I'm taking a fantastic class in
Sciences Po taught by Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School in the
University of Oxford. Goldin fought the apartheid in his earlier days and then
moved on to fantastically important jobs in development - from the holding
directorships in the EBRD, OECD to being vice president of the World Bank. Oh,
and he also advised Nelson Mandela. Fancy titles aside, Goldin's classes, which
is on globalization and international economics and development and yada yada,
have been the easiest 4 hour lectures to sit through because we get to hear the
uncolored opinions of where the world is heading by an experienced and
intelligent man who somehow hasn't become jaded by bureaucracy, poverty and the
generally dismal state of things.
Like many, Goldin holds the view that globalization can be the engine of growth and development and any damages simultaneously incurred is essentially a matter of management. He thinks the problems with the management of globalization lie in two broad areas: first, that the capacities of developing countries to influence global dynamics in their interests are too limited for them to benefit fully from globalization. Second, the continued existence of barriers to globalization – be it in trade, in information flow, and so on – gives rise to inefficiencies, economic and social costs that could be avoided otherwise. So far so good.
His thoughts on Intellectual
Property (IP) and "Ideas" in the globalized world, however, prompted
some protest from me. Goldin, like many others, far too easily and quickly tend
to morally champion the spread of knowledge, and therefore technology and
ideas. I think this tendency can be attributed to the fact that knowledge is a
public good, it is also not a tangible good and therefore avoids being put
precisely in economic terms and finally, new standards in development practice
strongly privilege education. This is not to say that education and knowledge
are not important in managing globalization or development but that the
discourse needs to be more nuanced, more rigorous, and veer away from simple
moral statements about the right to education and the need to educate.
At this point, I think it apt to warn you that I'm not trained in economics so let me know if anything I say is blatantly false.
One point repeatedly pointed
out by people who write about how IP is working against the developing world is
that IP is not the same as physical property. For the large part, this stands
valid. However, whilst IP rights protect knowledge, IP is not knowledge itself,
and authors tend to conflate the two. This conflation is comparable to (though
less problematic than) the conflation of IP and other kinds of property. IP is
a nonphysical property that has value based upon an idea or ideas, which has or
have some amount of novelty. This property is constructed in the mind of the
creator with the additional inputs of talent (e.g. creativity, perseverance,
alertness, etc.) and also the results of investments in the creator such as
education, collaborators, facilities and other resources. Hence IP is not
knowledge but a novel and assembled way to use or value knowledge, which, in
contrast, remains abstract in form and neutral with regards to a relationship
of possession with an owner. Of course, one of the problems even at this stage
of definition would be what constitutes a “new” and “novel” way to do things. But besides how we should decide on patenting, Joseph
Stiglitz seems to take issue with patenting itself. He argues “at least part of
what is patented, and therefore privatized, is knowledge that previously
existed – part of common knowledge.” [1] This is exactly what I mean by the
conflation of IP and knowledge. The example Stiglitz uses in his book to
demonstrate this point is that of traditional knowledge. For example, consider the
situation in which a new drug using the knowledge of certain herbs that fight
fatigue is formulated and patented. A tribal community had known this piece of
information before, and indeed, might have shared this information with
researchers who contributed to the creation of the drug. This tribal community
has therefore lost out in accruing royalties from the sales of the drug, which
they had no means to produce in any case. They are still able to use that herb
and share information about that herb if they wish – usage of this knowledge
has not been restricted or reduced in any sense except for the case of creating
a drug with the same composition. This exception is not limited to knowledge.
We can think of other public goods, such as clean air, which cannot be used in
any way one wishes (e.g. we cannot pollute clean air without say, paying a
fine). In any case, knowledge has not been privatized, what is a private good
here is the novel assembled way (composition of the drug, the very idea of marketing
this drug as anti-fatigue, etc.) of using this herbal knowledge. There is a
monopoly on this private good when we take into account IP rights and this
remains problematic, but for less critical reasons than what we would find in
the privatization and then monopolization of a public good, which is what
Stiglitz suggests is happening in this case.
