24-26 February 1998
New Delhi-Sariska, India
Identity, Locality and Globalization Organizing a conference can be compared to the process of cooking. One invites conference participants, because one expects them to make solid contributions (the ingredients). However, whether the mixing and blending will result in savoury dishes will only become clear during the meetings of the conference itself. The round-table seminar in Sariska near New Delhi (India) on 'Identity, Locality and Globalization: the Indian and Indonesian Experience' proved to be a rare feast.
By Elsbeth Locher-Scholten
The purpose of the conference was to organize a South-South meeting of Indian and Indonesian scholars who do not have the opportunity to meet on a regular basis, to which some 'outsiders' would be admitted. The material setting of the seminar was organized by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (New Delhi; Mr Suresh Chander) and the IIAS (Leiden, Ms Marianne Langehenkel), while Prof. A.K. Bagchi (Centre for Social Studies Calcutta) and myself (Utrecht University) acted as convenors. Participants came not only from different localities on the globe, they also represented different disciplinary identities. This implied that the theme came close to the skin. Participants had to communicate in different cultural repertoires. That we succeeded to do so, was a stimulating experience as well as a creative process.
Meeting ground was the conference theme itself: the effects of globalization, on Indonesia and India, with its concomitant processes of identity and locality formation. Rarely has a conference theme been more up-to-date. When the subject was was chosen in 1996, the economic crisis in Indonesia and the elections in India were completely beyond our ken. Now they provided the discussions with a sharp edge of timeliness.
Of course a short summary of the main panels does not do justice to the richness of the ideas in each paper. But it may give an impression of the content of the meetings. The conference opened with a panel on 'Models and Globalization'. It offered the opportunity for a discussion of the relatively new notion of the South by Dr Mary John (Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi); for the introduction of the econometrist debate on wages in a global setting by Prof. Sugata Marjit (CSSSC Calcutta), and of a first view of the modern Indonesian economy by Prof. Sunanda Sen ( Jawharlal Nehru University, New Delhi). The afternoon session remained focused on the Indonesian economy, in the broad context of processes of economic integration in East and Southeast Asia (Prof. A.K. Bagchi, CSSSC, Calcutta), in an evaluation of the New Order economic performances (Dr Thee Kian Wie, LIPI, Jakarta), and in a broad analysis of the globalization of the modern capital forces and their search for short-term results (Dr Marc Beeson, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University). Panel and discussion showed the many faces of this crisis. No agreement could be reached about its causes and origins: the specific patterns of the Indonesian economy ; the Indonesian political order; the changed character of the financial markets worldwide; the hegemonic financial discourse; or the capitalist system itself, characterized by regular crises in the past. The concluding panel of the day on 'Religion and Politics' turned minds and thoughts in a completely different direction: the politicization of (Hindu) religion in India since the 1980s (Peter van der Veer, Amsterdam University) and Indonesian Islam as a cultural product of global influences and local characteristics (Prof. Cees van Dijk, KITLV, Leiden).
The second conference day was devoted to the all morning panel on 'Globalization, Gender and Bodies'. The papers on Indonesia (Dr Yulfita Rahardjo, LIPI, Jakarta and Prof. Anke Niehof, Agricultural University Wageningen) and India (Prof. Jasodhara Bagchi, Jadavpur University, Calcutta) illustrated how globalization, implying the institutionalization of universal concepts of health and wellbeing, has touched women in their reproductive qualities. The globalization of Hindu nationalism to other locales such as Trinidad, a forgotten spot in the Indian diaspora, was highlighted by Dr Kalpana Kannabiran, (Asmita, Secunderabad). The panel on 'Globalization and Space' (papers by Dr Stig Toft Madsen, Roskilde University, Denmark and Dr Satish Despande, Delhi University) drew attention to the importance of the notion of space in the discussion on globalization and to the still limited participation of the rural population in globalization processes.
The last day's programme contained three panels, on 'Political Identities' (papers by Dr Taufik Abdullah, LIPI, Jakarta and Dr Ignas Kleden, independent scholar, Jakarta); on 'Local Values and Human Rights' (papers by Dr. Mulya Lubis and myself); and on 'Pop Cultures' (papers by Dr Krishna Sen, Murdoch University; Mainak Biswas, Jadavpur University, Calcutta; and Rangan Chakrabavarty, Sussex University). All papers shared and proved the assumption of culture as a (political) creation or as an expression of political discourse and power.
Contributions and debates focused more on analyses of the dialectic between identity, locality and globalization than on theoretical frames. In line with the liberal tendencies in present-days globalization processes, monolithic definitions of globalization were lacking. Globalization was thus defined as a neutral term indicating a new period in time; as a process of transnationalisation, brought about by new technologies which compress or collapse time and space; as the institutionalization of universal values; or even more neutral as a process of internationalization. In spite of this diversity, most papers dealt with one of the two domains, particularly affected by globalization: economy and culture. Most papers had their starting point in one of these two fields, returning to policies and politics when necessary.
Specific themes kept reappearing during the conference. All participants agreed, for instance, to the normative view that, however negative the effects may be, globalization can no longer be avoided. Easy moral evaluations were passed over, likewise easy generalizations. More than once the pertinent question was raised, whose globalization we were discussing? Which classes, groups or gender are affected or passed by?
The relationship between globalization and the nation-state was another recurrent issue. That the nation-state is a concept of the past and that we should turn to transnational phenomena (cities for instance) proved to be point of vivid debate. The transnational presupposes the national; nation- states are still the localities which formulate the translation of global values in their national idiom as the economic crisis in Southeast Asia, reproductive policies in Indonesia and India, and the human rights question illustrated. Even though nation-states may have to share their power with other institutions, impinging on their sovereignty, to most of their subjects without direct global connections they are still the first to address such problems as the distribution of welfare. In one example (the analysis of the recent Indonesian film 'Madonna of Sumba'), the state proved to be so powerful that intellectual protest against it took the form of global imagery (the star Madonna) in a local or regional setting, excluding the national level.
A third theme concerned globalization and history. When one defines globalization as the processes of socio-economic, political, and cultural internationalization, which have (had) their effects on national, regional, or local structures, as well as on the construction of identities at different levels, globalization is not a process of the present, but clearly has its roots in the past. Historians at the conference looked for its nineteenth-century origins in modem imperialism and colonial rule. In search of cultural repertoires, which provide the syntaxis for the construction of local identities in a time of globalization, others looked at what history had made available, whether in communal rights (India) or human rights (Indonesia). For all agreed: identities and localities are present-day constructions, composed of the cultural heritage available for political or personal reasons. Abundant examples from both India and Indonesia illustrated this point.
In conclusion one might say, that this conference, although unable to resolve the major crises of the global system (who had expected to do so anyway?) was a worthwhile scholarly endeavour looking at the origins of globalization and its breadth, its causes and effects in the socio-economic, cultural, and political arenas of the two countries involved.