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By Barry Gills
gjournal@ncl.ac.uk
Barry Gills is a Professor at The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle. He is also Editor of the journal Globalizations.
First appeared in Volume 1
Number 1 Globalizations
September 2004
[Routledge, Taylor and Francis]
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Globalizations’ editorial policy will therefore be to encompass as many perspectives as possible, including not only the traditional social sciences and humanities, but including contributions from the natural, environmental, medical and public health sciences as well. Moreover, it is our hope to encourage new types of multidisciplinary research and transnational research involving participants from more than one field or country. In this respect, we see our role as contributing to the emergent field of critical Globalization Studies, or Global Studies, and to the pursuit of new modes of global education and the ‘globalization of education’. There is a necessary link between this new model of global research and education and the realm of practical action, politics, and policy. The journal will not confine itself to publishing only critiques of existing economic or ‘neoliberal globalization’, although such critique will always be a feature of the discussions. Globalizations will seek to engage with social, cultural, political and ideological debate on the nature and practices of global change. In doing so, it is the hope of the journal to establish a real bridge between the academic world and the world of practice, the world of action. We want to publish work that is relevant and accessible to a wide public, including academics and students, non-governmental organizations and policymaking communities and bring them actively into direct dialogue wherever possible. It is that commitment which should encourage us to publish work by the new generation of younger scholars, who have already embraced the new research agenda of Globalizations, as well as by practitioners and activists in as many fields as possible. By encouraging the development of this emerging global community of globalization scholars and activists, the journal will seek to become part of its own times, as aspect of ‘the turning of the tide’. We hope to bring new meanings and fresh ideas to the concept, broadening its scope, and contributing to the debates that will shape our common future..
‘The turning of the tide’ implies a sense of history, an understanding of human development in the long term and the evolution of the global human community as the main subject of understanding. That is why you will see in these pages a deliberate concern for history, for ‘global history’ and the ‘historicization of globalization’ as well as the ‘globalization of history’. All of this is intimately related to the remaking of global education, escaping the parochial confines of nineteenth century inspired nationalism and national historical narratives. It also contributes to the shaping of contemporary ‘global consciousness’ or ‘world consciousness’, which in fact is not unique to our present age, but itself has a long ‘history’. The true meaning of ‘globalization’, in its deepest and most generic sense, has everything to do with ‘global history’ and with the perception as well as the ultimate reality of the ‘unity of humanity’ as a central fact of global history. This (re)-awakening of world-consciousness recaptures in our own time what is perhaps the oldest and most simple truth of history, as recorded in the oldest extant literary tradition from Sanskrit, that is, that ‘In truth, the whole world is indeed one family.’ We are witnessing, in our own time, a renewed impetus to the formation of world consciousness, as globalization processes bring all of humanity into greater physical and communicative proximity to one another. These same processes are rapidly altering the social relations and social networks that compose the basis of the human community. The global level of reality is now becoming increasingly proximate to every human being in one manner or another, and therefore ‘globality’ or ‘globalization’ is something everyone has to deal with. This implies recognizing human unity at some levels while simultaneously maintaining and adapting identity and social relationships at the individual, family, community (or ‘local’ , national and regional levels, thus ensuring the continuation of human and cultural diversity. However, in so far as the ‘unity of humanity’ is a truth, it is based on two fundaments, two ‘facts’ of nature. The first is our genealogy, the fact that we are in truth all members of one species, all related to one another, all sharing the common heritage of our remote ancestors, despite millennia of migration and the formation of myriad groups. The second fact is our mutual inhabitancy of a single, integrated common natural environment, our planet and its single biosphere, which knows in reality no political, territorial, ideological or other artificial human imposed boundaries.
Thus the imagery of our journal cover shows us our common global identity, the image of globality, but transcending any single perspective on this globality and implying an ever changing ordering, yet all within a continuum of planetary and human history. The evolution of world-consciousness, awareness of the world-as-a-single-place, and the evolution of world or ‘global civilization’ are all intimately related historical processes, the inheritors of all that has come before down the ages and combining all the streams that have fed the great river we call human history.
It is thus that today we have established new concepts such as ‘global governance’ and ‘sustainability’ in relation to the evolution of the human polity and to its relationship with the natural environment. It is to the first of these, the evolution of the polity, as it approaches truly global level, that the concepts and practices of globalization will perhaps play the most important part. The enduring idea of a universal humanity implies an evolution toward some form of universal polity, in turn premised on some manifestation of universal or world consciousness. Perhaps, in this sense, ‘globalization’ is a way of expressing our present stage of evolution or historical development towards a world polity and world consciousness. This is not a new phenomenon, but in fact a feature of human history extending back many millennia until the present. There may in fact be a fundamental desire for an international or global order that brings unity, peace, prosperity and stability. In times of disintegration, confusion, or strife, the longings of many wise as well as ordinary souls may be for a type of unity that brings peace and the benefits of law to all. Despite many historical attempts to build such enduring orders, often accompanied by aspiring universal ideologies or religious visions, none have so far been truly world encompassing and none has been more than temporary. Perhaps all hegemonies, all empires, and all states and their universalisms are only temporary. Why should our present time be an exception? Yet, the deep desire for unity, peace and stability still remains a potent force in history. Even as the idea of the Roman empire persisted in the West for more than a thousand years after its actual historical unravelling, as Gibbon so adeptly analysed, in its absence the idea of unity persisted in that of the universal church, as Augustine outlined in his De Civitate Dei. There are counterparts to this history in many other traditions and civilizations, such as the institution of the Caliphate in Islam, which persisted for many centuries, and in the idea of a unified state that has influenced the history of China and India from antiquity to the present. In all these expressions, and many others not mentioned here, the idea of the experience of unity, of integration in a single community rather than separateness and fragmentation, is deeply implanted in the human mind. Today it finds at least partial expression in modern institutions such as the United Nations and the Olympic Games, where divisions are to be at least temporarily set aside, in the pursuit of the experience of unity.
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