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Chantal Alfaro

Academic Year: 2011-2012

Globalization: Capital Gain or Loss?

Area of Concentration

  • Community and Economic Development

Key Terms:

globalization, cultural preservation, corporatization, ecosystem, environmental destruction, ecological material

Significance/Broader Impact:

The significance of my project targeted the ways in which indigenous Peruvian groups have had to culturally adapt to the practices of globalization, or have had to give up their inherited homelands for a westernized living space.  Although my study was extensive, there is a limited amount of data available when searching for specific case studies on the detrimental cultural effects of the globalization and mass production in Peru. Analyzing these relationships will help our understanding of how Peruvian culture is affected.
Peru is celebrated not only for its exceptional biological assortment, but also for its cultural diversity. Peru is distinctly recognized as having one of the most diverse native cuisines and is ranked the third most biodiverse country in the world (Dore, 1998).
Globalization has brought both positive and negative impacts to the Peruvian nation-state. Globalization has provided economic development in the urban parts of the country by improving its infrastructure and providing a middle class, and by decreasing the illiteracy percentage throughout the country.
Globalization has allowed Peru to take full advantage of its natural resources such as precious metals, natural gas, petroleum, rainforests, an exceptional array of flora and fauna, and its unique climate that thus far has allowed its renown vegetation to grow and flourish. Peru is also the largest exporter of silver in the world and second largest exporter in gold and aluminum in the world (Kuramoto, 2002). With tremendous resource accessibility, Peru has managed to be one of few countries on the planet that prospered economically during 2007 the global financial crisis, growing an impressive 9% in Gross Domestic Product from 2007 to 2010, and eliminating its national debt in 2011 (http://www.state.gov). My researched proved that the rural parts of Peru have been especially affected by consequences of globalization, and therefore are more vulnerable to the continuing globalization of its culture. Peruvian culture seems to be declining at an alarming rate. Globalization has become a major concern in the last decade, affecting the natural habitat and subsequently the customs and traditions, of native tribes.
Biodiversity and culture are extremely reliant upon each other. No culture would exist without biodiversity; and subsequently biodiversity would not be utilized to its full capacity without culture and the knowledge that comes along with it. This brings a new term Biocultural Diversity, which is defined as the relationship between nature and culture, or better yet, the relationship between our environment and our community (Terralingua, 2009). Biocultural diversity is the vehicle by which we acquire invaluable knowledge in order to achieve harmonious coexistence with other forms of life on Earth.
According to the Roshan Institute of Culture and language preservation, culture collectively includes but not limited to the excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture; an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning; the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group (Parker, 2008).
This Peruvian economic shift towards globalization and mass production has started to be a major concern to communities and has earned the attention of both local, national, and international organizations. These organizations attempt to preserve culture, national history, and the country’s identity itself.

References

1.    A thoroughly modern resource curse?: the new natural resource policy agenda and the mining revival in Peru. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2008.
2. The bewitchment of silver the social economy of mining in nineteenth-century Peru. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000.
3. Development’s Displacements Economies, Ecologies, and Cultures at Risk.. Vancouver: Ubc Press, 2006.
4. Dore, Elizabeth. The Peruvian global industry: growth, stagnation, and crisis. Oxford: Westview Press, 1988.
5.    Kuczynski, Peter. The impact of Privatization in Peru. South Center Press, Miami, 2000

Links:

1. “Institutional challenges for sustainability in Peru.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . http://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17296.full.pdf+html (accessed October 17, 2011).
2.    “Does Globalization Diminish Cultural Diversity? The Globalization website and the World Culture Theory. http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/glossary.html (accessed January 23, 2011)

