Abstract
Where shall social scientists turn for guidance in grappling with the instability and uncertainty that mark the contemporary world? Fittingly, the changes grouped under the rubric of globalization –including the institutionalization of the post-Fordist work regime, the implementation of neoliberal macro-economic policies (in former welfare, socialist, and development states), widespread migration across national boundaries, and the expansion of the information revolution – have inspired many sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists, to reflect on the origins, evolution, and future of global governance. Owing to the exigencies of the present day – including poverty, human rights abuses by state and non-state actors, financial instability, cultural exclusion, and environmental degradation – the interdisciplinary literature on global governance has tended to focus on the roles of such intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) as the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United Nations Organization (UN) in regulating the world-economy, the interstate system, and what some have dubbed ‘global civil society’. In essence, the literature evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of existing IGOs in order to inform policy-makers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists, and the global public about the trade-offs associated with managing an unruly and unpredictable global system.
To date, the central question in the literature on global governance has been as follows: should we reform, abolish, or replace the WB, the IMF, the WTO, and the UN? Bracketing the thorny issue of who – the US, the global North, or the entire world? – should preside over such modifications, scholars have produced an array of normative blueprints: turning the WB into a Global Development Fund (financed by a Tobin Tax); transforming the IMF into an International Clearing Union (by updating Keynes’s original plan); replacing the WTO with a Fair Trade Organization; creating a Global Environmental Organization; and placing all IGOs under the supervision of a more democratic, accountable, and transparent UN (or World Parliament). Registering the impact of popular protests at WB/IMF, WTO, and G7 meetings, proposals for a Green New Deal or a Marshall Plan on a global scale demonstrate the capacity of social scientists not only to reflect critically on the US-led transformation of the world-economy and interstate system initially after the Second World War and again after the crisis of the 1970s, but also to move past the positivist insistence on value-neutrality in order to defend such norms as human rights, global justice, and ecological sustainability. In sum, the literature on global governance is both facilitated and constrained by a practical orientation that takes a set of existing institutions – whether organizations, laws, or customs – as the logical starting point. But what if we were to de-emphasize existing institutions in order to begin anew? This question provides the backdrop for an audacious book by Menno Boldt – a sociologist who devoted his distinguished career to the analysis of the struggles of Canada’s indigenous peoples for basic rights and a modicum of self-determination, before moving on to such theoretical issues as the definition of humanity, the nature of power, and the sources of authority.
In A Quest for Humanity: The Good Society in a Global World, Boldt offers measured criticisms of the UN’s attempts to serve as a custodian of human rights, while making only fleeting allusions to the academic literature on global governance. Instead, he opts to offer a sustained theoretical reflection on human potential in the face of the dehumanizing aspects of globalization. While Boldt defines globalization as ‘a process of expanding social-relational interdependence and the convergence and sharing of knowledge and understanding across the spectrum of human endeavor’, he traces the roots of globalization to the ancient world – long before the advent of capitalism (p. 9). Thus, in Boldt’s view, globalization progressed in fits and starts throughout human history before coming to fruition with the information revolution and the attendant emergence of a global communication sphere (pp. 17–18, 137). Since the complex relations between nation-states (operating according a territorializing logic) and capital (operating according to a de-territorializing logic) fall beyond the book’s scope, the reader may have some difficulty evaluating the details of Boldt’s theory of globalization. Nevertheless, it is clear that the author sees both foreboding and promise in a world characterized by increased economic, political, social, and cultural integration and interdependency.
Boldt makes a strong case for the need for scholars to intervene actively to create a better world – an exhortation shared by many scholars in the areas of human rights, development, and social movements. More precisely, Boldt implores social scientists to engage in ‘practical idealism’ (or what others have termed ‘grounded utopia’) by summoning the courage to tackle a foundational question in social thought: what is the Good Society? Drawing on a powerful critique of Western conceptions of democracy and human rights that derives from the experiences of indigenous peoples in Canada, the US, and elsewhere, Boldt defines the Good Society as a ‘metaphor for a world of liberty, social justice, and equal human dignity for all people’ (p. 3). How shall we – that is, the ‘Millennial Generations’, in Boldt’s formulation – construct a world that affirms liberty, social justice, and equal human dignity? Boldt advances the thesis ‘that we need a global moral social order based on a principle and ideal that upholds as a common good the obligation to acknowledge and honor everyone’s humanity equally’ (pp. 3–4). The puzzle consists in the need to accord equal treatment to the humanity of seven billion persons.
As Boldt stipulates, the entire project hinges on the definition of humanity as ‘an inherent human potential to liberate self-consciousness and sensibility from the constraints and imperatives of naturalism and biological determinism. . .’ (p. 4). Eschewing the conventions of social scientific exposition, the author waits until the end of the book to elaborate on his conception of humanity-as-potential (pp. 204–208). In Boldt’s perspective, actualizing humanity entails mobilizing the accumulated resources of the world’s cultures in order to overcome the processes of dehumanization (including commodification and consumerism, scientism, militarism, nationalism, and religious extremism) that define the contemporary world. This amounts to a ‘bottom-up’ approach to universalism – one that proves consistent with the predominant tendency among sociologists who analyze struggles over human rights.
In sum, Boldt envisages the reconciliation of universalism (defined as a set of common principles) and particularism (defined as the protection of local customs) – a globally binding order that would accommodate a high degree of cultural specificity. This would require a universal screen through which to filter local practices – something global feminists, for example, have suggested as a means of combating patriarchy without violating the cultural rights of peoples in the global South. In this light, Boldt’s argument for a ‘global humane social order’ comes with an important caveat: notwithstanding its currency as an expression of human aspirations, the doctrine of human rights has been compromised by the abuses of the great powers, the shortcomings of the UN, and the misguided undertakings of some humanitarian NGOs. Hence the question arises: how might we extricate the doctrine of human rights from the legacy of Eurocentrism and the excesses of power politics? In the most surprising passage of the book, Boldt proposes to have a transformed UN ‘advance the quest for the Good Society by facilitating the implementation of the absolute principle and the concept of human mutuality as basic standards of global moral social order’ (p. 176). In the process, Boldt makes a significant contribution to the literature on global governance. More broadly, he presents an important challenge to scholars, UN staff, NGO workers, and activists to avoid taking shortcuts to universalism.