Part I: The Afterlife of Globalization (original) (raw)
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The international journal of interdisciplinary global studies, 2020
The last decade of the twentieth century was a momentous period in contemporary history. A revolutionary wave that started in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere, led to the end of Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe, and ultimately the collapse, in 1991, of the Soviet Union itself. Today, the contrast between the current direction that the world is headed and the accelerated globalization of the 1990s is pronounced. While in the aftermath of the Soviet Bloc's defeat, the discourse of capitalist triumphalism prevailed-with Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis as its most influential example (Fukuyama 1992)three decades on, more cautious assessments are in order. Although global capitalism-especially of a particular, neoliberal kind-has maintained its tight grip over almost the entire globe, the obituaries written in the early 1990s, for social democracy, the state, the nation, sometimes modernity itself, now seem utterly premature. Far from homogenizing the world, the processes of globalization have clashed with tendencies toward fragmentation, globalism has been undermined by nationalism, and the hegemony of free-market economics is often described as zombie-like, exhausted by challenges both on the right and the left (Peck 2014). The articles gathered together in this special issue of the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies look back at the hopes that were invested in the new world of the 1990s as it was emerging out of the ashes of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, consider what went wrong to produce its unforeseen dysfunctions, and postulate some tentative ways to get out of the multiple crises we find ourselves in at the outset of the 2020s. In this introductory article we map the insights provided in the following four contributions to this issue-by Darren J. O'Byrne, Paul Kennedy, Andrew Z. Katz, and Zdzisław Mach-while complementing them with our own observations. The first part takes a brief look at how the 1990s were interpreted by intellectuals and commentators at that time. The second part descends from the realm of dreams to the realities on the ground and sheds some light on recent developments, including the rise of national populism. Finally, the third part, which is more explicitly normative in nature, takes a glimpse into the future. When the World Was Being Flattened The end of the Cold War opened the way to a far-reaching and multidimensional social transformation on both sides of the former geopolitical divide (Soborski 2013). Perhaps most importantly, the world then, as much as now, was subject to rapid advances in the means of
Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy, 2015
Exit from Globalization moves from theory to practice: from questions of where incorrigible knowledge of substantive economic life derives and how that knowledge is put towards making a progressive, redistributive, eco-sustainable future of human flourishing. Westra discards at the outset views that the root of current economic ills is the old devil we know, capitalism. Rather, he maintains the neoliberal decades spawned a "Merchant of Venice" economic excrescence bent upon expropriation and rent seeking which will scrape all the flesh from the bones of humanity if not stopped dead in its tracks. En route to providing a viable design for the human future in line with transformatory demands of socialists and Greens, Westra exorcizes both Soviet demons and ghosts of neoliberal ideologues past which lent support to the position that there is no alternative to "the market". Exit from Globalization shows in a clear and compelling fashion that while debates over the possibility of another, potentially socialist, world swirl around this or that grand society-wide scheme, the fact is that creative future directed thinking has at its disposal several economic principles that transformatory actors may choose from and combine in various ways to remake human economic life. The book concludes with an examination of the various social constituencies currently supporting radical change and explores the narrowing pathways to bring change about.
Language, individual & society, 2016
Globalization is one of the most important contemporary megatrends. Paradoxically, it is still not fully known. In my talk I will show that “globalization” is an ambiguous term. I want to highlight three aspects of globalization: economic, political and cultural. The assessment of globalization in these aspects is not unambiguous because globalization itself is not isomorphic. Thus in the context of globalization there is a place both: for a clash of civilizations and for their homogenization; for ecological disasters and for extraordinary actions saving the environment; for the triumph of liberalism and free market capitalism and for counter-reactions to them; for the stability of nation states and for the emergence of powerful, private, non-state agents.
Cooperation and Conflict, 2002
This article considers the future of 'globalization', conceived here as processes promoting international interconnectedness. Three questions are examined. First, is contemporary globalization unusual compared to past episodes such as 1850-1914? Then there was rapid growth in trade, capital flows and migration comparable to or greater than today. There was also a policy backlash and the widespread adoption of protectionist policies. Second, are contemporary globalization processes undermining national economies and thus hollowing out states? On the contrary, the major states are reinforced in their role of international actors. However, both the global economy and national governments will face crucial challenges during this century, the chief of which is climate change. Such changes will tend to foster conflict and thus reinforce the role of the state, but in a context where governance at every level will be harder to achieve. Third, is economic globalization likely to increase or decrease? Evidence about the effects of borders and the limits to trade expansion are presented, which indicate that we could be close to the limits of feasible globalization.
