FRI 3/20

Globalization (Maquilapolis)
Week 10: Systems of Privilege and Global Inequality

The Pervasive Ideology of

Individualism
Thinking Structurally: understanding that our individual
lives are shaped by a larger social structure (over which we
often have little control as individuals).
Privileges

are not individual possessions, but visible as

systemic patterns.

Remember Johnson: we are not the system, although our lives

are very much shaped by it, and we act through it in our
everyday lives.

All of us have to work to go against

the path of least resistance
Going

against the path of least resistance is

consciously working to make the invisible visible

And

challenging myths like equal opportunity a

cultural belief that doesnt allow us to see structural
inequality at work.

The Myth of Equal Opportunity and the Meritocracy

Our

ideology of equal opportunity makes us think that people

get ahead based on merit alone (the myth of the
meritocracy).

And

hide our systems of privilege not just class privilege,

but racial privileges, gender privileges, etc.

Affirmative Action & the Meritocracy

Affirmative Action and other quota programs violate peoples value of the
meritocracy because many, many folks believe that people should get a
job/scholarship/admission/etc. based solely on merit.

If everything were equal and our data showed that everyone experienced equal
opportunity, then there would be no need for programs like affirmative action.

But

these kinds of programs were instituted once people realized that the elimination of
de jure discrimination wasnt actually eliminating institutional racism or sexism.

Because

And

the cultural and structural patterns of inequality shaped by history still remained.

these programs arent reverse discrimination, because theyre trying to correct a

structural pattern of inequality. They arent perfect, though, in part because they dont
always consider the complex ways that inequality operates in our lives.

Intersectionality: proposes that how we experience

privilege and oppression is not just based on race (or just

gender, or just class, etc.), but how our one identity
category intersects with other categories of identity.
So,

for instance, just because you are white and experience race privilege doesnt
mean that you wont experience oppression because you are working class.

And

just because you are a man and experience gender privilege doesnt mean
that you wont experience oppression in realms of race, or sexuality, etc.

These systems are complex, and we cant look at one to explain our life
experiences.
But at the same time, they do have their own independent operation that we must
consider, as someone like McIntosh or Johnson shows with their examples.

Maquilapolis (City of Factories)

The

story follows a group of women

who work in factories in Tijuana, along
the U.S.-Mexico border.

These

factories maquiladoras, or
maquilas are centers of production
for many global corporations,
including companies based in the U.S.
(as well as other 1st world
economies, like Japan).

The

development of Tijuana and other

border towns in Mexico as centers of
manufacturing is the direct result of
specific political and economic
policies, initiated largely by Western
governments with a lot of political and
economic power.

NAFTA
One

of these policies, as is referenced in the film, is NAFTA the North American

Free Trade Agreement which was initiated by the U.S. government and passed
in 1994 to eliminate trade barriers between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Its main goal was to make the borders between the U.S. and Mexico more fluid
and make the two countries more connected in a global economic marketplace.
It allowed U.S.-based companies to more easily set up production in Mexico and
utilize the cheaper labor force available in that country, for the sake of generating
larger profits.

When watching the film, pay attention to how large-scale political and economic
processes affect people on the local, everyday level, in unequal ways. These
include political policies like NAFTA, Structural Adjustment policies conditioned
by the IMF/World Bank, and the decisions made by multinational/global
corporations (most of whom are based in the U.S. or other Western or 1 st world
nations).