Perceptions and understandings of globalisation, what it is and what it represents, have become highly dichotomised. As the pro- and anti-globalisation lobbies confront each other, again this weekend in Genoa, some political leaders have sought refuge in the middle ground.
Known as Third Way advocates, the leaders of this middle ground - people like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder - enthusiastically embrace globalisation while claiming that their policies and interventions mitigate its more insidious traits. Eschewing what they regard as the hard dogma of polarised debate, they opt instead for soft rhetoric, crisp soundbites, confessional humble tones and the charm offensive. And charm and tone rather than content are all-important in this mediaised, globalised world.
So what is globalisation? Is it a cause or an effect? Is it the chicken or the egg? Is the pint half full or half empty, or as its proponents would have us believe, the best and only pint in town?
The "Big Mac", Coca-Cola, Nike have become synonymous with globalisation, as they stand side by corporate side with Adidas, Marlboro and a range of other popular brand names. The twin yellow towers of McDonaldisation triumphantly march across all borders like a scene from Pink Floyd's The Wall.
It's at the level of consumerism that we in the "developed" world encounter globalisation on a daily basis. Now everything is commodified, produced in as low-cost an environment as possible, packaged and marketed in a way that denies the very world its image-makers create. And image-makers and spin merchants are central to the globalisation "project".
The multi-cultural image of the marketing executive belies a world of deeply ingrained racism, a racism that is reinforced by the purveyors of neo-liberal capitalist orthodoxy - the ideology that underpins the current model of globalisation. Supposedly open markets are, in reality, ring-fenced against racial and ethnic minorities in what has come to be described as a new form of global apartheid.
With wham-bang razzmatazz, the snap, crackle and pop spin marketeers homogenise, McDonaldise society by manipulating images of smiling aged persons who are, in reality, compulsorily made redundant in the belief that young "dynamic" people can do it better. Soft-focus images of the disabled are in reality kept far from our consciousness. While the peasant farmer might still adorn the cereal packet, in reality, he has long been displaced by the genetically produced food of the global agri-food business.
Tony Blair has said that globalisation brings countries closer together and that it is an opportunity (for whom?), not a threat. Speaking in Korea to a group at the Asia Europe Business Forum last October he stated that "we have to keep pressing on to capitalise [my emphasis] on the opportunities opened up by globalisation", a view he reiterated with even greater post-election victory conviction in Gothenburg.
Peter Sutherland, former Irish Attorney General, EU Commissioner and director of GATT, who is co-chairman of BP/ Amoco and was chairman of the former Overseas Development Council (and after whom the recently opened institute on globalisation at TCD has been called) boldly stated in a recent issue of Time magazine that "globalisation's effects have been overwhelmingly good". While acknowledging that globalisation has made life more difficult for those dislocated by change, he goes on to claim that "unprecedented liberalisation [has induced] a wave of productivity and efficiency, creating millions of jobs". Even more impressive, he argues, is "the stunning increase in international investment that is building roads, airports and factories in poorer countries".
A wholly unimpressed anti-globalisation lobby counter-argues that globalisation results in the control and exploitation of (yet again) the many by the few. The tide of globalisation is not, they argue, lifting all boats. Rather, many are lost in a globally warmed flood, drowned in a sea of greed, their voices unheard by the elites in the powerhouses of the world's mainly unelected decision-makers.
As far back as 1980, the UN-commissioned North-South - A Programme for Survival, chaired by the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, forewarned, in what could have been the anti-globalisation charter, against the spread of what it regarded as an incredibly destructive force over the globe.
"We see a world in which poverty and hunger prevail: in which, resources are squandered, in which more armaments are made and sold than ever before," it said. Like Brandt, anti-globalisationists call for intellectual reorientation, structural change, economic solutions, inspiring ideas, a commitment to human dignity, basic human rights, justice, freedom, peace, mutual respect, love (Love? Now there's a thing!) and an end to global debt.
Unless the G8 and others begin to listen, the pro- and anti-globalisation lobbies will continue to confront each other on the streets of the "developed" world; the consequences of their policies will continue to wreak havoc on the cities and rural areas of the "developing" world and the glass of the poor will remain empty.
And no matter how honeyed the words or charming the offensive, nothing, nothing that Third Way advocates say can disguise that reality.
Peadar King works as a freelance researcher