Panel One: The Implications of the Coronavirus Outbreak on Globalization

• Author: Yong Wang
• Position: Professor of East China University of Political Science and Law
• Pages: 4-20

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Panel One: The Implications of the Coronavirus Outbreak on

Globalization1

Chair: Yong Wang (Professor of East China University of Political Science and Law)

1. COVID-19 as the Vanishing Mediator of Globalization

Douglas de Castro

Greetings from Brazil; it’s very good to be here with you tonight or this morning.

This representation is a part of a larger research agenda that I’ve been conducting in Brazil,

which investigates the Bandung spirit in the relationship between Latin America and China.

The methodology is the epistemological stance in my paper. It is a grounded theory, which

means that I’m looking into data, the quantitative data, watching what emerges from data, and

a postcolonialism approach, especially the third world approach to international law. Despite

working with the grounded theory, I’ve developed the hypothesis that COVID -19 emerges as

a vanishing mediator, which I will explain later. The concept of the globalization process, new

conditions, and new ideas that emerge to rethink the status of the globalization process melt

into the air, as Mark and Elsa post in their manifesto.

First of all, talking about globalization is to bring the subject of modernity, or I should

say, the crisis of modernity. For which reason? Automaticity. Automaticity will bring

happiness and progress to humanity, and this is not what we’ve been observing, especially

during the second world war. It is more like rationalism, creating this monster, and after the

creation, it becomes irrational. And that’s why I put it here, the picture of Frankenstein. The

monster is created by rational thinking, but as soon as it is brought to life, it is alive, it becomes

irrational and represents the crisis of the modernity project.

I think also, postmodernism is not the answer. I mean, deconstruct globalization. So, we

need to just think about the crisis and what we’re going to replace when we deconstruct

globalization to mention the postmodernism postulate. My argument is that COVID-19 is a

vanishing mediator. The quote here from Etienne Ballbar in which who says that the vanishing

mediator is the figure, admittedly presented in speculative terms of a transit or institution force

for community or spiritual formation. That creates conditions for a new society and a new

civilization standard, albeit on the horizon and in the vocabulary of the best, reorganizing the

elements inherited from the institution itself that has to be overcome. When we look into

COVID-19, we look into the responses in two levels of analysis. The first one is international.

When we observe at the international level, we see an apathy of initiatives store common global

problems or complex issues. In regards to COVID-19, if we look into the climate change

regime, we can choose to observe that apathy. When we look from the national level, we see

populist agendas and the disregard, two independences. And something more serious, I should

then point out the approach of securitization of COVID-19. Putting a sanitary issue in the

political agenda justifies the war against COVID-19, so since we are in work with COVID-19,

many instruments detrimental to fundamental rights are justified within this framework.

COVID-19 has the vanishing mediator because we’re looking into a potential and

constructive way in which we can work this out within this framework, the Bandung spirit,

which rejects in period colonial stances and also the constructivism that looks into ideas and

1 This content was transcribed by Yaping Wang, Yijing Zhu and Yier Ji, all from East China University of

Political Science and Law.

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vcapabilities are necessary, but placing a stronger approach to ideas and shared experiences.

So, bring the bricks to be my empirical stands to my argument.

Sharing experiences within developed countries is a reality. We tend to observe that

because as we look to COVID-19 within the south, a framework, we tend to see the viable

ability of the people, but also, we tend to see ingenuity. If we have most of the vaccines

developing out of the 150 initiatives, we tend to see the Russian one, the Chinese one, the

Indian one. So, of course, there is more viable ability in our region, but also we tend to see

ingenuity. And this is part of the optimism that I bring into this discussion which unlocks the

potential for the corporation and solidarity, which is embedded with the Bandung spirit.

Regional responses to regional problems or in other words, adding a level of analysis to the

problem. I’ve been arguing for quite some time that international law doesn’t respond to all of

the challenges or national law, so we should consider more. This is a regional level of analysis

in which problems can be solved more easily as complex as they are.

Thank you!

(By Douglas de Castro, Visiting Scholar at Foundation for Law and International Affairs;

Professor of Law at Ambra University).

2. A Shift in the Hierarchy of Needs Unleashed by COVID-19: From

Maslow to Max Neef in Search of Transcendence

Jean-Pierre Doussoulin

Hello everyone, let me just start to explain how I’m thinking about the relationship

between the hierarchy of needs, concepts, and the comments. COVID-19 was formally called

a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. Today, the number

of infected cases has passed ninety million and continues to rise. The impact of the disease is

far below their implications, not like other ones, including the Spanish flu. It has a much

powerful impact on society. Every aspect of the economy and society is affected by it, including

economic rewind, contraction in the rear economic activity, and lower energy system. So, due

to this pandemic, we can note the fate of the question and conversation related to COVID-19.

I think that consciousness has shifted towards survival and transcendence. On the surface,

I’m sure that all of the activities and all initiatives have shifted away from the menace to our

planet. It was changed toward the immediate and more tangible danger to our life under

COVID-19. Speaking about the crisis, relationships between the government are covered by

focusing on the response. We can discuss a large period of the debate and speech around the

response to human needs during the crisis.

As a consequence of this uncertain world, people are desirable for transcendence and

humans need hierarchy and satisfiers changed after the pandemic. This can be seen as a result

of the natural change in the behaviors and perspectives that can positively impact the biosphere

and now decide for the sentence from a positive side.

This expert authority research analyzed the change in the hierarchy of needs as a result of

COVID-19. My presentation focused on the challenge that followed this transformation. This

challenge is a question of needs and satisfaction if you trade the dialogue space on human needs.

Let me continue with sending well-known theory of human needs. First, I would like to present

a famous person from Maslow who studies positive human qualities and the life of people. In

1954, Maslow created the theory of human needs and expressed the theory in his book

Motivation and Personality.

This taxonomy is based on this work on human-scale development and was published for

the first time in 1986. The structure of Maslow’s approach proposes talking about the urgency

of sustainability of the planet towards an ideal of transcendence, not only human transcendence