Saro-Wiwa explained the matter succintly on US radio shortly before his arrest:

“Shell does not want to negotiate with the Ogoni people. Each time they’ve come under pressure from local people, their want has always been to run to the Nigerian government and to say to the Nigerian government, ‘Oil is 90 percent of your foreign exchange earning. If anything happens to oil, your economy will be destroyed. Therefore, you must go and deal with these people, these troublemakers.’ And most times, the government will oblige them and visits local communities of poor, dispossessed people with a lot of violence.
And when these communities then protested and said, ‘Look. Look at the amount of violence that is being used against us, even though we are only protesting peacefully,’ then the oil companies will come and say, ‘Well, there is no way we can determine how much violence a government decides to use against its own people.’ So, basically, the local communities have no leverage with the oil companies at all.”

This post will not be what one usually reads regarding multinational corporations (MNCs) and globalization and general evilness.  Don’t get me wrong – what Shell has done is absolutely terrible. But having your life caught up with one and becoming a TCK because of one makes it difficult to just say that MNCs are evil and should behave. Some nuance and better understanding of why some MNCs misbehave is needed.

I am an affirmative global. I believe that globalization is ultimately more for good than for bad. I believe this for both personal and logical reasons. The personal reasons are what makes me wonder how some MNCs end up doing such horrid things and others don’t. My sponsoring organization has scandals in its past, but the biggest one involved the CEO writing himself a spectacular severance package that the board didn’t really approve, not human rights abuses. In terms of people getting hurt, there is only an asbestos lawsuit inherited from an American company they bought. Also, “my” MNC is bringing with it worker safety standards along with concern for quality from Switzerland and Sweden to China along with the foreign managers, because that’s what the managers know and value. (I know, because I had a summer job translating work procedures into English once.) They pay well. They give opportunities for foreign travel. So why isn’t “my” MNC making power technology in sweatshops?

Perhaps part of the answer is to be found implicit in the question. “My” MNC makes technology products – well-understood and mature technology, but technology nonetheless – which requires educated and skilled labor. I learned that transformer winding is an art that takes years to master on the floor as a teen. It’s “just” winding special paper around flat copper wire, yet it takes years to get good at it. And it’s not something you can get an education for – you have to learn by doing. The projects are designed by electrical engineers. One does not put electrical engineers in a sweatshop and expect them to just crunch out more work, no matter where in the world they are located. One does not fire a winder who won’t work 12 hours a day and hire a new one off the street. And due to the high shipping costs of large power technology products, it’s more cost-effective to build it as locally as possible if there’s a larger market – and hiring locals, rather than sending in a very expensive team of expats, is clearly the better move. So perhaps a key predictor of MNC misbehavior is whether unskilled labor can be used to make their product.

However, there is another factor. Nigeria’s military dictatorship is surely a factor in Saro-Wiwa’s death. With no pretense of caring for the people, a dictatorship enables many bad things, including doing anything the company that supplies 90% of the country’s income by exploitation of natural resources wants. This usually also includes taking as much of the money as possible. Even in countries with “merely” weak governments, exploitation of natural resources of nearly any kind can be accompanied with severe pollution, destruction, and labor abuse. (Diamonds, gold, other metals.) Processing can also be similar, such as in metal smelters in the former USSR. Ultimately, someone important is looking the other way in the countries in which these things happen, and that someone (or more likely someones) just doesn’t think other people’s suffering and pollution of their country is as important as getting rich and/or staying in power.

Those of us in democratic countries with laws against all of these abuses that can be and are enforced can only really use consumer power (and some limited legislation of the type that companies doing business in “our” country must follow environmental and labor regulations elsewhere as well) to try to influence the misbehaving MNCs. The lack of regard of leaders for their citizens is something that the citizens of those countries must fix or ask for help with – much like Saro-Wiwa tried to do. I’m not saying that this is simple or straightforward by any means, nor do I pretend to know how to do it. I just know that one country trying to “fix” another has never really worked and has all kinds of problematic overtones. (Including this silly war in Iraq – I made the argument before the invasion that even if Bush was right, it would still be a bad idea. I hate to be right on both counts.) Even if Shell is acquitted – and I really hope they’re not – Ken Saro-Wiwa was right when he spoke at the end of his mock trial:

“I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company’s dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence.”

The trial is being held in New York.

This man talks to the world almost exactly like I would. I think many of us third culture kids know that in some general sense, our lives are like prototype lives in the future, when cultural globalization starts catching up to economic globalization. I didn’t expect to see a third culture kid openly espousing third culture values in my lifetime as president of any country, let alone the only Western country that is still very nationalistic. I thought the revolution would start in a small European country in my old age, when my generation had gotten older and let old ideas for an old world go. With Obama’s election, I have gone from feeling culturally marginalized to feeling like I unconditionally belong, not only here but anywhere. If a TCK can get elected president here, we can make our way anywhere, no matter how parochial things may seem.

