Economic Globalization is Inevitable

My first stop was New Zealand, on the University of Canterbury Erskine Fellowship, to make 11 presentations to faculty and students, while working with Kaupapa Māori scholars Tyron Love and Angus MacFarlane. Kaupapa Māori is a form of theory and research methodology that stands on its own feet in opposition to Western theory and method, such as what I was socialized into in the US Academy of Management. My thesis is that by reclaiming IWOK, we can tame WWOK theory and methods that accomplish neoconservative/neoliberal globalization. Research methods of the Western academy, in general, privilege US conservatism and neo-positivism. Decolonizing research methodologies and theory is necessary if we are to counter the momentum of globalization hegemony (the power of Western nations’ ideas over those of other nations). My thesis is that our living stories are agentive-players working to decolonize Western narratives as wells as Western research methods and theories. The litmus test for this is IWOK methodology and theory. While there is no one IWOK method or theory, I believe there are core “markers” to globalization that a variety of IWOK scholars are able to decipher as actual narratives and discourses of continuing material oppression (Swadener & Mutua, 2008: 34). To be blunt, Western globalization research methods and theory reify existing power articulations by creating “data plantations” while silencing research “tools for decolonization” (Swadener & Mutua, 2008: 34). For example, in Western globalization studies, a variety of indigenous experiences are reduced to measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and to dualistic categories of First World and Third World. Meanwhile, what is left out is the untold story of the origin of these categories in post-WWII when First World meant the allies; Second World, the soviets; and Third World, every other nation. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, “Second World” fell out of common usage, First World morphed into developed capitalist countries, and Third World included all others. My project, in this book, is to critique the research methods and theory of the Western globalization project, including such measures as GDP, and the Western narratives of First, Second, and Third World. IWOK has spatial, temporal, and material aspects of living story experiences that get reified and reduced by Western globalization narratives, research methods, and theoretical categories of our geopolitical experience…