(DOWNLOAD) "Towards Global Diversity (Globalization) (Editorial)" by Arena Journal # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Towards Global Diversity (Globalization) (Editorial)
- Author : Arena Journal
- Release Date : January 22, 1999
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,Politics & Current Events,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 170 KB
Description
The upheaval within social life which we associate with the term globalization has now been building up for at least two decades. Tied structurally to cultural and technological developments which have issued in the information and communications revolution, this upheaval has produced effects in every sphere of social experience. Arguably, amongst many other things, it dealt the final blow to those Soviet-influenced state structures which had, for better or worse, represented a blockage to full-scale capitalist hegemony. A new social and economic order, combining modern capitalist markets and productive settings with postmodern high technologies emerging from the high sciences, offered utterly novel ways of living, consuming and producing. These have captured the social and political imagination of a generation. Yet this shift in ways of life has seen the rise of a hyper-individualism and the emergence of processes which shatter established community structures, workplaces and the natural environment. Individuals and communities--even generations--have been affected as these forces displace our conceptions of social and economic development, as well as our sense of selfhood. While at first helpless before processes which could barely be named, slowly but surely signs of social resistance to globalization have gathered pace. In stark contrast to the bemused and ineffectual responses of left social democrats and socialists in the 80s seeking to blunt strategies like those of Margaret Thatcher, diffuse movements--hardly of the Right or Left--are now actively removing from office hard-nosed proponents of globalization. Lacking a social policy, and also largely lacking a social perspective, these movements nevertheless know what they are against. They have organized sufficiently to make such a political impact that they are now feared by mainstream politicians. The recent congress of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle (or its follow up in Davos) marks a further stage in the emergence of such movements of resistance in search of a viable perspective and policy in the face of the global juggernaut.