In fact, the International Herald Tribune has an article about the extended first family, which speaks English, Indonesian, French, Cantonese, German, Hebrew, Swahili, Luo and Igbo. How normal is that in the third culture? My family speaks Finnish, Swedish, Polish, German, Chinese and English. I can relate to these people. Everybody is a unique product of place, culture, and genes, but belongs together. Connects. There is no Other simply because of someone’s culture or genes. Otherness happens because of refusal to connect and understand others, because of closemindedness. And now we have a mini-UN third culture family in the White House!

Sweden had a very bad prime minister for quite a while, up until the last election. But who cares if Sweden’s prime minister is an idiot other than the Swedes? No one. The prime minister of Sweden has no power to inflict suffering on others. The president of the United States, however, can and might. I have high hopes that the coming one knows and understands the responsibility he carries.

Is this the beginning of the re-balancing of economic power from the global north to the global south? Is this the moment?

Those times when I hear bad news of people dying from a part of the world I know and think “There? I could have been there! I could have died!” are often times when I feel alone. International news so emotionally distant to local people. On the other hand, I felt rather emotionally distant from Hurricane Katrina. I’m not entirely sure why, but one explanation is that I live so thoroughly in a world of distant proximities that I’m just that lacking in patriotic fervor. I may simply feel closer to 北京 (Běijīng) people or 重庆 (Chóngqìng people than New Orleans people, because I conceptualize belonging nearly completely in a transnational, abstract space. It’s always hard to analyze yourself, but this might not only be an example of Pollock and van Reken’s properties of TCKs, but it might also connect that property with experiencing distant proximities strongly and living in Rosenau’s Affirmative Global world.

Maybe I feel for the earthquake victims more than Hurricane Katrina victims because I am very aware of that my life has intertwined with 四川 (Sìchuān), but not with New Orleans. My repatriation has made me keenly aware of the fallacies of assuming commonality because of shared language, partially shared culture and shared genes. I see myself, others and my own identity playing out in a space of emotional connections which are distant proximities. I do not automatically feel connected to people because they superficially ’seem’ like me. The most bitter moments of my life were caused by such people, and in contrast, some of the best were with people who were not superficially like me. I am committed to a global identity in ways that I doubt many expatriates are.

Perhaps our reactions to international news regarding our old homes or places we visited a lot locally is just the visible indicator of what really sets us apart from expatriates or other international-minded people. If I’m anywhere near typical, I just don’t care about people (above and beyond fundamental human dignity) just because they look like me, talk like me, dress like me, or have the same passport as me. All of those have been shown to be poor indicators of real similarity to myself. I feel connected to anyone I’ve met who is open-minded and open-hearted, and I continue to feel that way no matter how far away they are from me at the moment. The strong emotional reaction to bad international news is a natural consequence. 

In Hotelland, I am everywhere and nowhere, exactly where I’m from. It’s tremendously comforting to belong somewhere. I belong at the Marriott more than all these people around me, who are just visiting from Localland. Who don’t see that the head chef isn’t doing a good job. Who miss local things. I can see why lots of TCKs end up in hospitality management. This is probably what Saskia Sassen is talking about in her essay “Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims”. I feel at home in the San Fransisco Marriott because I’ve already felt at home in Marriotts elsewhere. Hotelland comes with me, and to some extent I do want Hotelland to push Localland aside. Although I hate touristy areas of any town because they’re inauthentic, authenticity doens’t bother me much when it comes to Hotelland. It’s what I’ve got, in terms of not constantly having to work to understand everyone in Localland worldwide, whereas no one even considers that they need to understand me too. And because of that, I wish Hotelland were bigger. The locals have so much space, they can afford to give some of it to us, the global nomads. The entire world is theirs! They have roots everywhere. The only roots I have are in the air – is it too much to ask for some space for them, too? They tend to get squished in the scramble for space in Localland.

Anyway, returning to the original topic, from Hotelland I know how to make anywhere a new home. While sipping my Cosmopolitan (no pun intended) , I started thinking about a word I saw on TCKID: xenofilia. The word stuck with me, because it was a bit of a surprise. Logically, it’s the obvious opposite to xenophobia, but somehow it never occurred to me that there was a direct logical opposite – I always thought of the opposite of xenophobia as comopolitanisms. The poster who used it implied briefly that TCKs were xenophiles. In a sense, maybe that’s true. As much as I complain about being poorly understood myself despite having to understand all the locals, I do enjoy getting to know new cultures, things, thoughts and foods. However, I don’t think of them as xeno – as alien or Other – simply things that exist that I don’t know yet.

There are two cultural phenomena I can think of that makes me relate in an alienated way. One is widespread sexism, like in the Middle East. Being a woman whose parents are feminists from some of the most egalitarian countries in the world and having spend ten years in the most egalitarian country on earth as a child, I feel like someone’s trying to cut off my arms sometimes when men from very sexist countries start opening their big mouths. Sexist men from less sexist countries tend to get a hammer in the head from someone in their own culture – often another man – that makes it a cultural deviation, not a rule I’d have to abide by when I interact with them. Locals throwing hammers at sexists gives me permission, too.

