Globalization (Hinduism) (original) (raw)
The Becoming of a Global World: Technology / Networks / Power / Life
2007
The Becoming of a Global World / 31 Actualization means contingency. Actualization, that is, what happens does not follow a plan of progress. Our history 'has neither departure nor arrival, origin nor destination' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 293). As such, globalization may be understood as a process without begin or end. Globalization is not a process that develops in a linear fashion, to say, from 'the West to the Rest'. 11 Gellner (1964: 12-3) remarked, more than forty years ago, that 'for two centuries it has been difficult for anyone from the West to 'think about human affairs without the image of an all embracing upward growth […]. It seemed a natural conclusion from the pattern of Western history, which was generally treated as the history of humanity. Western history seems to have a certain continuity and a certain persistent upward swing […]. Emerging from the river valleys of the Middle East, the story of civilization seems one of continuous upward growth, only occasionally interrupted by plateaus or even retrogressions: history seemed to creep gently around the shores of the Mediterranean and then up to the Atlantic coast, things getting better and better. Oriental Empires, the Greeks, the Romans, Christianity, the dark ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, industrialization […] all this is extremely familiar and still forms the background image of history for most of us.' History is not progressive; it does not develop like a ready-made plan. Rather than defining globalization as originating from a certain point, as notions like Westernization (or Americanization) imply, we have to acknowledge that 'human history did not follow a straight line […] on the contrary, at each bifurcation alternative stable states were possible, and once actualized, they coexisted and interacted with one another' (De Landa, 1997: 16). As such, it would be better to speak of becomings instead of Becoming. Becoming stresses the contingent nature of globalization, and the multiple actualizations that the de-and reterritorialization of flows bring forward. Just as human history is not marked by stages, or a plan of progress, human geography is not marked by bounded territories, but rather made of a multiplicity flows and the destratifications and restratifications they undergo (De Landa, 1997: 268). There is no original territory of globalization, no 'primordial totality that once existed, or a final one, that awaits us at some future date' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977: 42). By withdrawing from usually modern national state centric definitions of territory we can see how de-and reterritorialization forces constitute particular time-spaces: local, national, regional and global
19 Globalization : Interconnected Worlds
2008
Although in its simplistic sense globalization refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnectedness, such a definition begs further elaboration. ... Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional. At one end of the continuum lie social and economic relations and networks which are organized on a local and/or national basis; at the other end lie social and economic relations and networks which crystallize on the wider scale of regional and global interactions. Globalization can be taken to refer to those spatio-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents. Without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of this term. ... A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements: extensity (stretching), intensity, veloci...
The usefulness of globalization as an analytical concept has largely been eclipsed by its growing fashionableness. The term's currency has distended its meaning to the point where it has gained the studied ambiguity and diffuseness of an advertiser's slogan. When powerful interests equate globalization with the progression of human freedom even as they work to insulate their institutions from political intervention, there is reason to believe that, as a label for contemporary social changes, globalization obscures more than it illuminates. Perhaps like the similarly popular phrase "peace through commerce," which in today's neoliberal climate really means "commerce through pacification," the meaning of globalization has to be inverted to be made useful. What does globalization mean? Mavbe rather than the growing cohesion of a world order, the word refers to the breakdown of order on a previously unimagined scale. At the very least, in its current uses "globalization" is replete with ambiguities and contradictions that must be disentangled to make the term useful for understanding the contemporary socio-cultural scene.