tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/globalism-27780/articlesglobalism – The Conversation2019-10-21T12:17:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1248392019-10-21T12:17:46Z2019-10-21T12:17:46ZYour political views can predict how you pronounce certain words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297586/original/file-20191017-98678-nfzj9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How do you pronounce 'Muslim'? What about 'spiel'?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/contemporary-art-collage-concept-set-colorful-1483872332?src=nvVwg4FLG-JLkP5UIAaKQQ-1-35">Linda Staf/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politics can predict <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberals-and-conservatives-have-wildly-different-tv-viewing-habits-but-these-5-shows-bring-everyone-together-118898">the TV shows we watch</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/partisan-divide-creates-different-americas-separate-lives-122925">the shops we frequent and the places we live</a>. </p>
<p>But what about the way we speak?</p>
<p>In a 2019 study, I was able to show how your political orientation can influence how you pronounce certain words. </p>
<p>How members of America’s two parties view the country – and its place in the world – might explain this phenomenon. </p>
<h2>A tale of two presidents</h2>
<p>You may have noticed former President Donald Trump had a unique way of saying the names of foreign places. </p>
<p>For example, he’s pronounced “Tanzania” as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/27/donald-trump-tanzania-foreign-policy-speech">tan-zay-nee-uh</a>,” as opposed to “tan-zuh-nee-uh,” and “Namibia” as “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/21/africa/trump-nambia-un-africa-trnd/index.html">nam-bee-uh</a>” instead of “na-mih-bee-uh.”</p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum, President Barack Obama was a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2009/07/obama-a-stickler-for-pronunciation-024466">stickler</a>” for saying foreign words in a way that more closely mimicked the pronunciation of native speakers. He was even thanked for it: Pakistanis <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2009/07/obama-a-stickler-for-pronunciation-024466">reportedly expressed appreciation to the White House</a> for his pronunciation of “Pakistan” as “pock-ee-stahn,” rather than using a pronunciation like “<a href="https://youtu.be/4-cIrJ_5Z0A?t=101">pack-iss-stan</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/1b8BEkCKuxg">My own research</a> has found that this pronunciation difference isn’t relegated to presidents. Speakers who identify as Democrats are likelier to use these kinds of pronunciations of foreign words than those who identify as Republicans.</p>
<h2>A speech pattern emerges</h2>
<p>In my study, I had participants read random sentences out loud, some of which included the names of foreign places, and others that included English words borrowed from foreign languages. </p>
<p>Then I asked them questions about their political identities, views and opinions. I compared their responses to these questions with their pronunciations.</p>
<p>I found that, when compared with Republicans, Democrats are more likely to pronounce</p>
<ul>
<li>“Iraq” as “ear-rock,” rather than “eye-rack”</li>
<li>“Chile” as “chee-lay,” rather than “chill-ee”</li>
<li>“Muslim” as “moose-limb,” rather than “muzz-lum”</li>
<li>“spiel” as “shpeel,” rather than “speel”</li>
<li>“foyer” as “foy-ay,” rather than “foy-er.”</li>
</ul>
<p>In each case, Democrats pronounced the words in ways that mimicked the way native speakers would say them. For example, pronouncing “spiel” – which comes from German – as “shpeel” more closely replicates how the word is said in Germany.</p>
<p>Why does this happen and why does it matter?</p>
<p>Today’s Republicans and conservatives tend to align more strongly with <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041">an ideology of nationalism</a>.</p>
<p>This term has been used more in political discourse over the past few years, often <a href="https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/nationalist-supremacist.php">in ways that aren’t clearly defined</a>.</p>
<p>In social psychology, however, this ideological bent can have multiple dimensions. </p>
<p>Someone who’s more “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/06/true-or-false-real-americans-are-christian-speak-english-and-were-born-in-the-u-s/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4260b3079045">ardently nationalist</a>” might believe that diversity makes it more difficult for a nation to have a shared identity. They’re also more likely to believe their nation is superior to others.</p>
<p>Democrats are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/06/true-or-false-real-americans-are-christian-speak-english-and-were-born-in-the-u-s/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4260b3079045">less likely</a> than Republicans to identify as ardently nationalist. Someone who’s less nationalistic also tends to have <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-globalism-a-counterculture-that-could-redraw-the-world-map-69390">more interest or willingness to interact with foreign people, places or cultures</a>. </p>
<p>This difference may explain the political pronunciation pattern: In my study, Democrats usually scored lower on a nationalism scale. And this score correlated with speakers’ pronunciations, too.</p>
<p>So Democrats are often more receptive and accommodating to foreign people and cultures. And the way they pronounce foreign words reflects this attitude.</p>
<p>In cognitive linguistics research, we see this pattern a lot: People tend to speak <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40925791?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">more like others</a> when they have <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0074746">more positive attitudes toward them</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s why Obama was thanked for pronouncing “Pakistan” more like how Pakistanis do. It wasn’t for anything specifically political. The Pakistanis simply reacted in the way someone who hears their name spelled or <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/hasan-minhaj-explained-on-ellen-how-mispronouncing-his-name-speaks-to-a-double-standard-17018808">pronounced the way they prefer</a> would react; they heard it as a sign of respect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zachary Jaggers receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>How members of America’s two parties view the country – and its place in the world – might explain this phenomenon.Zachary Jaggers, Postdoctoral Scholar of Linguistics, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1240522019-10-14T16:06:31Z2019-10-14T16:06:31ZDebate: Can corporate purpose be global?<p>As a French consumer, I was pleased that in April 2019 France’s Parliament adopted a pioneering law on business growth and transformation. Known as <a href="https://www.economie.gouv.fr/plan-entreprises-pacte">PACTE</a>, it creates the possibility of companies to enshrine their purpose in corporate bylaws. This new law became even more significant four months later, when the Business Roundtable – a non-profit association based in Washington, whose members are chief executive officers of major US firms – released a new <a href="https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans">statement on the purpose of a corporation</a>.</p>
<p>Signed by 181 CEOs committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders, they committed to: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“delivering value to [their] customers […]. Investing in [their] employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. […] Supporting the communities in which [their] work. […] Generating long-term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the business historian and author <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6493&facInfo=awa">Nancy Koehn</a> states, the new statement on the purpose of a corporation and the French PACTE Law are initiatives that responded to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html">“something in the zeitgeist”</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, as a <a href="http://compasslabel.fr/index.php/compass-label-anglais/">CEO myself</a>, a Franco-Spanish citizen and a member of the programme <a href="https://francobritish.org/en/programmes/young-leaders/">Franco-British Young Leaders</a>, this new bill challenges me. For global companies, there is a significant gap between theory and practice regarding corporate purpose. Indeed, there is no evidence that a global company is able to define its corporate purpose regardless of its nationality. Doing so requires committing to deliver value not only to shareholders, but to all stakeholders (employees, customers, communities…). But can a global company truly do so? </p>
<h2>Local meets global</h2>
<p>Let’s take an example in the mobility sector. France’s national railroad company, SNCF, operates almost exclusively within the country, so defining its corporate purpose is not complicated: to give everyone in France the freedom to move around easily while taking care of our planet. For the French carmaker Renault, which operates globally, the exercise is not so obvious. Officially, its corporate purpose is to make mobility easy and accessible for customers around the world. Unofficially, five words are missing from this definition: “preserving French employment and influence”. Why? Because Renault was one of the crown jewels of French industry before becoming a global automaker. </p>
<p>This fact has direct consequences on Renault’s ability to make auto-mobility more sustainable in the coming years, as illustrated by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/06/renault-fiat-chrysler-merger-collapses">collapse of the Fiat-Renault deal</a> in June 2019. The planned merger was driven by the need for global automakers to share the costs of the sustainability transition, i.e., research and development investments into electric vehicle and self-driving cars. The deal failed in part because of France’s government wanted guarantees that jobs and industrial sites in France <a href="http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/fiat-chrysler-renault-merger-why-it-failed-analysis-background-2019-6">would be preserved</a>. </p>
<p>However, the fact that the French government holds a 15% stake in Renault wasn’t a contributing factor in itself. In the Forbes 2019 ranking of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/best-large-employers/">America’s best large employers</a>, nine of the first ten are American. In the Capital 2018-2019 ranking of <a href="http://business-cool.com/carriere/entreprises/classements-meilleurs-employeurs-france-2018-2019/">France’s best employers</a>, nine of the first ten companies are French. </p>
<p>This isn’t surprising – it makes sense for an American employee to work for an American firm, for a French employee to work for a French one, and so on. People are looking for coherence between their values, what they stand for and their professional activities. They need to be inspired by their company’s purpose, behaviour and decisions. Therefore, corporate purpose must include some national core values and priorities, and global companies must assume nationally driven social values, initiatives, and commitments. </p>
<h2>Working with all stakeholders</h2>
<p>That does not mean that corporate purpose must always include the creation or preservation of national jobs – Apple has long asserted that “manufactured in the USA” (rather than just “designed”) is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html">not a viable option for iPhones and iPads</a>. Yet Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, is a member of Business Roundtable, and the first word of the new statement on the purpose of a corporation is <em>Americans</em>, not <em>workers</em> or <em>consumers</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But don’t be mistaken; my point is not that global firms should give up their ambition to define their corporate purpose. It is that a coherent and meaningful corporate purpose must include the current global reality’s implications. Corporate executive must address pressing social issues, take into account national priorities and values, and define a purpose that resonates with stakeholders, customers and employees around the globe, without opting for the lowest common denominator. </p>
<p>How to define an ambitious global corporate purpose? Companies should take inspiration from the consensus meetings in the health sector. They enable policymakers to overcome philosophical, ethical and moral debates and to take into account vital considerations and strong personal statements. Establishing a similar process to define and embed in the business a global corporate purpose may offer corporate executives the opportunity to lead organizations that are really and truly inspired by their global purpose.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Agathe Cagé is co-founder and president of Compass Label, a strategy consulting agency.</span></em></p>New initiatives have allowed firms to enshrine their purpose in corporate bylaws, but gaps exist between local and international issues that can complicate the definition of a multinational’s purpose.Agathe Cagé, Docteure en Sciences politiques associée au (CESSP) du CNRS, de l'EHESS, et de , Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1246512019-10-03T10:34:41Z2019-10-03T10:34:41ZScott Morrison warns against ‘negative globalism’<p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison has foreshadowed his government will have Australia play a more active role in seeking to set global standards.</p>
<p>Delivering the Lowy Lecture on Thursday night, Morrison said Australia “cannot afford to leave it to others to set the standards that will shape our global economy”.</p>
<p>He has asked the foreign affairs department for an audit of global institutions and rule-making processes where Australia had the greatest stake, and he plans to tap Australian expertise in expanding its role.</p>
<p>Morrison’s initiative, which follows his recent United States trip and his criticisms during it of China’s behaviour on trade, has particularly in mind the World Trade Organisation which is seen to need reform.</p>
<p>In comments that seemed to have an eye to Brexit and Donald Trump’s recent lauding of patriotism over globalism, Morrison made a sharp distinction between positive and negative globalism. </p>
<p>He said that “Australia does and must always seek to have a responsible and participative international agency in addressing global issues.” This he dubbed this “practical globalism”.</p>
<p>Australia was not served by isolationism and protectionism, he said. “But it also does not serve our national interests when international institutions demand conformity rather than independent cooperation on global issues.</p>
<p>"The world works best when the character and distinctiveness of independent nations is preserved within a framework of mutual respect. This includes respecting electoral mandates of their constituencies.</p>
<p>"We should avoid any reflex towards a negative globalism that coercively seeks to impose a mandate from an often ill defined borderless global community. And worse still, an unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy. Globalism must facilitate, align and engage, rather than direct and centralise. As such an approach can corrode support for joint international action. </p>
<p>"Only a national government, especially one accountable through the ballot box and the rule of law, can define its national interests,” he said. “And under my leadership Australia’s international engagement will be squarely driven by Australia’s national interests.</p>
<p>"To paraphrase former prime minister John Howard, as Australians, ‘we will decide our interests and the circumstances in which we seek to pursue them.’</p>
<p>"This will not only include our international efforts to support global peace and stability and to promote open markets based on fair and transparent rules, but also other global standards that underpin commerce, investment and exchange.”</p>
<p>The Prime Minister sought to put a positive spin on his labelling of China as a “newly developed” economy during his foreign policy speech in the US last week - a description which the Chinese contest.</p>
<p>“China has in many ways changed the world, so we would expect the terms of its engagement to change too. That’s why when we look at negotiating rules of the future of the global economy, for example, we would expect China’s obligations to reflect its greater power status.</p>
<p>"This is a compliment, not a criticism.</p>
<p>"And that is what I mean when describing China as a newly developed economy.</p>
<p>"The rules and institutions that support global cooperation must reflect the modern world. It can’t be set and forget,” he said.</p>
<p>Morrison told his audience that his passions had always been for domestic politics – he did not naturally seek out international platforms. But as prime minister he had to be directed by Australia’s national interest.</p>
<p>He said he would be visiting India in January and also Japan early next year. This follows a busy international schedule in 2019.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Delivering the Lowy Lecture on Thursday night, Morrison said Australia “cannot afford to leave it to others to set the standards that will shape our global economy”.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1024842018-09-18T20:34:44Z2018-09-18T20:34:44ZTrump versus China means picking sides<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236834/original/file-20180918-158246-piecz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If the trade war with China escalates, siding with the US is going to cost, but Australia's long-term national interests still lie with it.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Donald Trump escalates his trade war with China, slapping a 10% tariff on roughly $US200 billion of imports <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-china-trade-war-tariffs-dates-goods-imports-a8542291.html">that will climb to 25% if China retaliates</a>, he appears to found something of a soul mate in Scott Morrison.</p>
<p>“We both get it,” Australia’s new prime minister said this week. What they get, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/15/opinion/columnists/trump-finally-makes-a-friend.html">he told the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd</a>, is that some people feel left off the globalism gravy train: “The president gets that. I get it.”</p>
<p>His words signal a profound change of tack in Australian economic diplomacy as <a href="https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/reports-and-publications/2018/2018-trade-policy-agenda-and-2017">the new US approach</a> threatens to <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-to-prepare-for-life-after-the-world-trade-organisation-100522">break down the World Trade Organisation</a> and universal trade agreements in general.</p>
<p>Under Trump, trade will depend on stronger bilateral (one on one) agreements that support US geopolitics.</p>
<p>It’ll mean Australia <a href="https://theconversation.com/trade-with-china-or-security-with-the-us-australia-will-have-to-choose-68511">picking sides</a>. </p>
<h2>Double dangers in middle of the road</h2>
<p>The status quo of relying on China for trade surpluses and on the US for security patronage might not be sustainable in the long run. </p>
<p>Siding with neither China or the US, attempting a “third way” of non-alignment, runs the risks losing out on both trade and security. </p>
<p>Broadly speaking, we can summarise the trade war between the US and China as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-economic-power-struggle-for-asia-trump-and-xi-jinping-are-switching-policies-90173">contest between sea and land</a>. </p>
<p>The US aims to secure trade routes through the Indian and Pacific oceans. China wants to shift the bedrock of international trade to Central Asia. </p>
<p>Its <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-belt-and-road-initiative-chinas-vision-for-globalisation-beijing-style-77705">Belt and Road Initiative</a> is a grand strategic plan to join Eurasian economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok. The plan would end the historic era of Anglo-American hegemony founded on controlling trade routes across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-trump-administration-getting-east-asia-right-or-just-confusing-it-101938">Is the Trump administration getting East Asia right, or just confusing it?</a>
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<p>Australia faces an existential strategic choice. </p>
<p>Leaving political ideologies aside, its economic prosperity depends on trade by sea. The <a href="http://stories.cnas.org/the-return-of-marco-polos-world-and-the-u-s-military-response">return of Marco Polo’s world</a> would eventually make Australia little more than a price-taking commodity supplier to trade and investment hubs from Beijing to Venice. </p>
<p>This means our national interests lie with the US defence of its seaborne trading routes.</p>
<h2>Picking a side will be costly</h2>
<p>In the short term, especially if the trade war escalates, siding with the US will be costly. We could lose a good deal of China-related export and business opportunities. Over the longer run we could offset the losses by diversifying to trade and invest in countries with shared strategic interests, such as Indonesia and India. </p>
<p>We would be well advised to reconsider the diplomatic benefit of RCEP, the China-led <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/negotiations/rcep/Pages/regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership.aspx">Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership</a>. This mega regional trade deal between the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their bilateral trade partners has been dubbed the Chinese Trans Pacific Partnership. It can be seen as <a href="http://www.atimes.com/rcep-fueling-xi-jinpings-major-power-diplomacy/">an extension of Xi Jinping’s major-power agenda</a>. </p>
<p>After a promising start, RCEP negotiations now appear to be stuck. The main obstacle is <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/crunch-time-for-india-at-meet-on-mega-free-trade-agreement/articleshow/65600065.cms">India’s fear</a> of worsening its already significant trade deficit with China. </p>
<h2>Our interests lie with the US, and India</h2>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-to-push-eu-style-trade-deal-in-asia-20180830-p500qa.html">sticking point</a> is that India, the Philippines and other potential members want countries like Australia, New Zealand and Japan to open up their markets for information technology and professional services.</p>
<p>In pure trade terms we would lose little if the RCEP did not proceed. We already have strong bilateral ties with all the negotiating countries apart from India, with whom we are presently <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/negotiations/aifta/Pages/australia-india-comprehensive-economic-cooperation-agreement.aspx">negotiating a free trade agreement</a>.</p>
<p>We would be well advised to use our limited diplomatic resources for that and supporting the US when it comes time to pick sides.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giovanni Di Lieto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There can be no middle road in the trade war between China and the United States. Soon we will have to pick sides.Giovanni Di Lieto, Lecturer of international trade law, Monash Business School, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/983732018-06-22T10:26:35Z2018-06-22T10:26:35ZIt’s time for a new approach to travel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223492/original/file-20180617-85830-j44cg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C170%2C4942%2C2796&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As Mark Twain once said, 'Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jake Simonds-Malamud</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I overcame a <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Scholar-Rises-Above-His-Fear/129934">flying phobia</a>, I resolved to make up for lost time by visiting as much of the world as I could. </p>
<p>So in the course of a decade, I logged over 300,000 miles, flying everywhere from Buenos Aires to Dubai.</p>
<p>I knew intuitively that my travels would “make me a better person” and “broaden my horizon,” as the clichés have it. But I’ve come to believe that travel can, and should, be more than a hobby, luxury or form of leisure. It is a fundamental component of being a humanist. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/el-turista-humanista-cuando-viajar-es-mas-que-un-hobby-102699">El turista humanista: cuando viajar es más que un hobby</a>
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<p>At its core, humanism is about exploring and debating the vital ideas that make us who we are. We study music, film, art and literature to do just that. And while it’s important to explore these ideas in our own communities, people and places that are not like us have a role to play that’s just as crucial.</p>
<p>This is where travel comes in. It’s what sent me packing to see some of the places I have spent so long reading about. And it’s what compelled me to write “<a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/I/bo28223423.html">The Importance of Elsewhere: The Globalist Humanist Tourist</a>,” in which I wanted to make a case for a new approach to travel. </p>
<h2>The imperialist tourist</h2>
<p>In academia, travel studies have long looked at the intersection between imperialism and tourism, describing <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Imperial_Eyes.html?id=1E6IAgAAQBAJ">how they flourish</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-beaten-track-9780198122760?cc=us&lang=en&">in tandem</a>.</p>
<p>From the 16th to 19th centuries, European empires gobbled up territories around the world, planting their flags and building embassies, banks, hotels and roads. Imperialists traveled to collect cinnamon, silk, rubber and ivory, using them, upon returning home, for pleasure and profit. </p>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-beaten-track-9780198122760?cc=us&lang=en&">The golden age of travel roughly coincided</a> with that period. Not long after the military and commercial incursions began, tourists followed imperialists to these far-flung locales. </p>
<p>Both tourism and imperialism involved voyages of discovery, and both tended to leave the people who were “discovered” worse off than they had been before the encounters.</p>
<h2>Globalism’s impact on the way we travel</h2>
<p>Over the last century, globalism – a vast and daunting concept of transnational corporate and bureaucratic systems – has replaced imperialism as the dominant network of international relations. </p>
<p>Globalism can be overwhelming: It involves billions of people, trillions of dollars, innumerable inventories of goods, all ensconced in a technocratic vocabulary of geopolitics and multinationalism that’s anathema to those of us who approach the world on a more human scale.</p>
<p>It has also made travel much easier. There are more airplane routes, more ATMs on every corner and international cellphone service. You can travel elsewhere without ever leaving the comforting familiarities of home, with McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Holiday Inns now dotting the globe. </p>
<p>But why bother traveling if you want familiar comforts?</p>
<p>I would argue that we need a new travel guide that acknowledges the sweeping interconnectedness of globalism, but balances this with a humanist mindset.</p>
<p>Because beneath the innocuous activities of visiting cathedrals, lounging on the beach and collecting souvenirs, travelers can still harbor selfish, exploitative desires and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10548408.2015.1130112">exhibit a sense of entitlement</a> that resembles imperial incursions of yesteryear. </p>
<p>In a way, globalism has also made it easier to slip into the old imperialist impulse to come with power and leave with booty; to set up outposts of our own culture; and to take pictures denoting the strangeness of the places we visit, an enterprise that, for some, confirms the superiority of home.</p>
<h2>The right way to be a tourist</h2>
<p>Humanism, however, is proximate, intimate, local. Traveling as a humanist restores our identity and independence, and helps us resist the overwhelming forces of globalism.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with going to see the Colosseum or the Taj Mahal. Sure, you can take all the same photos that have already been taken at all the usual tourist traps, or stand in long lines to see Shakespeare’s and Dante’s birthplaces (which are of <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/youve-read-the-book-now/44358">dubious authenticity</a>).</p>
<p>But don’t just do that. Sit around and watch people. Get lost. Give yourself over to the mood, the pace, the spirit of elsewhere. Obviously you will eat new and interesting foods, but think of other ways, too, of tasting and “ingesting” the culture of elsewhere, of adapting to different habits and styles. These are the things that will change you more than the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower.</p>
<p>Psychologists <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550613514456">have found</a> that the more countries you visit, the more trusting you’ll be – and that “those who visited places less similar to their homeland became more trusting than those who visited places more similar to their homeland.” Immersion in foreign places <a href="https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://scholar.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1537&context=soss_research">boosts creativity</a>, and having more diverse experiences <a href="https://pscresearch.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/112/2014/09/Simonton-Diversifying-Experiences-Cognitive-Flexibility-2012.pdf">makes people’s minds more flexible</a>.</p>
<p>With the products and conveniences of globalism touching most parts of the world, it simply takes more of a conscious effort to truly immerse yourself in something foreign.</p>
<p>My own empathy, creativity and flexibility have been immeasurably enhanced by such strange and fascinating destinations as a <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Monty-Pythons-Academic-Circus/126062">Monty Python conference</a> in Lodz, Poland; a <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/a-scholar-in-svalbard">remoteness seminar</a> near the North Pole; <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/one-big-yawn-the-academics-bewitched-by-boredom">a boredom conference in Warsaw</a>; Copenhagen’s <a href="http://fq.ucpress.edu/content/69/3/84">queer film festival</a>; Berlin’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-new-psychogeography-of-tempelhof-airport-once-a-nazi-landmark/282594/">deconstructed Nazi airport</a>; a workshop in Baghdad on <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Under-Siege/137725">getting academics up to speed after Iraq’s destruction</a>; and an encounter as an ecotourist with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/08/18/the_destructive_lie_of_american_zoos_how_weve_blinded_ourselves_to_the_truths_of_the_natural_world/">Tierra del Fuego’s penguins</a>. </p>
<p>There’s an especially vital argument to make for travel in these fractious times of far-right ideologies and crumbling international alliances, burgeoning racism and xenophobia. The world seems as if it’s becoming less open.</p>
<p>A trip is the greatest chance you’ll ever have to learn about things you don’t experience at home, to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. You’ll probably find that, in many important ways, they are the same as you – which, in the end, is the point of doing all this.</p>
<p>Humanists know that our copious insights and deliberations – about identity, emotions, ethics, conflict and existence – flourish best when the world is our oyster. They dissipate in the echo chamber of isolationism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Randy Malamud does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Globalism has made it easier than ever to visit faraway places – and easier to never really leave home while you’re there.Randy Malamud, Regents' Professor of English, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/977612018-06-06T16:30:03Z2018-06-06T16:30:03ZHow Trump’s tariffs are much bigger than Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221820/original/file-20180605-119847-63na3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. in October 2017. Trump's tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel simply reflect a broader U.S. philosophy on international trade, and that doesn't bode well for Canada.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Everybody but U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters (who, lest we forget, number some 40 per cent of Americans) has rightly condemned the United States’ imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and other U.S. allies as monumentally stupid.</p>
<p>The tariffs are expected <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/trudeau-g7-leaders-to-confront-trump-on-tariffs-in-opening-g7-meeting-1.3959781">to be a key topic of discussion</a> at the G7 summit in Quebec kicking off Friday.</p>
<p>The pretense alone — that the tariffs are all about national security — is absurd and, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put it, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-tariffs-canada-insulting-trudeau-1.4689819">“insulting.”</a></p>
<p>Trudeau has accurately called this moment <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/05/31/us-will-hit-canada-with-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-as-of-midnight-tonight.html">a “turning point in the Canada-U.S. relationship.”</a></p>
<p>But what kind of turning point are we at? </p>
<p>A few voices, such as <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-relax-canada-the-relationship-with-america-will-be-fine/">James Nealon, the former U.S. embassy deputy chief of mission</a>, argue that Canada and the United States have disagreed before and this, too, shall pass once Trump is gone. </p>
<p>Others, including <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/06/04/trumps-tariffs-a-death-knell-to-nafta.html">Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-nafta-is-dead-and-canada-should-move-on/">Peter Donolo, director of communications for former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien</a>, opine that this signals the death of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Donolo argues convincingly that we have to realize that the United States is now “an unpredictable and (economically) aggressive partner” and act accordingly.</p>
<p>Donolo and Walkom are much closer to the truth than Nealon, but even they understate somewhat the magnitude of what has happened here. </p>
<p>Trump has done more than wreck a trade agreement. He is playing executioner to the basic assumptions that has driven Canadian economic policy for the past three decades: That free trade and minimal government involvement in the economy can deliver prosperity.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a problem that can be solved by Trump’s removal, because the underlying problem isn’t Trump. </p>
<p>Trump is merely playing out, in his ham-fisted way, two underlying trends: An increasing willingness by the United States to impose unilaterally its will on its neighbours and a global rise in economic nationalism brought about by structural changes in the global economy.</p>
<h2>Goodbye economic continentalism</h2>
<p>For the past three decades, Canada has bet the farm on free trade as its guiding economic policy. Low trade barriers, and lots and lots of trade agreements were seen as the key to Canadian prosperity.</p>
<p>As a consequence of Canada’s geography, this liberal economic policy has meant a deeper integration into the U.S. economy and the creation of a continental economic space, governed by NAFTA. </p>
<p>NAFTA was supposed to restrain the United States’ protectionist impulses. But instead, it’s become abundantly clear how much of NAFTA’s success depends on the exercise of restraint of the United States, which dominates North America. </p>
<p>The United States’ decision effectively to rewrite the rules on continental governance by imposing new security requirements on Canada and Mexico after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, showed the extent to which the United States calls the tunes in North America. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221826/original/file-20180605-119847-1pkf0x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former prime minister Stephen Harper and former U.S. president Barack Obama are seen announcing a bilateral deal in 2011 to ease the congestion at the Canada-U.S. border that ensued after the 9-11 terrorist attacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Successive Canadian and Mexican governments did their best to put a positive face on these changes and to accommodate U.S. demands, even as the thickening of the borders imposed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2013.870659">significant costs on</a> <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2303913">all</a> <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-911-on-canadian-u-s-trade-an-update-through-2008/">three</a> <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/border-delays-cost-canada-up-to-30-billion-a-year/article615238/">economies</a>.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t that the United States felt insecure and wanted to do something about it. Instead, it’s that continental free trade simply can’t work when the most powerful partner constantly works to rewrite its foundations. </p>
<p>Trump’s current actions, supported tacitly by one of the two major American political parties, further demonstrate the folly of basing all your economic planning on the actions of a country that sees Canadians as outsiders.</p>
<h2>Hello digital economic nationalism</h2>
<p>On top of all of that, the global economy is also changing. We’re witnessing the rise of what I call digital economic nationalism, which is displacing the liberal-internationalist globalization that has dominated since the 1990s.</p>
<p>This change is partly tied to the relative decline of the United States, which Trump has accelerated immeasurably.</p>
<p>The post-Second World War system, which was underwritten by the United States, emphasized global rules and mutual economic gain through a liberalized trading regime. Trade, it was successfully argued, could be win-win. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, support for liberalized trade in Canada had been joined to a mistrust of government economic intervention. An industrial policy of state support for key industries <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/why-canada-is-ripe-for-a-new-industrial-policy/article34138869/">was largely</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/07/14/industrial_policy_is_back_except_in_ontario.html">frowned upon</a> as outdated economic nationalism.</p>
<p>That the United States is undercutting this rules-based order through actions like the steel and aluminium tariffs is not news. Just as consequential, however, is the emergence of a global knowledge economy, which functions according to its own rules. </p>
<p>A knowledge economy is based on the control of knowledge, such as data and intellectual property. One of the key differences between this type of economy and one based on production and manufacturing is that knowledge economies seem to encourage winner-take-all outcomes. </p>
<h2>‘Disproportionate’ sway</h2>
<p>Controlling data and intellectual property allows one to exert disproportionate influence over others: Witness the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-facebook-a-mass-media-micro-surveillance-monopoly/">concerns over Facebook</a> and smart-city projects like Sidewalk Toronto.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quayside-toronto-project-proves-that-smart-city-talks-must-be-transparent-96323">Quayside Toronto project proves that smart city talks must be transparent</a>
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<p>This reality may be why we are increasingly seeing what communication scholars <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83cdd9wm9780252039126.html">Shawn Powers and Michael Jablonski</a> call the “re-nationalization” of the global economy, of American Googles battling against Chinese Alibaba Groups. There’s a lot more that can be said here, but the key point is that economic nationalism is on the march.</p>
<p>It is comforting to think that if we can just survive the next two to six years of Trump, then things will get back to normal. This is a dangerous illusion. </p>
<p>The United States and the world have moved on, and slavish devotion to conventional economic wisdom will not serve us well in this new world. </p>
<p>The first step is to see the world as it is now, and to act accordingly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blayne Haggart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The underlying problem with Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum isn’t Trump. It’s the increasing willingness by the U.S. to impose its will on its neighbours amid rising economic nationalism.Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/928562018-03-25T09:17:47Z2018-03-25T09:17:47ZA Marxist approach appropriate for the climate crisis and the 21st Century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211176/original/file-20180320-31596-157hdz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite the climate crisis, humans have continued emitting and intensively using fossil fuels.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change is the most serious challenge the human species faces. Despite numerous warnings – scientific studies, UN declarations, books, movies, progressive media reporting – global leadership has failed humanity. </p>
<p>But how do humans survive the climate crisis? </p>
<p>The climate crisis should be treated as an emergency, demanding transformative politics that gets to the root causes through democratic systemic reforms. These would include remaking how people produce, consume, finance and organise social life.</p>
<p>A civilisation constantly undermining the conditions that sustain life has to be transformed urgently.</p>
<p>Despite the science and global consensus on the climate crisis, humans have continued emitting and intensively using fossil fuels. As a result the world is recording the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/18/2017-was-among-the-planets-hottest-years-on-record-government-scientists-report/?utm_term=.6662195245e1">hottest years</a> on the planet. A heated planet, as a result of human action, unhinges all certainties and places everything in jeopardy. It challenges fixation with growth economics, “catch up” development and every conception of modern progress. </p>
<p>Most fundamentally, it prompts the question, has globalised capitalism lost its progressiveness? Is today’s fossil fuel driven, hi-tech, scientific, financialised and post-Fordist industrial world leading humanity down a path of destruction? </p>
<p>A new book I’ve <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-climate-crisis/">edited</a>, <em>The Climate Crisis- South African and Global Democratic Eco-Socialist Alternatives</em>, draws from the analysis, concepts and systemic alternatives emerging at the frontiers of climate justice politics. This includes alternatives championed by global social movements such as <a href="https://viacampesina.org/en/">La Via Campesina</a>, the largest peasant movement in the world, progressive Southern intellectuals and movements within Bolivia, Ecuador and Africa. </p>
<h2>Challenging Marxism to meet the challenge</h2>
<p>As in previous volumes in the <a href="http://copac.org.za/democratic-marxism-book-series/">Democratic Marxism series</a>, this one brings together contributions that are thinking with – and learning from – grassroots movements. Many of the contributors are engaged activist scholars, grassroots activists and movement leaders.</p>
<p>This volume also places Marxism in dialogue with contemporary anti-capitalism in a way that draws on its ideological and movement potentials. Marxism in the 20th century as a ruling ideology, mostly as Marxism-Leninism, has pursued policies that have been ruinous to the environment. These have included championing growth at all costs, monopoly one party state control and catch-up industrialisation with capitalist countries. </p>
<p>In this volume nature is placed at the centre of how Marxism understands capitalism, history and alternatives. It confronts the intersections of climate change, patriarchy and racism inherent to capitalism. Marxism is challenged to think and act democratically in the 21st century. It’s tested as an intellectual resource to serve as the basis for a new future.</p>
<p>This is different from socialisms in the 20th century. These where authoritarian (controlled by elites), anti-nature and undermined the power of workers, peasants and progressive social forces. This volume affirms the renewal of socialism in the 21st century in dialogue with Marxism, ecological thought and democratic alternatives emerging from below. </p>
<h2>A heating planet</h2>
<p>In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen <a href="https://skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction-advanced.htm">drew attention</a> to the heating of the earth’s temperature, otherwise known as climate change. Yet over the past two decades the US refused to adopt the <a href="http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php">Kyoto Protocol</a>. This didn’t go far enough but nevertheless locked in common but differentiated responsibilities for industrial countries to cut emissions. Instead, Washington has worked systematically to scuttle the Kyoto Protocol. </p>
<p>In 2006, Hansen <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288">cautioned</a> that the world has a decade to change the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or face irreversible changes which would bring disastrous consequences. </p>
<p>Since this plea was made, another decade has been lost including through the ineffectual <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php">“Paris Climate Agreement”</a> <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2017/06/01/read-obama-statement-paris-climate-agreement/8jA3iHkFL2E1D55c74BnHJ/story.html">championed</a> by the US President Barack Obama but <a href="http://time.com/4802148/paris-agreement-barack-obama-donald-trump/">undermined</a> by incumbent Donald Trump. Today geologists and climate scientists are talking about a dangerous new world: the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/">Anthropocene</a>. It’s a world in which humans have changed planetary conditions including climate, breaking a 11 700 year pattern of relatively stable climate known as the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/history_of_the_earth/Holocene">Holocene</a>.</p>
<h2>The realities of climate driven world</h2>
<p>For many the climate crisis is a complex scientific problem. At one level it is. And is very different from daily or seasonal variability in weather. The science of climate change has <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/">confirmed</a>, with the measurement of greenhouse gases that human induced climate change is happening. </p>
<p>In 2015, the halfway mark towards catastrophic climate change was broken. This was confirmed by the <a href="https://www.wmo.int/pages/index_en.html">World Meteorological Organisation</a> which broadcast to the world that planetary temperatures have reached a 1 degree Celsius <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2016_hottest_year_on_record_wmo_12_degrees_c">increase</a> higher than the period prior to the industrial revolution.</p>
<p>The world is moving rapidly closer to a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/31/health/climate-change-two-degrees-studies/index.html">2°C increase</a> in planetary temperature. With this shift, extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, drier conditions enabling fires and floods are becoming more commonplace. Sea levels are also rising, placing many low-lying communities, populous coastal cities and island states in jeopardy. </p>
<p>Climate change on this scale is not expected to unfold in a linear way. Instead, it potentially can happen abruptly or through feedback loops further accelerating runaway climate change. Examples of this include methane release from the Arctic ice sheet, carbon saturation in the oceans and the destruction of rain forests which all feed into the climate change crisis. As the world fails to address the climate crisis, it becomes more complex and more costly.</p>
<p>In response, the <em>Climate Crisis</em> highlights the importance of advancing a deep and just transition that decarbonises society and provides a new basis for organising society to endure climate shocks. </p>
<p>New systems have to be developed through democratic systemic reforms. These would include the rights of nature, degrowth, climate jobs, socially owned renewable energy, a substantive basic income grant, integrated public transport, food sovereignty, solidarity economy and commons approaches to land, water and the cyber sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishwas Satgar receives funding from the National Institute of Humanities and Social Science and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He is an activist in the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign, he chairs the board of the Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC) and is the editor of the Democratic Marxism book series.</span></em></p>The climate crisis is a complex scientific problem. New systems have to be developed through democratic systemic reforms.Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907442018-01-27T02:38:40Z2018-01-27T02:38:40ZMacron calls for a ‘global contract’ at Davos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203564/original/file-20180126-100926-h3klf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Macron in Davos on Jan. 24, 2018, where he argued that economic growth wasn't an end in itself.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Markus Schreiber</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 24 called for nation-states and businesses to join in a “true global contract” to invest in human capital, and meet the challenges of terrorism and climate change.</p>
<p>“Globalization is undergoing a major crisis,” Macron said, “and this enormous challenge requires a collective effort.”</p>
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<h2>A ‘cultural shift’</h2>
<p>In terms of domestic policy, Macron proclaimed France’s commitment to creating a business-friendly environment. Speaking in English for the first 20 minutes of his speech, he declared “France is back!” This was an implicit challenge to the United States, which under President Donald Trump has threatened to ignite a trade war by <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/28/politics/trump-china-tariffs/index.html">implementing costly protective tariffs</a>.</p>
<p>Macron’s domestic program is also a repudiation of France’s long-standing commitment to social protection and a regulated form of capitalism. France’s postwar policies, he said, produced a nation in which companies were both “forbidden to fail” and “forbidden to succeed.”</p>
<p>Macron’s economic reforms aim to improve French productivity and competitiveness by encouraging a more flexible labor market, essentially by making it easier for firms to fire their employees. In the past, French governments have hesitated to push such reforms, because of the <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/03/economist-explains-15">long-standing power of French unions</a>. Macron appears to believe that his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-france-election-marine-le-pen.html">decisive defeat</a> of both the candidates of the left and the right in last year’s presidential election gives him more leverage in this fight than his predecessors François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.</p>
<p>Macron also boasted of a “cultural shift” taking place in France. No longer would the French government assume that adjusting social inequalities with tax policy and job protections was enough. He promised instead that his government would address the fundamental causes of inequality, rather than simply try to “correct” it with taxpayer money. Significantly, his speech gave no specifics on how he would accomplish this, beyond his general enthusiasm for economic growth.</p>
<h2>En Français</h2>
<p>Switching to French, Macron made a very different argument about the global economy. Economic growth, he stated, can never be an end in itself. A world where all nations compete against one another has led to an unsustainable Darwinian struggle, a race to the bottom. Short-term profits accrue to the few. The distribution of wealth in the world is increasingly unjust.</p>
<p>Macron pointed out that a commitment to growth at all costs creates serious divisions within nations. New technologies and the disproportionate growth and power of the financial sector have created winners and losers in every country. The “nomadic” and talented few who are able to adapt to the new economy move easily from New York to London to Tokyo and back, Macron suggested. Many more cannot adapt and are left behind.</p>
<p>In this way, Macron argued, democracies are corroded from within, providing fertile ground for nationalists whose only solution is to turn inward and close the borders against the world. Populist parties in Europe and North America blame globalization for all their problems. Their leaders pull out of international agreements at precisely the moment when cooperative efforts are most needed. Macron did not name names in his speech, but the audience at Davos certainly understood the reference: Trump’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2018/01/22/the-nafta-withdrawal-threat-is-real/#b30b82b6458c">attacks on NAFTA</a> and the Trans-Pacific Partnership; British <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-is-on-britain-votes-to-leave-the-eu-experts-respond-61576">voters opting for Brexit</a>; and France’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/tpp-trump-trade-nafta.html">own National Front calling</a> for the French to leave the EU.</p>
<p>For Macron this is the danger of the present moment: a relapse into a sterile nationalism that is incapable of addressing the real challenges posed by the present. </p>
<h2>Three obligations</h2>
<p>Macron called for a “true global contract” that rests on three obligations that fall equally on nation-states, their populations and private businesses. </p>
<p>The first is the “duty to invest,” particularly in the education of young women in developing countries. </p>
<p>The second obligation is the “duty to share” both the profits and costs that accompany the new economy. </p>
<p>Finally, Macron insisted that the global contract implies a collective “duty to protect.” The challenges of terrorism, large-scale migrations and climate change can only be met with a collective, multilateral effort. </p>
<p>Macron’s global contract sounds eerily like the promises of the postwar European welfare states: Invest in human capital through subsidies of education, redistribute the value generated by capitalism to all participants in the global economy, and protect the vulnerable through multilateral and cooperative policies that involve both states and the private sector. </p>
<p>The difference, of course, is that France’s older social model depended on a strong state to mediate the clash of interests between employers and labor. His “global contract” is a form of multilateralism that includes both states and nonstate actors. It lacks a mediating force to insist that everybody play by the rules.</p>
<p>Macron’s hope is that a united Europe might play this mediating role. A democratic Europe might thread the needle between the unregulated capitalism often endorsed by the United States and the statist and anti-democratic model provided by China. It’s a compelling vision, but even the optimists will admit that it is easier to see the paths that lead to failure than to success. Macron understands the stakes — but seems to see no other option.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>French companies will no longer be ‘forbidden to fail’ and ‘forbidden to succeed,’ the French president tells the World Economic Forum.Joshua Cole, Professor of History, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847552017-11-02T22:28:39Z2017-11-02T22:28:39ZWhat exactly is neoliberalism?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191892/original/file-20171025-25540-1myn2wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4896%2C3232&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paper chains hang on the White House fence in Washington in October 2010 during a demonstration against the IMF and World Bank neoliberal economic policies during their annual meeting. Has the term neoliberalism run its course? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I struggle with neoliberalism – as a problematic economic system we might want to change – and as an analytical term people increasingly use to describe that system.</p>