Fall SRP Proposal Abstract

With the regressing world economy, and subsequently the devaluation of the American dollar, countries have relied more and more on their environment to make a profit. Profitable but environmentally degrading practices such as mining, logging, and oil extraction constitute the main Peruvian export activities today. In recent years, the Peruvian economy has found itself dominated by global trends such as export and capital trade, which takes full advantage of its environmental abundance. Surely, the exhaustion of Peru’s resources and the country’s environmental damage is irreversible. In an attempt to make its mark as an economic power, the developing countries continue to exploit their land, stripping the soil of non-renewable materials. In past years, not only has the Peruvian biodiversity and environment been affected, but the Peruvian culture has also been exhausted along with it.
Since Fujimori’s rise to power in 1990, a number of bills have been passed in order to stimulate the economy; including Law 653, which promotes foreign investment in the agricultural sector; and the 1995 Land Law, which enabled collective groups to divide and sell land held in common (Kuramoto, 2009). This has caused a revalorization of land-use resources and shifted the government’s priorities while accelerating the privatization of land and has facilitated mining companies to buy them without the consent of the residents (Ossio, 1998).
As a result, land in these indigenous rural areas has become scarce and impotent, forcing families out of the region and into cities at lower elevations. At lower elevations, however, practices such as horticulture and livestock production become very difficult. Rural areas are heavily dependent on agriculture and the herding of animals such as sheep, llamas, alpacas, and vicunas, which require high altitude; however, the soil at lower altitudes is not as fertile and is unfamiliar to them (Madeley, 1999).
Throughout this paper, I will explain the negative cultural effects that globalization has had not only on the environment, but on the culture of rural Andean communities of Peruvian Sierra. These effects include the diminishing fluidity of the Peruvian dialect of Quetchua, the loss of traditional agricultural practices, the diminishing of folklore traditions such as weaving, ceramics, and artesian metalwork; the loss of food and medicinal recipes, and with this the change of sustenance practices and therefore a shift in the Peruvian culture and lifestyle.

Winter Senior Research Project (SRP) Abstract

This study focuses on the cultural impacts of globalization and corporatization on local communities in rural regions of Peru. With the purpose of stimulating the national economy, the Peruvian government has pursued global mass production and an even bigger consumption, subsequently neglecting both the needs and concerns of the Peruvian natives. In the past decades, large corporations such as Newmont Mining Company and the Barrick Gold Corporation, have compromised cultural preservation by exploiting the land’s natural resources, forcing Peruvian natives to adopt their unsustainable profit-based lifestyle that has lead dismantling their very own cultural fabric. Not only are Peruvians losing valuable ecological material, but the knowledge they have acquired through its cultivation. This study was based on statistical and census data, demographic analysis, and case studies of various indigenous groups living in the rural parts of Peru such as Cajamarca and Cuzco. As a result of this study, I found specific ways in which indigenous groups are culturally affected by global industries such as mining and logging through deforestation of tropical rainforests. Peruvian culture has been tremendously affected through the immense environmental destruction the country has suffered in the past decades. These effects are depicted by gradual diminishing fluidity of its main dialect of Quetchua, decreased traditional clothing popularity and usage, decreased traditional Peruvian music and dance popularity, decreased exportation of native handcrafts, a vanishing traditional medicine practicing population, an alarming agricultural shift towards the exchange of capital goods and a formal economy, and growing importation trends. The environmental injustice the country of Peru has suffered has now lead to cultural injustice and has made the relationship between our ecosystem and humanity even more indispensable. Culture is not only crucial to our identity, but it is crucial to our survival.

Study's Major Findings and Contributions

In a study in the Cajamarca, Peru region performed in 2008, 95% of interviewees reported that they are no longer able to grow crops where they once did (Bebbington and Bury 2009). Furthermore, more than half of the households that were forced to sell their land have no been able to purchase equivalent land, due to inflation, or unavailability. This has forced 75% of former landowners to out-migrate to other regions in 2003 (Conger, 2008). Because of the laissez-faire type market of Peru, the government is bought out by foreign investors wanting to exploit indigenous lands. With the increasing connectivity of countries being economically dependent on others, globalizations takes place. This is especially the case for developing countries that are willing to give up all of their natural resources to get to top of the totem pole.
Although most people perceive globalization as being a rather beneficial factor in a country’s economy and culture, globalization does more than just interweave a region’s economy. Globalization dilutes the culture by creating a sort of “melting pot”, in turn bringing a similar lifestyle to those affected by it. Globalization promotes “civilized” western behavior and ideals that are often considered universal, or the “right” way to live. Local traditions are forgotten and countries face off for the title of the cultural conquistador. 
In the past 10 years, the rural population in Peru shrank 25%, adding to the already mostly urban cities of the western Peru. Similarly, a drastic fall in the onset production of local grown crops has declined: vegetation has become weaker, thinner, and therefore more vulnerable to disease. Because of this, the National Center for Potato was developed, in order to protect Peruvian biodiversity, its land, its people, and its way of life along with customs and culture.
Farmers complain that they are “selling all [their] natural products and eating mostly just rice and pasta, which are not native foods.” (culturalsurvival.org). Another Cusco-based non-profit Andes organization, Papamaka, was been working with the Andean community on the construction of the “papa” (potato) park, whose idea was started because of the abundance of natural potato types in Chawaytire, Peru.
Peru grows 2,000 types of potatoes, the most diverse potato population in the world, already decreasing because of climate change and different and unpredictable amount of rainfall. Potatoes are now required to be grown at much higher temperatures (as high as 600ft above sea-level). (seattletimes.nwsource.edu) The potato is only one of the many endangered vegetation species in Peru due to global warming. Thankfully for us, there are as many as 1,500 gene banks throughout the world responsible for helping to maintain food biodiversity in the world.
Contrary to what most people may think, the environment is extremely tied in with culture and its practices. Knowledge about our surroundings provides us with knowledge about ourselves. The extinction of indigenous groups is the extinction of knowledge including language, agricultural practices, and a sustainable economy.