The second is hyperlocalism. People who are from a small town somewhere in the world and have never left scare me, because my repatriation went very poorly at the hands of such people. People with strong regional accents make me a bit uncomfortable, as if one moment they will be smiling at me and then biting me in the neck the next, after screaming OUTSIDER!!!. Small towns can be cute, but to me they’re a bit scary. I don’t want to stay long, and I don’t want to step out of the “I’m just passing by” role. There is no Hotelland in those places, they are too small. Our kind does not go there enough. I was ostracized by people who look just like me and where I didn’t speak the language with even a hint of an accent. If real xenophobia can come out even when there is no tangible difference to seize on, what will happen when there is? When my parents briefly moved to 合肥 (Héféi), I could feel the localism coming at me immediately. I don’t even know exactly what I picked up on. Something about how people looked at me that I recognized from Sweden, even though they were looking a lot more because I looked foreign. Something about how they talk to each other. I’m not sure. But it was scary. I felt like I was back in the small Swedish town where I lived during my repatriation and I almost had a panic attack.

That’s why Hotelland is such a pleasure to be in. If I don’t open my mouth, I could be from anywhere. I am from anywhere. I could have arrived from anywhere in the world. I could fly to anywhere when I leave. I both belong and am free.

References

Sassen, S. (2000). Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims. In F. J. Lechner and J. Boli (Eds.), The Globalization Reader (pp. 70-76). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, is using her global, cosmopolitan outlook to both make the world a better place and money, says CNN Money. This woman is fantastic. Not only has she made it to the top as a woman of color/foreigner relative to the United States, she might get a US government post (Haha! A cosmopolite in US government!) and started out at BCG – she believes in gut health, gets along with people and is telling Davos participants companies like PepsiCo have to have responsibility for people’s health. Bet you didn’t know Naked Juice is owned by PepsiCo. And profits are up. And she worked for ABB – she’s practically my big sister! Although I don’t like some of the descriptions in this article (“mother hen”? Uh, what? Is that any way to describe a CEO?) , she is described as someone who “brings her whole self” to the office. She’s already done so many of the things I’d like to do. Now I have a second person to look up to in addition to Nokia’s (ex) Sari Baldauf.

Null hypothesis: America is not moving forward into the future as well as Europe is.

We shall see what some reading might do to the null hypothesis.

Now that I am old enough to have been alive/there for some of the recent historical background of news, my personal level of involvement has gone up a lot. I remember the news of Srebrenica, and the civil war in general – especially the news of the ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is to me one of those words that everyone learned through the news – kind of like tsunami is in many countries now. I remember the political discussion about whether visas should be required of refugees, of numbers cited of which countries took how mnay refugees, the high school cafeteria discussions about NATO’s intervention, seen as unilateral action on the part of the US.

I also remember the cliqueishness of my junior high school along nationality lines. The Turks kept to themselves, the Iranians kept to themselves, the Swedes – as which I counted, because I was a hidden immigrant and because there were really no other white foreigners – didn’t show interest in letting the foreigners join their social hierarchy. But as related to the news item, I remember the Bosnian refugees, especially the girl in my class. She was tall and thin and so sad. I wished that I could do something to help her, but all I knew about what she’d been through was from TV – and that’s not a patch for anything. Besides which, it would have been difficult for me to win trust in the first place.

One of my early friends in Sweden was the daughter of some Iranian intelligentsia refugees. When I hear news of the democracy movement there, I think of her sometimes. When I attended a talk on islamic feminism two years ago at Knox, I thought of her. When I hear news of parents jailed for abusing their daughters in order to keep them from mixing with secular societies, I think of the women I know who were in the general setup and how furious I would be if they had been abused at home for hanging out with me.

In relation to all this, I also remember the rise in neonazi activity in response to the refugees. I remember the graffiti and the debates on what to do. But above all, I remember the neonazis in junior high. One of them was in my class. He was the ringleader of the badheads in the whole school. He had the standard attire of black bomber jacket, shaved head, Doc Martens, and violent attitude. I’d arrive for class and he’d be sitting there outside the classroom, flicking a butterfly knife in and out. I always would wonder if he’d actually stab someone – like me or one of the refugees or immigrants – if he got pissed off. He had this aura of unpredictability and instability that made you tip-toe around him, lest he decided that you were shit and got on your case. He was friends with one of the neonazi leaders for the whole region, who happened to be my Swedish teacher’s son. This was a shameful secret whispered around the halls.

The moral of this long-winded parenthesis is that such news items draw my attention, because I think of people I’ve met and what this might mean for them. In my worldview, international news has a place to fill. I feel that it concerns my personal sphere because it concerns people in my personal sphere if not myself directly. You can find a link of most world regions pretty easily within your circle of acquaintances, in addition to just putting yourself in their position. Maybe this victim mentality focuses attention on themselves to such a degree that not even large news like the tsunami can jolt their eyes upward, toward the rest of us. That would be very unfortunate.