<p>I’ve been reading and writing about the concept for more than a decade. But the more I read, the more I think that neoliberalism is <a href="http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/the-difficulty-of-neoliberalism/">losing its analytical edge</a>. </p>
<p>As a result of its growing popularity in academia, media and popular discussions, it’s crucial to understand neoliberalism as a concept. We need to know its origins and its definition in order to understand our current political and economic mess, including the rise of nativism that played a part in <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/corporate-research-development-innovation-brexit-donald-trump-europe-far-right-companies-visas-a8015651.html">Brexit and Donald Trump’s election a year ago</a>. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism is regularly used in popular debate around the world to define the last 40 years. It’s used to refer to an economic system in which the “free” market is extended to every part of our public and personal worlds. The transformation of the state from a provider of public welfare to a promoter of markets and competition helps to enable this shift. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism is generally associated with policies like cutting trade tariffs and barriers. Its influence has liberalized the international movement of capital, and limited the power of trade unions. It’s broken up state-owned enterprises, sold off public assets and generally opened up our lives to dominance by <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/01/29/how-to-think-like-a-neoliberal/">market thinking</a>.</p>
<p>As a term, neoliberalism is increasingly used across popular media, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/magazine/the-rise-of-jeremy-corbyn-and-the-death-throes-of-neoliberalism.html"><em>The New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-may-have-joined-the-fray-too-late-save-neoliberalism-xmzncbs7j"><em>The Times</em></a> (of London) and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4832486/Corbyn-ally-accuses-neoliberal-politicians.html"><em>The Daily Mail</em></a>. It’s also used within international institutions like the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/this-is-what-the-future-of-economic-liberalism-looks-like-its-time-to-rethink-it/">World Economic Forum</a>, the <a href="http://oecdinsights.org/2017/01/30/new-economics-narrative-for-a-complex-age/">Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development</a> and the <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm">International Monetary Fund</a>. </p>
<h2>Neoliberalism a Trump antidote?</h2>
<p>Neoliberalism is criticized for giving markets too much power over our lives. Yet in light of the rise of Donald Trump and other nativist, anti-trade populists, there is a growing chorus of people <a href="https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/coming-out-as-neoliberals">extolling the virtues of neoliberalism</a>.</p>
<p>What’s most evident from this growing popular debate about neoliberalism – whether from left-leaning critics or right-leaning advocates – is that there are many different views of neoliberalism; not just what it means politically, but just as critically, what it means analytically. </p>
<p>This raises an important question: How do we use a term like “neoliberalism” when so many people have such different understandings of what it means? </p>
<p>I wrestled with this question when writing my book, <a href="http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/a-research-agenda-for-neoliberalism"><em>A Research Agenda for Neoliberalism</em></a>, in which I examine the intellectual history of neoliberalism. I do so in order to examine the different conceptions of the term and to expose the contradictions underlying our daily use of it.</p>
<p>The term “neoliberalism” has a fascinating intellectual history. It appears as long ago as 1884 in an article by R.A. Armstrong for <em>The Modern Review</em> in which he defined liberals who promoted state intervention in the economy as “neo-liberal” — almost the exact opposite meaning from its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot">popular and academic use</a> today.</p>
<p>Another early appearance is in an 1898 article for <em>The Economic Journal</em> by Charles Gide in which he used the term to refer to an Italian economist, <a href="https://eh.net/book_reviews/maffeo-pantaleoni-at-the-origin-of-the-italian-school-of-economics-and-finance/">Maffeo Pantaleoni</a>, who argued that we need to promote a “hedonistic world … in which free competition will reign absolutely” — somewhat closer to our current conception.</p>
<h2>Adopted by liberal thinkers</h2>
<p>As the 20th century dawned and the world moved through one World War and onto the next, the term was appropriated by a range of liberal thinkers who felt sidelined by the ascendance of state planning and socialism.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it">conventional narrative</a> is that “neo-liberalism” was first proposed as a term to describe a rebooted liberalism in the 1930s after the so-called <a href="http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/activities/contextualising-the-walter-lippmann-colloquium(a97f6216-91a8-427b-8ada-3a579c873cda).html">Walter Lippman Colloquium</a> held in Paris in 1938. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193098/original/file-20171102-26432-1972e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American writer and journalist Walter Lippmann on the cover of Time Magazine in 1931. Lippmann’s writings were influential on the neo-liberal movement in the first half of the 20th century.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, its history is not as clear cut as this narrative might imply. According to <a href="https://cybergeo.revues.org/26324">Arnaud Brennetot</a>, for example, the term was subsequently mainly used to refer to French and other liberals associated with a publishing house called La Libraire de Medicis at least until the early 1950s. By then, the term was increasingly used to refer to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/the-political-thought-of-neo-liberalism/B4C3B238E3403C9E03670650BC8D3DCB">German Ordoliberalism</a>, which was a “neoliberal” school based on the idea that markets need a strong state in order to protect competition — ideas that are a major forerunner of the European Union’s framework conditions.</p>
<p>Famously, Milton Friedman even referred to himself as a “neoliberal” in a 1951 article for the Norwegian magazine <a href="https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/Farmand_02_17_1951.pdf"><em>Farmand</em></a>, although he subsequently dropped the term.</p>
<p>By the 1970s, Brennetot and others argued that neoliberalism was a term primarily associated with a shifting emphasis in Latin America away from import-substitution policies towards open economies, influenced by Chicago School thinkers like Friedman. </p>
<p>It was around this time that neoliberalism increasingly took on negative overtones, especially <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/chile-september-11-1973-the-inauguration-of-neoliberalism-shock-treatment-and-the-instruments-of-economic-repression-the-juntas-deadly-economic-medicine/5545802">after the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government</a> in Chile in 1973. As the 1980s dawned, along with the generally accepted birth of the modern neoliberal era, the term “neoliberalism” became indelibly linked to the Chicago School of Economics (as well as <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Handbook-of-Neoliberalism/Springer-Birch-MacLeavy/p/book/9781138844001">Law and Business</a>). </p>
<h2>Neoliberalism has several ‘schools’</h2>
<p>When we use the term today, it’s generally with this Chicago inflection, rather than its other previous and alternative histories and associations.</p>
<p>But it’s important to remember that there were and are at least seven schools of neoliberalism. Some of the older schools, like the First Chicago School (of Frank Knight, Henry Simons, Jacob Viner), disappeared or were subsumed in later schools – in this case, the Second Chicago School (of Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, George Stigler). </p>
<p>Other old schools, like the Italian or Bocconi School (of Maffeo Pantaleoni, Luigi Einaudi) faded into academia before being resurrected as the legitimization for current <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/austerity-9780199389445?cc=ca&lang=en&">austerity policies</a>. Other more marginal schools, like the Virginia School (of James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock) – itself influenced by the Italian school – have existed under the radar until recent critiques by historians like <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980965/">Nancy MacLean</a>. </p>
<p>As these various schools of neoliberal thought have evolved and mutated over time, so too have our understandings of them and their influence on us. It’s therefore tricky to identify neoliberalism with any one particular school of thought without missing out on a whole lot of the story.</p>
<h2>Three contradictions</h2>
<p>That’s a major reason why I identify three core contradictions in our current understandings of neoliberalism in my new book. </p>
<p>First, too little has been done analytically to address the contradiction between the supposed extension of “free” markets under neoliberalism and the growth in market power and dominance of corporate entities and monopolies like Google and Microsoft.</p>
<p>Second, there has been too much emphasis on the idea that our lives, identities and subjectivities under neoliberalism are framed by “entrepreneurial” beliefs, attitudes and thinking. </p>
<p>In contrast, my view is that our lives, societies, and economies are dominated by diverse forms of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/33175493/Technoscience_rent_Towards_a_theory_of_rentiership">rentiership</a> — for example home ownership, intellectual property monopolies and market control. According to British academic <a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/the-corruption-of-capitalism">Guy Standing</a>, rentiership can be defined as the extraction of income from the “ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce.”</p>
<p>Finally, there has been little interest in trying to understand the important role of contract and contract law – as opposed to “markets” – in the organization of neoliberal capitalism. </p>
<p>All these areas need addressing in order to better understand our future, but neoliberalism has perhaps run its course in providing us with the necessary analytical tools to do this work. It’s time to find new ways to think about our world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kean Birch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The term “neoliberalism” has a rich history but has it run its course as an accurate concept when so many people have such different understandings of what it means?Kean Birch, Associate Professor, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/836712017-09-15T13:27:40Z2017-09-15T13:27:40ZThe UK continues to top world university rankings – here’s why that matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185984/original/file-20170914-8990-lqzgx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>University rankings can be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/sep/11/graduate-employability-ranking-the-best-university-for-getting-a-job">very influential</a>. They are one way higher education institutions can show off their ability to <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2017090513250829">deliver good research and teaching</a>. And they are also a useful guide for potential students – with those from both the UK and overseas <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/why-do-students-go-university-and-how-do-they-choose-which-one">using various rankings</a> to help with their decision of where to study. </p>
<p>Attending a high-ranking university can provide graduates with better paid jobs, because top ranked universities are often looked on more favourably <a href="http://monitor.icef.com/2015/09/when-it-comes-to-rankings-students-really-want-to-know-about-employment/">on CVs</a>. And as the number of people holding a degree increases, attending a higher ranked university is one way graduates can differentiate themselves from the competition.</p>
<p>Some students who don’t make the grade, will also look to “improve” or “upgrade” their education, based on the rankings of an institution. This is where students initially accept a place at a lower-ranked university and then <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/06/should-you-switch-to-another-university">look to transfer</a> to a higher-ranked one later on. This can be done as part of a “top-up” program for undergraduate study or when they embark upon postgraduate study. </p>
<h2>International outlook</h2>
<p>But not all rankings are made equal. And it seems increasingly, some university league tables are proving to be <a href="http://monitor.icef.com/2017/09/what-rankings-are-most-important-to-students/?utm_content=buffer54c38&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer">more important</a> than others. This includes the more global ones – such as the <a href="https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings">QS World University Rankings</a> and <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings">The Times Higher Education World University Rankings</a> – this has seen many institutions working hard to remain at the top of such tables. </p>
<p>Many governments across the world also use global university rankings to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/sep/10/university-rankings-influence-government-policy">measure their competitiveness</a>. And in some countries they are even <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20170829141248285">used to help drive positive change</a> within higher education – rankings can be used as a benchmark, allowing institutions to identify strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185986/original/file-20170914-9038-1vxogtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oxford and Cambridge were named best two universities in the world in a recent ranking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The globalisation of higher education seems to show no signs of slowing down. In fact more universities are pursuing their internationalisation agendas to increase global competitiveness and attract the best and brightest academics and students. In a few cases some universities have even been said to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/06/universities-stopped-sidelining-british-students-foreign-teens/">favour international students over local ones</a> due to the higher fees they bring.</p>
