INTRODUCTION

Bei Dawei

Hsuan Chuang University, Taiwan

Evangelos Voulgarakis

Independent Scholar, Taiwan

Derrick M. Nault

University of Calgary, Canada

Globalization

Centuries hence, when future historians look back upon our era, surely globalization will stand out as one of its defining trends. Technological advances have resulted in ever-accelerating levels of travel, trade and communication. Human ties (e.g., cross-border marriage and adoption) and population movements have followed, challenging various regional and cultural identities. Transnational institutions and agreements have gained new importance. Integration into global markets has brought routine contact with "foreigners," whether in the form of competition or alliance, and imitation is widespread. Elements of a common culture can be identified in our business practices, choice of languages, clothing and hairstyles, consumer products, entertainment, education, military affairs and politics, among other spheres. We may even speak of a certain "global consciousness," a reflexive awareness of our growing interconnectedness.

Scholars and public intellectuals disagree as to how far back to trace this process. Thomas Friedman (1999, 2005) focuses primarily on the end of the Cold War, and the technological and managerial developments of the 1990s. Benjamin Barber (1992) looks to the post-World War II rise of multinational corporations and international trade regimes (such as the Bretton Woods institutions and the various common markets). Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson (1996) liken this to earlier cycles of internationalization, such as the period between 1870–1914. William H. McNeill (1963) emphasizes the period of European industrialization and colonialism from 1750 to 1950. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989) begins with the great age of European exploration and the intercontinental maritime empires established in its wake. Janet Abu-Lughod (1991) and Jack Weatherford (2004) hail the contributions of the thirteenth-century pax Mongolica. Others nominate the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates (e.g., Stearns, Adas, Schwartz and Gilbert 2004), or earlier land-based Eurasian empires associated with the Silk Road. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills (1991, 1993) suggest a figure of "five thousand years" ago, referring to trade ties between the Sumerian and Harappan civilizations. Daniel Quinn (1992) and Jared Diamond (1997) point to the development of mass agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Finally, James Harrod (2006) refers to "periods of globalization" during the lower Paleolithic, between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago, in which Olduwan industries (and presumably also the hominins themselves) spread out from Africa across Asia via the Indian Ocean Rim.

Of course there is some merit to each of these starting points, at least within specifically defined contexts, and there have been numerous attempts at periodization (some by the same authors). Here we may usefully resort to David Held's distinction between "thick" globalization (characterized by high extensity, intensity, velocity and impact) and several earlier forms. For example, the ancient Silk Road (which combined high extensity with low intensity, velocity and impact) would be an example of "thin" globalization (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton 1999; see also Nye 2002). At any rate, the present momentum — for better or worse, and regardless of the system's ultimate success or failure — is clearly in the direction of thickness. Less amenable to reconciliation are the questions of whether our era is unique, or part of some larger economic or historical cycle; and whether neo-liberal economic policies will, or should, prevail under the New World Order.

However periodized or conceptualized, that globalization is a contested process is demonstrated through the spectrum of "anti-globalist" figures, which extend from the far left (the "Black Bloc") to the far right (Marine le Pen), and encompasses environmentalists, labor organizers, anarchists (David Graeber and John Zerzan fill several of these roles), indigenous rights activists, conspiracy theorists (Theodore Kaczinsky, David Icke), dissident economists (Joseph Stiglitz, Susan Strange), postmodern cultural critics and miscellaneous others. Noam Chomsky himself protests the nomenclature:

The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda. (Cited in Matejcic 2005, par. 6)

By way of illustration, Chomsky complains that the world press routinely describes the World Social Forum — a diverse, international group with global aims — as "anti-globalist," in apparent contrast with the (far less representative) participants in the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

It is often observed that globalization has resulted in countervailing, atomistic forces of "glocalization," regionalism, subcultural identity and individualism. Globalized cultural products have aroused a reaction among nationalists of various stripes, their eagerness made "more keen when confronted with the media assault of Western music, videos and films that satellite television now beams around the world, and which threaten to obliterate local and traditional forms of cultural expression" (Juergensmeyer 2001, 66). Such modernizing leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Shah Reza Pahlavi all faced a backlash of this nature, with varying results. In the United States we might point to the overlapping subcultures of white supremacists, neo-militias and tax protesters who mistrust the federal government and, in some cases, fear world government. Many such groups point to globalization as the reason for their political and social reclusiveness, though their precise motivations range from conspiracy theories to a desire for exclusivity (Abanes 1996; Heller 1995). The ethical questions involved are fascinating. For example, the ideologies of white nationalists — who are active and networked in numerous countries — can be difficult to distinguish from other groups seeking ethnic-based nations or autonomous homelands (although no one would confuse the late Eugene Terre' Blanche with the Dalai Lama).

Attempting to make sense of the above, global studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field with globalization as its object of study. To be sure, not everyone admits the legitimacy of this body of discourse. Indeed, globalization as a subject has been dismissed as "folly" (Rosenberg 2002), "global babble" (Abu-Lughod 1997) and "globaloney" (Veseth 2006), and a catch phrase meaning "anything, everything and nothing" (Munck 2000, 84). Yet in view of the enormous differences between life today and twenty years ago (let alone the lower Paleolithic), surely such changes are deserving of scholarly attention, if still imperfectly understood.

