PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ON HISTOR
PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ON HISTORY, GLOBALIZATION, AND GLOBALITY During reviews of the project application by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we were asked how the outcomes would differ from results achieved by funding the specific investigations - each of our projects - as standard grants. How would we achieve collaborative results? What would be gained from collaborative effort? What does society gain?Initial collaborative effort produced excellent answers or we would not be here. Now we have to fulfil promises. That is a serious responsibility. In one response to questions about whether the whole would exceed the sum of the parts, we mentioned that the project fashioned a community of scholars; we would inform one another. Therefore, everyone was urged to read each team member's proposed research program, and a number of readings as well. It is humbling to read the projects. Due to their content, what I proposed 36 and even 3 months ago has changed. An explanation should promote some later discussion about the themes that could unite chapters in the volume on globalization in history. Until a few months ago I had been writing about The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900, a
The Follies of Globalisation Theory, London: VersoScholte, J. As a phenomenon, globality may now have entered the time scale of deep, persistent cultural developments not transient political change. Ties here with several of the non-historical projects abound. Second, we should consider the possibility of pursuing the roots of globality in material relations. Will Coleman's recent working paper on the seemingly untethered financial derivatives markets holds further connections between rapid global capital flows and the way these affect perceptions about the world as unitary place. Perhaps the reading by David Held (1995) that we all read can inspire members of the history sub-group to coax out evidence of what Held calls nautonomy, "the asymmetrical production and distribution of life chances which limit and erode the possibilities of political participation. Colonies consulted one another; survey methods and law reforms circulated internationally; international telegraph cables enabled cartographers to establish longitude with precision; the British survey of India became a world model for the scientific study of places; irrigation engineers hawked their expertise around the globe in the late nineteenth century, thereby not just changing places but eroding for awhile the idea that Nature set limits on improvement. The profits were privatized and international; the costs were socialized and national. A particular culture of property, not broadly European but specifically English, happened to acquire unique force. In their narrow critique of the notion of globalization as a fad, Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson (1996; 31) argue that the world's underprivileged in the current make-up of power have little choice but to endure poverty. Before I lay out some of the historical projects for a study of property rights and globality, let me elaborate on what I see as the reciprocal connections between globality and property rights. It seems rather something intrinsic to capitalist social relations themselves.
Common topics in this essay:
World Bank,
British American,
Indian Ocean,
European Union,
Janet Abu-Lughod,
Colin Scott's,
Tim Brook,
John Locke,
German Dutch,
Research Council,
property rights,
doctrine improvement,
world unitary,
university press,
world systems,
global integration,
individualized property rights,
free trade,
settlement colonies,
homo oeconomicus,
scholte 2000,
law free trade,
tracts international law,
biota people capital,
volume globalization history,
|
Acceptance Essays
