I thought about going to the ICOGRADA Design Week in Seattle, thought long and hard. Might have gone, too, if the early registration had not been cut off at April 30th. As it turns out, I did not miss much. Marian Bantjes’ reports from the trenches reinforced what I already know about such gatherings, and I’m very happy to be able to donate what would have been a wasted $1,000 to the good people of Cameroon.
Speak Up ran a promotional piece by Chris Liechty a week before the show in Seattle. I assume registrations were lagging, due to the April 30th deadline on reasonable rates, or the super-saturation of design conferences, or both. But it is to some of the assumptions in Liechty’s piece I would like to turn because they support other more insidious cultural truisms I’d like to contest.
Chris began his piece with a description of a cold-war childhood. This was not an uncommon experience in the sixties. My Father was a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society, and in our house the one-world seeking UN was not to be trusted. It’s a wonder that I survived to adulthood, let alone became a socialist. I’m not supposed to say that last thing, not because it’s illegal, but because it’s just no longer fashionable.
Following this typical caveat, “…with full recognition that abuses need to be stopped, I believe the net effect of globalization is positive,” Liechty’s piece soon descended into a litany of apologies for the effects of globalization. He believes globalization results in:
— increased political stability (depending upon where and who you are) and…
— decreased incidence of war (depending on who you’re reading)
Personally, I’ve never worked for the WTCA or the UN as Liechty has. The State Department is as close as I’ve come to a hopeless bureaucracy. Even there, working among friends so-called, I’ve been truly underwhelmed by the bitter realities of bureaucratic decision-making. But I digress.
“Isolation and focused attention on an external enemy are the tools of dictators,” Liechty writes. Not unless our supposed democratically elected government is run, as some would contend, by an autocrat. Liechty, who has much firsthand experience in China, a truly autocratic place, barely shows this in his remarks about Chinese maquiladoras like Guangzhou (a Chinese free-enterprise zone). There is no reference, even in passing, to the infamous environmental conditions of such places. Naomi Klein take aim!
In Red Sky At Morning, his recent book about the global environmental crisis, James Gustave Speth, co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council, clearly outlines the many ways in which globalization as currently practiced is antithetical to sustainability. He quotes a letter drafted by a select committee of the World Resources Institute to the Heads of State and Government of the Americas:
“We therefore welcome current initiatives to liberalize trade and to revive growth in our region more broadly. But these proposals are too limited. They will succeed only in expanding unsustainable and inequitable patterns of growth unless they are complemented by powerful initiatives to promote social equity and to protect the environment. Indeed, there is much reason to believe, based on past experience and current trends, that unless major complementary initiatives are undertaken to bring environmental, economic, and social objectives together in the new synthesis called sustainable development, liberalizing trade and reviving growth could lead to short-term gains and long-term disaster.”
The quaint italicized reference to “the new synthesis called sustainable development” dates this quote ominously at 1991. What has been done to forge the called for synthesis in the meantime? Precious little. And what about those pesky short-term gains? Status-quo-li-’oly.
It’s reasons like these that make me mistrust Liechty’s standpoint. Leave alone his convenient reference to Rob Peters’ “globalism,” which in Liechty’s hands ends with an acquisitive entreaty to, “Let’s take the best from every culture,” when I meet a designer who trumpets the glories of globalization I’m usually staring at a person who balances short-term gains against long-term sacrifices and opts, all too often, for the gains.
I find it ironic that Marian Bantjes was so put off by Liechty’s Flash visualization of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions (a prominent feature on the Meyer and Liechty website that feels more like this year’s ASID “hot colors” barometer than a terminally un-PC faux pas) that her “eyes popped out of her head and rolled down the aisles.” She characterized it as “…the most outrageously ignorant thing I heard over the two days.” Personally, I’m much more concerned about the subtle implications of Liechty’s AIGA-backed capitalist cheerleading through events like the World Trade Week NYC Global Branding Event “Branding in China.” And you should be too.
David Stairs leaves September 7th for a ten-month tour of duty with Designers Without Borders in South Africa, Uganda, and Cameroon where his self-righteous sermonizing is considered quaint and everyone laughs at his jokes. You can keep up on his and other adventures through the Design Altruism Project web-log at design-altruism-project.org.
Thank you for the article, and glad to be introduced to your Design Altruism Project. As a member of AIGA, I welcome the oppurtunity to dig deeper into any cheerleading on its behalf. In fact, I thought I'd take the oppurtunity to post a link to an extended research essay I wrote about this very topic. For anyone interested I delved into the Globalization debate and the particular role visual communication plays in its rhetoric, particularly from the Anti-globalization side of things. The paper is available here.
On Aug.10.2006 at 07:32 PM