The Future of Globalization: Seeking Pathways of Transformation
T he phenomenon of globalization is widely recognized as the dominant rubric for describing life in the twenty-first century, yet fierce debates are currently being waged over its definition and beneficence to society. This essay offers a typology of four competing globalization theoriesneoliberal, development, earthist, and postcolonial-that currently dominate globalization discourses and briefly sketches the constituencies, ideological underpinnings, and moral vision of each as background. It then critiques these theories using a set of normative criteria offered by the author. These criteria are framed to answer the question "What constitutes the good life?" and are rooted in a feminist, Christian ethical analysis of globalization. They delineate a democratized understanding of power as the context of moral agency, define humanity's purpose as caring for the planet, and establish that human flourishing is evidenced by the social well-being of people. The paper concludes by suggesting some pathways of transformation that build on these criteria.
Modern-Day Globalization: Its Murky Underpinnings and Its Even More Unsavory Future
Dialogo, 2023
By spelling out the link between Transhumanism, the 4th Industrial revolution, and globalism, which together form the economic thrust of mankind’s projected future, this paper invites a rethink about the direction envisaged by modern-day society. The underlying linking factor of these enterprises is the Humanist movement that, like Transhumanism, shares a Utopian view of the world and supplies the relative ethical underpinning for these ‘so-called’ new advances. Three Manifestos lay out the objectives of the Humanist Association describing it as a religion that is supposed to replace other older deity-based religions. Its progressive philosophy of life without theism or other supernational beliefs leads to a break with the past and affirms humans' "ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfilment that aspire to the greater good.” But can we live ethical lives where the accent is on fulfilling only our personal desires, which include the right to unrestricted contraception, abortion and divorce and death with dignity eg. Euthanasia and suicide? Ethical relativism is taken to a new extreme by Transhumanism, which rests on the idea that humans should embrace self-directed human evolution using technology to transcend their current natural state and limitations, ie disease, ageing, and even death. According to this author, it is time we moved beyond the limited materialist view, not through global movements like Humanism and Transhumanism, but through exploring and discovering our spiritual nature and the spiritual underpinning of reality. Through this endeavor, we can learn to live in harmony with each other and nature, where the accent is on service to others. Based on experience, we soon realize that our happiness depends on others being happy and includes looking after the weak, the aged, and the infirm. Ethical relativism and lack of clear values will not get us there; on the contrary, they will probably lead to hell on earth.
The possible paths of a new globalization
International Journal of Development and Sustainability, 7(9), 2310–2333, 2018
This paper is focused on the structural and evolutionary examination of the current global crisis and restructuring by supporting in terms of methodology that, first, in every interpretation of the global crisis we ought to analyze and perceive the historical and evolutionary character the dynamics of the global socioeconomic space have while, second, all the dynamic dimensions of the modern world-economic, technological, social and geopolitical-should be examined together, in their narrow dialectic co-adaptation and co-evolution. The multi-faceted crises of every socioeconomic system are both the products and the producers of globalization crisis over a co-determinatory and co-evolutionary course, unfolding inside a contemporary capitalism which intensifies unceasingly the dialectic reproduction of the global interdependence. This crisis of this capitalism is sustained, nourished and reproduced by the absence of a "new wave" of effective innovations, throughout all the levels of socioeconomic activity. The overcoming of the crisis therefore requires prior installation and assimilation of new, effective change management mechanisms at all levels of contemporary reality. Based on the available data it is estimated that the challenge of building a new global developmental trajectory engages with all the levels of analysis and intervention: the individual and the collective, the material and the symbolic, the national and the local, the social and the economic, the microeconomic and the macroeconomic, the cultural and the political. The only sustainable way out of the global crisis goes through the effort to adapt progressively to a new evolutionary thinking of perceiving the global crisis dynamics, which represent the internal forces of innovation and effective change management within every socioeconomic system and on a planetary scale and across every level of action.