Conclusion: Towards a Socialist Public Sphere

Abstract

Debates around the meaning of globalisation are not just a to-and-fro tussle between academics in their ivory towers. How globalisation is theorised and looked at also has practical implications. Nowhere is this clearer than in respect to the relationship between poverty, inequality and globalisation. As Sutcliffe (2004: 35) observes, ‘inequality has as many meanings as globalisation’. The way in which world governing institutions conceptualise globalisation will obviously influence how they perceive the causes and effects of globalisation. For example, as Kiely (2005a) argues, one of the main ways of assessing global poverty by the World Bank is to measure the amount of people living on an income of $1 a day. While in theory this might sound reasonable, in practice it is highly problematic. To see why we must remember that the ‘dollar’ used by the World Bank to measure poverty is not the normal US dollar but is rather a dollar based on the purchasing power parity of exchange rates. Effectively, this method compares the purchasing power of commodities consumed across social classes and across countries. By making these assumptions, however, this method abstracts away from complex social issues such as the fact that those from poorer backgrounds do not consume many of the commodities included by the World Bank in their estimations.