Unsettling subjectivity across local, national, and global imaginaries : producing an unhappy consciousness

This article analyzes the complex and subtle dynamics involved in producing and representing the global-local nexus in everyday life. Its socio-historical context is the destabilization of the current globalization system – and its associated global imaginary – marked by the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, continuing with the populist explosion in the mid 2010s, and climaxing in the 2020 Global Coronavirus Pandemic. But rather than mischaracterizing the current context as “deglobalization”, we describe it as a contemporary intensification of what we have been calling the “Great Unsettling”. This era of intensifying objective instability is linked to foundational subjective processes. In particular, we examine the production of an “unhappy consciousness” torn between the enjoyment of global digital mobility and the visceral attachment to the familiar limits of local everyday life. In doing so, we rewrite the approach to the sources of ontological security and insecurity

‘The Democratic Paradigm: A Vanishing Act?’

The premise of this issue of the journal is that in western secular democracies the principles underlying the democratic paradigm at the national level are not in any serious doubt. It is this presumption that I wish to address. This paper will assert that the citizen is no longer at the heart of the democratic process. Using the example of the UK, I will argue that this is a consequence of the representative nature of liberal democracy which conceptualises citizenship as a legal status, giving citizens protection of the law rather than participating in its formulation or execution as in the civic republican model. Liberal democracy not only eschews greater political participation, it does not prepare citizens for it. There currently exists a democratic deficit at local and national level which is leading to a decline in active citizenship. Therefore any attempt to democratise globalisation without addressing the weakening of national democracies will simply lead to the current political elites populating new ‘democratic’ structures. With this in mind I will counter arguments utilised to discredit the civic republican model of democracy. I will argue that in England the present educational system, predicated upon a narrow skills-based agenda premised upon an economic rationale, is undermining democracy by not preparing the citizenry for active political participation or to critique governance. In addition, policy changes in England are leading to the commodification of education which will undermine its social purpose and inter alia democracy

The virus and the glocal: tracing semiopolitical interactions

This work explores the reactions that the sudden appearance of COVID-19 has caused. More precisely, it is an attempt to grasp the re-articulation of the semio- political relations in the first two months of the spread of the virus (or at least of awareness of its circulation). At the heart of this process are the states. We will analyse how some of them managed the unpredictable and the risk represented by the virus. At the same time, we will see how this has brought into play not only the interactions between states, and the interaction between them and the planetary dimension, but also how it has redefined (within each individual state) the form of the collective, that is to say the relationship between rulers and governed, between central government and territories etc. What results is the need for abandoning static definitions of the local and the global in order to trace the multiple glocal relationships that constitute the fabric of our reality

Towards an Ecumenial or a Catastrophic City? A Design, Ecumene and Humanitarian Discussion

This paper is an attempt to explore the interplay of humanity and science to respond to novel globalization processes in the face of the 21st century. The human situation is presented through two schisms: the human-nature and the socio-cultural. Sustainability and ecumene studies are proposed as the new aggregated science fields aiming at solutions for the 21st century. Ecumene studies respond to the need to create a planetary intellectual infrastructure (a planetary brain) that “thinks” in an ecumenial way (beyond border conviviality) for a global transformation and reconciliation of human differences in/for a cosmopolitan perspective. Ecumenic, humanitarian and design movements/studies are considered the main areas of ecumene studies as an inter- and transdisciplinary field, with the city (in all its forms) as its core platform. The city as a human extension and dissipative system reveals a duality since its origin, coming to a peak of conviviality as it will comprise two third of humanity by 2050. This peak will either lead to higher forms of organization (anastrophe), or to collapse (catastrophe). The paper presents the “ecumenial city” or Ecumenopolis (city of Human Rights) as a anastrophic future projection and a call for everyone, emphasizing both a destiny and small actions for activating transformation and reconfiguration in times of approaching the peak.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Between the Local and the Global: Interwining Archives for the Construction of the History of Colonial Northeast Rioplatense

This research recovers methodological and heuristic interests that developeda few years ago, which have led us to work on the local and global historical archivesfrom a humanistic horizon. This task puts us in a different place as historians, for itforces us to rethink the social function of the archives and of the historians in thosearchives. In the Northeast region of present-day Argentina, the space for discussionon archives begins to be a terrain won over by historians, who develop projects torecover, digitise and conserve documentary sources. Throughout this article we willfocus on characterising a set of global and local archives that are vital to Rioplatensecolonial history. We are interested in problematizing about documentary dispersionand how we build documentary corpus from sources that lie in different repositories.Beyond exploring them and briefly entering its institutional history, the work is oriented to present an in-depth analysis of the documentary typologies that can be foundin those archives and that are vital to historical research in the region.Fil: Salinas, Maria Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Investigaciones Geohistóricas. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Instituto de Investigaciones Geohistóricas; ArgentinaFil: Valenzuela, Fatima Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Investigaciones Geohistóricas. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Instituto de Investigaciones Geohistóricas; Argentin

Place Attachment in a Sustainable Neighbourhood: Comparison of Two Cases in Surrey, B.C

Scholars have voiced the emphasis of studies in sustainability on environmental sustainability over social sustainability. One of the dimensions of social sustainability is neighbourhood cohesion among residents of a neighbourhood. This paper compares the social sustainability of two neighbourhoods in Vancouver metropolitan area particularly in the city of Surrey, B.C. with respect to the sense of neighbourhood cohesion among their residents. Buckner’s (1988) instrument for measuring neighbourhood cohesion index is used with the addition of a few questions to probe for a new conception of space that may link the degree of accessibility and permeability of a neighbourhood (or degree of gated-ness) with the level of neighbourhood cohesion. Results of qualitative and quantitative analysis show that the neighbourhood having an enclosure model had a higher level of neighbourhood cohesion than the neighbourhood with an encounter model on both the affective and interactive dimensions of neighbourhood cohesion.articl

Glocalization and everyday life

This Special Issue of Glocalism bring together scholars from different countries and with different approaches to reflect on the relation between the idea of "glocalization" and that of "everyday life". The Index can be found here: https://glocalismjournal.org/issue-2020-3-glocalization-and-everyday-life