ethics news & views

All in the family?
Religion, ethics & globalization

By Chance Hunter. Ravaged by decades of religious wars, the great powers of Europe in 1648 signed the Treaty of Westphalia, signaling the rise of the sovereign, centralized nation-state as the key actor in international affairs. Religious rivalries of course continued, but wars would now be fought for king and country, not doctrine. Society increasingly secularized, religion becomes just one facet of civil society among others. Secular ideologies—sometimes uncannily similar to the theological forbears—mobilized the masses for total war. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, rivalries between European nation-states (and their increasingly independent colonies) shook the world.

But now the global order based on the sovereignty of competing nation-states draws to a close. One nation-state towers over the rest. Called the “indispensable nation” by Madeline Albright, the United States demonstrated its dominance with now two wars with Iraq. But elsewhere, the nation-state seems lest robust.¹ The bonds of the expanding European Union grow closer, and a newly formed African Union hopes to follow in its footsteps. Periods of regional anarchy and genocide followed hard upon the collapse of failed nation-states in the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia. And no nation seems able to challenge the US’ lead in military technology for decades to come.

Money talks…

Others wonder if economics, not geopolitics, is the new order of the day. Global economic institutions like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank exercise considerable power over the faltering economies of the youngest nation-states. Multi-national corporations control wealth more vast than that of most nations. Impoverished nations jockey for the corporations’ attention, who can supply sorely needed social services in exchange for government cooperation. A global division of labor is emerging, with the wealthy, less populated north moving its capital around the poor, overpopulated south. ²

The dominance of multi-national corporations and the sole remaining superpower is opposed by a rapidly coalescing, technologically sophisticated protest movement. The movements failed to prevent the US-Iraq war, but protests at Seattle and Davos succeeded in growing support for reform in the IMF and WTO. Together with powerful NGOs, it succeeded in the passage of the World Criminal Court and global land mind treaties (both of which the US has refused to sign).³

The start of a global culture?

John Boli identifies the initial formation of a diverse global culture, founded during the latter half of the nineteenth century by European missionary organizations, relief agencies, and colonial administration.⁴ Expanding in fits and starts throughout the twentieth century, world culture rested upon north Atlantic assumptions about the rights and responsibilities of nation-states, a commercialized pop culture of soda pop and blue jeans, and a devotion to market-driven sci-tech research.

Yet global culture is not monolithic. The structures of global culture give many of Europe’s former colonies a voice through their membership in international governance institutions and non-governmental agencies (NGOs). Many of these international organizations have an exclusively regional focus. Paradoxically, the cultural relativism of world culture opens a space for the assertion of the “authenticity” of local traditions, even if those traditions are sometimes commodified by the global culture for their “exotic” values. And new cross-cultural art forms commonly arise as previously separate cultures meet in the new global agora.

Fundamentalisms in many ways represent a global counter-culture. An embattled spirituality, fundamentalisms seek to defend themselves against the encroachment of global culture and influence by a selective retrieval of their religious traditions, pitting them against their more ecumenical co-religionists.⁵ Molded into practical political ideologies, fundamentalisms yearn for Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” a conflict they are certain they did not start.

The new place of religion

Still, religion plays several roles in this new global culture. In fundamentalism and liberation theologies, it provides tools for a rejection of globalization. Religion-based relief work and social services (re)mediate the harmful effects of globalization. And the global reach of religion provides many individuals with an avenue to assimilate themselves into the larger global culture.⁶

But aside from fundamentalism, religion appears to be only one global actor among many, and a marginal one at that. The participation of several religious traditions—most notably the Vatican—was key to the enactment of Third World debt relief, but in most other global arenas religious voices are silent or ignored. Religions stand ready to compose the largest parts of global civil society (and thus to define its norms). Therefore, their “ostensible rejection of globalization begins to turn into reformist reconstruction” of globalization, offering a vision of globalization that is an alternative to the neoliberal vision.⁷

Imagining a global common good

Ethicist Alisdair MacIntyre argues that dependence upon others—and not rugged independence—is the essence of the human condition. This interdependence leads MacIntyre to assert that common human flourishing—based not on “mine” and “yours” but on “mine-only-if-also-yours”—is the natural end of ethics.⁸ But how could we conceptualize this common flourishing on a global scale? And in a way that communicates to those who would be contributing members of this more flourishing global order?

To date, most conversations about global ethics have centered around the secular, legal language of human rights, even though key concepts from respective religious traditions could provide a grounding for an ethics of globalization. (To Chandra Muzaffar’s list of distributive justice, unity, the household of God, the interdependence of all life, reciprocity, restraint, and compassion/hesed, we might add imago dei, familial piety, and subsidiarity.)⁹

But an echo of the Treaty of Westphalia can be heard: what about religious differences? Arguments for the underlying unity of world religions—however much we agree or disagree with them—produce language so abstract that it ignores the concrete, lived experiences of persons of faith. Yet despite important differences between world religions, Karen Armstrong argues that the major religious traditions share a common commitment (1) to individuals’ accountability for their own spiritual paths, (2) to acts of practical compassion, and (3) to transformative conversations with respective wisdom traditions.¹⁰ These common commitments are certainly fertile ground for conversation, despite disagreements and conflicts.

Religious traditions could play a greater role in the formation of a global civil society, a society already centered on such values as (1) the unity of humanity, (2) the fulfillment of human needs, and (3) the accommodation of cultural differences.11 The nonsectarian language of human rights has aided global consensus, but can it inspire?

1 Falk, Richard. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. (Blackwell, 1999).
2 Hertz, Noreena. The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy. (Free Press, 2001).
3 Davenport, David. “The New Diplomacy,” Policy Review 116.
4 Boli, John and Frank Lechner. “Globalization and World Culture,” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 6261-6266.
5 Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God. (Ballantine, 2001).
6 Boli & Lechner.
7 Lechner, Frank. “Religious Rejections of Globalization and Their Directions,” 2003 Halle Institute Seminar.
8 MacIntyre, Alisdair. Dependent Rational Animals. (Open Court, 1999).
9 Muzaffar, Chandra. “Conclusion,” Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy. Edited by Paul F. Knitter and Muzaffar. (Orbis, 2002).
10 Armstrong.
11 Lechner.
12 Singer, Peter. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. (Yale, 2002).

[ Posted by Chance Hunter at August 15, 2003 10:48 AM | More Opinion articles | More Public Events articles ]

© 2000-2003 by the Center for Ethics, Emory University. Some rights reserved.