(2002). Conscious Evolution of Humanity: Using Systems Thinking to Construct Agoras of the Global Village. Announcing the 47th Annual Conference 2003 of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISS) www.isss.org. World Futures: Vol. 58, No. 4, pp. 335-338.

Da je svijet postao globalnim selom danas čujemo gotovo svakodnevno, na bilo kojoj geografskoj širini. McLuhanova metafora gotovo da je na mitski zoran način oslikala procese koji se zbivaju u suvremenom nam svijetu i kao takva postala je općepoznatom i općeprihvaćenom. Ovaj rad istražuje na koje je načine »globalno selo« najavilo globalizaciju.Marshall McLuhan je inače, već od djela Mechanical Bride počeo prepoznavati i najavljivati trendove koji će kasnije uistinu postati globalnima: od poruka oglasne industrije, promjene recepcije medija koji nam donose (...) poruke, do promjena naših uloga u svijetu…Cilj ovog rada je istražiti i prezentirati dosege McLuhanove »najave« globalizacije, posebno u djelu Global Willage, djelu u kojemu je McLuhan otkriće trendova pokušao staviti u okvire »četverostupanjske zakonitosti«. Rad želi pojam globalizacije motriti u svjetlu McLuhanovih istraživanja odnosa vizualnog i audijskog, u kontekstu analize utjecaja vizualnih tehnologija na čovjeka, te promisliti neke McLuhanove teze o robotizmu.We are hearing almost every day and on each latitude how the world has become a global village. McLuhan’s metaphor in an almost mythical way gives depicts the processes happening in our contemporary world and as such has become renowned and recognized. This paper shall examine in which ways that “the global village” has announced globalization.Marshall McLuhan had since The Mechanical Bride started recognizing and heralding the trends which would later actually become global: from the messages of the advertising industry, the change in the reception of the media which transmit messages to us, to the changes of our roles in the world etc.The aim of this paper is to examine and present the scope of McLuhan’s “heralding” of globalization, especially in the part of The Global Village in which McLuhan tries to place the discovery of trends into “four degree legality” frames. The paper would like to examine the concept of globalization in light of McLuhan’s research of the relationship between the visual and audile, within the context of the analysis of the influence of visual technologies on Man, and rethink some of McLuhan’s theses on robotics. (shrink)

The moral crises of our time -- Ethics at the crossroads -- In search of our moral heritage -- Re-connecting with the earth -- Re-connecting with one another -- Re-connecting with the enemy.

'Globalization' provides an ambiguous cliché for psychology as the North American and European version of the discipline is being exported widely. After providing a brief history of globalization and the failure of its intended effects I discuss three episodes of psychology's place in a globalized marketplace of ideas; the pre-1900 development of psychology in Germany and North America, the failure of phenomenological psychology in Europe after World War II and the current state of the professionalization of psychology. Psychology has, thus (...) far, largely followed the enthusiasms of the globalizers. While it is far too late to create 'indigenous psychologies,' theory remains a vehicle of questioning, coaxing, and resistance through which to engage the multiplicity of subjectivities that confront us. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this book, Maduabuchi Dukor presents a comprehensive interpretation of African Philosophy that is informed by the idea that everything in the universe includes a 'spiritual' dimension, what he calls theistic humanism. Imperceptible agents such as God, lesser divinities, and ancestors, as well as forces such as witchcraft and magic, play prominent roles in Dukor's accounts of not just metaphysics, but also ethics, aesthetic, and epistemics. By highlighting the diversity in intellectual world currents philosophy stimulates intercultural dialogue, African Philosophy in (...) the Global Village. Theistic Panpsychic Rationality, Axiology and Science is a response to major contemporary socio-cultural challenges in the global village. (shrink)

Globalization is often seen as a process of universal standardization under the auspices of market economics, technology, and hegemonic power. Resisting this process without endorsing parochial self-enclosure, Fred Dallmayr explores alternative visions that are rooted in distinct vernacular traditions and facilitate cross-cultural learning in an open-ended global arena.

