Globalisation and Its Discontents 

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME x

The promise of globalisation─of creating an interconnected, interdependent world that would bring us all into the global village where the common good of each would be the common good of all. However, the interconnectedness of the process was skewed towards prioritising haves and marginalising the have-nots. This neoliberal globalisation was from the top-down and largely resulted in the dominance of the market economy, especially the financial markets. It failed to bring the promised equality between and within nations. This precipitated a broken, bruised world ridden with multiple crises and desperate, extremist responses. CLICK TO READ MORE…

The essays in this volume address the discontents of such a process. We need a globalisation from below, i.e., more open movement of labour and migrants, that would create more symmetric interdependencies and universalise the common global good for all and share the means towards this. We need consensual universals on human rights and corresponding duties to create an incisive global community. The Gandhian metaphor of concentric circles, ever-widening and ever-reinforcing each other is an apt image of this.

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Globalisation and Its Discontents

LIST OF ARTICLES WITH ABSTRACTS IN VOLUME x

1. THE GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL CRISIS: A THIRD WORLD PERSPECTIVE ON SOME PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract: This paper will particularly deal with practical the ethical implications of the environmental issues involved in the potential fallout from anthropogenic global eco-change: the burden of risk and the price of change; equity-led ecological development; inter-generational responsibility; environmental and financial debt; and environmental rights and ecological duties. When we have a global crisis, only a global response can meet it, and for this, we need to act as a global community.

2. GLOBALISATION AND RELIGION: CONTRADICTIONS AND COMPLEMENTARITIES

Abstract: This study attempts to outline an area of concern and is a beginning rather than a conclusive statement. The inspiration for this venture has come from Gandhi, who by acting locally has challenged us to think globally, even when we think differently from him. This is not merely an intellectual ‘search’, but a spiritual ‘quest’ as well. The attempt here is to orient and focus our response to the increasing ethnification in our plural society.

3.  GLOBALISATION AND MINORITIES IN SOUTH ASIA: POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS

Abstract: This essay focuses on the political, cultural and religious implications of globalisation for minorities, while being careful to avoid a reductionist approach to this complex, multidimensional process.

4. GLOBALISATION AND CULTURAL NATIONALISM

Abstract: Book Review of Globalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Christians in India, by Lancy Lobo, Rawat Publications, Jaipur and Delhi, 2002.

5. COLONIALISM TO GLOBALISATION: REFOUNDING THE CHURCH OF THE INDIES

Abstract:  The challenge is to refound the churches in the post-colonial age, to inculturate, or rather incarnate the Good News in a globalising world.

6. GLOBALISATION AND IDENTITY: MULTIPLE PROCESSES, COMPLEX ISSUES

Abstract: Rapid social change precipitated by globalisation is dissolving older more tolerant inclusive identities and reconfiguring them into newer hostile exclusive ones. To study this, we must first deconstruct the multiple processes that constitute globalisation and then, unpack the complex issues implied in the construction of an ethnic identity. Identity and dignity are constructed in the encounter of the ‘self’ and the other. Ethnicity refers to some kind of ‘collective identity’.This is an explorative not a conclusive study, deliberately tentative and open-ended.

7. RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM AND GLOBALISATION: ERODED IDENTITIES AND DISPLACED ELITES

Abstract: Nationalism as an ideology must be at the service of the people, and not vice versa: the people to be sacrificed on the altar of nationalism. So too must religion embrace the seva-marg and not sacrifice people at the altars of false gods. Surely, we can do with a surgical strike into the prejudice and hatred in our hearts and minds.