Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

164 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Feminist economists such as Swasti Mitter and Celia Ng have conducted
extensive empirical research on employment in ICT-based industries in
the South to argue for greater state intervention to improve the ‘quality
and quantity’ of jobs for women workers fostering sustainable as opposed
to export-led development. 15
Deliberation through difference: lessons for transnational public
interest advocates
Feminist advocacy within the WSIS process shows the ways in which
redistributive claims over appropriate technology and basic ICT access
are deeply entangled in claims for recognition marked by gender, class,
race and nationality, among other differences. We have argued that two
decades of debates over representation within transnational civil society
have given advocates for gender justice a wider perspective on how to
challenge the Eurocentric claims of human rights without abandoning
an emancipatory vision of social justice. The notion that both states and
corporations need to be held accountable to universal principles of social
justice is an indisputably positive outcome of the ‘MacBride legacy’. We
have argued that building on this legacy, we must recognize the need for
a normative framework of social justice that incorporates recognition,
redistribution and representation as linking issues of ‘development’ with
concerns about individual and community ‘rights’.
If we consider the issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), for instance,
we can see how expansive redistributive claims coupled with claims
for recognition based on community rights can successfully challenge IS
discourse and practice. Relevant to this discussion is the fact that civil
society organizations have worked with state actors, specifically states
where there are vibrant social movements engaged in policy-making
more broadly – in this case Argentina, Brazil, India and South Africa,
among others. Since the 1986 signing of the controversial TRIPS Agreement
in the GATT strongly advocated by the US and its Northern allies,
Southern nation-states have formed alliances among themselves and also
with civil society organizations to oppose the implementation of freetrade
norms, especially in the area of agricultural seeds and medicine.
Northern nations and TNCs have meanwhile pushed for patenting of
plants and other living organisms against arguments for community use
of resources and the need for affordable transfer of technologies to promote
economic and technological development (Shashikanth 2005). The
battle over TRIPs has taken place at the WTO and more recently at
WIPO, where Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil were successful in 2004 of
convincing the general assembly to adopt a resolution that established a