ProtoSociology Vol 33 Borders of Global Theory Edited by Barrie Axford Abstracts (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Potential Risks of the Local in the Global Information Society
Journal of Social Philosophy, 2000
Globalization has become a concept for describing the changes taking place in the global economy. These changes are worldwide in capital and financial systems and in prices of raw materials, food, goods, and services. These changes are increasingly unpredictable and affect strongly the local and national economies. They are almost without exception discussed in the framework of the global economy, leaving the local economy and society almost no space. Globalization is seen as a process integrating local economies into the world economy. It seems to refer to a space where the global and the local interact, and the means of interaction is information and communication technology (ICT). Is globalization a process without an end, and how is it taking place? What kind of space is the global village as an economic space, referring to Marshall McLuhan's popular term ?
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...
Sociological Theory, 2002
I sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that will discuss the fundamental transformations in the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory features and oppressive and negative attributes. This requires articulations of the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization and the ways that globalization both is imposed from above and yet can be contested and reconfigured from below. I argue that the key to understanding globalization is theorizing it as at once a product of technological revolution and the global restructuring of capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural features are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both technological and economic determinism and all one-sided optics of globalization in favor of a view that theorizes globalization as a highly complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations, as well as one involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies, cultural forms, and people.
The Expansion of ICT: A New Framework of Inclusion and Exclusion from the Global Realm
International Journal of Criminology and Sociological Theory, 2013
The proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their interaction with certain social systems, led to the emergence of the phenomenon of globalization. Globalization lays on a technological infrastructure that makes it possible, by minimizing the time needed for communication and inter-systemic interactions. This also, has led to a strong support of the global financial system to the ICT industry, so that the latter can provide faster applications at any level of networking, thus putting both globalization and the ICT industry in an accelerating mutual development. This paper, examines the problems certain social systems face into this new environment, due to the structural coupling of those systems with a technological backbone that functions as a system of inclusion (and thus exclusion as well) of those social systems which do not conceive of the ICT as a prerequisite for their own continuation. That situation is challenging the political subsystems, as to their ability to govern the social systems through their way towards a global society. The paper initially presents the state of globalization in a brief way and next introduces some of the basic concepts of contemporary systems theory. At the rest parts, we examine the problems posed to the basic social system-reconstituting functions by the "real-time" communications global network and finally we introduce some preliminary thoughts about the ways the political system (or any other management system for the matter) can try to solve those problems.
Information Society as a Global Policy Agenda: What Does It Tell Us About the Age of Globalization?
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2007
The issue of information society commands worldwide attention: diverse constituencies work at closing the gaps in access to and in use of digital technology. Why are such efforts directed specifically at the issue of the information society? In this article I argue that the redirection of world society's attention towards this issue is related to the correspondence between the dimensions of globalization and those of the field of information and communications technologies. Specifically, I highlight five such shared dimensions: economic transactions, political relations, globality, networks, and world norms. In this way, the theme of information society was quickly defined as a global social problem because it corresponds to the themes of the era of globalization. I also argue that while various realist theories of globalization focus solely on the dimensions of economic and political transactions, world society theory expands on these by highlighting the cultural and institutio...