Religion

The meaning and scope of "religion" is unclear to specialists, or at least not yet a matter of general agreement (e.g., Greil and Bromley 2003). The boundaries of the field (if not its very core) are challenged by the difficulty of distinguishing, for example, a traditional religious leader from a traditional chieftain; a religious practice from mere etiquette; or religious cosmology from primitive science (noting that many aspects of our present scientific worldview are likely to be remembered as quaint and culture-bound). Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1962) and Jonathan Z. Smith (1982) argue that the very category of "religion" is a social construct illegitimately generalized from the example of Christianity. The world abounds with cults and ideologies that might be deemed in some sense religious-like, but whose details do not quite resemble those of the Abrahamic religions. Chinese "religions," for example, rarely provide their adherents with a multi-generational group identity (many Chinese people profess uncertainty as to whether they even have a religion, or what it should be called), but are better described as personal interests, family customs or community activities. As for Chinese group identity, this is more usually drawn from a shared sense of history, culture and politics (including Confucianism as well as several modern state or party affiliations). Whether these are ipso facto religious in nature is difficult to say. Structural functionalist approaches (e.g., Émile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski) classify institutions according to their social roles, whereas "substantive" approaches (e.g., Clifford Geertz, Melford Spiro) focus on content, such as ritual or supernatural beliefs. We may also distinguish "inclusivists" from "exclusivists," depending on their willingness to acknowledge the religious character of such borderline cases as atheism, the "civil religion" or football.

As tempting as it may be to dismiss the concept of religion as meaningless, there are equally good grounds for assuming it to be basic to human nature, along with other forms of behavior that seem to define us as a species. (For a discussion of chimpanzee religion, see Harrod (forthcoming).) That is to say, every society we know anything about, past or present, has something like a religion, or so the argument goes. Perceiving evolutionary utility behind this apparently universal phenomenon, Pascal Boyer (2002) proposes that we possess an intuitive sense of what might make a plausible religious belief (in the sense that we can imagine some religion, somewhere, believing in it), and which of his various hypothetical examples could not possibly function as such. Perhaps the solution is to say that while many aspects of "religion" are indeed universal, their fusion into a single category is artificial and culture-bound. Timothy Fitzgerald (2003) suggests that "[i]t may not be a coincidence that anthropologists who discuss religion are less likely to become submerged by conceptual problems that the category typically induces than are those who come from religious studies" (par. 10). Fitzgerald for his part sees the sacred/secular distinction as a Western projection, at least as applied to Japanese weddings.

Even if we resist the total conflation of the sacred with the profane, that "religion" tends to mirror the ordinary world seems clear enough. Concepts of supernatural beings generally reflect the lifestyles of the societies positing them. Hunting cultures conceive of spirits associated with animals and nature (such as the worldwide prehistoric figure of the Master of the animals). Agricultural civilizations worship pantheons whose political structure, gender roles and division of labor are thought to resemble their own. Gods and goddesses of fertility, war and weather are common. In this light, we should expect to find various trends associated with globalization reflected in contemporary religious developments. For example, it may not be coincidence that interest in ESP has grown in tandem with improvements in communications technology. (One nineteenth-century American Spiritualist newspaper was entitled The Spiritual Telegraph.)

The history of the "great" religions is intimately bound up with globalization in its various phases. Several (Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, arguably Judaism) coalesced in the context of centralizing states or empires, developed a distinct identity in contrast to local rivals, then spread beyond their parent region along the great trade routes. Islam initially gained strength on the periphery, along the trade routes between India, Ethiopia and Byzantium, and only later entered the centers of power. The history of European colonialism is intertwined with that of Christian mission, while capitalism owes much to the "Protestant work ethic" as posited by Weber. Of course, other religions have sent their missionaries and traders, as a glance at the demography of Southeast Asia will reveal. Examples of cross-fertilization are plentiful and extend to the most rarefied levels of scholastic philosophy (as in the interreligious disputations of ancient India and the medieval West) and spiritual practice (e.g., mutual influences among mantra recitation, dhikr and monologistic prayer).

A century ago Franz Cumont (1906) offered the following analogy for the situation of religion during the Hellenistic age:

Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation — a confusion in which all those priests would erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine. (196)

His fellow Mithraism specialist David Ulansey (2000), noting that Cumont's wildest flight of fancy has more or less come true, wonders whether some new mystery may yet arise — perhaps by means of that new oikomene, the Internet — to ape the transformation of ancient Christianity into a transimperial symbolic system. One is reminded of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick who, in his VALIS series as well as in his gnostic memoir Exegesis, considers the contemporary world as the archetypal recapitulation of ancient Rome. Lest this suggest a doomed repetition of history, Kathryn Babayan (2002) identifies a strain of Iranian ghulat movements that interpreted the cyclical time characteristic of Persian cosmology, in an "alchemical" sense "leading to metamorphosis, with the spirit enhanced each time it incarnates into new and purer forms" (xv).

Today, most religions boast some sort of international presence, whether as a consequence of historic expansion and migration, or in the form of diasporas. While it is still possible to find world maps color-coded to reflect the majority religion of each region, the limits of such a project are obvious in view of globalization. Arjun Appadurai (1996) instead proposes to map "(a) ethnoscapes, (b) mediascapes, (c) technoscapes, (d) finanscapes, and (e) ideoscapes" onto a Lacanian "social imaginary" (33). In such a fashion we can begin to make sense of something like the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an international network of Gelugpa dharma centers headquartered in Portland, Oregon, but founded by Tibetan and Sherpa monks in India and Nepal (one of whom has apparently reincarnated as a Spaniard), and whose funding comes disproportionately from ethnic Chinese communities in East/Southeast Asia.

In his essay "Defining Religion: A Pluralistic Approach for the Global Age," Frank J. Lechner (2003) points out that

"religion" can be source, component, or affected party. Religion has been a source of globalization by creating transnational or inter-state relations, by stimulating and endorsing the expansion of such relations, and by articulating a distinctive awareness of the world as a whole. Religion has been a component of globalization insofar as religions themselves have spread globally, built global institutions, and aspired to being global actors. Religion has been affected by globalization since worldwide social and cultural conditions have changed the conditions for its flourishing, relativized the identities of religious groups, and involved religion in addressing the problems of the world as such. (72)