Evidence

The last few decades have seen a steep decline in the cultivation of Peruvian traditional vegetation varieties. Some types such as the unadegato, mococa, and amarnzo, are a few of the vegetables that are on the verge of extinction due to climate change and harsh weather uprisings. Climate change is only one of the many consequences of globalization and its effects on the environment.
Another detrimental effect of globalization is inequality. Although Peru is a country rich in terms of resources, geography, nature, people, culture, and diversity; it is also a country of great inequality. While the coastal regions of Peru continue to grow financially and technologically, the Sierra territories of Peru along with the Amazonian areas, continue to struggle financially, ecologically, and ultimately, culturally. With a tremendous urban expansion in these coastal zones, Andean communities like Cajamarca and Cuzco become smaller and smaller, losing population to major globalized cities such as Lima and Callao. These communities slowly become integrated in the globalized market, losing customs and culture through their new adaptations.
Globalization also calls for a formalized economy, telecommunications and media, mass production and consumption, major resource exploitation; all of these driven by profitable incentives and by the Peruvian government itself.
Because of recent growing awareness of this cultural epidemic, however, the Peruvian government opted to adopt a historic bill recognizing the rights of all the Indigenous groups.  On August 23, 2011, the Peruvian Congress unanimously voted to pass a bill requiring consent of indigenous groups to be able to starts projects such as mining, logging, and oil drilling.  Corporations interested in performing such activities must now consult with community members and come to an agreement that must benefit both parties. President Ollanta Humala has made it a priority to protect the rights of the Peruvian Andean groups through an array of policies protecting diversity. Humala is under constant scrutiny for affecting the free-market type economy in Peru, which has made the country one of the most prosperous in the world in the last few years.
With the development of modern technology and the promise of wealth and opportunity, Peru has become the modern jackpot for foreign companies wanting to invest. Although the nation stay seems to be benefiting from foreign investors, communities have suffered a constant decline as poverty rates have increased. According to study done by JR Bury in 2008, 37% of rural residents lack basic necessities, and 15% of them are extremely impoverished.

Spatial Dimension

Peru grows 2,000 types of potatoes, the most diverse potato population in the world, already decreasing because of climate change and different and unpredictable amount of rainfall. Potatoes are now required to be grown at much higher temperatures (as high as 600ft above sea-level). (seattletimes.nwsource.edu) The potato is only one of the many endangered vegetation species in Peru due to global warming. Thankfully for us, there are as many as 1,500 gene banks throughout the world responsible for helping to maintain food biodiversity in the world.
Contrary to what most people may think, the environment is extremely tied in with culture and its practices. Knowledge about our surroundings provides us with knowledge about ourselves. The extinction of indigenous groups is the extinction of knowledge including language, agricultural practices, and a sustainable economy.
Globalization could be described as a sort of cultural imperialism, the western culture domination of the world. Because of globalization, the indigenous community is a conflicted identity, while trying to withhold their local traditions and at the same time trying to not give in to the social current and global cultural orientation.
During my research, I kept coming across a special term: Biocultural diversity. This term refers to diversity of life in all its manifestations biological, cultural, and linguistic, which are interrelated within a complex socio-ecological adaptive system (Earthscan, 2010).

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