jwsr. globalization of consciousness

from the current issue of jwsr. quotation from Chase-Dunn: "Today the term
'world economy', 'world market', and 'globalization' are commonplace,
appearing in the sound-bites of politicians, media commentators, and
unemployed workers alike. But few know that the most important source for
these phrases lies with work started by sociologists in the early
Seventies."

This reminds me of a study by Richard Merritt who
studied the prelude to the American Revolution 1776. He examined newspapers
of the American colonies and tried to find out at what time the American
settlers stopped thinking of themselves as British subjects and started to
think of themselves as Americans. He used some form of content analysis and
found a stunning switch in consciousness about two decades before the
revolution. Merrit called that a "symbol revolution" in which the
self-identification as colonial subjects of the British Crown in 13 separate
British colonies was replaced by self-identification as "Americans". I see a
parallel between that and the change in consciousness over the past two
decades referred to by Chase-Dunn. "Global" has become a household word,
like "American" became a household word in the British colonies of North
America. Since it took about two decades for the American leap in
consciousness to get translated into a revolution, one wonders whether we
are at the verge of some major earthquake-like changes in the global arena,
based
on a change of consciousness, awareness, self-perception, perception of
the world we live in?

-gert kohler