Reading and Faith in a Global Community

Abstract

In 1960s only few obscure American and French social scientists were talking about globalization. Today it has become one of those buzz words that everyone uses but few define. Somehow it is connected to Internet and to World Trade Organization; to ubiquity of McDonalds and MTV; to transnational corporations, fall of communism, and spread of democracy. But globalization is also becoming of increasing concern for literary scholars. As Giles Gunn notes in his introduction to recent special issue of PMLA called Globalizing Literary Studies: challenge for students of humanities ... is not to decide whether globalization deserves to be taken seriously but how best to engage it critically (21). For those of us who study literature in all of its manifold and intricate relationships to Christianity, globalization provides new opportunities as well as poses crucial questions for future of our work. To consider these implications, I will briefly summarize current theories about globalization, highlight some of issues that have been raised in globalization of literary studies, call attention to some striking but often overlooked demographic trends, and, finally, reflect on task of literary scholar within this context. In general terms, globalization refers to fact that world is becoming increasingly interrelated, so that what happens in one part of world impacts and has consequences for individuals or communities in another part of world. One definition from group of sociologists states, Globalization [is] widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life, from cultural to criminal, financial to spiritual (Held et al. 2). While fact of this increasing worldwide interconnectedness is generally acknowledged, globalization theory as whole is still rife with disagreements over causes, connotations, and consequences of such connectedness. The overview provided by Held and his colleagues identifies three broad schools of thought: skeptics, hyperglobalizers, and transformationalists. The skeptics argue that globalization is merely rhetorical myth concealing reality that international is increasingly dominated by three regional blocs of Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America. The is becoming ever more powerful, and deeply rooted patterns of inequality and hierarchy in world economy have changed only marginally. The skeptics conclude, Such inequality ... contributes to advance of both fundamentalism and aggressive nationalism such that rather than emergence of global civilization ... world is fragmenting into civilizational blocs and cultural and ethnic enclaves (Held et al. 6). In contrast, hyperglobalizers believe that we are entering a new epoch of human history in which traditional nation-states will become irrelevant: global diffusion and hybridization of cultures are interpreted as evidence of radically new world order, order which prefigures demise of nation-state (Held et al. 4). Neo-liberals view this process optimistically as another stage of spread of Enlightenment values, such as democracy and freedom, while radical, or neo-Marxist, hyperglobalists more pessimistically see globalization as crass Americanization of entire world or the triumph of oppressive global capitalism (Held et al. 4). Both liberals and Marxists alike, however, tend to see these globalization processes from western perspective, as aspects of European culture and/or economics gradually permeate world. Finally, transformationalists agree with hyperglobalists that globalization is historically unprecedented, powerful driving force in today's world. But how globalization is transforming world remains uncertain since it is an essentially contingent historical process . …