Bello, Walden 1945–

views updated

Bello, Walden 1945–

(Walden F. Bello)

PERSONAL: Born 1945, in Manila, Philippines. Education: Ateneo de Manila University, A.B.; Princeton University, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of the Philippines, professor of sociology and public administration, 1992–; Focus on the Global South, founder, executive director, 1995–. Visiting professor, University of California at Los Angeles. Human rights activist; Anti-Martial Law Coalition, coordinator; Philippines Human Rights Lobby, Washington, DC, founder. Food First, board member; Green Peace Southeast Asia, former chair of the board;

AWARDS, HONORS: New California Media Award for Best International Reporting, 1998; Chancellor's Award, University of the Philippines, 2000, for A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand; Right Livelihood Award, 2003.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Editor, with others) Modernization: Its Impact in the Philippines, five volumes, Ateneo de Manila University Press (Quezon City, Philippines), 1967–71.

(Editor, with Severina Rivera) The Logistics of Repression and Other Essays: The U.S. Assistance in Consolidating the Martial Law Regime in the Philippines, Friends of the Filipino People (Washington, DC), 1977.

(With David Kinley and Elaine Elinson) Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, Institute for Food and Policy (San Francisco, CA), 1982.

(With John Harris and Lyuba Zarsky) Nuclear Power in the Philippines: The Plague That Poisons Morong!, Third World Studies Center, University of the Philippines (Quezon City, Philippines), 1983.

(With Peter Hayes and Lyuba Zarsky) American Lake: Nuclear Peril in the Pacific, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Stephanie Rosenfeld) Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis, Institute for Food and Development (San Francisco, CA), 1990.

People and Power in the Pacific: The Struggle for the Post-Cold War Order, foreword by Renato Constantino, Foundation for Nationalist Studies (Quezon City, Philippines), 1992.

(With Shea Cunningham and Bill Rau) Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment, and Global Poverty, Food First Books (Oakland, CA), 1994, 2nd edition, foreword by Susan George, 1999.

(Editor, with Jenina Joy Chavez-Malaluan) APEC, Four Adjectives in Search of a Noun, Manila People's Forum on APEC (Quezon City, Philippines), 1996.

(With Shea Cunningham and Li Kheng Po) A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand, Zed Books (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Nicola Bullard and Kamal Malhotra) Global Finance: New Thinking on Regulating Speculative Capital Markets, Zed Books (New York, NY), 2000.

The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance, edited and with a preface by Anuradha Mittal, Food First Books (Oakland, CA), 2001.

Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, Zed Books (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Herbert Docena, Marissa de Guzman, and Mary Lou Malig) The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines, Focus on the Global South/University of the Philippines (Quezon City, Philippines), 2004.

Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire, Metropolitan Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Also contributor to numerous journals and periodicals, including the Bangkok Post. Contributor to books, including A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible?, edited by Tom Mertes, Verso (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Walden Bello is the author of over a dozen books critiquing globalization and the effects of U.S. government policies on the rest of the world, especially Asia and the Pacific Rim. A professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, Bello has been a long-time activist, fighting first the martial-law government of Ferdinand Marcos in his native land, and then resisting and critiquing the monetary policies of international agencies and groups such as the World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), G-8, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Bello is the recipient of the 2003 Right Livelihood Award. In awarding the prize, the selection committee, as reported on the Right Likelihood Award Web site, commended Bello as "one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalisation, combining the roles of intellectual and activist." The selection committee further noted that, "through a combination of courage as a dissident, with an extraordinary breadth of published output and personal charisma, [Bello] has made a major contribution to the international case against corporate-driven globalisation."

Bello's writing and editing has spanned several decades, and deals with topics specifically Philippine in nature, but also with larger global issues. His political activism led him to research IMF and World Bank loans to the Philippines that were in effect underwriting the Marcos regime. Breaking into the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington, DC, Bello made off with several thousands pages of documents that demonstrated World Bank involvement in support of the Marcos dictatorship. These he used in his 1982 book, Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, a work that helped to politicize the residents of the Philippines. Ultimately Marcos was brought down in 1986 by a people's movement. Thereafter, Bello examined the new Asian economies, writing his Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis, several years before those markets collapsed. Since that time, the crux of Bello's more recent work has been a critique of the manner in which developing countries have, in his opinion, become dominated by foreign capital and an examination of alternatives to such subjugation. Additionally, he has examined the ecological fallout of globalization, and since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he has also taken a sharp look at U.S. foreign policy around the world.

With the 1998 A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand Bello "depicts various disappointments and adverse side-effects in Thailand's economic development model of the last forty years or so," according to Nick J. Freeman in ASEAN Economic Bulletin. Philip Hirsh, reviewing that title in Geographical Journal, called it a "penetrating—if polemical—analysis of one country's experience." Bello and his fellow authors examine aspects from the damming of rivers and subsequent environmental degradation to the advent of the AIDS crisis as indicative of the failure of fast-track capitalist development in Thailand. Written before the 1997 economic crash in Thailand, the book provides a prescient introduction to the problems besetting other Asian countries as well.

With The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance Bello gathers together what Susanne Martikke, writing in World Watch, called "scathing critiques of globalization." Here Bello takes on the WTO, the IMF, and World Bank, characterizing them as bankrupt institutions, doing more harm than good in developing countries. Speaking with Jerry Harris of Race and Class, Bello outlined some of his complaints about globalization: "The loss of place, the loss of one national economy and of having some space from the volatility of growth. The loss of sense that the state could act as a protective mechanism vis à vis the global economy, the feeling that corporations have completely taken over. That is what we're talking about." With Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy he delivers some alternatives to what he sees as outmoded globalization; as Theresa Wolfwood noted in a Briarpatch review, "We need to decommission the financial institutions while we build a pluralist system of governments." Bello further argues that development should be based on human needs and environmental concerns rather than solely on growth, as in the Western model. Wolfwood concluded, "This short concise volume is a guidebook no activist should travel without."

Bello also tackles the United States' role in the world in his 2005 title, Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire. For Bello, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the invasion of Iraq are mistakes that will result in the end of American hegemony in the world and cause the rise of other economic powers, such as China, to take its place. Much of the world, according to Bello, is turning against American imperial designs. A critic for Kirkus Reviews found Bello's position "resonantly and assuredly" argued, as well as "provocative and useful." Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly thought Dilemmas of Domination to be a "concise and thoughtful global South perspective on America's military, economic, and political realities." Writing for Booklist, Brendan Driscoll also found the book a "a provocative, well-researched polemic."