Mr. Ventrone
How do you know beforehand its a myth when you are still
gathering definitions. Strange way of doing research.
Mr. Stokes wrote:
Dear Mr.. Ventrone,
By referring to globalization as a myth in the title of
your proposed dissertation, you demonstrate that you have formed your conclusions
ahead of your research. The fact that you would be soliciting definitions
of globalization suggests, furthermore, that you are at a very early stage
in your research. Doesn't it get boring to do research when you already
know the answer? At least some variations of globalization are probably
fanciful and even politically useful, but it does not strike me that you
have yet earned the right to draw such a conclusion.
R. Stokes
Dear sirs.
I have to excuse myself for the poverty of my "call
for definitions". I strongly appreciated the honesty of your reproachs,
but I don't think I deserve them.
I am currently finishing my dissertation, not beginning
it, and if I'm still looking for definitions, this is only to provide the
reader with the widest range of definitions I can. Of course, I already
had collected many of them.
However, when you wrote that "I demonstrate
that I had formed
my conclusions ahead of my
research", you are partially right. I don't think that our individual and
collective interests and concerns are casual. The very choice of any "object"
of analysis implies assuming it as problematic. Problematic for someone.
Can we approach this "object" with a tabula rasa mind? Aren't our
hypotheses preliminary conclusions? I don't think we can free ourselves
from the particular interests, concerns and biases that drive our research
work. Must we? The "honesty" of our work, I believe, is in the measure
in which we succeed in unveiling them and putting them to test against
the greatest number of other analyses expressing other particular interests,
concerns and biases.
Nonetheless, the success of a perspective doesn't
depend always on its internal coherence or explanatory power. Ideas don't
spread by themselves, in virtue of their properties. All narratives are
constructed to serve particular interests or concerns. Moreover, the power
to select, adjust, redistribute narratives is never evenly distributed.
So, I think that the success (popularity) of a particular narrative among
the others is strongly influenced by its compliance with the representational
needs of hegemonic power. Why globalization narratives are more popular
than e.g. world-systems analysis or regulation theory? Do they depict better,
on an average, our present world? Some analyses that use globalization
as keyword to refer to the processes we are experiencing are indeed very
sophisticated and helpful. I don't address my criticism towards them. But
globalization has come to be presented more and more as having mythical
properties, like destiny or god, something inevitable, inhuman, not made
by humans. Something, good or bad, we have to cope with. Something we can't
stop or reverse. Many scholars successfully ride this juggernaut by contributing
in some way to the myth construction. For an "authoritative" example, see:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/irresfrc.htm
Others indirectly reinforce it by unquestioningly
assuming it as big picture in which to place their particular micro analyses.
Is it useful at all to use globalization as buzzword given the dangerous
implications?
Personally, I specially appreciated the way Philip
McMichael addressed the matter in his book Development and Social Change,
Pine Forge Press, 1996.
Best regards,
Oreste Ventrone