Globalised Exploitation

The so-called “big discoveries” started a race to establish colonies worldwide. Colonisation harboured imperialism, which facilitated brutal exploitation through the extraction of natural and human resources. Attempts to “justify” colonisation gave rise to further racist explanations. With the phrase “the irony of globalisation”, I refer to some ambiguity encapsulated in this notion. On the one hand, globalisation seems to indicate solidarity, to embrace the perception that we are all in it together, and to signal a universal concern for each other. On the other hand, processes of globalisation demonstrate brutal forms of exclusion and exploitation. The globalised world is a world apart. Processes of globalisation include the automatisation of production processes, financial transactions, and the free movements of ownership. Such processes are rooted in mathematics-based technologies. Mathematics is deeply embedded in global networking and in all its accompanying ambiguities.