Hyperconflict: Globalization and Insecurity by James H. Mittelman

Author:James H. Mittelman [Mittelman, James H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9780804777148
Google: eUUkDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22210741
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2010-01-08T10:00:46+00:00

IN THE STREETS

This genealogy must be considered in conjunction with the record of the WTO, which was ushered in by the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement and formally launched as the successor to the GATT in 1995. At that time, newspapers carried critical op-eds and probing news articles about the WTO. The main concerns centered on sovereignty, democracy, the environment, human rights, and labor. Clearly, many vexing issues that arose in the 1999 protests had already been vetted. Building on a seedbed of criticism, sixteen demonstrations against the WTO and other international economic institutions took place between 1994 and 1999 (Lichbach 2002, 10). These involved thousands of people and were amplified by symbolically charged actions, such as when Taiwanese farmers hurled pig dung to express their opposition to Taipei’s accession to the WTO and when an environmental activist threw a pie in the face of its director-general, Renato Ruggiero.

In October 1998, Boeing chairman and chief executive officer Phil Condit and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates asked the WTO site selection team to hold the Third Ministerial meeting in Seattle (Gorlick 1998). Then, during the nine months after the team decided to make Seattle the venue, nearly fifty thousand people and more than seven hundred organizations assembled to attest that the WTO had harmed large swaths of citizens. Demonstrations targeted the WTO in twenty-four cities in the United States; an additional fifty cities in sixteen other countries in the global North; and twelve cities in seven countries in the global South (Lichbach 2002, 16).

Effectively, the meaning of the WTO crystallized as a transnational symbol of difference and Otherness that evoked critical interpretations. Articulating multiple narratives, swarms of individuals and organizations cultivated counterdiscourses.2 By all indications, these were inchoate, fragmentary, overlapping, and sometimes competing formulations, not a single set of alternatives.

Print and electronic technologies, particularly flyers and the Internet, were key informational mechanisms for disseminating stories that buffeted the WTO. Meanwhile, U.S. and WTO officials attempted to negotiate this contestation and define the situation on their own, albeit differing, terms. The result was that the 1999 battle became emblematic of a hypercompetitive struggle over meanings, the rules of global governance, and control of resources.

The discourse centering on natural resources resonated with longtime residents of Seattle and its hinterland, a vast territory reaching Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. (In fact, the University of Washington was founded as the Territorial University in Seattle in 1861, only one decade after the arrival of the first white settlers.) Locals and history buffs know that Seattle had served as a frontier town and provincial capital for the region, that its first large business was the steam sawmill built on Elliott Bay in 1853, and that economic development has been linked to the exploitation of natural resources. Historically, prospecting for gold, logging, and fishing have provided mainstays of the economy. The environment itself is promoted as the source of a vital industry for enthusiasts of recreation: skiing, hiking, mountaineering, kayaking, and sailing (Raban 2007).

Seattle’s influential families, such as the Boeings, and

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