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Bad Subjects: Recovering the State: Interview with Saskia Sassen

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Recovering the State: Interview with Saskia

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Interview with Saskia Sassen.

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Miguel Lara Hidalgo

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Issue #66, February 2004

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Beginning January 2004, Argentina and the US engaged in fierce

diplomatic controversy over the statements of Roger Noriega, the
Department of State officer in charge of George W. Bush's policy on Latin
America. Noriega stated that the US was disappointed with Argentina
because it had strengthened relations with Cuba and would not support
the US proposal to condemn Cuba for human rights violations at United
Nation. The most popular Argentinean president in its history, Nstor
Kirchner, replied: "No one can demand our country." Many Latin American
leaders, including Bolivia's Evo Morales, congratulated him for this
attitude.
Sometimes I don't know where Latin America is in the map. I guess it has
been geographically located in the Western Hemisphere for millions of
years, but its location on political maps changes and puzzles me decade
by decade. Currently, the region isn't in the same political location as in
the '90s. New grass-root social movements demanding social justice and
protesting policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank have spread across the borders. "Los tiempos cambian", people
say.
During the last year, new governments in Latin America have inspired
hope for their populations. Most of them are openly progressive or call
themselves such. They have formed alliances to negotiate together with
the more developed countries about critical issues economic policy,
external debt, foreign investment, and free trade.
Countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia have abandoned
the liberal policies of the '90s that caused increasing poverty,
unemployment, political crisis, corruption, and growing external debt. The
informal economy has invaded the cities: people selling food on the
street, offering all kind of services without paying taxes, or trading
illegally"Hay que vivir", people say.
According to sociologist Saskia Sassen, recovering the state in Latin
America is part of major social and political processes now in progress:
the construction of a transnational citizenship, the increasing role of
cities, the geopolitics of war, and international terrorism.

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71: Prisonvision
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Introduction: All that is
Solid Melts into ...Barbarous
Empire-ialism
C uba Libre: C apitalism,
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C ollective: Response to
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the World
Recovering the State:
Interview with Saskia
Sassen
C iudades en riesgo:
Entrevista a Saskia Sassen

Sassen is a transnational citizen. Born in Holland, raised in Argentina, and

now resident in the United States, she carries out research around the
world. In Buenos Aires, she recently presented "Cities Transformed:
Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World," a
study she helped coordinate in several countries and sponsored by the
US National Academy of Sciences.

Hegel-Marx: The "Other"

Logic of Unproductive Labor

*****

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The Movie

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Bad Subjects: Recovering the State: Interview with Saskia Sassen

ML: More and more people call themselves "citizens of the world" and
identify with universal values. Does national citizenship make sense
as the state loses power in a globalized world?
SS: The conditions for a transnational citizenship are solidifying. Although
some groups are genuinely transnational, like Internet communities,
world social forums or international volunteer movements, transnational
citizenship is just a component of a much more complex experience:
traditional citizenship. Formal rights with regards to the state continue to
be the crucial element.
The enormous number of people converging from all over the world
produce a sort of "transnationalism in situ": they meet on the street for
the first time, in corporate workplaces, in the neighborhoods of global
cities, or by encountering other immigrants in highly professional jobs. For
example, we can venture to see a relation between the situation of
immigrants and the emergence of political practices of an informal nature.
Immigrants, even illegal ones, often become new political subjects.

65: Protest C ultures

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It's remarkable how the phenomenon of so-called "transnational

citizenship" opens the possibility both to generate new forms of lateral
power among groups with few resources, and to improve transnational
policies mobilizing more and more sectors inside a country.

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82: M(other)hood

ML: You state the necessity to "urbanize the social sciences." To what
does this refer?
SS: To understand social processes, one needs to research and focus on
what happens in cities. Firstly, metropolises are strategic places in the
global economy for several reasons:
a) they are bridges between the nation-state and the world;
b) they are locations for implementing measures to reduce the
influence of large foreign corporations. These measures include
ensuring housing for the impoverished middle class, establishing
taxes for the "new rich" and corporations, promoting civic
responsibility, and guaranteeing worker-oriented labor standards.

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In the second place, the coexistence of huge clusters of power and

poverty give the city a unique political character. Cities clearly show the
contradictions of globalization concentrations of international capital
and increasingly marginalized populations exist side by side.

Marcel Khalife and

Blasphemy

Globalization is tangible in the way that struggles are recurrent from one
city to another; for example, the demands of migrants, gay and lesbian
communities. This is what makes it necessary to research the practice of
citizenship and the role of civil society. The loss of governmental influence
gives way to new forms of power at local or neighborhood levels. Cities
are the places building that new political geography.

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ML: Informal economy is a typically urban phenomenon. Is it

substantial to a decline of civilization or only a "collateral problem"?
SS: The informal economy in global cities is becoming a "spirit" of the new
millennium, even in the richest such as New York. We have technology to
travel throughout the world but we're unable to provide water, food,
vaccines, or jobs for more than three billion people. It's not a
consequence of some scientific inability, but of economic and political
projects that don't pursue common well-being. The new informality in the
Northern big cities, and now also in the South, isn't an invention of the
poor to survive but a substantial characteristic of advanced capitalism.
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Bad Subjects: Recovering the State: Interview with Saskia Sassen

ML: Why did you do your research in Latin America?

