Medidas preventivas de carácter general

If the central paradox of globalisation is that between hegemony and plural-ity and international institutions are the primary arena for understanding such processes, then it remains to show how Quaker activity is caught in the paradox. The problem was captured succinctly in a 1908 essay, ‘Group Expansion and Development of the Individual’ by Georg Simmel. In this essay discussing the relation of the individual and the group, Simmel (1908:

256–257) draws out the insightful relation of the opposites of groups and their emergence in wider domains: ‘The nonindividuation of elements in the narrower circle and their differentiation in the wider one are phenomena that are found, synchronically, among coexistent groups and group elements,

just as they appear, diachronically, in the sequence of stages through which a single group develops’.

As he continues: ‘The narrower the circle to which we commit ourselves, the less freedom of individuality we possess [. . .] Correspondingly, if the circle in which we are active and in which our interests hold sway enlarges, there is more room in it for the development of our individuality; but as parts of this whole, we have less uniqueness: the larger whole is less indi-vidual as a social group’.

If I read this correctly—and the meaning is indeed obscure—Simmel rec-ognises that as the circle of a group expands, there is a paradox that the social differentiation is related to a tendency to nondifferentiation. This analysis of social groups and the effects of the widening of the social circle are—intriguingly—related by Simmel to the social order of Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) as it relates to tensions within identity across the individual and social. This becomes even more poignant when the social circle expands to the global context.

Simmel’s proposition occurs within the context of industrial and colo-nial models and is therefore, as I have underlined, lacking the conceptual geography of sophistication that occurs in complex networks and a global circle. However, if we transpose this rule to the UN and religious NGOs, and take Quakers as a paradigm group as I have done, we can see some key issues of the paradox of the concept of globalisation. We can see something of the problem of global extension of the social group within the context of global institutions: the reduced effectiveness of multiple small groups inside a dominant system.

Furthermore, Simmel’s proposition can be related and updated by linking it to the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, who was the economist behind the neoliberal ideology of Reagan and Thatcher and arguably the inspiration behind the deregulation of the world market that led to the full force of eco-nomic globalisation. Hayek’s (1948) work is neoliberal insofar as he bases societal freedom on the market and not the state apparatus. In his attempt to overcome the problems of both fascist and Communist ideology, he believed the free movement of a deregulated market would protect against the ideals of oppressive government. While his thinking clearly attempted to respond to a situation of tyranny, his blind spot was not to see how the new sets of institutions, such as competitive market-states, could create different forms of oppression, particularly when they had global outreach. The very attempt to decrease state power by reducing state institutions only creates a new power regime of non-state institutions. The same dynamic, somewhat dis-turbingly, plays out in the very attempt to resist hegemonic power, because of what Hayek (1973, 1976, 1979) calls ‘knowledge catallaxy’ (exchanges in the self-regulating and decentralised market), which create an artificial playing field for knowledge and thus resistance.

I want to place this idea of ‘knowledge catallaxy’ alongside Simmel’s proposition of nondifferentiation of the social group in a wider circle. When

the social circle is expanded and there is a free play of social groups in a market-driven society, the resulting ‘catallaxy’¹³ hides the dominant social structures that persist in the new world of apparent pluralism. The concept of globalisation hides an implicit paradox in its abstract application and political normative paradigm.

The apparent increase in free expression of civil society, that is, increased differentiation, results in nondifferentiated organisational power, built on the illusion of differentiation. What I am arguing is that the global institu-tional environment undermines agency and action in the name of freedom and democracy. It is the paradox of allowing self-defined groups freedom of expression without altering the central institutions (in this case states, international institutions and corporations) that control such freedom of expression. It relates to what Marcussen & Kaspersen (2007: 184) call

‘institutional competitiveness’: ‘The concept of institutional competitive-ness concerns the intentional and unintentional outcomes of the attempts of people to optimize their institutions in innovative ways with a view to performing in the wake of globalisation’.

Quaker engagement in the UN is changing in this new competitive envi-ronment. In the post-1990s social catallaxy of NGOs at the UN, Quakers have modified their action. As we have seen, their distinctiveness has shifted within the wider field of NGO actors through different forms of collabora-tion, but it is also worth giving a few additional examples. First, in a com-peting environment, the Quaker-UN office in Geneva decided to allow other NGOs to carry out work on the review of the Human Rights Council in 2011, so it could focus its resources on other campaigns.¹⁴ In an environ-ment of social catallaxy, there is scope for a different kind of resource man-agement. Second, as Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud has shown,¹⁵ the follow-on work from the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child led to a number of interconnected implementation activities from religious groups of which the Quaker campaign against child soldiers was a part, albeit an impor-tant one, that resulted in 2000 in the UN-adopted Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.¹⁶ Quakers have always been embedded in a complex civil society apparatus, but after the 1990s there is—to echo Giddens (1990: 21ff)—a new ‘embedding’ in the social catallaxy of civil society, a weaving together of substrands of campaign work.

The social catallaxy of NGOs at the UN can also be seen in the dif-ferent competitive levels of funding and knowledge of the UN system. In contrast to Quakers, new religious NGOs from the South, or the two-thirds world, find it increasingly difficult to gain access, to shape representations, have meetings with diplomats or even put forward UN statements, because knowledge and experience of the ‘processes’ and networks of association is power.¹⁷ Quakers may lose distinctiveness in the extension of civil society processes, but they still hold a unique historical reputation as a valuable cur-rency within the system of exchanges, such as their ‘off-the-record’ meetings (Quaker United Nations Office 2010). The crucial issue of blending civil

society actors inside the UN system is also part of the UN enculturation or adaptation of NGO actors (Martens 2005). This raises the important ques-tion of the effectiveness of NGOs in their attempts to influence global state actors.

STATE POWER, RELIGIOUS NGOS AND COURTIER POLITICS