Social Capital Key to Globalization

A South Korean man around 50 years old, holding a sign with the text "The WTO has killed farmers," committed suicide during a demonstration at the WTO's meeting in Cancun, Mexico. Protesting against the WTO, an organization with the power to negotiate global economic and trade issues, by committing suicide – what a tragedy, what frustration! Judging from the protests, distrust among developing countries toward developed countries has not diminished in the slightest. This also reflects the growing criticism of neoliberal globalization by anti-globalization activists.

Since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) transformed into WTO under the leadership of the stronger economies, an atmosphere has formed where non-participants are seen as unlucky losers. But are the participants necessarily winners? That is not at all certain, and it will be decided by the political competition between the economic powers.

Economic hegemons use their economic capital to create what is known as cultural hegemony. They could euphemistically be said to be creating a common world culture, but behind this euphemism, each country is losing its local cultural capital. As global economic capital is running amok and influencing the industrial structure in various countries, local social capital is becoming weaker.

From the perspective of globalized social relationships between nations, the only relationships remaining are "thin" relationships based solely on profit, ignoring people and devoid of the fundamental interaction that should be part of social capital. Social capital is not based on economic benefit, which at best is a side effect of the workings of social capital. "Social capital" means the trust, standards and mechanisms that are naturally created through social interaction and promote compromise and cooperation. It is a relationship or network based on people. Apart from directly reducing the benefits of human interaction, the loss of social capital also indirectly decreases the economic benefits it brings.

In particular, compared to the labor and business organizations that benefit from the economic advantages of globalization, it is more difficult for local communities, such as economically weak agricultural organizations, to build bridges between each other, thus building global social capital.

As global economic capital develops, immobile agricultural communities at the grassroots level are the hardest-struck victims. Agricultural decline will lead to part of the population migrating, even though farmers may not fare as badly as the homeless. Following migration, existing social capital will grow weaker, and both those moving away and those staying will become more isolated.

At this, the first WTO meeting Taiwan has participated in, Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) declared that Taiwan will deregulate imports and lift customs taxes on selected agricultural products from developing countries. I don't know if the Council of Agriculture had explained this move, aimed at making a good impression on the outside world, to domestic agricultural organizations in advance in order to obtain their understanding and support. The costs of working towards diplomatic ends abroad and fighting for the economy domestically must be clearly explained.

Even though our farmers have taken to the streets many times to make their opinions known and to protest against the government's agricultural policies and the reform of the credit units of farmers' and fishermen's associations, these demonstrations have always been peaceful. Our government, however, must neither neglect the interests of, nor play political games with the weak and good farmers.

Let's turn our gaze to the structural unemployment that has resulted from the transformation of domestic industry. Our habitual thinking blames it on the unemployed lacking sufficient skills, and the government's habit is to offer technical training and unemployment benefits, but it has not faced up to the many problems caused by unemployment from the perspective of social capital.

The unemployed have not only lost their monetary income, but they have also lost their relationship to society. There have been news reports about parents killing themselves and their children as a result of economic factors, but we must not ignore the role played by severed social ties and the resulting social ostracism and loss of will to go on living.

In addition to engaging in dialogue on the principle of globalized market integration on the many platforms provided by the WTO for economic and trade issues, it seems the WTO also should take a more tolerant and less confrontational approach by paying attention to differences in regional and local cultural capital. We can only develop toward a globalized world with economic and social justice by cultivating global social capital in order to decrease the uncertainty that goes hand in hand with the existence of two different economic worlds.