<p>But as well as the high fees, there is also an argument that international students bring their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jul/03/universities-dont-understand-how-international-students-learn">own knowledge</a> and understanding of the world. This global knowledge can then be shared among students and staff in the classroom – creating a global laboratory for open discussion and debate. </p>
<h2>Knowledge exchange</h2>
<p>In this way, the internationalisation of universities often results in both academics and students coming together from across the globe. This can increase the melting pot of ideas for research projects as well as the funding that can be applied for. </p>
<p>This international knowledge exchange can also help gather skills and knowledge from others that work in the same field. And can extend international research networks – as well as providing a <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/why-we-should-all-be-interested-in-international-research-programmes-29-sep-2015">greater audience for the research produced</a>. </p>
<p>But to continue to attract students and academics from overseas, universities need to remain competitive. And with political changes and international student enrolments <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/13/nearly-4-10-universities-report-drops-international-student-applications">down in countries such as the US</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2016/jul/14/international-student-numbers-have-been-plummeting-for-years-now-what">UK</a>, this may prove harder to achieve.</p>
<h2>Home and away</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/International/heglobal/Pages/what-is-transnational-education.aspx">Transnational education</a> (TNE) – where students can stay in their home country and study degrees from abroad – is one way universities have been expanding. And many governments, including <a href="http://monitor.icef.com/2017/03/uk-government-signals-increasing-emphasis-transnational-education/">the UK</a> have been supporting the development of educational partnerships and programs abroad. This allows universities to set up branch campuses or educational partnerships to recruit students who may not want to, or perhaps cannot leave their home country. </p>
<p>TNE provisions could also provide UK universities with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-overseas-degrees-could-offer-students-the-best-of-both-worlds-post-brexit-63171">alternatives</a> after Brexit. But more importantly these branch campuses provide further exposure and awareness of their institution in new markets. All of which helps to secure and maintain their competitive position. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185985/original/file-20170914-9003-xvakzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The world’s your oyster when it comes to higher education.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What all this shows is that remaining in the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2018/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/scores">top spots of the rankings</a> – as many UK and US universities continue to do – is of course important for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>But as international student enrolment flattens, it is clear <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20170905140031381">the global higher education landscape is changing</a>. And with newer destinations for study such as <a href="https://thepienews.com/news/china-11-percent-growth-international-student/">China</a> entering the market, it seems governments and universities may need to be ready to consider alternative options if they want to remain competitive in this rapidly shifting landscape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Cockayne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The globalisation of higher education and what it means for students.Heather Cockayne, Doctoral Researcher, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814632017-08-11T00:59:50Z2017-08-11T00:59:50ZRise in globalism doesn’t mean the end for nationalists<p>Are you more of a nationalist or a cosmopolitan? Or both?</p>
<p>Recent events suggest that a nationalist backlash to globalization is <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21710249-his-call-put-america-first-donald-trump-latest-recruit-dangerous">on the rise</a>. The United Kingdom’s decision to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887">leave</a> the European Union, Donald Trump’s win in the U.S. presidential election and the growing popularity of right-wing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/world/europe/europe-far-right-political-parties-listy.html?_r=0">parties</a> in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/18/nation-state-marine-le-pen-global-mood-france-brexit-trump-front-national">France</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/opinion/the-freedom-partys-second-chance-in-austria.html">Austria</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/germanys-far-right-rises-again-214543">Germany</a> attest to this. </p>
<p>Liberals in particular are puzzled by the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-03-15/a-look-at-global-neo-nationalism-after-brexit-and-donald-trumps-election">spike in nationalism</a> on a global scale. Some may wonder, where have all the global citizens gone? The answer, I argue, is nowhere. The confusion comes in because the ideal of a selfless global citizen, someone who puts global issues above national interests, does not really exist. </p>
<p>It’s true. Data from the World Values Survey shows that since the early 1990s, the integration of markets, communities and cultures has bred a new generation of people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan,” or global citizens. The World Values Survey was started by social scientists in 1981, and is often conducted face-to-face with representative samples of adults from each country. Researchers such as Pippa Norris and Roland Inglehart, among others, have also used the World Values Survey data to identify trends in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitan-Communications-Diversity-Globalized-Communication/dp/0521738385">cosmopolitanism</a>.</p>
<p>Three-fourths of nearly 85,000 adult respondents from 60 countries surveyed by the <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a> between 2010 and 2014 identified as global citizens.</p>
<p>However, my <a href="http://burcubayram.net/Research_files/Bayram_Draft_Nationalist%20Cosmopolitanism.pdf">research</a> shows that global citizenship and nationalism are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<h2>Global citizens love their country</h2>
<p>Of those who strongly identified as global citizens in the latest round of the World Values Survey, 82 percent also strongly identified with their nation, and 74 percent are highly proud of their nation.</p>
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<p>About 68 percent of the 2,176 respondents from the U.S. expressed either a strong or a moderate degree of global citizenship. Of these global citizens, more than 46 percent also strongly identify with the United States, and 61 percent are very proud to be American. Similar patterns exist in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.</p>
<p>This data suggests that most global citizens do not shed their national identity. Global citizens are still protective of national interests.</p>
<p>Consider this. The <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV5.jsp">2005-2009 World Values Survey</a> included a question (not repeated in the latest round) that asked respondents whether their nation’s leaders should give top priority to help reduce poverty in the world, or solve their own country’s problems. About 62 percent of those who identified as global citizens said they would put their country’s problems first. The policy implication of this is that global citizens are not necessarily interested in increasing foreign development aid to poor countries.</p>
<p>Many global citizens also take a hard-line stance on immigration. Of those who strongly identified as global citizens, more than 36 percent supported making immigration conditional on the availability of jobs. Some 35 percent preferred placing strict limits on immigration, and about 12 percent supported a total ban. Only about 16 percent of global citizens favored unrestricted movement of people.</p>
<p>When it comes to requirements for citizenship, many global citizens supported models of citizenship that require ancestral bonds. About 70 percent of those who strongly identified as global citizens said ancestry is important in qualifying for citizenship.</p>
<h2>What is global citizenship then?</h2>
<p>What this data suggest is that while many see global citizenship and nationalism as <a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/">polar opposites</a>, they are not. The growth of the number of people who identify as global citizens does not mean nationalist concerns, hawkish foreign policies and isolationism are concepts of the past. For many, being a global citizen and a nationalist go hand in hand.</p>
<p>Global citizenship is an acquired social identity that is shaped by how individuals prioritize <a href="http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol2/iss1/11/">values</a> such as universalism and self-enhancement. As I show in my <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066114541879">article</a> published in the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt">European Journal of International Relations</a>, global citizenship is compatible with both selfish and altruistic values. While some global citizens are motivated by universal moral concerns such as protecting the environment and the welfare of human beings, others are simply driven by egoistic motives. And these egoistic motives can be used to protect the nation. </p>
<p>The million-dollar question is, how do people really understand global citizenship? Right now, we have a better idea of what global citizenship is not than of what it is. Global citizens do not seem to like conformity, status quo and convention, but they like the nation and even put it first.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Throughout her career, A. Burcu Bayram received funding from The Ohio State University, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, American Political Science Association, Fritz Thyssen Foundation. </span></em></p>Data show that many people who consider themselves ‘global citizens’ also harbor strong national sentiments. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.A. Burcu Bayram, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of ArkansasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/803522017-08-02T01:19:10Z2017-08-02T01:19:10ZThe true failure of foreign language instruction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179076/original/file-20170720-23983-47qtgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Far fewer Americans speak a second language than in most other developed countries – and the problem starts in the classroom.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/high-school-students-working-on-international-654280111?src=jkDOykIkSecBAUlQfAJ_LQ-1-2">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/language/Commission-on-Language-Learning_Americas-Languages.pdf">recent report</a> from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for more attention to language teaching in the U.S. The report notes that U.S. students have much less access to foreign language instruction than students in other economically developed countries, and that Americans are thus much less likely to be bi- or multilingual.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.gse.harvard.edu/faculty/catherine-snow">expert on language and literacy development in children</a>, I’ve talked to many immigrant parents who expect their children to grow up bilingual, only to be surprised that they end up as monolingual English speakers. Meanwhile, foreign language learning opportunities for English speakers are limited. Why is the U.S. so bad at producing bilinguals?</p>
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<h2>Native language loss</h2>
<p>The dismal state of bilingual and multilingual fluency in the U.S. has a couple of sources. Notably, far too many of the children with the greatest potential to become good bilinguals – the children of immigrants – lose fluency in their parents’ language. It’s estimated that by the third generation, immigrants have <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED335176">completely lost fluency</a> in their heritage languages.</p>
<p>Ongoing support (political and social as well as educational) for maintenance of minority languages <a href="https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/language/Commission-on-Language-Learning_Americas-Languages.pdf#page=34">is limited</a>. Bilingualism can be impeded by a general sense that it’s <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/why-english-should-be-official-language-united-sta/">more important for immigrants to learn English</a> than to maintain their first language, and that these are somehow in conflict with one another.</p>
<p>In my view, it’s ironic that we have students walking up staircases at one end of their school building to attend Spanish foreign language classes while at the other end of the same building native Spanish speakers are being taught English and content in ways that <a href="https://languageattrition.org/">lead to their loss</a> of Spanish.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179083/original/file-20170720-942-1496yjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-immigrant sentiment can be a driving force behind opposition to native language retention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/donotlick/4616365374">Jennifer Morrow</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Foreign language classes ‘fail’</h2>
