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https://ejournal.ukm.my/akademika/article/download/598/4025

Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection

This exciting new study provides an original and provocative expose of the crisis of global capitalism in its multiple dimensions - economic, political, social, ecological, military, and cultural. Building on his earlier works on globalization, William I. Robinson discusses the nature of the new global capitalism, the rise of a globalized production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state and warns of the rise of a global police state to contain the explosive contradictions of a global capitalist system that is crisis-ridden and out of control. Robinson concludes with an exploration of how diverse social and political forces are responding to the crisis and alternative scenarios for the future.

Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity

Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development, Bruce Rich. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Pp. 376. $29.00 (hardcover). I. INTRODUCTION Bruce Rich's critique of the World Bank's development policies, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development,l is unabashed advocacy. Therein lies its beauty and its flaws. The beauty is the wrenching emotion evident in the descriptions of disadvantaged people's lives ravaged in the name of development sponsored by a monolithic, secretive, megabureaucracy answerable only to itself. The flaw is that this emotion is too often worn on the author's sleeve and draped in hyperbole. As a result, the underlying merit of the author's message is suspect at times. Rich repeatedly castigates the World Bank, its goals, and procedures through the tool of specific extreme examples culled largely from the community of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)2 and selected documents leaked from the Bank. This somewhat incestuous production of information coupled with his advocate tone chills the reception of his message by those of us who seek comfort in a more analytic discourse. The author, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund who has devoted a substantial part of his life to problems associated with the World Bank, has produced a substantial work that has been deservedly acclaimed by his fellow believers in the inherent evil of the Bank and its methods. However, it leaves those of us who enjoy being immersed in facts and "undigested" information hungry for more raw facts from reliable sources so that we may judge the author's statements, conclusions, and proposed solutions for ourselves. The author's message of long-term systemic failures in World Bank development activity is too important to be ignored. That the World Bank has become more of a problem than a cure is independently corroborated in another work, Perpetuating Poverty, published by the more conservative Cato Institute.3 The Bank itself recognizes that there have been problems, at least with regard to the Bank's execution of its environmental responsibilities in the past.4 Also, the Bank's large bureaucracy, cloaked in secrecy, isjust the type of organizational structure-like the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons program from its inception through the 1980s-that tends to fixate on the goal of accomplishing a project and relegates all other concerns, including people and the environment, to no better than ancillary consideration. In sum, the Bank has been the type of organization that makes Rich's allegations all the more believable. When Rich's concerns are echoed by a think tank like the Cato institute,5 the Bank's leaders also admit to problems, and the organization is all but impenetrable to outside scrutiny, his arguments must be recognized as being-if not unbiased-at least on the right track. Rich's bias in assessing the World Bank's problems evidently the product of years of frustration in dealing with the imperious bank, may be distracting, but that is not to say he is misguided. The Bank may be its own worst enemy in countering Rich's criticisms. The World Bank's External Affairs Department issued a three-page rebuttal to Rich's book in March 1994.6 It chastises Rich's methodology, alleges factual errors, and accuses Rich of a northern hemisphere elitist perspective. It goes on to claim credit implicitly for environmental and social improvement in developing countries over the last twenty-five years.7 It also pledges the World Bank to a commitment to improve the lot of disadvantaged peoples.8 The tone of the rebuttal and its lack of verifiable substance are more reminiscent of the negative political advertisements in the 1994 election than a rigorous substantive debate on the merits of Rich's claims. In sum, "Thou dost protest too much." There is another reason why Rich's work demands attention: the new Global Environment Facility (GEF). …

Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development

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The Multinational corporation : a radical approach

During the period after 1970s, capitalism has gone through a significant restructuring. This period has been primarily characterized by the process of globalization. Globalization has not emerged as the natural result of capitalism but it has been actively promoted and the appropriate conditions for the functioning of global capitalism have been created by certain actors. Many scholars argue that it is a newly emerging transnational capitalist class which transformed capitalism into a globalizing project. Although the members of this class are located in different parts of the world, they have a common interest in supporting globalization. They are aware of their common interests and they have a certain class consciousness. Moreover, their habits, tastes, and lifestyles are becoming increasingly similar. Considering these debates on transnational capitalist class, in a case study of the Turkish top managers working in the ?stanbul branch of a multinational corporation, this paper looks at the lifestyle characteristics of this group of managers, comparing them with those aspects of the lifestyle of the transnational capitalist class that are indicated by the scholars. A second question that has been considered is to what extent these managers feel themselves as part of a transnational class that has common goals and interests. This study shows that for this group of managers the primary identification is with the people who have the same position with them, regardless of their country or corporation, not with their fellow nationals.

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Turkish Managers as a Part of the Transnational Capitalist Class

This paper explains discrimination perceptions of Turkish qualified migrants who returned from Germany and the United States, and the impact of perceived discrimination on their return. It depends ...

Perceived discrimination as a major factor behind return migration? The return of Turkish qualified migrants from the USA and Germany

This paper aims to assess the World Bank’s social risk management approach to poverty by focusing on the implementation details of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey, a World Bank project that depends on this approach. The paper looks at the approach through the concept of neoliberal governmentality, as an attempt to produce responsible poor citizens during a period when the responsibility for providing social services is transferred to the market and the family. By using field research it demonstrates that, with the intervention of local factors, several unintended consequences emerge in the implementation of a social risk management project. The article concludes that these outcomes, although not planned or intended, have all been instrumental in depoliticising poverty and the poor in the country. Moreover, in spite of all the problems and dissatisfaction, thanks to the Bank’s own portrayal, this project has contributed to the image of the Bank as a development institution that achieves succes...

How the World Bank manages social risks: implementation of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey

This paper looks at the gender aspect of social policy provision in Turkey during the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) government period through an emphasis on the ways in which women are positioned within the anti-poverty programmes. It focuses on conditional cash transfers (CCTs), as the leading and most emphasized poverty alleviation programme of the AKP government. The paper subjects the CCTs in general and the Turkish CCT programme in particular to a gender analysis. It demonstrates how CCTs are representative of the AKP’s social conservative and neo-liberal approach to social policy especially with regard to the roles that are assigned to women. It argues that the double-sidedness in AKP’s policies in terms of gender equality is observed in the case of the CCTs. Although at the discursive level, there is an emphasis on empowerment of women by this programme, the ways in which the programme is structured leads to the reinforcement of women’s domestic roles.

Conditional cash transfers in Turkey: A case to reflect on the AKP’s approach to gender and social policy

We use coarse-grained mobile phone data from a large Turkish mobile phone provider and cross-reference this data with social media data and a qualitatively composed violent events list to explore the integration of refugees in Turkey. The data provides grounds for fruitful future research. It suggests that border communities with the refugee-sending country have much different communications patterns than non-border communities. Additionally, proximity to refugee camps may increase negative sentiment on social media toward refugees, which we suggest may be a proxy for understanding “compassion fatigue.” These findings provide directions for future research on integration.

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Meltem Yilmaz Sener

Papers

Turkish Managers as a Part of the Transnational Capitalist Class

Perceived discrimination as a major factor behind return migration? The return of Turkish qualified migrants from the USA and Germany

How the World Bank manages social risks: implementation of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey

Conditional cash transfers in Turkey: A case to reflect on the AKP’s approach to gender and social policy

Characterizing the mobile phone use patterns of refugee hosting provinces in Turkey