THE MYTH OF ENDLESS ACCUMULATION A Feminist Inquiry Into Globalization, Growth, and Social Change Martha Freymann Miser A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August, 2011 This is to certify that the Dissertation entitled: THE MYTH OF ENDLESS ACCUMULATION: A FEMINIST INQUIRY INTO GLOBALIZATION, GROWTH, AND SOCIAL CHANGE prepared by Martha Freymann Miser is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership and Change. Approved by: Carolyn Kenny, Ph.D., Dissertation Committee Chair date Philomena Essed, Ph.D., Committee Member date Amanda Sinclair, Ph.D., Committee Member date Valentine Moghadam, Ph.D., External Reader date Copyright 2011 Martha Freymann Miser All rights reserved Acknowledgments This dissertation is the fulfillment of my dream to become a scholar-practitioner. Working on it has been a cherished experience that has transformed me personally and professionally. Accomplishments like this do not happen without support, and I am blessed to have had the encouragement and guidance of a number of extraordinary people along the way. My dissertation committee is my “dream team.” Carolyn Kenny, my committee chair and guiding light, has been unfailingly committed to my success, holding my vision as her own. Philomena Essed’s intuition, encouragement, and advice have sustained me every step of the way. Amanda Sinclair opened my eyes to the power of feminist thought and helped me recover my own feminist voice. And Valentine Moghadam, my external reader, encouraged me and introduced me to a group of scholars whose work altered the content and conclusions of this study. I’m also grateful to the faculty and staff at Antioch. It’s impossible to adequately thank Deb Baldwin, the library team, and Antioch staff for their tireless dedication. I owe a special debt to Lauren Alexandre and Al Guskin, whose vision for the Leadership and Change Program has profoundly changed my life. I also want to thank Richard Appelbaum for his guidance and introduction to the field of critical globalization studies. And I’m greatly in debt to Shannon Venable, who provided the material included here on Aquinas and medieval history. The friendship, encouragement, care, intelligence, and humor of Cohort 6 made this one of the most personally and intellectually fulfilling experiences of my life. No matter where I am, I carry the fellowship of Cohort 6 with me. A special thanks to my i dear friend Karen Geiger, who sustained me with her special combination of brilliance and humor. Thanks also to Rick Warm, who has been my friend and dissertation partner, and who shared these last intense but wonderful months. I’m also very grateful to my friend and brilliant coach, Lauren Powers. Special thanks go to Carolyn Slocombe for her support and for introducing me to Barbara Bell, editor extraordinaire. My partnership with Wendy Capland and Miriam Hawley was particularly important during this journey; I so appreciate their urging me to share my discoveries with women in the corporate world. I’m also fortunate to have an extended network of remarkable friends and professional colleagues who have traveled with me on this journey. I’m thankful for the love and encouragement my family provided during this process. My parents were my biggest fans, reading every paper along the way. My father often sent me thoughtful commentaries that further enriched my thinking. I was blessed to have the endless support of my sisters and my brother, and their spouses. My children, Amanda, Christina, and Carl, are the finest accomplishments in my life. Over the past 5 years I’ve watched them become caring, wise, and principled adults. I’m so proud of them. Joshua, Amanda’s husband and my amazing son-in-law, has been an invaluable supporter. My two grandsons, Brody and Caiden, were my inspiration for this study; I hope in some small way to have contributed to a better world for them. Andy, my husband, soul mate, and one true love, has been my partner in living for more than 37 years. Ultimately it was his love, inspiration, energy, kindness, and unflagging belief in me that sustained me on this journey. ii Abstract This theoretical dissertation examines the concept of growth and its core assumption— that the continual accumulation of wealth is both socially wise and ecologically sustainable. The study challenges and offers alternatives to the myth of endless accumulation, suggesting new directions for leadership and social change. The central question posed in this inquiry: Can we craft a more ethical form of capitalism? To answer this question, the study examines conventional and critical globalization studies; feminist scholarship on standpoint, political economy, and power; and the Enlightenment notions of progress and modernism, drawing on a number of works, including Aristotle on the three intelligences, Thomas Aquinas on human need and value, and Karl Marx on capitalism. From this broad