<p>The other factor contributing to a lack of bilingual proficiency in the U.S. may be low expectations. Too many Americans accept the claim that foreign language instruction is a dismal failure, that a very large percentage of students will <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/13/learning-a-foreign-language-a-must-in-europe-not-so-in-america/">never become fluent</a> in another language and that investing in foreign language learning is likely to be <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/the_marginal_pr.html">a waste of time</a>.</p>
<p>How do we explain, then, that l00 percent of students in Germany, Scandinavia, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore and many other places achieve <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/repository/languages/policy/strategic-framework/documents/language-survey-final-report_en.pdf">high levels of competence in English</a> – and typically in at least one or two other languages as well? Is the U.S. student population afflicted with some peculiar block to foreign language learning?</p>
<p>I would argue that we as Americans do have a block to successful foreign language learning: our deeply unrealistic expectations about how it works. Can a few years of experience in middle school or high school classrooms (experience that likely adds up to less than 600 total hours of instruction) generate excellence in another language? Frankly, no – at least <a href="https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/language/Commission-on-Language-Learning_Americas-Languages.pdf#page=20">not for most students</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179086/original/file-20170720-942-1sfyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">U.S. students typically get only a few years of foreign language classes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.marsoc.marines.mil/Photos/igphoto/28425/">Sgt. Steven King</a></span>
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<h2>Moving forward through opportunity</h2>
<p>Despite the current limitations of most curricula, such classroom experience can, however, form a solid foundation for truly learning a foreign language.</p>
<p>This is particularly true when a genuine communicative opportunity arises. Some lucky students get that opportunity on <a href="http://www.nafsa.org/Policy_and_Advocacy/Policy_Resources/Policy_Trends_and_Data/Trends_in_U_S__Study_Abroad/">trips abroad</a>. Others might seek it out by volunteering in <a href="https://www.gobeyondtravel.com/">refugee centers</a> or programs serving <a href="https://volunteer.uwkc.org/need/detail/?need_id=214442">immigrant youth</a>, or by seeking <a href="https://www.language-exchanges.org/">digital contacts</a> with native speakers.</p>
<p>Many efforts to rethink the traditional foreign language classroom experience have been tried. These efforts include immersion, <a href="http://www.cal.org/twi/">dual immersion</a> and <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24677/promoting-the-educational-success-of-children-and-youth-learning-english">other bilingual school programs</a>. Such programs typically recruit kindergartners and build second language skills by teaching content through the second language.</p>
<p>They often work well, but starting at kindergarten is not a requirement for ultimate fluency. Immersion programs are effective and, in fact, generate equivalent learning in less time if started at later grades. Late immersion may be more efficient just because older students are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232600201_A_comparison_of_early_and_late_second_language_learning">better learners</a>, and are generally more likely to have had a say in choosing the immersion program – thus they’re also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X8500400102">more motivated to learn</a>. </p>
<p>With such opportunities to improve foreign language instruction, let’s not <a href="https://qz.com/309143/a-case-for-cutting-foreign-languages-from-us-schools/">give up on it entirely</a> – let’s figure out how to complement it with the experiences that enable students to exploit it optimally!</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179087/original/file-20170720-15106-169zjsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Foreign travel – for those who can afford it – can be a path to effective and lasting language learning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daniel_Oerther_posing_with_students_during_a_study_abroad_trip_to_Gujarat,_India.jpg">Oertherdb</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Snow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether it’s due to native language loss or unsupported high school curricula, the lack of bilingualism in the US is notable. Why can’t more Americans speak another language? How should that change?Catherine Snow, Professor of Education, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/776072017-06-06T00:17:42Z2017-06-06T00:17:42ZThe decline in foreign students hurts America’s future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172345/original/file-20170605-16869-1brhft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Multicultural friendships formed in college help develop students' cultural agility</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/education-students-people-knowledge-concept-521629030?src=_h9GSMLeITArIZanpooDUA-1-38">Rawpixel / Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Trump administration’s nationalism (as most recently witnessed in <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-tweets-favor-original-travel-ban-not-watered-down-version-n768191">his pro-travel ban Twitter reaction</a> to the London attacks) has had an unfortunate effect on universities in the United States. Namely, some international students, surmising that they’re unwelcome or unsafe studying in the U.S., are not applying. As a result, many American universities are reporting <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/13/nearly-4-10-universities-report-drops-international-student-applications">a significant decline in international student applications</a>.</p>
<p>This decline in applications, while applauded by those <a href="http://items.ssrc.org/reflections-on-the-rise-of-educational-nationalism/">hoping to improve admissions for American students</a>, has unintended long-term consequences: It makes America less safe and less prepared for future global growth.</p>
<p>As a researcher studying how individuals develop cross-cultural competencies, I’ve found that domestic and international student integration on American university campuses is essential for building cultural understanding – important for the future of national and economic security.</p>
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<h2>The need for student integration</h2>
<p>Over 600 university presidents recently reminded Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly of <a href="http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Documents/Letter-From-Institutions-to-DHS-on-Immigration-Executive-Order.pdf">international students’ benefit to national security</a>. In a letter dated Feb. 3, 2017, they stated that international students who study in the United States return to their home countries as “…ambassadors for American values, democracy and the free market.” </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.nafsa.org/">NAFSA</a> (a nonprofit organization for international educators), international students can help to <a href="http://www.nafsa.org/Policy_and_Advocacy/Policy_Resources/Policy_Recommendations/Welcoming_Foreign_Students_to_U_S__Institutions_is_Vital_to_American_Public_Policy/">counteract negative stereotypes of Americans</a> back in their home countries. Research has found that college students with friends from different countries are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.001">more open-minded and had less apprehension when engaging in conversation</a> with people from different countries. Both, I believe, are useful characteristics to combat terrorism; those who like Americans would seem less likely to attack America.</p>
<p>In addition to the benefit for national security, integration of international students is critical for American students’ development of <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118275071.html">cultural agility</a>: the ability to work comfortably and effectively in different countries and with people from different cultures. Cultural agility is a competency in high demand by employers, making it an asset for both American and international students upon graduation. </p>
<p>Roughly one-third of multinational firms cite a lack of culturally agile employees as a limit to their <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/developing-global-leaders">global competitiveness</a>. When over 13,000 professionals from 48 countries <a href="http://www.ddiworld.com/DDI/media/trend-research/global-leadership-forecast-2014-2015_tr_ddi.pdf">rated their effectiveness</a> on 12 managerial tasks, the three tasks with the lowest ratings were those with an intercultural component: integrating oneself into foreign environments, intercultural communication, and leading across countries and cultures. Clearly, it’s a skill valued by employers, but lacking in the workforce.</p>
<p>My research has found that <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118275071.html">cultural agility can be readily fostered on diverse college campuses</a> that successfully promote inclusion. It is gained over time, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2012.01.014">through collaboration and friendship</a> among those from different cultures.</p>
<h2>Fostering international and domestic student integration</h2>
<p>Some universities have started <a href="https://www.youarewelcomehereusa.org/read-me/">#YouAreWelcomeHere campaigns</a> to attract international students with a countervailing message of openness and inclusion. The campaign will, hopefully, also encourage wary international students to apply. Enrollment, however, is only half the solution. What happens when the international students arrive?</p>
<p>While studying in another country holds promise for developing cross-cultural competencies, the reality is all too often quite different. According to the South China Morning Post, 25 percent of Chinese students attending Ivy League universities in the U.S. <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1342846/study-one-four-chinese-students-drop-out-ivy-league-schools">dropped out of school</a>. Many reported difficulties adjusting to the new environment.</p>
<p>For those international students who do not drop out, nearly 40 percent of them reported having <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.691525">no close American friends but would like to have more meaningful relationships</a>, based on a study of over 450 international students attending 10 public universities in the United States. International student experiences fall short of the expectation that cross-cultural bonding and skill-building will occur automatically; sharing a campus and classes is not enough to form friendships.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172313/original/file-20170605-16845-cuurms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Chinese study found that language barriers and differences in educational systems were leading causes for some international students to drop out of school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofpg/6162937613/">City of Prince George/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smi.1139/full">College is a stressful period</a>. When under periods of stress, students, like all of us, have the greatest cognitive and emotional comfort with those who they perceive <a href="http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.neu.edu/10.1037/0022-3514.72.2.305">are going through the same experience</a>.</p>
<p>The result is that people from the same country, when placed in a new country together as foreigners, connect with one another. We see this when we walk around not only college campuses but also expatriate communities abroad. While it is a natural human response, students who associate only with other similar students miss the opportunity to develop their cultural agility.</p>
<p>In an intervention piloted at the College of Business Administration at Kent State University, we found that student integration could be fostered by training both international and domestic students in conversational and cultural skills. The study, while not yet published, found that students who participated in this skill-building program had greater openness and higher levels of integration when compared to a control group. The benefit was an increased sense of ease to make friends on campus, better perceptions of social support, a sense of belonging and overall satisfaction, especially among those students who were less open when starting their freshman year.</p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>Students, both international and domestic, benefit from their multicultural friendships. Through their college friendships, they can demystify differences and become more open to people from different countries and cultures. This ease with cultural difference is the foundation of cultural agility.</p>
<p>This cultural agility can, in turn, have a lasting, positive effect on their personal career success and international cooperation. </p>
<p>The challenge, especially in today’s environment, is for universities to get ahead of the decline in international student applications before it becomes a detrimental trend. If not addressed, the opportunities for cultural development will be limited, potentially eroding national security and our students’ professional success as they compete in the global economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paula Caligiuri consults in the area of building cultural agility. </span></em></p>International student integration can (and should) be fostered on college campuses for the sake of national security and professional readiness.Paula Caligiuri, Distinguished Professor of International Business and Strategy, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/676602016-10-27T01:06:28Z2016-10-27T01:06:28ZOn the difficulty of being a world citizen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143373/original/image-20161027-11271-1up1aot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Global cooperation is necessary to fight our greatest challenges. Making it happen is much harder.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To say the idea of world government gets mixed reviews would be an understatement, to put it mildly. Many people dismiss the idea out of hand as either a utopian fantasy or a recipe for dictatorship by unaccountable elites bent on world domination. </p>
