We hoped to discover in these stories some patterns, common themes, regularly recurring relationships, and the underlying explanation for both successes and failures of the global economy. This is the process we followed at the September meeting and it is the process which, with appropriate adaptations, the entire three-year project will follow. By meeting s end this September, the group issued a 16 page consensus statement that was appropriately tentative in tone. Even simple declarative sentences were regarded more as questions for future study than closed doors on issues. A sampling will illustrate the point.
Globalization is a complex reality.
Globalization stimulates economic growth and social improvement for some, while at the same time, it lays economic burdens on many people and disrupts human development. The harms and benefits of globalization are not evenly distributed either among nations or within them. Given the economic gap between the First World and the Third World, however, our effort to see globalization from the perspective of the world's poor inevitably means that, while the participants did consider the benefits of globalization and endeavored to correct an overly negative bias, the discussion reported here did not view globalization in a neutral way. Our concern is for the victims of the process. Defining globalization and culture.