Jihad Vs. McWorld: A Paradox

According to Barber, Jihad and McWorld are two seemingly opposing paradigms that share a common trait - they both threaten democracy. In the meantime network based organisational structures - Jihad and McWorld belong to this category - are taught to foster democracy. How would you unfold this paradox?

This is the question in which this blog post is attempting to explain. The author in question is Benjamin R. Barber and the text, Jihad Vs. McWorld, an in depth article which featured in the March, 1992 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

'The two axial principles of our age--tribalism and globalism--clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy'
- Benjamin R. Barber

Barber begins his article by introducing the reader to just two ideologies 'political futures' that our planet will undoubtedly succumb to:

1. The first is the retribalization of large factions of humankind through the use of war and bloodshed. Barber entitles this movement the Jihad.

2. For the second movement he has coined the term McWorld (this is undoubtedly inspired by the global conglomerate fast food industry McDonalds). McWorld refers to the continuous pressing of nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce.

The forces of Jihad and the forces of McWorld operate with equal strength in opposite directions. However according to Barber, they share one common interest; neither offers much hope to citizens looking for practical ways to govern themselves democratically.

McWorld, Or The Globalization of Politics

Barber identifies four crucial components which make up the dynamic of McWorld. The first of these vital imperatives is the market. In the text we are presented with a market which must lack in national identity, individualism and religious preference in order to survive in the McWorld. Individual National laws, such as the law against liquor sales in Massachusetts on Sundays, are being overruled by an International set of laws. These laws, however, do not strive to achieve international morality or global peace. In the context of common markets, international law ceases to be a vision of justice and becomes a workaday framework for getting things done - enforcing contracts, ensuring that governments abide by deals, regulating trade and currency relations, and so forth. (Barber, 1992: p. 2)

The second imperative outlined is the resource imperative. Barber reminds the reader that we once lived in a world where Democrats dreamed of societies whose political autonomy rested firmly on economic independence, a type of Utopian self-sufficiency. However it was not long before every Nation discovered that interdependence is inevitable. Every nation needs something another nation has. A contemporary example of this is the oil crisis.

The information-technology imperative is the third imperative. Barber makes a direct similarity between science and globalization: Scientific progress embodies and depends on open communication, a common discourse rooted in rationality, collaboration, and an easy and regular flow and exchange of information. Alike globalisation, the pursuit of science and technology asks for, even compels, open societies. Satellite footprints do not respect national borders.
As well as the rapid spread of hardware technology across the globe, the new technology's software is also creating an outstanding impact on culture. Cultural imperialism came to light at the 1991 Cannes film festival. Exhibitors expressed growing anxiety over the 'homogenization' and 'Americanization' of the global film industry when, for the third year running, American films dominated the awards ceremonies. Culture has become more potent than arnaments.

Barber insists that this high-tech commercial world avoids the democratic.

'It lends itself to surveillance as well as liberty, to new forms of manipulation and covert control as well as new kinds of participation, to skewed, unjust market outcomes as well as greater productivity'
- Barber (Barber, 1992: p. 4)

The fourth imperative is the ecological imperative. In this section, Barber discusses the inequality cultivating between the developed world and the developing world:
'The world cannot afford your modernization; ours has wrung it dry!'
- Barber (Barber, 1992: p. 4)

Jihad, Or The Lebanonization Of The World

There are scores of institutions that reflect globalization but they often appear as ineffective reactors to the world's real actors: national states and sub national factions in permanent rebellion against uniformity. The headlines feature these players regularly: they are cultures, not countries; parts, not wholes; sects, not religions; rebellious factions and dissenting minorities at war not just with globalism but with the traditional nation-state. They are people without countries, inhabiting nations of their own, seeking smaller worlds within borders that will seal them off from modernity. (Barber, 1992: p. 5)

The Jihad law is as follows: war is not an instrument of policy but rather an emblem of identity, an expression of community, an end in itself. The Jihad movement emerged with the passing of communism. Ethnic prejudices were revealed which in turn resulted in the breakdown of civility in the name of identity, of comity in the name of community.

A Possible Resolution

Neither McWorld nor Jihad is of democratic persuasion. Neither needs democracy, neither promotes it. This theory even exists among the positive aspects of each way of life. McWorld promises peace, prosperity, and relative unity (at the cost of independence, community, and identity). However when it comes to trading, Mcworld does not value human rights, equality, peace. Once there is a constant market, the system operates beautifully. In other words, predictability is of more value than justice.

Jihad delivers a different set of virtues: a sense of identity and cultural individualism, a sense of community, solidarity among like-minded people. However it is a way of life grounded in exclusion. Solidarity is secured through war against outsiders and solidarity often means obedience to a hierarchy in governance.

So Barber is left to present us with one crucial question: How can democracy be secured and spread in a world whose primary tendencies are at best indifferent to it (McWorld) and at worst deeply antithetical to it (Jihad)? Barber concludes that the world will more than likely succumb to the ways of McWorld. However in any instance it is vital that in order for democracy to exist in our world, we will have to commit acts of 'conscious political will'.

'Democrats need to seek out indigenous democratic impulses ... These need to be identified, tapped, modified, and incorporated into new democratic practices with an indigenous flavour.'
- Barber (Barber, 1992: p.9)

Conclusion

Jihad Vs. McWorld is an engaging and thought provoking text. During the course of my study of this text I came to realise that although both ways of political rule hold a significant threat to democracy, it is pessimistic to assume democracy cannot exist. It is time the world as one unifies on at least one notion: compromise. It is through compromise and understanding that both worlds can exist alongside each other peacefully.

List of References:

1. Benjamin R. Barber (1992) Jihad Vs. McWorld, appeared in the March 1992 issue of The Atlantic Monthly