Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 10:46:07 +0100
Subject: Re: globalisation:


Hugh

No they are not. They are short descriptions of dominant economic
trends.

If you insist that the postmodern is solely discussed and understood
solely
through Lyotard you are missing the point. The postmodern is a model, a
proposal
that the world can no longer be understood through the modernist
project.
Lyotard did not invent or fully describe this - the economic shift that
the
phrase 'the postmodernist economy' can be identified as taking place
from the
mid-1950s when the numbers of people employed in the western societies
in
manufacturing began to decline whilst the productivity rose. The
definition of
the economic and social change is however recent...

Of course the individual historical elements that you mention may be
correct but
the point of constructing new philosophical, and perhaps also scientific
categories is that it enables new approaches and new understandings of
the way
in which the social functions. Philosophy is, I would suggest,  about
the
invention of new concepts which enable us to understand our relationship
to the
world.  To produce exploitiation, as you do below,  as a constant which
by
implication does not require new concepts raises the questions -  how do
you
define and work towards change? Do the old modernist and pre-modern
concepts
adequately describe and define the contemporary period? Is the empirical
understanding of the state of things adequate in the contemporary world?

I like the idea that the media are in some sense 'bearers of truth'...
an
entertaining thought.

regards

sdv

hbone wrote:

> Steve and All,
>
> Points 1) and 2) are impersonal academic truisims. As to Point 3 -
> everything after modern is, and will be chronologically, postmodern.  But
> the "Postmodern Condition" of Lyotard was based on the years preceding the
> Soviet collapse.  And that collapese commenced the stampede to corporate
> domination we call globalization.
>
> Globalization is old wine in new bottles, old wolves in new sheepskins.
> Describing the theft of  lands of indigenous peoples, the killing of their
> fighters, the raping, burning, and pillaging, are not speech acts of
> academics and historians, but daily reports and pictures that enrich the
> media.
>
> The information revolution facilitates globalization in much the same way
> naval technology facilitated and maintained colonization in the late 19th
> and early 20th
> centuries.
>
> regards,
> Hugh
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
> > The below 'simply', (simply ye-gods! Hugh i'm doomed...) simply describes
> the
> > normal state of all post-the-invention-of-the-state societies... I'd
> suggest
> > that it's neve been different.
> >
> > The economic structures of the past thousand years are understandable in
> the
> > following three groups - 1) agriculture and the use of primary raw
> materials,
> > worldwide 2) industrial production and the gradual invention of consumer
> goods,
> > based essentially around the western economies and the disgusting colonial
> > ideal 3) the post-modern economic system focusing on services, and the
> > manipulation of information on a global scale. The movement from the
> second
> > economic structure to the third is the process we know as the
> postmodern...
> >
> > regards
> >
> > sdv
> >
> >
> > hbone wrote:
> >
> > > Globalization exempts Arms, Illegal Drugs and Oil from international
> > > control, favors secrecy, profits from child labor (read Eliz. Barrett
> > > Browning on children in 19th century mines) takes the legacy of
> colonialism
> > > to new heights - destroys able-bodied males, sends elders, mothers and
> > > children on a Trail of Tears, and,
> > >
> > > describes those who protest as as CRAZIES
> > >
> > > HB
> >
> >