BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

RESISTING GLOBALIZATION? : SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN SRI LANKA

Author: Nira Wickramasinghe

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/ BIISSj2003v24n2a2

ABSTRACT

Globalization reflects a situation where the factors of production have become increasingly mobile. Capital moves freely and technology and information diffuse almost instantly across national boundaries. Corporations move their bases of operation to lower cost production areas. Raw materials are rapidly transported from their source to processing and production sites thousands of miles away. States in South Asia are, in varying degrees of intensity, participating in this growing process of integration of their national economies into a global world economy. When globalization first became a buzzword, the emphasis was on its inevitability and largely on the benefits of the phenomenon. These benefits were chiefly, but not solely economic. Openness to the international market, and the hames3ing of foreign investment and trade, in concert with new technologies, promised a new impetus for development and growth. The benefits of globalization have increasingly been in doubt. An integrating part of the globalizing process is sometimes perceived as the dislocation and exclusion of large number of people. There is a popular apprehension of being left behind while global civil society and liberalization engulf the world. This paper looks at the resistance and lack of resistance that has been meted to globalization in Sri Lanka.