New ubiquitous information and communication technologies, in particular recording-enabled smart devices and social media programs, are giving rise to a profound new power for ordinary people to monitor and track each other on a global scale. Along with this growing capacity to monitor one another is a new capacity to explicitly and publicly judge one another—to rate, rank, comment on, shame and humiliate each other through the net. Drawing upon warnings from Kierkegaard and Mill on the power of public (...) opinion to produce conformity, I argue a new apparatus of surveillance and control is being generated that threatens individual freedom through a coercion of the will by an anonymous and interconnected crowd. I conclude that we must urgently assess how to protect individuals from a social tyranny of the public enabled by these new technologies while effective measures can still be taken to mitigate their dangers. (shrink)

This article, which stems from separate research projects pursued by each author in Oaxaca, Mexico, explores conducting fieldwork through the lenses of community autonomy , and hospitality . Engaging with these concepts made us question how the process of research can contradict cultural ethics that operate within fieldwork locations, as well as consider how such concepts may inform a more ethical set of inquiry practices. Such a set of alternative ethics can provide, furthermore, means for negotiating situations marked by interculturality, (...) particularly as it emerges through contemporary processes of globalization. (shrink)

The contemporary world today has evolved into a global village. This civilization owes its existence to fast means of communication systems. Thus the global world is knighted into one political economy. Distances are reached under seconds. Notwithstanding the fast means of communication gadgets in our time, African traditional means of communication has survived the test of time. What then has been the connection of Africa traditional means of communication and politics? The answer to this question, specifically as (...) operative in Ogba land is the main thrust of this paper. The issues in discourse includes communication and the socio-political sphere, the town crier and Ogba socio-political culture using the literature approach. (shrink)

The quality of intersubjective communication in today's world, which is different from the past world, due to the development of communication tools and technology is so wide and deep that spatial distances have become almost unaffected. Then the question arises if we can talk about the educational function of religion in such a world. The general explanation of this function is that the religious educational system realizes educational goals by keeping people away from particular conditions and places which are against (...) the goals of education. In today's world, where it has become difficult, in fact almost impossible to keep people away from certain situations and places, how can religion have an educational function. Religious educators, traditionally, attempted to fulfill educational goals by imposing certain conditions and principles. The purpose of this article is to examine this problem from the Islamic perspective. The author tries to display why in the contemporary global village there is no conflict between the educational function of religion and the structure of intersubjective communication. (shrink)

``The diversity of cultures in this world isreally important. It's the richness that wehave which, in fact, will save us from beingcaught up in one big idea''.Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web)addressing the 10th International World WideWeb Conference, Hong Kong.

As the EU implements measures to tackle the climate emergency on a continental scale, national governmental and economic actors haste to claim better positions in an eco-friendly low carbon market of goods and resources. With this gradual change, surprising factors hinder local community support for the de-carbonized promised future. In order to understand what inspires rural communities to contest and negate green economic action, I investigate a case of local unrest against the erection of an RES plant on public non-arable (...) agricultural land. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with local villagers, rebelling against the photovoltaic plant and municipal representatives, deciding the fate of the land, I outline three main axes of exclusion. These, I argue, fuel the opposition to the EU’s green acts: the symbolic exclusion of differing types of greenness (natural vs political); the geopolitical political exclusion of the local human for the benefit of the global one; the local exclusion, depriving some citizens of legitimate instruments for social claims-making. (shrink)

When large-scale common land is taken from villagers by investors with little compensation, their labour unneeded, villagers’ livelihoods tend to be largely destroyed. This implies a tendency to focus on what has been taken from villagers during the land-based change, which has valid and has far-reaching social relevance. But as the rise of the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector in Guangxi shows, some villagers are capable of having their livelihoods maintained and even expanded when big investors come and acquire massive (...) amounts of land. This seems to be an anomaly at a first glance, considering what has been taken from villagers, but these unexpected and positive livelihood changes can be explained when one closely examines the dynamic of what is taken and what has been left to villagers. During this ITP boom, although large-scale collectively owned forestland is taken by investors and few work opportunities are created to incorporate those affected, villagers’ control over farmland plots and their access to off-farm work opportunities remain (including the land system and labour dynamics). This paper highlights the importance of analysing “taken-left” dynamics to more fully capture diverse livelihood changes. (shrink)

The facts are dismal. One out of five inhabitants of the earth lives in absolute poverty, while one out of seven is afflicted by hunger. Extreme poverty exists alongside extreme abundance. Empirical evidence points not to scarcity but to poor politics as the primary cause. The urgency of the situation as well as the intertwined nature of human misery and politics would lead one to expect global justice to be a major component of any respectable study of world affairs. (...) Quite to the contrary, theories of world politics are generally silent on these issues. The poor and the oppressed remain invisible, even in accounts of our brand new 'global village'. ;This dissertation aims to rectify the normative deficit of international theory by analyzing closely John Rawls's latest book: The Law of Peoples . Rawls takes on the challenge raised by global inequality and develops a theory of global justice that places moral judgment and action at the heart of world politics. The substance of this theory is filled out by using the famous original position, with its veil of ignorance, this time to generate global principles that regulate relations among peoples. The result is reassuring: human misery requires a response wherever it is experienced. In nonideal theory, the Law of Peoples necessitates global engagement for the eradication of the great evils that have historically followed from political injustice. ;In stark contrast to this global activism, Rawls defends nonintervention and rejects redistribution in ideal theory. This has provoked a heated debate in political philosophy, leading to cosmopolitan criticism of the Rawlsian enterprise. In light of such cosmopolitan objections, I assess the contributions and limitations of the Rawlsian project for global justice. I argue that the fundamental ideas of Rawls's broader thought necessitate the endorsement of Rawls's procedure, while at the same time requiring the revision of the substantive principles of the Law of Peoples. Thus reaching cosmopolitan conclusions without cosmopolitan premises, I claim that my reformulated Law of Peoples is more Rawlsian in spirit than the versions offered by either Rawls himself or his cosmopolitan critics. (shrink)

