Globalization and "Globality"

[Jane]

KXX4493553 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> The question, if globalization is a "myth" or not, is not easy to answer. In
> deed, there are many hints that "globalization" is a (post-)modern myth,
> created by the "think tanks" of the multinational corporations and right-wing
> political parties (Mr. Huntington and his student Fukuyama f. e. come from
> such "think tanks"). In the seventies there was the expression "New
> International division of labor" (Kreye/Heinrichs/Froebel) which can be seen
> as the forerunner of "globalization". The "new international division of
> labor" described the fact that working-places in the industrialized world
> were substituted by such in "production islands" in the third world because
> of the lower wages there, especially in the clothing industry.
> 
> But I don't want to debate about words. It's a fact that the word
> "globalization" is in everybody's mouth, and we have to handle with it. For
> the most economists and sociologists globalization is only an economic term,
> but it's far more than that. It has also social, cultural and ideological
> implications.
> 
> The British sociologist Martin Albrow has written a book with the title: The
> Global Age.State and Society Beyond Modernity, German : Abschied vom
> Nationalstaat. Staat und Gesellschaft im Globalen Zeitalter, Frankfurt,
> Suhrkamp 1998. I think Albrow has an interesting standpoint to that issue. He
> makes a difference between globalization and what he is calling "globality".
> Globalization is the economic part in it and less interesting than the new
> "habitus" and the new behaviour of the people especially living in big cities
> like London. He analyses that the direct "neighbourhood" is now of less
> importance than so called "social landscapes" or "socio-spheres". This means
> that someone has connections worldwide with the help of Internet, telephone
> a. s. o.; at the same time he/she doesn't know what the name of the family is
> which is living next door. So he critisizes communiatarism as a
> pseudo-romantic ideology which - in the last instance - only produces a kind
> of "group egoism". For Albrow globality is not a new ideology of progress,
> like "free trade" or "global village" or similar things, only an option, not
> more, not less. He says that globalization and globality also can fail, but
> this can only show the future.
> 
> What has this all to do with Pynchon? Of course, "globalization" was not an
> issue of GR (perhaps a little in Vineland). He "analyses" there the
> forerunner of globalization, the "international division of labo(u)r". And
> the main thing: he analyses the "counterforce in us", THEM as structure and
> its representation in the unconscious of the people. Of course there are real
> powers, real economic interests, real politics a. s. o. But I think this is
> secondary, or better: both sides must be described: the real power and its
> representation in the unconscious. Foucault says that power goes through our
> bodies and our souls. And the combination of both -structure and psychic
> representation - is what Pynchon writes about. You cannot devide it.
> 
> Kurt-Werner Pörtner
> 


Thank you Kurt-Werner!