A Country Called Global
A Journey Into Transnational Capitalism- and Beyond
Grassroots struggles are often localized, and grassroots activists often lack the Big Picture. What, after all, is this capitalist system within which we all live, that determines every aspect of our lives, that breeds many of the ills from which we suffer? How does this system work? What gives it the power to rule our world even as it exploits and excludes most of the world’s people — indeed, destroys the very conditions of sustainable life itself? How does it enforce its hegemony over us? And what would replace it? Even if we had a just and sustainable alternative, what would need to be done to actually realize it?
The Portal envisioned here aims to present the capitalist world system in a visual, engaging and accessible way. Utilizing films, videos, podcasts, animations, sound, games, 3-D presentations and texts, the Portal will introduce visitors to a country in which they live — called “Global” — but which they know little about. It brings them on a journey through the world of transnational capitalism, and in the end asks: Is there a more just, inclusive, sustainable alternative, and how can we realize it?
The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has created a sort of map that will help us navigate the country of global capitalism. As shown in the model above, it breaks down the global political landscape into “scapes” like the discrete but interconnected parts of a landscape. Each scape offers a comprehensible entry-point, a “portal,” into this complex system.
The purpose of the Portal is to provide a resource and a forum through which grassroots activists around the world can critically comprehend the capitalist system, collectively formulate an alternative and jointly develop a movement to both engage in global issues and, ultimately, to usher in a more just and sustainable alternative.
The Portal contributes to this goal in four ways:
1. As a resource for educating and critical political analysis. Grassroots activists often lack the Big (Critical) Picture of global capitalism .and how it affects our lives. As a result, campaigning tends to be localized. The Portal fixes attention on the capitalist world system yet presents it in accessible ways, allowing activists to explore and discover connections for themselves.
2. As a platform for collective analysis and collaboration. As a dynamic site of interaction, the Portal will spawn lively debate, discussion and political initiatives among the staff, activists, analysts and visitors from the general public. By allowing activists and analysts to upload texts, documents and visual materials, it encourages the production of joint exhibits and other cooperative endeavors.
3. As a forum through which activists can interact with and be empowered by academics and experts. Grassroots activists lack access to intellectuals and academics whose empowering analyses are often confined to universities and think tanks, while intellectuals often lack access to activists, scattered and siloed as they are across the earth. The Portal will serve as a forum that will bring activists and analysts together; it will become a key “node” in the infrastructure TPYN is creating.
4. As a “voice” through which young people can be inspired to engage in social justice and the construction of new world system.
Where Are We Today?
The conceptual design described above is now in the process of being “translated” into a working architecture by web professionals. We have begun with the Securo-Warscape, the piece of the portal entitled War Against the People. The initial “pathway” of exhibits looks like this:
Jeff Halper, a TPYN founder and the author of War Against the People: Isael, the Palestinians and Global Pacification (London: Pluto, 2015), serves as the content “curator” of the Portal project. Through TPYN he has hosted a number of brainstorming sesssions and workshops with military, security and critical theory specialists in Eueope and North America over the past two years.
Led by Steve Niva and Steve Wright, specialists have been invited to begin constructing the site’s different modules.
The very point of the Portal is co-creation, in terms of both content and architecture/design/technology. We invite anyone who would like to work with us on the Portal to contact us. One of our major needs at the moment is for a copywriter, storyteller, scriptwriter or museum text specialist to “translate” our texts into brief, compelling stories that nevertheless convey the critical content.
We hope to have a prototype up by the end of 2017, though the project is ongoing.