<p>Even those who don’t lie awake at night fretting about black helicopters and what goes on in smoke-filled rooms packed with powerful vested interests quite justifiably worry about democratic accountability.</p>
<p>At an historical moment when democratic institutions around the world are suffering a crisis of legitimacy and being undermined by a rising tide of populism and xenophobia, making the case for world government is consequently getting increasingly difficult. </p>
<p>The most promising example of institutionalised international cooperation we have yet seen – the European Union – is in crisis and has become synonymous with dysfunction. Britain’s ill-advised decision to leave only reinforces the idea that such projects are definitively off the historical agenda.</p>
<p>Paradoxically enough, however, some of the smartest people on the planet continue to argue that not only is world government desirable, it’s actually a functional necessity and one that will inevitably be realised. The only question is when.</p>
<p>The casual observer can be forgiven for feeling somewhat confused. Even those of us who take a professional interest in such matters can succumb to bouts of acute cognitive dissonance as we try to get our heads around what we – in this case the human race – need to do to survive in a civilised fashion. </p>
<p>The reality is that some problems such as climate change simply cannot be addressed by isolated “communities of fate” of a sort that have come to dominate politics and governance over the last four or five hundred years.</p>
<p>The fact that we all live within nationally demarcated boundaries is one of the defining features of modern political life. And it determines the existential variety, too. Those born in Victorian Britain thought they had won life’s lottery – or those in the upper classes did, at least. </p>
<p>Even now, people are willing to risk their lives to get into “the West” with its implicit promise of affluence, peace and social stability. It’s not hard to see why.</p>
<p>Some would say it was ever thus: throughout history, life has always been tough and uncertain for many – perhaps most – of the human race. Indeed, it’s possible to make a plausible argument that we humans have collectively never had so good.</p>
<p>But this rather abstract way of thinking about the human condition is not much consolation to those living in Syria rather than Sydney. For those of us fortunate enough in such privileged enclaves of peace and prosperity the question is whether we have obligations beyond borders. </p>
<p>Are we obliged to care about the fates of strangers we will never meet and whose lives only appear fleetingly, if at all, on our television screens?</p>
<p>At one level, the answer is clearly “no”. Unless you subscribe to some sort of religious belief that obliges you to take an interest in the welfare of your fellow man or woman, no one can compel us to care. True, seeing children getting blown up night after night gets a bit wearing, but you can always literally and metaphorically switch off.</p>
<p>But even if we take this quite understandable approach to problems we can do little to address, they will not disappear from the world’s political agenda or even from our consciousness. The fact is that we are stuck with them. </p>
<p>The world really is much more interconnected, interdependent and interactive than it has ever been before. What happens in one part of the world really can exert an influence elsewhere – even if it’s only in an increasingly futile effort to seal off one part of the world from the problems of another.</p>
<p>It is precisely because of the global nature of many problems that some people think that world government, or at least an increasingly effective process of global governance, has to be part of the way we conduct human affairs, however unlikely that might seem in principle. </p>
<p>It is also becoming ever more apparent that even relatively humdrum policy issues such as taxation are becoming impossible to manage without high levels of international cooperation that transcend national boundaries.</p>
<p>Yet even if we accept that transnational cooperation is a necessity for achieving effective governance in everything from climate change, disaster relief, to the governance of myriad areas of economic and social life, actually doing this effectively and uncontroversially is much easier said than done. </p>
<p>Not only will some actors inevitably benefit more than others from such initiatives, but some states also remain implacably opposed to the very idea of anything that impinges on national sovereignty.</p>
<p>In East Asia where I do most of my research, states have a long history of jealously protecting national sovereignty and little enthusiasm for the sort of cooperation that characterised the European Union in its heyday. </p>
<p>Indeed, many in Asia feel vindicated by what has happened to the EU of late and read it as a cautionary tale of elite level hubris, rather than the most important attempt yet to transcend narrow national interests in pursuit of a more cosmopolitan common cause.</p>
<p>For students of international politics like me this is a real problem at both an intellectual and personal level. Part of me thinks that the arguments for greater international cooperation in the face of global problems are simply overwhelming and self-evident. </p>
<p>But I am also very familiar with Asia’s empirical and historical record; it has created entrenched ideational and institutional obstacles to greater cooperation that are unlikely to be overcome in my lifetime – which is understandably the principal focus of my attention.</p>
<p>So what should those of us who would like to see greater collaboration occur actually do in the face of such seemingly insurmountable institutionalised obstacles? One response might be to follow Antonio Gramsci who said that he was “a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” </p>
<p>Developing forms of global citizenship, world government and a common consciousness do seem inherently improbable at this historical juncture. Believing in the possibility of change is vital, however, if only for our own psychological well being.</p>
<p>[An earlier version of this article appeared on the World Government Research Network<a href="http://wgresearch.org/about/">link text</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The idea of effective world governance seems highly unlikely, but it’s an idea we must keep returning to.Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/599432016-05-26T07:48:56Z2016-05-26T07:48:56ZFact Check: is Brexit the way to escape TTIP?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123948/original/image-20160525-25231-rgydxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'If Steve McQueen can do it ..."</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=prison%20break&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=232763653">Gabriele Maltini</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>You have been issuing tweets asking if I am a TTIP denier. I say to you that I am working flat out to persuade voters to support Brexit. If the campaign succeeds, TTIP in the UK will be dead in the water._</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>David Davies MP, <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidTCDavies">open letter</a> to <a href="http://www.peoplesnhs.org">The People’s NHS</a>, May 18</em></p>
<p>The <a href="http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1391">Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)</a> between the US and EU is a profound and ambitious project. Its effect will be felt in every corner of the two economies. It <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html">aims at</a> further reducing trade barriers and encouraging the international flow of investment and production across the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Like the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32498715">Trans-Pacific Partnership</a> (TPP) recently agreed between the US and 11 other Asia-Pacific countries, TTIP represents a new generation of trade liberalisation treaties designed to make up <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/uk-trade-wto-idINKBN0G41LJ20140804">for the failure of</a> the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to agree new global tariff reductions – as well as an attempt to spur it into action. </p>
<p>Critics say TTIP will further transfer national economic sovereignty to international institutions and threatens the likes of the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-france-threatens-to-walk-away-from-negotiations-a6675486.html">film industry</a> in France; the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/22/ttip-deal-real-serious-risk-nhs-leading-qc">National Health Service</a> in the UK; and European <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/caf1573c-f539-11e3-91a8-00144feabdc0.html">financial services</a>, <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/ttip-the-downfall-of-eu-agriculture/">agricultural products</a> and <a href="https://stop-ttip.org/what-is-the-problem-ttip-ceta/">consumer protection</a>. They are not swayed by the prospect of more efficiently allocating resources or enhanced competitiveness. In an echo of the deadlock at the WTO, the battle lines have been drawn between economic libertarianism and anti-globalism; between the multinationals who would benefit and vulnerable smaller businesses and their employees. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123949/original/image-20160525-25222-19kgyhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NHS protests in UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wdm/14473847638/in/photolist-oksS9N-o41fDd-o42aDa-FMth3Z-GAU9rC-GDf4rz-GAU9Ky-p84VSD-okdf7e-onfMq2-okdf8B-qYEnFt-okdfdB-o42aMX-o42aND">Global Justice Now</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The British agenda</h2>
<p>Within the EU and world politics, the UK tends to take a liberal stance in favour of the free market. TTIP is an opportunity to promote this agenda, and is a much better fit with the UK’s economic profile than many of its EU neighbours. Should the UK vote to leave the union, it would inevitably weaken the EU’s enthusiasm for TTIP. </p>
<p>But that does not mean the UK is an indispensable player in the game. Since the start, the European Commission has led the negotiation from Europe’s side. Member states and other relevant players are only consulted, for which Brussels <a href="http://corporateeurope.org/international-trade/2015/02/ttip-investor-rights-many-voices-ignored-commission">has been</a> heavily criticised. </p>
<p>A vote for Brexit in the EU referendum would enable the UK to pursue its liberal agenda with other world powers without the restraints of the EU. Despite <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36115138">US rhetoric</a> that the UK would be left at the “back of the queue” for trade negotiations in the event of a Brexit, it would not be difficult for the two countries to strike a similar deal to TTIP given their common political and economic outlook. </p>
<p>Having said that, the UK would have little leverage in such a negotiation both because it would have reduced bargaining power without the support of the EU and because the US sees TTIP and TPP as new standards for international economic law without much space for compromise. In parallel, the UK would have a freer hand to establish a unique independent position in trade negotiations with the likes of China and other Asian powers – albeit amid much uncertainty. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123951/original/image-20160525-25226-rxtfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Back of the queue?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=wUyaH_jceMSc97ACHsM5iQ&searchterm=US%20and%20UK&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=256855804">ImageFlow</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>It is technically true that the UK would probably not be a part of TTIP in the event of a Brexit. But TTIP would continue and the UK’s free-market approach to international trade would make it highly likely to promptly negotiate a similar deal with the US – and probably other countries. Far from leaving TTIP “dead in the water” from the UK’s perspective, a Brexit is more likely to move the country to pursue the same goals in uncharted waters instead. </p>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p><em>Sam Fowles, researcher in international law and politics, Queen Mary University of London</em></p>
<p>I broadly agree with this author’s characterisation of the issue. As an indication of successive UK governments’ attitude to trade, I would add that the country is already a party to around 90 <a href="http://investmentpolicyhub.unctad.org/IIA/CountryBits/221">bilateral investment treaties</a> with many other countries including China, Argentina, South Africa and India. These all contain provisions similar to the controversial aspects of TTIP. </p>
<p>My only reservation would be the author’s statements about the campaign against TTIP. He says it is “not swayed by the prospect of more efficiently allocating resources or enhanced competitiveness”. Many of the critics of TTIP <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9781509501014">argue</a> the opposite – that it will not efficiently allocate resources and will damage competitiveness. They believe that by enhancing the political power of multinationals, it will increase trends towards monopoly and will have little real economic benefit. </p>
<p>I also wouldn’t agree that you can characterise the debate as merely “economic libertarianism and anti-globalism”. We have seen opposition in the UK parliament from economic libertarians like <a href="http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/04/peter-lilley-yes-i-believe-in-free-trade-but-heres-why-we-must-protect-our-nhs-from-ttip.html">Peter Lilley</a>, who worry about TTIP’s effect on sovereignty and democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Fowles has received funding from Mishcon de Reya, but the views expressed in this piece are entirely his own. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zhongdong Niu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conservative MP David Davies has been telling anti-TTIP activists that a leave vote is how they can torpedo the deal.Zhongdong Niu, Lecturer in Law, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.