The Dialectics of Modernity - Recognizing Globalization. Studies on the Theoretical Perspectives of Globalization
Authors
Publication date
1 January 2014
Publisher
Arisztotelész Kiadó
Abstract
The volume The Dialectics of Modernity - Recognizing Globalization. Studies on the Theoretical Perspectives of Globalization is the product of a work of that
quarter of the century, which has been continuing, since 1989 up today, the true beginning of the globalization.
Therefore, because that concept was not existing at that time, the work is not yet directed, in the first years, on the globalization itself. As it can be seen, this concept
pushed through only in the second half of the nineties, when the concept could also be already statistically revealed in the world press.
How a group of researchers from Hungary was enquirying during the nineties, according to partners of conversation at home and abroad, with whom one could talk about how the new world emerging with 1989 can actually be described, is a
long story, the theory of which consists in the fact, that we apparently live in a world, where the most part of the people, even worse, even most of the intellectuals
are hardly interested in how this one really looks like.
On looking for partners, the circle of the authors of this volume was created. In Hungary, we quickly reached our limit (which much later did not prevent us from
appearing, such as if we had always been living in the theoretically worked globalization). The French group around Jacques Poulain reacted the fastest way
(and later around Francois de Bernard, with his particularly valuable homepage
www.mondialisations.org), not much later the contact with the Russian colleagues
around Alexandr Shumakov was created, in which Encyclopedia of the
Globalization our contribution could already appear in 2003. On these traces, we
came to the productive relationship with Leonid Grinin and Andrey Korotayev.
Finally, we mention the Fürstenfeld's initiative, founded since 2009 with Melitta
Becker's help in the framework of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Research in
this Austrian city. A relevant part of the author inside this book participated from
the beginning in the work of the group.
The individual contributions to this volume are linked together by a common
interest in knowledge. This is the theoretical view of the phenomenon of the
globalization. From the beginning, it was not further defined or limited to certain
approaches, particularly an independent theory of the globalization was not
intended. We started from the fact, that every legitimately revealed theoretical
approach can contribute legitimately to a later theory of the globalization.
In this way, the further contacts with Nico Stehr and the members of the Dresden
group for the investigation of the security problems arose, mainly with Ernst Woit.
Hegel defined the philosophy as the flight of the Owl of Minerva, which "begins
its flight only with the falling twilight". Through the theoretical investigation of the
globalization always becoming interdisciplinary, we wanted by no means to debate about this incomparable aphorism. We simply started from the conviction, that a new reality should not remain without any description