Re: jwsr. globalization of consciousness

Is this an idealist argument? Does a revolution materialize because
people suddenly begin believing they're something that they are not
yet? Does the global economy materialize because people suddenly begin
believing in a global economy?

The early development of the terms mentioned in the post is explained by
the early development of a world-system under capitalism. Capitalism was a
world market and a world economy centuries ago. And human beings have been
globalizing several dozens of thousands of years now.

Social science phrases do not govern the development of social reality.

Andy Austin

On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, g kohler wrote:

>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
>
>
>