{"id":4888,"date":"2010-04-19T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=4888"},"modified":"2010-04-18T21:04:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-18T19:04:19","slug":"international-norms-international-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/04\/international-norms-international-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"International Norms, International Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

JICA-ASEAN-WORLD BANK Consultation on World Development Report 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

Address to the ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta, April 2010
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Your Excellencies<\/em>, a World Bank World Development Report is a world view, and all the benchmarks are problematic conceptual tools defining world view discourses; indeed central to our concerns.<\/p>\n

Thus, “international” spells Western, the leading norms and standards being those of the leading countries.\u00a0 In no way does this mean that they are irrelevant, or harmful.\u00a0 But it could mean that they are incomplete, dated, Western views, with the state system as the material, and secular enlightenment as the spiritual, pillar.<\/p>\n

Today both are fading.\u00a0 A world view based on a list of states draws a yawn.\u00a0 People identify more with a cultural-religious nation (2000 of them) than with the territorial state (only 200, 20 uni- and 180 multi-national), and with the local level for development.\u00a0 And with Nature.\u00a0 And their region.\u00a0 And with GAIA; the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Without concepts articulated as words we are lost.\u00a0 But like insects they come with right and left wings, focusing our attention on different aspects of the human condition.\u00a0 Generally the West will pick up the right wing, and the insect flies badly, in circles.\u00a0 The cure is not left winged only insects, however, but both-and.<\/p>\n

Take conflict<\/em>.\u00a0 There are usually two things going on.\u00a0 Actors, state or non-state, have incompatible goals, till one or both give them up, one prevails over the other, they go for a compromise like a federation, or they creatively find a new reality for them all.\u00a0 A region?\u00a0 An EU?\u00a0 If acceptable-sustainable, the conflict is solved<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the other wing, violence breaks out: a hurtful word, a shot fired in anger.\u00a0 If violence subsides because one, or a third, party prevails, the conflict is settled<\/em>. Use conflict for incompatibility, violence for violence.\u00a0 Violence comes and goes.\u00a0 Conflicts may be transformed or not. Post-conflict is meaningless, post-violence not.<\/p>\n

The paranoid Anglo-American confusion of conflict with violence blocks for understanding of goals, blocks for creative solutions and opens for spirals of violence adding new conflicts.\u00a0 Increase the space for creativity, decrease it for violence, care with Both-and.<\/p>\n

Take security<\/em>.\u00a0 Whose? dignity for masses living in misery, or absence of violence for elites in gated communities?\u00a0 Or both-and?<\/p>\n

Take development<\/em>.\u00a0 West = universal is ending.\u00a0 But the Western liberal model has more to offer than economic growth, not to be confused with the Wall Street epicentered 2008 crisis.\u00a0 There are also human rights and democracy; like economism born in the West.<\/p>\n

And there is a Western marxist model, focused on distribution and basic needs of necessity and of freedom, not to be confused with the former Soviet Union.\u00a0 It has left strong impacts in this region.<\/p>\n

And a buddhist model, of neither too little nor too much, with spiritual growth; an islamic model of togetherness-sharing, zakat<\/em>, lifting the bottom up; a Japanese state-capital-labor cooperation model protecting workers; a Chinese model with creative shifts between periods of distribution and growth, inspired by daoism-confucianism-buddhism; like the Japanese focused on social harmony.<\/p>\n

ASEAN harbors this diversity, with ten country majorities, one christian, four hinayana buddhist, one mahayana buddhist, three muslim and one Chinese.\u00a0 And underneath the strong impact of the Japanese dai-to-a<\/em>, the East Asian Co-prosperity sphere, guided out of the Ricardo “comparative advantages” trap by a Kaname Akamatsu; to development economics what General Giap was to military practice,<\/p>\n

Whose standards, whose norms<\/em>? Authoritarian regimes distributed general health, education and infrastructure in many and then growth and opening up. Flying geese add 71% flying range with the V-shape reducing resistance.\u00a0 Hard on the head goose, though, now speaking zhong wen<\/em>, not nihon go<\/em>, incidentally.\u00a0 Setting new norms all over.<\/p>\n

Take economic growth<\/em>.\u00a0 Debunked, it measures something, but any economist with economic growth figures unaccompanied by growth of (in)equality (like PPP ratios between the 10-20% highest and lowest)\u00a0 is like a geographer pronouncing latitudes only.\u00a0 Go back to school.<\/p>\n

Watch buddhist model Butan with GNH, gross national happiness.\u00a0 Do not laugh, everything new begins small.\u00a0 So did GNP back in the 1930s.\u00a0 And, of course, the UNDP Human Development Index.<\/p>\n

Take human rights<\/em>, a Western gift to humanity. Individualistic,\u00a0 based on I-, not we-cultures.\u00a0 Asian voices argue the collective rights of villages not to be swallowed by cities; of traditional crafts to co-exist, unmodernized; of extended families as juridical persons.\u00a0 And: freedom of expression is fine, but so is the freedom not be humiliated, like by hurtful Nordic caricatured of the razul<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0 Take democracy<\/em>, rule by the consent of the ruled.\u00a0 Debate with voting is I-culture, dialogue to consensus better for we-cultures. Like Kenya-Zimbabwe, could a council run all ministries, not divided like in a Western coalition government?\u00a0 Moreover, democracy should also be practiced in the family, at school, at work, locally, and in the UN–the veto blocks that.\u00a0 Good norms should apply everywhere, not only to nation-wide multi-party elections.<\/p>\n

Take the Millenium Development Goals<\/em>: excellent UN standards, with no chance before 2015 except in Cuba, Venezuela, China and some others, proving the technical feasibility.\u00a0 The neo-liberal model does not produce that much trickle down that quickly.\u00a0 Moreover, the elites like cheap, exploitable labor at the bottom, and agonize over “when they come up, will they treat us like we treated them”?<\/p>\n

Take R2P<\/em>: the right to protect applies to elites, but also to victims of trafficking in humans, toxic drugs and toxic derivatives, like CDSs.\u00a0 An argument for intervention to close down growing fields, and Wall Street?\u00a0 And<\/em> to reduce the demand for the goods!<\/p>\n

Take early warning<\/em>.\u00a0 Three factors: a structure of inequity producing massive inequality, a culture justifying keeping it at the top and changing it at the bottom, and a tradition of using direct violence to settle rather than solve conflicts.\u00a0 They explain a lot.<\/p>\n

Take terrorism<\/em>.\u00a0 Atrocious, a sign of deep unsolved conflict.\u00a0 99 times worse is state terrorism, killing innocent civilians from the air rather than by IEDs and suicide belts.\u00a0 Same norms for both.<\/p>\n

And this is how the World Development Report 2011, or any year, produced in Washington DC USA, will be judged:\u00a0 will it pick up both wings of these concepts, be even-handed?\u00a0 Let us hope for the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“International” spells Western, the leading norms and standards being those of the leading countries. In no way does this mean that they are irrelevant, or harmful. But it could mean that they are incomplete, dated, Western views, with the state system as the material, and secular enlightenment as the spiritual, pillar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}