SS: I studied the region in order to focus on very specific global
phenomena: migrations, informal economies, economic inequalitiesFor
example, Sao Paulo is a crucial location to explore complex social
processes. Recently, a student of mine finished there an extraordinary
investigation about the relationship between globalization and favelas
(very poor and violent neighborhoods). She did field work in four favelas,
some of them controlled by drug dealers with whom she could negotiate
the conditions to remain inside. She had to leave these neighborhoods
before 7pm, otherwise she might have been killed. I admire her a lot
since she demonstrated how globalization materializes in cities through
processes of informal economy. Her name is Simona Buechler and now
she is a professor at New York University.
ML: How do you explain the attempts of Venezuela, Brazil and
Argentina to strengthen the state's role in social development?
SS: There are two different tendencies in play. Neo-liberalism, along with
International Monetary Fund and US policies, diminished the autonomy of
the nation-state, mainly in the countries of the South. On the other hand,
presidents Hugo Chvez in Venezuela and Luis Incio Lula da Silva in
Brazil want to use to the state as a political base to implement changes
they consider necessary in their nations. A social democratic state could
implement measures and provide resources for projects benefiting the
citizens and local economy.
In this sense, recovering the role of the state is a challenge that can
mobilize popular support, as we have seen in Venezuela and Brazil. The
President of Argentina, Nstor Kirchner, understood this issue when he
announced a review of the privatizations and assets still in state hands,
and changed most of the justices at the Supreme Court in order to
achieve transparency and state legitimization. No politician has made
such a pronouncement over the past decade.
Neo-liberalism reoriented key local elements toward the global financial
markets and opened the way for tremendous earnings by an elite
concentrated primarily in the big metropolises. This elite represents
nearly 20 percent of the inhabitants of the 40 global cities of the world,
like Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Sao Paulo, Seoul, or New York.
The Argentinean crisis that really started in the '90s is one of the
most dramatic instances of the marginalizing nature of neo-liberal
policies. Now the projects we see in Venezuela, Brazil and the one
emerging in Argentina are seeking to distribute national resources to
favor much more than that 20 percent.
ML: Last January 1st. Fidel Castro celebrated the 45 anniversary of
the Cuban Revolution and his rank as the longest-serving president in
the world. Do governments with markedly nationalist policies, such as
the United States or communist Cuba, need an "enemy" to legitimize
their existence?
SS: They need it in a certain way, but their motivations are different.
Cuba is a project of political power with a social mission: the common
well-being. In the United States, one political party wants to hold power
without caring about the costs, because power represents military
control, economic wealth, and ideological influence.
On the other hand, the meaning of each project counts. It's painful to see
so many freedoms eliminated in Cuba, but it has achieved an excellent
medical system and a basic wage for every citizen. That's much more than
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Bad Subjects: Recovering the State: Interview with Saskia Sassen

the United States can show, where we have 50 million under the poverty
line five times the population of the island; 40 million workers without
medical insurance; and much higher child mortality rates in poor
neighborhoods than in Cuba.
It's true that each country has a sort of a necessity to create crisis
atmospheres to justify its government's actions. The Cuban state has an
obsession with power mixed with strong social policy in which many still
believe. In the United States, the measures limiting civil freedoms and
allowing large corporations to exploit resources, as in Iraq, are connected
to the interests of a small group of politicians from the Republican Party
and their associated companies. In this sense, the differences between
these countries are scandalous.
ML: What risk do cities take regarding international terrorism?
SS: Cities are now the favorite target. War inflamed hatred against the
United States, like a boomerang effect. The youth of many suicidal
terrorists is one proof that Iraq's defeat didn't demoralize extremists;
they go on recruiting followers and intensify their attacks. The most
recent attacks in Baghdad or Indonesia demonstrate that innocents are
the ones who continue dying.
The Annual Report on Global Terrorism (2002), from the US State
Department, notes that between 1993 and 2000, 94 percent of the
injuries and 61 percent of deaths from terrorist attacks took place in
cities. Several reasons explain this: these are centers of power, focus
media attention, and are sufficiently complex to hide terrorist movements.
The city has replaced the kidnapped airplane: the new target is the
media show, not the enemy in person.
Cities like New York, London and Paris are targets for terrorism. Since last
year, we can add Kabul, Riyadh, Casablanca, BaliOthers such as Athens,
Istanbul, Rome, Berlin, and Jerusalem belong to other global nets but are
potential victims too.
Every attack broadcast by the media induces its repetition, a fact that
creates a vicious circle. Neither politicians nor military leaders will take the
biggest risks urban populations will. While US policy provokes rage and
hate from other cultures, cities will be targets for terrorist attacks. The US
government is working very hard to make a world that is less safe for
everyone.
Insecurity will also destabilize underdeveloped societies. Many poor
countries suffered shocking economic policies, which desolated traditional
national sectors. Now they will also have to pay the costs of an American
policy against terrorism causing anger and desperation, an ideal breeding
ground for violence. It would be naive to think that the rich and relatively
safe countries in the North will escape the consequences of urban
attacks. No matter how far away we may be, we cannot ignore the
poverty, wars and diseases suffered by the South.

Miguel Lara Hidalgo: Cuban journalist resident in Buenos

Aires-Argentina. BA. in Social Communication (University
of Havana, 1998). Writings in newspaper and magazines from
Cuba, Peru, US and Argentina. Director of Communication,
Argentinean Association of Entrepreneurs. Ex-Journalistic
Director of EMPRENDER TV program (Channel 7 Argentina).
Ex-professor of the School of Communication at the
University of Havana.

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