Since I’m posting late I had a little unfair advantage and saw that a lot of people have been talking about Castel’s ideas of global governance, a global public space and the network state. So I wonder if this give and take between the nation state and the global arena can be related/ explain the Millennium Development Goals. Aren’t the MDG’s supposed to be the ultimate symbol of nation state cooperation on a global scale, the global community cooperating by working within their own borders to make the world a better, shinier happy place? Even after four years of SIS I really don’t know that much about the MDG’s except that when they are discussed it is usually from a pessimistic point of view, as unattainable and too idealistic for even the most optimistic.
Then this morning I saw an article saying that China believes it will actually accomplish its MDG’s AND accomplish them on time! Apparently India is optimistic about reaching its goals too. I feel like these announcements just exemplified what Castel’s was trying to get at in his article. The MDG’s are global in their nature. They were created in the in the global arena, and yet in my opinion are a way for nation states to demonstrate their continued dominance. The article states, “According to UN reports, global progress on poverty reduction was largely due to the reduction of hunger in China.” Obviously China has such a large population that reduction in their poverty rates will affect the global scale, but this doesn’t mean that poverty hasn’t risen in other nations. In that way I feel like that’s why Castel ended back with the nation state. The global arena is real; it allowed the MDG’s to come to being. But the nation state remains the actual driving force. There is no way for the MDG’s to be achieved within the global arena, individual nation states have to do the legwork and then try to make the results equal a whole.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-09/18/c_13518596.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment