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181. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Peter J. Taylor Geohistory of Globalizations
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The social time and space constructs of Manual Castells (network society), Fernand Brau­del (capitalism versus markets) Immanuel Wallerstein (TimeSpace) and Jane Jacobs (moral syndromes) are brought together to provide a set of conceptual tools for understanding con­temporary globalization. Three successive globalizations are identified and named for their constellations of power: imperial globalization, American globalization, and corporate glo­balization. These are treated as unique historical products of modern, rampant urbaniza­tions; each globalization is described as an era of great cities with distinctive worldwide networks. Focusing on urban demand, it is suggested that current corporate globalization might elide into a planetary globalization covering both social and environment relations.
182. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Anna M. Agathangelou Real Leaps in the Times of the Anthropocene: Failure and Denial and ‘Global’ Thought
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The notions of failure and denial are co-constitutive of both “global” theory and social order. Though these concepts have been used to evoke an array of metaphors and images to under­stand the condition of international relations as a knowledge production site and in rela­tion to other social sciences, they have not been deemed pivotal for much theorizing of world politics’ events, including the “success” of a sovereign state, or the subjects and knowledge production of decolonial realities. The article critically assesses how the term failure is used by IR’s scholarly community as signifier and analogy and what it signifies and analogizes. It grapples with Bruno Latour’s “The Immense Cry Channeled” by Pope Francis and ‘“Love your Monsters.’” It concludes with a discussion of the ethics of critical theory and its empha­sis on critique. I problematize its critical moves to lodge racializations in the enslaved and colonized body and body politic of ‘failed’ states, and the normative projects it bolsters. I also point to its broader social and political implications, including its acknowledging of certain publics at the expense of others and its death limits in times of terror and the Anthropocene. I finally argue for a ‘global’ decolonizing social analysis that in an Fanonian sense, is a “real leap” as it introduces “invention into existence” by rupturing evolutionary trajectories and linear temporalities (i.e., pure immanence, or transcendentalism).
183. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Heikki Patomaki On the Possibility of a Global Political Community: The Enigma of ‘Small Local Differences’ within Humanity
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Is anything like a global political community – and thereby ideals such as global democracy and justice – achievable? This is a key question not only for political theory but also for contemporary political practices. Many political realists believe that humans are essentially tribal beings, or at least will remain so in the foreseeable future. Post-structuralists main­tain that historical identities are based on contrasts and oppositions, on the play of negative differences, which is necessary for language to exist. Thus identities must always exclude something. My first point is that it is possible to define our shared identity as humans and earthlings in the context of a cosmic setting. Big History not only frames world history in cosmic terms and imagines a future world community but is also systematically critical of Eurocentrism and other forms of centrism. Second, otherness can also be located either in our own past or, alternatively, in our contemporary being, when seen from a point of view of a possible future position in world history. Third, utilizing the concept of a horizon of moral identification and developing further Todorov’s axis of self-other relations, I conclude by outlining a cosmic, geo-historical, relational and ethico-political conception of global identity that is based on both positive and negative elements.
184. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Barrie Axford Mastery Without Remainder?: Connection, Digital Mediatization and the Constitution of Emergent Globalities
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This article approaches the question of what musters, or should muster, as global theory for these times through the lens of mediatization. Emergent globalities – states of global (perhaps glocal) becoming – are seen as constituted by world-making practices that are obviously, per­haps paradigmatically, referenced in processes of digital communication within and across borders. This is no hymn to “mere connection”, but a sustained attempt to marry process and consciousness with a proper regard for the vagaries of human interaction with the structures of indifferent technology and indifferent globalities.
185. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Didem Buhari Gulmez Autonomy, Self-determination and Agency in a Global Context
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Offering a transdisciplinary study that benefits from the conceptual and theoretical contri­butions of sociology, political science and international relations, this article focuses on three key notions that shed light on the promise and limitations of the prevailing globalization scholarship. The proposed notions are self-determination, autonomy, and agency, which are often seen as merely antagonistic – if not a ‘prey’ or victim – to globalization. They are wor­thy of attention for their common emphasis that rests on the increasingly blurred boundar­ies underlying the nexus between agent and environment, agent and action, and capability and expectations. Besides, they constitute an important source of inspiration for the rise of critical studies on globalization with a special emphasis on glocalization (Robertson) and world society (Meyer). Focusing on the prevailing global context in which claims to agency, autonomy and self-determination emerge, spread and receive diverse reactions, the study aims to discuss the complexity defining the relationship between homogenizing and hetero­genizing, universalizing and parochializing, converging and diverging logics, forces and processes underlying globalization. Overall, the article emphasizes that far from being hostile to global phenomena, self-determination, autonomy, and agency are both the products and key constitutive ingredients of the globalization as we understand it today.
186. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Jan Aart Scholte Whither Global Theory?
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After several decades of intensive efforts to theorize the global in contemporary society, what are the endeavour’s main accomplishments and future challenges? This article develops five main observations in this regard: (a) that the transdisplinary promise of global theory remains largely elusive; (b) that global thinking might productively give way to transscalar conceptions of social space; (c) that global theory still struggles to move from universalist to transculturalist dispositions; (d) that global theory remains subject to substantial marginal­izing knowledge/power hierarchies; and (e) that global studies can further develop an ethico-political role of helping to improve possibilities in actually lived global lives.
187. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Impressum
188. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Heather Widdows The Neglect of Beauty: What’s In and What’s Out of Global Theorising and Why?
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This paper explores why some issues count as acceptable topics for global ethics and justice and some do not. It argues that over the last few decades a cannon of global ethics and jus­tice has emerged, and that, like other canons, it is prescriptive and exclusionary. It asks why beauty is excluded from the cannon given there are standard ethical and justice concerns which attach to beauty. The paper considers possible reasons for this exclusion, including that beauty is a concern only of the rich and that it is a trivial or minority issue. It argues that underlying and compounding such reasons are discipline-specific reasons which derive from the parent discipline of Philosophy. It concludes that what is in and out of global theorising is a matter of justice itself and one which global theorists should address.
189. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
On ProtoSociology
190. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Contributors
191. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Books on Demand
192. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Digital Volumes Available
193. ProtoSociology: Volume > 33
Book publications of the Project
194. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Madeleine L. Arseneault Intentionality and Publicity
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This paper analyzes the central relation between publicity, linguistic meaning, and the mental in the light of philosophical issues concerning intentionality. The concept of intentionality provides a way to articulate how the determinants of linguistic meaning are both public and private. A strength of this approach is that it accommodates desiderata of explaining compositionality and successful communication that initially seemed at odds with each other. A further benefit is that thinking about the case of linguistic meaning can help re-focus our understanding of the metaphysical status of the intentional objects of our thoughts.
195. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Richard N. Manning Reflections on Davidsonian Semantic Publicity
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The topic of the present essay is the proper understanding of Donald Davidson’s version of the publicity requirement for the determinants of linguistic meaning. On the understanding I promote, the requirement is very strict indeed. My narrow aim is to show how such a strict conception of the publicity requirement can be maintained despite the evident need for interpreters to go beyond what is public on that conception in the process of constructing Davidsonian theories of meaning. Towards that aim, I engage dialectically with treatments of Davidson’s principle of charity owing to Lepore and Ludwig and to Bar-On and Risjord, each of which, in different ways, recommend a more permissive approach to the publicity requirement than the one I recommended here. A broader aim is to shed some light on what would be required to take seriously the larger ambitions of Davidson’s semantic program.
196. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Richard N. Manning Introduction: Meaning and Publicity: Two Traditions
197. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Patrick Rysiew Meaning, Communication, and the Mental
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Thomas Reid (1710–1796) rejected ‘the theory of ideas’ in favor of perceptual direct realism and a fallibilist foundationalism. According to Reid, contact with the common and public extra-mental world is as much a part of our natural psychological and epistemological starting point as whatever special type of relation we have to the contents of our own minds. Like the general perceptual and epistemological views Reid was countering, an individualistic, idea-centered approach to language and communication continues to have a grip on theorists. But Reid’s heterodox counter to the latter is much less well known than his response to the former, even though it marks a complementary and equally clear departure from the views of his contemporaries. Reid holds that while mental phenomena are indeed implicated in language, the meaning of a term is the typically public object to which it directly refers. Further, Reid argues that for linguistic communication to be possible, we must already have some measure of access to others’ intentional states. While we each might enjoy a special kind of access to our thoughts, they are not ‘private’ in any epistemologically troubling sense: the fact that we have language shows that we already have communicative abilities and an epistemological toehold with regard to others’ mental states.
198. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Gary Kemp Quine, Publicity, and Pre-Established Harmony
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‘Linguistic meaning must be public’ – for Quine, here is not a statement to rest with, whether it be reckoned true or reckoned false. It calls for explication. When we do, using Quine’s words to piece together what he thought, we find that much too much is concealed by the original statement. Yes, Quine said ‘Language is a social art’; yes, he accepts behaviourism so far as linguistic meaning is concerned; yes, he broadly agrees with Wittgenstein’s anti-privacy stricture. But precisely what is being said by the original statement to be public, and what does calling it ‘public’ amount to? Pressing such questions complicates the picture enormously, partly though by no means entirely aligning Quine with linguistic internalism vis-à-vis Chomsky.
199. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Lewis Powell Speaking Your Mind: Expression in Locke’s Theory of Language
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There is a tension between John Locke’s awareness of the fundamental importance of a shared public language and the manner in which his theorizing appears limited to offering a psychologistic account of the idiolects of individual speakers. I argue that a correct understanding of Locke’s central notion of signification can resolve this tension. I start by examining a long standing objection to Locke’s view, according to which his theory of meaning systematically gets the subject matter of our discourse wrong, by making our ideas the meanings of our words. By examining Locke’s definition of “truth”, I show that Lockean signification is an expression relation, rather than a descriptive or referential relation. Consequently, the sense in which our words signify our ideas is roughly that our utterances advertise our otherwise undisclosed mental lives to each other. While this resolves one aspect of the public/private tension, I close with a brief discussion of the remaining tension, and the role for normative constraints on signification to play in generating a genuinely shared public language.
200. ProtoSociology: Volume > 34
Berit Brogaard The Publicity of Meaning and the Perceptual Approach to Speech Comprehension
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The paper presents a number of empirical arguments for the perceptual view of speech comprehension. It then argues that a particular version of phenomenal dogmatism can confer immediate justification upon belief. In combination, these two views can bypass Davidsonian skepticism toward knowledge of meanings. The perceptual view alone, however, can bypass a variation on the Davidsonian argument. One reason Davidson thought meanings were not truly graspable was that he believed meanings were private (unlike behavior). But if the perceptual view of speech comprehension is correct, then meanings (or at least conveyed meanings) are public objects like other perceivable entities. Hence, there is no particular problem of language comprehension, even if meanings originate in “private” mental states.