disciplinary and historical perspective, a compelling narrative emerges, one that describes how the idea of growth has intersected with power and privilege to create an overarching global imperative that threatens the viability of our species and planet. The closing sections explore potential responses to that threat, introducing consciousness, wisdom, and caring to our understanding of growth, and emphasizing the importance of relational practice to effect real social and institutional change. The electronic version of this dissertation is at OhioLINK ETD Center (www.ohiolink.edu/etd). iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments i Abstract iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables vi Chapter I: Introduction 1 A Practitioner’s Learning Journey 2 Origins of the Study 7 Overview of the Study 15 Study Approach 24 Chapter II: Globalization and Social Change 30 Introduction: A Big Enough Problem 31 Journalists’ Views of Globalization: Zakaria and Friedman 33 Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory 37 Challenging Development: Postcolonial and Feminist Critiques 40 From Development to Globalization 44 21st-Century Critical Globalization Studies 48 Interlude: Epochal Choices 58 Prosperity Without Growth: Jackson 61 Women and Marginalized Voices: A Resource for the Future 67 Chapter III: Feminist Wisdom 69 What Does Gender Have to Do With It? 71 Making Feminist Epistemology Accessible 73 A Retrospective: The Unfolding Feminist Journey 75 The Gendering of Institutions: Feminist Views on Social Change 91 Interlude: The Case for Feminist Optimism 95 The Web of Significance: A Context for Gender 98 Chapter IV: Power 102 Who Gains and Who Loses? 103 Understanding Power 105 Power, Privilege, and Growth: Who Gains, Who Loses—and How? 115 Unmasking Growth: Power Through the Lens of Gender 120 Transnational Networks of Resistance 133 Chapter V: The Myth of Endless Accumulation 140 The Power of Myth 141 A Brief History of Growth 146 The Consequences of Growth 164 Hidden Commitments 174 iv Chapter VI: Practical Wisdom 179 Phronesis 180 Toward an Ethical Capitalism 188 Chapter VII: The Reflective Practitioner 197 The Language of Business 198 A Feminist Vision 202 The Vulnerable Practitioner: Reflections on Leadership and Change 205 Future Directions 213 References 216 v List of Tables Table 3.1 Feminist Thought From the Late 1970s to Today 76 vi 1 Chapter I: Introduction One morning in the fall of 1992, I walked through the door of a venerable insurance company, a newly minted member of the corporate leadership education team. A neophyte in the world of business, I was stunned by all the alien concepts, behaviors, and terminologies I encountered. After many years in the public sector, what I found most puzzling was the notion that the entire corporate enterprise seemed to revolve around a single purpose: making money. Alternately amused and horrified by this foreign concept, I could not get over the idea that thousands of intelligent and well-meaning people would get out of bed every morning for the single purpose of growing profit. When I voiced my surprise, friends and colleagues generally reacted with good humor, but it was clear that I was going to have to accept this premise and move on. And move on I did. Fourteen years later, after weathering numerous market fluctuations, strategies, restructurings, leadership changes, mergers, and acquisitions, I found myself at the pinnacle of my corporate career. I had worked my way up to a leadership position in the company’s global human resource function; and one of my primary responsibilities was developing and implementing practices to ensure that our employees were aggressively pursuing the company’s very straightforward business strategy—to grow faster than our competitors. Despite some lingering reservations, I had become fluent in the language of business, a leader in the relentlessly competitive world of capitalism. 2 A Practitioner’s Learning Journey “Reflective examination of practice . is itself an exercise in practical philosophy.” —Schwandt, 1996, p. 64 Jarvis (1999) says that “all learning begins with an experience of disjuncture” (pp. 38-39), with an event that disrupts our life and challenges our worldview. In this sense, my learning journey is a series of experiences that have shaped my personal and professional identity. As a backdrop, I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in middle-class New England suburbs that cared for and sheltered me in my formative years. Still, no community was immune to the intrusion of the events of those decades, including the Bay of Pigs, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, feminism, the sexual revolution, and the Apollo space missions. My childhood and early adulthood were a mixture, then, of a strong grounding in family and community, and a sense of disequilibrium as the world changed rapidly around me.