Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::October 21, 2002

Worth repeating

On Oct. 15, UGA’s Center for Humanities and Arts celebrated the International Day for the Humanities with a roundtable discussion about globalization in the humanities. Participants included Joel Black (comparative literature), Doris Kadish (Romance languages and women’s studies), Lioba Moshi (comparative literature and African Studies), Douglas Northrop (history), Max Reinhart (Germanic and Slavic languages) and Clark Wolf (philosophy). One excerpt from the wide-ranging discussion:
Northrop: “There is an implication that this is about hegemony, a projection of one culture or system. It seems to me perhaps more helpful to think about this as exchanges or encounters or interplay between parts of the world, and that of course implies that there is going to be bi-directional exchange, that things will be going out and coming back. . . . Another point to keep in mind is that globalization is not a sudden phenomenon--it has not come out of the blue and it’s not new. This is what I’m contractually obliged to say as the historian up here, but it seems that we should keep in mind this is a process that’s been ongoing for centuries and, in fact, this allegedly hegemonic culture and economy is itself a product of that process.”
Wolf: “I’d like to point out that there are some things about the contemporary situation that are radically different. I suspect that most of the clothing we are wearing in this room was probably put together on the other side of the world, and that’s new. The rise of international juridical and economic and sovereign institutions like the IMF is new. The ability to send an instant message to somebody in Africa or Asia, to get information from the far reaches of the world, is brand new. . . . Increasingly in the world, globalization is seen as Americanization. . . .”

--Beth Roberts

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