1. An Interdisciplinary Forum on Time and Globalization
- Author:
- Christopher Breu
- Publication Date:
- 09-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- How do globalization and temporality relate to one another? This was the question addressed by a 2011 workshop sponsored by Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition (IGHC) at McMaster University. In the past, globalization and temporality have both been characterized as moving forward independently of human volition, carrying all of us along in their flow. Now there are large literatures challenging this view, and showing how globalization and time are constructed and modified by humans. However, with some important exceptions (Harvey 1990, Sassen 2000, Appadurai 2005, Bauman 2000), the literatures on globalization and on temporality have developed separately from one another. It is important to bring these literatures into closer dialogue, because a great many urgent issues in contemporary human affairs involve interactions between temporality and globalization. These range from individual-level questions, such as managing the accelerated pace of everyday life, to large epochal problems, such as climate change, that may not always be readily apprehended, but are no less significant. The workshop participants, drawing on their backgrounds in a variety of academic disciplines, addressed the relationship between temporality and globalization in a variety of settings. Six of the papers presented at this workshop are gathered in this IGHC Working Paper. The assembled papers, individually and jointly, identify a number of themes of particular relevance to any comprehensive discussion of globalization and time. By way of introduction, it is useful to briefly consider how the most prominent of these themes are addressed by the contributors.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Human Development, and Time
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus