Christian scholars seem to know a lot about God. Non-Christian scholars seem to know a lot about the world. Neither seems to know much about the other…and something seems wrong with this picture.
It was both refreshing and convicting to read this compilation of articles from Canadian journalist Naomi Klein who, at under 35 years of age, knows a good deal about some of the most complex systems in our world: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the North American Free Trade Agreement, G8 Summits and the like. I don’t think Klein is a Christian, at least she doesn’t mention that she is, but I highly doubt most Christians now much about the WTO or its effects on global poverty, nor do many of them care. This is a gap that needs to be bridged.
On a strictly literary level, the book left me wanting a little more: more direction, more explanation, more help answering the question I had at the end, “Now what?” But in all fairness I don’t suspect that is what Klein set out to give. As a collection of articles from her experience with activism and protest, her stated aim is to give readers a “backstage pass” to the “global revolt against corporate power.”
Using the analogy of fences and windows, she presents a palette of thought regarding the domination and destructive nature of capitalism in its current form, the abuse and expansion of free trade, the role of terrorism in shaping trade policy, the momentum of the protest movement, the challenges of activists to reconcile their apparent diversity in light of their desire for a unified voice, and the need to shift the trade debate from generic, large-scale economic rhetoric to the terms of local governance and quality democracy.
To follow her extended metaphor, here are a few pickets in the fence, or panes in the window, if you will, of things I found thought provoking:
On Capitalism and Communism: “Many of the young Czechs I met this week say that their direct experience with communism and capitalism has taught them that the two systems have something in common: they both centralize power in the hands of a few, and they both treat people as if they are less than fully human. Where communism saw them only as potential producers, capitalism saw them only as potential consumers; where communism starved their beautiful capital, capitalism has overfed it, turning Prague into a Velvet Revolution theme park” (p. 35).
On September 11th: “Instead of asking why the attacks happened, our television networks simply play them over again. Just when Americans most need information about the outside world – and their country’s complicated and troubling place in it – they are only getting themselves reflected back, over and over, and over: Americans weeping, Americans recovering, Americans cheering, Americans praying. A media house of mirrors, when what we all need are more windows on the world” (p. 171).
Fences and Windows is a great glimpse of how the globalization debate, at least one side of it, has played out in real time. Klein doesn’t offer many tips for how to participate in the debate, but it is thought provoking and informative nonetheless, and a great book to pick up, put down…and pick up again.
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