Re: globalization

Tacer@alumni.bilkent.edu.tr Wrote

<Even if our globalization is 5000 years old, we must admit that she has grown up quite fast for [the] last hundred years. From my point of view, the unchanging parts of the story are brief … Globalisation always existed. Nevertheless, those similarities, do they really suffice to draw the boundaries of the term itself?>

Yes, we do see this kind of global consolidation in a political and corporate sense within the 20^th century.  But to say that this period of dev’p somehow constitutes the real growth and maturation of the global dynamic is risky.  What was the rest of history before that point – mere embryonic development that only kicked into full gear when we reached the year 1900 CE, and the contemporary real world economy was birthed? … As it is, we know world-systemic relationship reach back farther into time than the relatively recent spectacle of 20^th century global, economic history.

<There is an infertile discussion among world-systems scholars on the beginnings of world-system chronology. In my opinion, it does not really matter if globalisation has been present for 150 years, 500 years, 5000 years or Neolithic ages …we might find ourselves discussing … – for what reason? Does it help us to understand the essence of capital accumulation process more fully? Or does it provide a full-fledged analysis of market formation in early civilisations? Again, I doubt it does…>

But this discussion of chronology isn’t infertile.  The further back in time we trace WS origins, the more evident it should become to us that such phenomena are behaviorally and habitually rooted in human social-economic character?  If we end up saying the real WS only came of its own and into its own in the Twentieth Century, then we’ll be hard pressed to argue that it [and globalization] isn’t anything other than a constructionist phantasm produced through the machinations of modern media and elite string-pullers, and that is not the case.

Unless we look to 50, 500, 5000, 10000, or 200000 years ago, our world systemic analytical tools are rendered impotent.  The only utility of sticking to 100, 150, and 500 years ago in discussing world-systems and globalization is ideologically, politically, and economic-corporate financially grounded.  Yes, it’s easy to exclusively discuss capitalism, corporatism, and modern politics in that light; but does it analytically and systematically tell us anything key about the human economic condition?  I don’t think so.  Discussing “capital[istic] accumulation”, et al does us good as a means of considering modern finance, investment, and quasi political-economic subjects from an contemporary, Eurocentric viewpoint; unfortunately it can’t account for the rest of human economic behavior or world history.  And, this omission does matter.  If an intellectual tool does not account for the rest of the world or human history/ecology, then how exactly will it possibly be able to arrive at the “essence” of human economic activity?

The “Big[ger] History” – of issues from Paleolithic/Neolithic human activity and non-human animal activities - provides the basic (environmental) context out of which human behavior, human ecology, economic activity, and world systemic (structures/operations) arose.

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Luke Rondinaro, Group Facilitator, The Consilience Projects

www.topica.com/lists/consiliencep

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