Global Civilization and Local Cultures

Schäfer, Wolf

doi:10.1177/026858001016003004

Cited by 23 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Other famous typologies of this kind include status and contract (Maine), militant and industrial (Spencer), mechanical and organic (Durkheim), folk and urban (Redfield), sacred and secular (Becker), and so on (McKinney 1966). Then there is a traditional distinction in German social thought between Kultur (moral cultivation) and Zivilisation (gadgetry and materialism) (Schafer 2001;Tiryakian 2001). However, the nothing/something distinction grew not out of this body of work but rather from an effort to think through the distinctions and relationships between grobalization and glocalization, as well as an effort to expand upon the concept of a nonplace (see below).…”

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confidence: 99%

Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/Grobalization and Something/Nothing

Ritzer

2003

Sociological Theory

241

145

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The concept of “grobalization” is proposed to complement the popular idea of “glocalization.” In addition, a sociologically relevant concept of “nothing” is defined and juxtaposed with “something.” Two continua are created—grobalization‐glocalization and nothing‐something—and their intersection creates four quadrants: the grobalization of nothing, glocalization of nothing, grobalization of something, and glocalization of something. Of greatest importance are the grobalization of nothing and the glocalization of something, as well as the conflict between them. The grobalization of nothing threatens to overwhelm the latter and everything else. Other issues discussed include the loss of something in a world increasingly dominated by nothing, the disappearance of the local, and the relationship of the triumph of nothing to political economy, especially social class. I conclude that no social class is immune to this process and that the poor and lower classess may be “doomed” to something.

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confidence: 99%

Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/Grobalization and Something/Nothing

Ritzer

2003

Sociological Theory

241

145

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“…In this context, an exploration of multiple modernities is important, especially for our contemporary world society. Western modernity can be regarded simply as a distinct new type of civilization — a global techno‐scientific civilization (Eisenstadt, ; Schäfer, ), whose characteristics are unprecedented openness and uncertainty driven by the rapid growth of science and technology. Its formation reveals a reversal of asymmetry between nature and culture in premodern societies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rewriting Experiment of Modernity from the Perspective of Connected Histories: Taiwan as a Laboratory of Modernity

Tang¹

2018

J Historical Sociology

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This paper aims at a new understanding of modernity from the perspective of connected history. It demonstrates that with the case of Taiwan, so-called 'modernity' emerged from the interactions and connections among the various regions, cultures, and civilizations.Thus, modernity has been entangled since its birth, and has had diverse variants. When we combine this reconceptualization of modernity with the concept of functional differentiation as the most essential structural condition of modernity, a theoretical escape from the trap of Eurocentrism emerges; additionally, we are able to integrate sociological theoretical reflections with the advancements of world history study. | TAIWAN AS A HEURISTIC CASE TO RETHINK MODERNITYThere is no cognition and knowledge not mediated by observation. The observer 's framing, or in Luhmann's (1998) word, the distinction, which makes observation and indication possible but remains a blind spot for itself, determines what the observer can perceive. Taiwan's development in the 1980s and 1990s, long deemed as a representative example within the frame of "economic development" and "regime transition", has attracted attention from international scholarship; its success wins the nation a label of "miracle", and becomes a familiar story and preferred case in academic research (e.g., Copper, 1997;Gold, 1986). With the rise of China and the dramatic change in the international political-economic situation during the early twenty-first century, Taiwan seems to lose its academic halo.Although it remains visible in academia, it is mostly addressed and discussed in another frame in which strategic interaction or potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spotlighted. Nevertheless, if we can hold at bay these conventional observing frames, and adjust our perspective, Taiwan endures as a useful heuristic case that helps us revise some taken-for-granted assumptions of sociology inherited from the nineteenth century. For now, these assumptions prove not only out of date but also problematic, especially when modernity is under discussion.The concept of modernity re-emerges, and has become a heatedly debated issue since the challenge of postmodernism in the 1990s. Arguing for the necessity of a global comparison in the "third phase of modernity", Domingues * Editorial board member of Soziale Systeme.(2011) stresses the importance of incorporating non-Western and peripheral cases, such as China, India, and Brazil, to go "beyond the center". I contend in this paper that Taiwan, as a "periphery of the periphery", provides more epistemic potential for emancipation, if we can use the perspective of connected histories to integrate three separated, sometimes even antagonistic, research trends: revisionist world history study, postcolonialism, and theoretical reflection on multiple modernities.Substituting connected histories for the old Eurocentric frame of observation, we will encounter the fact that modernity has formed in the interactions between different regions of the world, rather than ...

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“…Moreover, replacing the notion of the nation with the concept of globalization would be the equivalent of throwing out the baby with the bath water. The same could be said of calls to sacrifice the spatial dimension of the societal completely in favour of notions of delocalization and deterritorialization, or by abstracting 'older concepts from territorial reference' (Albrow et al 1997: 35;Jackson et al 2004; see also the historical longue durée arguments in Schäfer 2001).…”

Section: Concepts and Dimensions Of Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Configurations of geographic and societal spaces: a sociological proposal between 'methodological nationalism' and the 'spaces of flows'

Pries

2005

Global Networks

128

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The societal practices, symbol systems and artefacts that form sociology's field of study are shifting in their spatial reach. Terms like internationalization, globalization, glocalization or transnationalization denote an (at least perceived) increase in the flow of information, commodities and capital across nation‐state borders as well as an unprecedented ease of human spatial mobility. Situated in the wider research programme of transnationalism, in this article I present a typology of geographic‐societal spatial configurations, of which transnationalism is one of several ideal types. Distinguishing explicitly between an absolutist and a relativist approach to space and applying this to geographic and societal spaces, the article puts forward a framework for discussing how shifts in the geographic reach of the societal are taking place. The case of General Motors provides an example of how such a typology could be applied. The article concludes by discussing some consequences for future empirical research.

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Global Civilization and Local Cultures

Cited by 23 publications

References 2 publications

Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/Grobalization and Something/Nothing

Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/Grobalization and Something/Nothing

A Rewriting Experiment of Modernity from the Perspective of Connected Histories: Taiwan as a Laboratory of Modernity

Configurations of geographic and societal spaces: a sociological proposal between 'methodological nationalism' and the 'spaces of flows'

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