Provides an important step in the emerging movement toward global dialogue and peace. It is the belief of the book's contributors that human culture has entered a new age of Global Dialogue in response to increased inter-penetration of the world's cultures. In our emerging global village, guidance is needed, for as we have painfully seen, our century is not only the century of world culture, it is also the century of world wars, world famines, and worldwide (...) environmental destruction. In this inspiring arid challenging book, Prof. Leonard Swidler presents the next stage in the Global Ethic Movement. For All Life includes Professor Swidler's draft of a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic, followed by responses from religious scholars representing Christian. Buddhist. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, African, Chinese, and Baha'i traditions. (shrink)

Persons in Community sounds a clear call for African voices to be heard in the global village. It explores the interface between traditional African ethics and contemporary issues, both locally and globally. The contributors to this book offer incisive perspectives on cultural values - such as ubuntu - in a wide range of areas: the workplace and Western capitalism, medical practices, government and political change, gender relationships and HIV/AIDS. What emerges is that there are distinctive and common strands (...) in ethical views from sub-Saharan Africa, which need to be examined, sometimes applauded, and sometimes challenged. (shrink)

Rising global demand for meat will result in increased environmental pollution, energy consumption, and animal suffering. Cultured meat, produced in an animal-cell cultivation process, is a technically feasible alternative lacking these disadvantages, provided that an animal-component-free growth medium can be developed. Small-scale production looks particularly promising, not only technologically but also for societal acceptance. Economic feasibility, however, emerges as the real obstacle.

The term global suggests all-inclusiveness and brings to mind connectivity, a notion that gained a boost from Marshall McLuhan's reference to the mass-mediated ‘global village’. In the past decade it has rapidly become part of the everyday vocabulary not only of academics and business people, but also has circulated widely in the media in various parts of the world. There have also been the beginnings of political movements against globalization and proposals for ‘de-globalization’ and ‘alternative globalizations’, projects (...) to re-define the global. In effect, the terminology has globalized and globalization is varyingly lauded, reviled and debated around the world. The rationale of much previous thinking on humanity in the social sciences has been to assume a linear process of social integration, as more and more people are drawn into a widening circle of interdependencies in the movement to larger units, but the new forms of binding together of social life necessitate the development of new forms of global knowledge which go beyond the old classifications. It is also in this sense that the tightening of the interdependency chains between human beings, and also between human beings and other life forms, suggests we need to think about the relevance of academic knowledge to the emergent global public sphere. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of (...) the Cheng brothers' neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics. (shrink)

The sociological debate about globalization has often neglected the place of religion in a global age. This absence is problematic, given the creative role of the world religions in the shaping of the modernization and globalization processes. This article treats globalization as a particular phase of the general process of modernity, and considers religion in terms of four paradoxes. The first (the Nietzsche paradox) argues that, against the received wisdom, fundamentalism is a form of modernization. Although religious fundamentalism may (...) be a reaction to the hybridity brought about by globalization, it is not a traditional reaction. The second (the Parsonian paradox) argues that modernization and globalization constitute religion as a special and separate institutional sphere of society, and hence transform religion into a problem of modernity. Fundamentalism attempts to reverse this pattern and, in the marginal societies of the global system, fundamentalist religion challenges this western version of modernized religion. The third (the McLuhan paradox) is that religious values in a global village expose the incommensurability of cultural systems, but relativism is not easily sustained in practice and globalization paradoxically increases the need for human rights universalism. While nationalism as a framework for cultures conflicts with attempts to develop general systems of rights discourse, it is not evident that the creation of alternative rights systems (such as Confucian codes) appears to be immediately viable. The final (the Montaigne paradox) explores the contradiction between Orientalism as a necessary consequence of the discovery of Otherness and Otherness as a necessary experience of cosmopolitan humanism. The article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of cosmopolitan virtue in the context of these paradoxes of globalization and religion. (shrink)