There is also the general
argument that IP laws were absent from most of mankind’s history of knowledge
creation, and that such knowledge creation continues in a similar fashion today
in universities. However, innovation is not equivalent to scientific research
nor is innovation of the same nature today as in the past. First, there is an
intellectual culture, now codified by citation practices, that runs deeper in
scientific communities than in the rest of innovative communities. This
increases trust amongst researchers for producing work that is less likely to
be plagiarized and more likely to incur significant backlash if plagiarization
occurs and is found out. Second, the stretch of innovation across different
fields today – from science, art, business, concepts, and even how things are
done in different aspects of life (e.g. innovative processes) – has brought us
into a world where innovation is far more entangled in the realm of
profit-making ventures than before, and with larger potential profits in
question. Enter global networks and exponential technological progress into the
equation and we get a highly competitive, dynamic world of innovation, which is
also producing a far greater volume of output than before. On the other hand,
the inputs of innovation have not changed at quite the same pace – innovation
still requires creativity and plenty of resources. This implies that innovation
has become far riskier than before to invest in, and hence expecting incentives
and paths to innovation to remain the same as that of the past, yet expecting
the high productivity we see today, is not realistic.
Another thing: Goldin's
finished up all the lectures last Friday and I've heard all the hit words:
"poverty," "inequality," "child labor,"
"migration," "technology," "growth,"
"literacy," etc. I just haven't heard one mention of gender
inequality, which is all my other professor on globalization, Kyoko Kusakabe,
talks about. This contrast was pretty interesting to me. It was also
interesting that there is only 1 dude in my class with Kusakabe. And he's
Scandinavian.
I thought it might be
productive to talk about IP, technology and the flow of "ideas" in a
gendered context, because that seems to be a discourse in the globalization
field that forgot about women altogether. I'm not a feminist, but this
definitely smacks of continued male-domination in not only the knowledge
economy but the entire hierarchy of economic systems and sectors. IP laws can
benefit women, and this is why: women in developing countries who are often
overlooked by labor policy fall into two broad categories – those in informal
sectors associated with large companies at the end of the value chain, and women
business-owners/entrepreneurs, who own up to 50% of small and medium-sized
enterprises and form the majority of owners of
microenterprises in developing countries. Importantly,
there is a tendency for the business owners group to move towards the informal
sector during economic downturns, particularly in the absence of adequate
protection for these small, vulnerable, but potentially thriving businesses.
Furthermore, women form a large portion of poor farmers that would suffer from
higher costs imposed by patents on seed and microorganisms, and in fact, in
many developing countries, women have a special role in the preservation of
seeds. Without IP laws to protect these women and women
who own businesses – women who could potentially own trademarks, patents,
designs and so on – we risk the continued channeling of female labor into “low
road” forms of employment, where protection is even more scant. The issue of
the feminization of the informal economy alone seriously challenges the notion
of unfettered, and even managed, globalization, but I won't be dealing with
this broad topic here.
Also, the canonical
prescriptions for knowledge sharing as a route to development do not always
result in the predicted positive impacts for women. Technological transfer does
not necessarily improve the employment situation for women, and in fact, has
been observed to masculinize employment and therefore leave women worse off
[2]. This is quite clearly related to the lack of skilled female labor when we
move up the value chain in many developing countries. However, to argue that
educating women would resolve this issue simply does not address the myriad of
disadvantages women face in the globalized economy. A case study in the United
States has shown that even when women in the manufacturing sector invested
significantly more in skill training after being laid off (70% vs 42% for men),
they were still less desirable for reemployment. [3] Furthermore, Veena Das has
argued that knowledge and education can be added to the list of tools
previously thought to carve out a (at least) linear path of development, but in
practice do not always do so – other tools on this list being economic growth,
food abundance, democracy, and so on [4]. Other factors such as the inability
to unionize, the burdens of reproductive and unpaid work as well as
socio-cultural factors make it difficult for women to move past their appeal as
flexible, low wage, and low skill labor. Even in cases where women are
benefiting from information flow, this does not always lead to the final desirable
outcome; research in India has shown that “women are assigned a sufficient
measure of modernity to reinforce rather than challenge gender roles [5].”
This broaches the topic of the
socio-cultural barriers to knowledge diffusion. Often, policy makers envision
the spread of knowledge as a universal long-term solution to several
developmental problems. Indeed, pitting learned and therefore empowered minds
against unemployment, violence, environmental abuse, and so on, would probably
yield more informed, more sophisticated and therefore better local vigor to
address all these questions. However, pit ideology against another ideology and
the result is not as clear. Stiglitz discusses this issue to a certain extent
when he points out that the conflict of value systems is one of the fundamental
challenges underlying a feasible and balanced global IP regime [6]. However,
more broadly, I pose the following question: to what extent can a
political/structural effort to open up a country, whether economically or socially,
change entrenched ideas and cultural values? Is it simply a matter of access to
knowledge that needs to be resolved? We can think of several examples when
people do have access to ideas but choose to reject them. For example, the
strong anti-Western sentiments in the Middle East are no longer simply
political but cultural, philosophical and religious. Arguments for the
comparability of Islam, a non-Eurocentric modernity and non-American democracy
have figured strongly in intellectual and even layman circles, triggered mostly
by political developments but also emerging from deeper undercurrents
associated with the overload of Western media and the increasing sense that it
is an affront to native religious-cultural viewpoints [7]. From a developmental
perspective, several well meaning and ostensibly constructive policies that
address gender inequalities often fall short because of the inability to
overcome socio-cultural gender constructs. For example, microcredit programs in
Bangladesh meant to increase women’s economic independence have been purported
to domestic worsen violence against women due to the perceived disobedience of
these women against gender norms [8].
