japan in late 19th century industrialization, that in the 20th century after World War Two could now spread to the former colonized parts of the world and as they gained their independence was a process of global economic development that had reached almost all the world. There are still places where this is not true til today. Often the most land-locked interior places with difficult climate, with lack of natural resources, and so forth that have all of the burdens and few of the benefits should take hold. But for most of the world, the breakthrough by now has taken place. Of course, those who made the breakthrough early on are today’s rich world. They’re the high income countries. Those who have come late to this by virtue of their history, their politics, their resource base, their geography are today’s middle income or low income countries. Those still waiting to take off are today’s least developed countries. We’re going to turn our attention carefully and in detail to how those least developed countries can make the breakthrough now in the 21st century.

Impacto da globalização na Saúde Global – VII

O processo de globalização levou a um mundo interdependente. Depois de no século XIX a industrialização e a urbanização terem constituído os modos dominantes de criar crescimento na economia, e de criar processos de melhoria na saúde pública, o século XX viu surgir um modo de organizar a economia e as sociedades diferentes. Vimos as doenças não comunicativas, ditas do progresso, tornarem-se dominantes em todo o lado, ao mesmo tempo que as infecções e os agentes infecciosos viajem muito mais rapidamente. A globalização traz, para a saúde global, vantagens e desvantagens. Como em todas as coisas à que defenda e que critique, quem se entusiasme e quem seja mais cético. No entanto à que analisar o novo fenómeno para procurar as melhores soluções.

Há claras vantagens nos processos de integração económica. A circulação de capitais, bens e serviços, das tecnologias, do trabalho e do saber é benéfico.

Mas também trás inconvenientes. Para além da facilidade de viagem dos agentes infecciosos sabemo que o crescimento económico que a globalização procura catalizar não é infinito e não é necessariamente sempre crescimento. Doenças derivadas de hábitos de vida ou alimentares não saudáveis também se tornam globais, aumentando o risco das populações de cada vez mais regiões a este tipo de patologias. Há vário casos, como por exemplo o aumento da obesidade na população mexicana, nos anos 80, com o crescimento exponencial da importanção de produtos alimentares americanos embalados. Mas também a globalização pode trazer efeitos positivos, como sucedeu na Polónia, onde os níveis de saúde da população melhoraram substancialmente nos últimos quinze anos com melhorias no sistema de abastecimento alimentar. Há também um conjunto de vantagens no campo do conhecimento médico com a globalização. O Conhecimento pode agora ser acessível em todo o mundo.

No entanto, a globalização e o seu sistema de crises cíclicas traz vários problams. Por exemplo as políticas de ajustamento estrutural, levadas a cabo em países como por exemplo a Rússia nos anos noventa, levaram a claras deficiências no financiamento dos sistemas de saúde pública, com reflexos na saúde da população. Também na China, com a crescente mercantilização da saúde, regista-se uma tendência para uma diminuição dos indicadores de saúde.  Há no entanto paíse, como sucedeu na Tailanda, que resistiram às políticas de austeridade, e que mantiveram, contra a pressão das organizações internacionais, o financiamento ás serviços de saúde, mantendo e melhorando os seus indicadores. As várias organizações internacionais acabaram por considerar os efeitos negativos das reformas que propuseram, nomeadamento a limitação ao acesso aos serviços de saúde, com a introdução de taxas moderadoras, ou por um insuficiência no financiamento do sistema.

Há um outro importante impacto da globalização no sistema de saúde global que deriva da livre circulação de pessoas. Os pessoal médico e qualificado no campo da saúde é mais facilmente atraído ara regiões mias seguras e melhor remuneradas, o que cria dificuldades de cobertura em diversas regiões do mundo. É necessário um código de ética para assegurar a distribuição de pessoal qualificado por todas as regiões.

Um outra tendência da globalização, com efeitos na esfera da saúde global, é a tendência cada vez maior da investigação ser financiada por findações e empresas privadas. Nem sempre há uma coincidência entres os interesses globais e os interesses do mercado e das corporações. Isso é susceptível, por exemplo, de introduzir distorções nos processos de investigação, favorecendo uns em detrimento dos interesses gerais.

