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Studying The Contemporary World: Why Do You Need To Study The World?
Studying The Contemporary World: Why Do You Need To Study The World?
As the main concept in the study of the contemporary world vis-à-vis the ontology (what
it is to exist) as a citizen of the world, globalization is in itself a work-in-progress concept.
Academic circles are yet to come up with an encompassing definition that is not limited to
globalization in the contexts of economy and politics. As we progress through the course, there
are numerous definitions and/or conceptualizations of globalization that will be discussed.
Rather than defining what globalization is, Manfred B. Steger (2013), described the
phenomenon as “the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across
world-time and across world-space” (as cited in Claudio & Abinales, 2018: 7-8).
A breakdown of Steger’s (2013) description of globalization together with Claudio & Abinales’ (2018) elucidation.
Appadurai’s five ‘landscapes’ present the idea that there are multiple globalizations, and this can
help make sense the dynamics in globalization as a big process with all its multidimensional sub-
processes (Claudio & Abinales, 2018: 10). As Appadurai (1996) put it, “each of these ‘scapes’
contains the building blocks of the new ‘imagined worlds’ that are assembled by the historically
situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe” (as cited in Steger, 2014:
13).
These descriptions should provide students an overview of what to expect in undertaking
a study of the world and globalization. The concepts presented here will be tackled in more detail
in the succeeding lectures.