BREAK THE CHAINS OF OPPRESION AND THE YOKE OF ...

governments in southern countries express their emancipated freedom in rejecting
development programs from the North on the grounds that the link to respect for
human rights or health and safety regulation is pure paternalism; they then turn
around and accept a no-strings-attached program from China, allowing their own
people to work without the benefit of health and safety regulations. They must
therefore be prepared to face questions about their moral integrity and a discussion
about who is actually empire and what instruments it uses.
On the other hand, the constant reference to abuses – corruption, lack of transparency
and disloyalty toward their own citizens, as is often heard in discussions
in the North about the South, cannot deny – let alone eliminate – the fact that
many people in countries of the South live in situations of oppression and threat
to their livelihoods. Nor is the very justified question about the responsibility of
affluent countries of the North answered or in any way settled. When brothers
and sisters “on the one side” disparage good intentions with knee-jerk anti-colonialist
reactions, those “on the other side” withdraw from critical reflection by
making sweeping accusations of corruption.
Apart from these arenas of conflict management among brothers and sisters it
may be helpful to note that the approach to analyzing structures of globalization
of people in the North is completely different to that in the South. Argentine
theologian René Krüger describes it as follows:
In the North, a method of evaluation is frequently used which sets the positive and negative
aspects and elements of neoliberal globalization side by side, and then tries to
advise how to check the negative effects and combat the disadvantages, in line with the
logic “keep the good and correct the bad.” (…) In contrast, attention in the South of
the globe is repeatedly drawn to the extensive negative effects of the globalized world
economic system.
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The subjection of all humanity and nature to the logic of barefaced acquisition of
ever more capital is denounced as inhumane, sinful and contemptuous of life. 11
Krüger calls the approach of the North “an abstract quest for truth” and thus an
“academic debate”, far removed from real life and of no use. The “South’s
hermeneutic approach”, by contrast, stems from “the concrete urgency of survival
and the search for justice, for which the starting point lies in analysis of the living
conditions of human beings who have been harmed by neoliberal globalization.” 12
Both approaches have their weaknesses. Whoever cool-headedly analyzes
the ranking of globalization’s advantages and disadvantages misses some essential
points, is not touched inwardly by the suffering of those who are affected,
and does not need to open up to their lament or to his/her own responsibili-
11 Krüger, René: The biblical and theological significance of the Accra Confession: a perspective
from the south, In: Reformed World, 226, Volume 55 (3) Sept. 2005.
12 Ibid., 227.
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– Empire - Provocation with a Perspective – 75