A globalização também tem produzido alterações noutros sistemas com resultado que tem impacto nos sistemas de saúde global. Por exemplo, na agricultura, a predominância do mercado e da produção extensiva em regime de monocultura, não só está a diminuir a diversidade da base alimentar e a destruir ecosistemas, como introduz lógicas que destroem recursos das populações. Por exemplo a produção de sementes através de processos de produção industrial ou a tendência do mercado para previligiar a produção de carne, levará, nesta caso, mantendo-se o crescimento previsto do consumo, a um impossibilidade de recursos para satisfazer a procura. Isso já está a ser visível, por exemplo ao nível dos recursos marinhos. O ambiente é outro sector onde a globalização também produz efeitos com reflexos na saúde global. A degradação do ambiente tem um reflexo na saúde pública. Por exemplo, o processo de transferência da industrias poluentes para países mais pobres, para aproveitar uma mão-de-obra mais barata, tem efeitos negativos nesse paíse, que já por sí são mais frágeis em termos de sistemas de saúde pública, introduzindo novas pressões que implicam a mobilização de mais recursos.

Mas por outro lado a globalização pode ser uma oportunidade para corrigir as distorções e conseguir alcançar condições para uma maior equidade na saúde global.

Sabemos que o crescimento económico, por si só não gera uma melhor saúde global. É necessário que o crescimento económico se faça com equidade. O mercado por si só não resolve os problemas das sistemas sociais. É necessário criar também alguma ação colectiva para criar equidade. O mercado gera assimetrias que é necessário ir corrigindo. É necessário que os podere públicos tomem uma série de medida para corrigir os mercado.

As medidas de ação podem ser, por exemplo, criar consciência da consumidores saudáveis e dar incentivos ás industrias de produção de bens alimentares saudáveis. Uma sociedade com saúde é mais produtiva, e uma população com um trabalho estável consome mais no mercado e com mais responsabilidade. É necessário criar condições para que a população aceda a uma alimentação saudável através do incentivo às industrias de produção de bens alimentares saudáveis.

A globalização criu uma superfície onde é mais fácil navegar. Mas por vezes a superfície é inclinada. Há que manter a superfície plana e equitativa. Sem isso não é possível alcançar uma melhoria nos indicadores da saúde global. Para isso é necessário criar um compromisso global e corrigir as assimetrias do mercado. É necessário assegurar que as instituições globais estão ao serviço da equidade e da justiça. É necessário que os diversos pasíses tenha consciência das armadilhas das dívidas externas. É necessário não confiar nos mercados financeiros. Sabe-se que ao menor sinal de fragilidade dum mercado, que os investidores desaparecem. O mercado financeiro é um mercado muito volátil e tem um risco muito elevado de sustentabilidade. É necessário proteger alguns serviços do mercado. Serviços como a água, o saneamento, a produção de alimentos, o ambiente, a saúde básica e a educação constituem serviços básicos que devem ser assegurados. É necessário ter em consideranção que o mercado é imperfeito.

Por outro lado é necessário aproveitar as vantagens que a globalização oferece. A livre circulação de conhecimento e das tencologias são um benefício da humanidade. É necessário construir pontes para o conhecimento para partilhar soluções inovadoras.

Por exemplo a inovação reversiva, que é constituída por inovações em processo aplicados em muitos pequenos ou médios países podem levar a implementar soluções de baixo custo e de maior rendimento em outros países.

Por outro lado é também necessário apoiar os países mais pobres a implementarem mais rapidamente os seus programas de saúde e de desenvolvimento económico. Estes países não podem ficar dependentes do assistencialismo e da caridade. Há que ter programas adequados. Para isso é necessário construir uma parceria global para valorizar os modos de vida saudáveis e os sistemas de alimentação saudáveis. É necessária atuar de forma aberta nos problemas sociais e combater as diferentes formas de pobreza. Criar um compromisso global é dominar os impactos da globalização e aproveitar as suas vantagens.

Heranças Globais – Abordagens Contemporâneas no campo patrimonial

Pequeno texto escrito em 2011, para o Curso de Formação Avançada em Museologia, dado em Santa Catarina, Assomada, Cabo Verde.

As questões da mudança da tradição permanecem como uma problemática do campo dos estudos patrimoniais. Uma mudança interrupta e acelerada caracteriza a globalização neoliberal. Um tempo de consumo de novidades, onde o que hoje é inovação, amanhã é já obsoleto. Um tempo onde o património, hoje inventado, é amanhã reinventado exigindo novas imagens e novos protagonistas comunicacionais. Um tempo onde os agentes do património, afetados por alterações estruturais e organizacionais, sentam-se perdidos e cada vez mais se apegam às velhas fórmulas de trabalho tradicionais. A produção cultural está hoje profundamente ligada aos processos de globalização, incorporando processos comunicacionais de elevada complexidade tecnológica, que tem vindo a alterar a relação entre os cidadãos e os seus objetos patrimoniais. Uma desmaterialização dos objetos que tem produzido um consumo incessante de novos e inovadores objetos que incorporam as novas tecnologia.

Podemos mesmo caracterizar que o atual processo de globalização neoliberal se caracteriza pelo domínio das redes de comunicação e saber. Ao invés do processo de globalização liberal, com base na exploração intensiva dos recursos materiais, seja em espaços europeus seja em espaços coloniais, e na relação de dominação violenta sobre o trabalho, seja ele operário seja trabalho colonial, este processo gera dominações através de instituições multilaterais. Na globalização neoliberal encontramos expressões de poderás característicos dos processos de industrialização, nomeadamente a presença dos Estados Nacionais, com as suas políticas e instrumentos de dominação. A continuidade das hegemonias geradas pelas relações de dominação dos poderes soberanos dos Estados continua a gerar violências que tem como objetivo manter e expandir, essas mesmas dominações. Na globalização neoliberal todas as relações sociais estão envolvidas em processos de dominação. Como todos os processos, estas relações influenciam e são influenciadas por esses processos.

Todas a relações sociais, incluindo a cultura, estão sujeitas à influência do capitalismo. De fato a cultura é igualmente afetada por processos de transformação e ajuda a influencia-los. As forças de produção agem sobre a cultura, mas a cultura também pode ser uma força de produção em si, como demonstram tão poderosamente as indústrias criativas. Isto pode não constitui completamente um fenómeno novo, mas a importância da cultura nos processos de transformação é hoje completamente claro” (LONG & LABALI, 2010, 1)

Quando abordamos o problema das políticas culturais nos tempos da globalização, sobretudo se focarmos os últimos trinta anos, há inúmeros campos que se transformaram, influenciando profundamente a abordagem das políticas culturais publicas. No entanto é cada vez mais evidente que o fenómeno das problemáticas culturais ultrapassou hoje o quadro de intervenção das nações e das políticas nacionais. Os fenómenos culturais são hoje também eles globais. Se as preocupações sobre os bens culturais e a preservação do património se construiu no passado, na necessidade dos Estados preservarem os elementos simbólicos, de os protegerem do comércio ilícito e da destruição provocada pelos fenómenos da guerra; hoje as preocupações sobre os patrimónios, sem dúvida influenciadas pelas políticas da UNESCO, é profundamente influenciada pela visão das heranças globais como processo de interação política e económica. E por via das políticas de globalização dos patrimónios temas como as alterações climáticas e a gestão dos recursos naturais, a pobreza e a violência, o desenvolvimento sustentável com base nas comunidades e nos territórios, a desertificação dos territórios e os movimentos migratórios e os consumos territoriais, tornam-se hoje componentes dos estudos sobre as heranças e patrimónios. As heranças globais é um campo de investigação interdisciplinar.

As heranças patrimoniais representam nos dias de hoje um importante campo de trabalho na afirmação dos direitos humanos. O direito à memória é também um dos direitos fundamentais nas comunidades e nos territórios como recurso para a construção do seu próprio futuro. Ele não pode ser olvidado nas estratégias de desenvolvimento territorial. É todavia necessário não esquecer que muitos dos planos e estratégias de desenvolvimento territorial, incluindo as estratégias de desenvolvimento turístico, propostas como “estratégias de desenvolvimento sustentável” são propostas pera territórios e comunidades que foram e continuam em muito casos a ser vítimas de guerras, de conflitos armados, de pobreza e violência social e instabilidade política. O campo da herança já não é hoje mais um campo onde se trabalha a conservação dos edifícios antigos. É necessário ter uma postura mais ativa no campo das heranças patrimoniais para dar resposta aos novos problemas. Continuar a lerHeranças Globais – Abordagens Contemporâneas no campo patrimonial