Oppositional Postmodernism and Globalizations

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2008

Varieties of world-making: beyond globalization, 2007

This article replies to an earlier forum (International Politics (42.3) on ‘Globalization Theory: a Post Mortem’. Whereas the ’Post Mortem’ had criticized Globalization Theory largely for its neglect of Classical Social Theory’s achievements, the current paper emphasizes its reproduction of one of Classical Social Theory’s greatest limitations: the failure to incorporate ‘the international’ into its theorization of historical development. This limitation, it is argued, may be overcome using the idea of ’uneven and combined development’, an idea which is first reformulated (in order to re-connect the premises of social and international theory), and then used as a vantage point from which to respond to criticisms of the ‘Post Mortem’. ‘The international’, it turns out, is not the fading reality postulated by Globalization Theory but rather a fundamental dimension of social existence that IR, uniquely among the social sciences, encounters as its core subject matter.

2011

Suggesting cultural analysis of the phenomenon of globalization needs to take into account more than studies of subjectivity and communications technology, the author suggests a deconstructive methodology that seeks reconciliation of postmodernism with structuralism and idealism with materialism. Demonstrating points of contact between various social actors in the globalization arena, a sketch is made of the state as a pluralist agent articulating the process of globalizing capital. Motivations to globalize are said to point to a real social by which the political structure of the state is revealed. Subversion of the dominant discourse through self-determined practices of liberty are suggested as a means of constructing alternativesto global capital. Keywords: culture; state; globalization; resistance; social change An opportunity exists for communications and cultural scholars to contribute more poignant critiques to the discourse of globalization of capital and suggest

Globalizations

Theorizing globalization in all its contradictions and unevenness is still at a very formative stage. Too many theories are either characterized by reductive appropriations of the phenomenon or by studied vagueness. This article attempts to answer the question how can we set up a method for understanding such a variable set of processes associated with globalization(s) while still recognizing broad and changing dominant patterns of practice across world history. The article begins with the apparently simple issue of defining globalization, suggesting that definitional issues often hide a multitude of methodological questions. It then goes onto to develop a series of propositions about the nature of globalization and how we might move from detailed empirical studies of different social processes of extension across world space and time to an understanding of the changing nature of the spatiality and temporality itself. This is linked to an argument about the structures of power and subjection.

Journal of Globalization Studies, 2018

This chapter proposes that humanity has entered a new historical epoch in the evolution of the world-system, one defined by the collapse of the modern world-system. It conceptualizes neoliberal globalization as the final historical phase of the modern world-system. In extreme overshoot and oscillation, the modern world-system’s rule set has become unstable, making for an epistemological ‘Time of the Posts.’ The instability raises questions about how the deep structural changes of the modern world-system’s collapse will affect the meaning of human experience. The essay considers the experience of alienation, one of modernity’s defining features, and its relationship to the forms of knowledge and experience held by those consigned to the periphery of the modern world-system. Building from a post-colonial perspective, this chapter advances the idea of ‘transmodernity’ as the condition and ‘other knowledge’ of the peripherals that emerges from modernity’s alienation. It concludes with c...

Suppose a particular model of globalization implicitly includes elements contradicting the main claims made by its leading proponents. Establishing this would constitute a criticism of the framework internal to the framework itself, an immanent critique. Suppose further that some other position explicitly addressed these immanent contradictions. There would then be a systematic relationship between the two, justifying a theoretical progression from one to the other. If this second position in its turn were implicitly beset by immanent contradictions explicitly addressed in a third theoretical framework, the systematic progression could be continued. Such an ordering may be termed ‘dialectical’ since it is constructed by means of ‘determinate negation’, the central principle of dialectical methodology. In so far as this sort of ordering does not reconstruct a historical progression, it is an example of ‘systematic’ rather than historical dialectics. In this paper a systematic dialectic of positions in the globalization debate is developed. (From Dialectics for a New Century, edited by Bertell Ollman and Tony Smith, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007.) [The arguments here are developed at much greater length in Globalisation: A Systematic Dialectical Account (Brill 2005, Haymarket 2009)] .

Acta Sociologica, 2000

Pensamiento Educativo: Revista de Investigación Educacional Latinoamericana, 2014

Most theories of globalization are rooted in one of two philosophical schools of thought: critical theory or post-structuralism. Regardless of the advantages of these, one major disadvantage is the extreme metaphysics of otherness. This metaphysics manifests as a denial of the importance of subjectivity, particularly as construed in the western philosophical tradition from the dawn of the modern era. While there are problems with extreme notions of subjectivity, no doubt, the opposite notion of an extreme anti-subjectivity is unpalatable. In this article, I will discuss why I think Pragmatism as a school of thought ably navigates the rocky shoals of the subjectivityanti-subjectivity divide and provides a better foundation for theories of globalization than otherwise.

Canadian Social Science, 2005

Abstract: 'Globalization' -a term that entered popular discourse in the late 1980s has certainly been become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of the new millennium. The nature and impact of globalization has been the subject matter of profound debates and concerns in economic, political, cultural studies and academic circles since the mid-1990s. However, mainstream economic thought promises that globalization would lift the poor above poverty, dissolve dictatorship, protect the environment, integrate cultures, and reverse the growing gap between rich and poor countries of the world. But in reality, globalization has brought about the devastating destruction of the traditions, the continued subordination of poorer nations and regions by richer countries of the west, environmental degradation, and posed a serious threat to indigenous and non-western cultures and economies. The globalization has resulted in the penetration and expansion of western food, film, clothing, mus...