Branislav Gosović’s discussion
on the Global Intellectual Hegemony is particularly interesting in the context
of the reception of ideas on modernity, the influence of consumerism, and the
challenges that are presented to the empowerment of women in such an
environment. He argues that the dominant ideas that are propagated by global
capitalism are competition, dynamism, “results-oriented” enterprises and
consumerism, and consequently, the winners and losers of such a system are
defined respectively as an empowered and active agent or as a passive receptor
[9]. Empowerment is thus deeply tied to competitive and cutthroat
individualism, at the expense of ideas on collective action. Feminist theories
take issue with this and argue that such hegemonic ideology is essentially
perpetuated by the male dominated paradigm. Not only global ideology but all
levels of the realm of ideas, down to the “production of knowledge…[it] is a
gendered practice [10].”IP is the materialization of “rigid boundaries to
sharing,” characteristic of a male paradigm, as opposed to a “relational
approach to knowledge [11],”which is afforded by the participation of women in
culture and knowledge creation [12]. These anti-globalization and feminist
stances have translated to ground action, notably in India. Many Indian women
activists see a “direct connection of women with sustainable living and
development and definite stand against the inequities of a patriarchal world
order,” which many perceive as equivalent currently to our globalizing world
[13].
Several of excesses of
globalization surface quietly and late in the game – the way globalization is
speeding along on the backs of many impoverished women was not anticipated, and
neither can many of the detrimental or positive effects of IP laws be known
until more about these voiceless populations are known to begin with. It seems
to me that the progress of globalization and intellectuals’ struggle with
“managing” it has largely been an experiment – beginning with a bold capitalist
hypothesis – ending with a more moderate and nuanced stance with targeted
solutions that are unfortunately liable to only plug the leaks after the
fact.
---
1. Joseph Stiglitz, “Patents,
Profits and People: Intellectual Property, Its Strengths and Limits,” in Making
Globalization Work, Kindle. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006).
2. Jayati Ghosh,
“Globalization, Export-Oriented Employment for Women and Social Policy: A Case
Study of India,” Social Scientist 30, no. 11–12 (2002): 43.
3. Lourdes Benería,
“Global/Local Connections: Employment Patterns, Gender, and Informalization,”
in Gender, Development and Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2003),
104.
4. Veena Das, “Modernity and
Biography: Women’s Lives in Contemporary India,” Thesis Eleven 39
(1994): 52.
5. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase,
“Paradoxes of Globalization, Liberalization, and Gender Equality : The Worldviews of the Lower Middle Class in West
Bengal, India,” Gender and Society 17 (2003): 547.
6. Joseph Stiglitz, “Patents,
Profits and People: Trades and Values,” in Making Globalization Work,
Kindle. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006).
7. Leila Ahmed, A Quiet
Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence,from the Middle East to America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Revolution-Resurgence-Middle-America/dp/0300170955.
8. Sidney Schuler, Syed
Hashemi, and Shamsul Badal, “Men’s Violence Against Women in Rural Bangladesh:
Undermined or Exacerbated by Microcredit Programmes?,” Development in
Practice 8, no. 2 (2010): 148–157. For a comprehensive review of gendered
economies across different parts of the world, see Naila Kabeer, “Gender, Life
Course and Livelihoods: Analytical Framework and Empirical Insights,” in Mainstreaming
Gender in Social Protection for the Informal Economy (London: Commonwealth
Secreteriat, 2008), 55–107.
9. Gosović, “Global
Intellectual Hegemony and the International Development Agenda,” International
Social Science Journal 52, no. 166 (2000): 447–456.
10.Debora Halbert, “Feminist
Interpretations of Intellectual Property,” Journal of Gender, Social Policy
& the Law 14, no. 3 (2006): 436.
11. Ibid., 446.
12. Ibid., 436.
13. Shujra Rajgopal,
“Reclaiming Democracy? The Anti-Globalization Movement in South Asia,” Feminist
Review 40 (2002): 134–137.
