The document discusses several perspectives on globalization and its effects on cultural and religious identities. It states that globalization both corrodes inherited identities but also encourages the creation of new identities to gain control in the global power structure. Religion can both further and oppose globalization at the same time. Globalization relativizes particularistic identities and religions, but revitalizing religion is a way for groups to assert their identity and compete for influence. For many Muslims, pressures toward relativizing religion and identity are seen as demands to abandon who they are and what they hold sacred. The document then reviews several theorists' perspectives on globalization as a radical change, the challenges it poses to religions, and its effects on economies, polities, communication,

1. Session 2
Joshva

2.  Global system corrodes inherited or
constructed cultural and personal identities:
yet also encourages the creation and
revitalization of particular identities as a way
of gaining control over systematic power.
 Religion within the global system can be anti
and pro at the same time. It can further
globalization while opposing its effects

3.  Globalization brings with it the relativization
of particularistic identities along with the
relativization and marginalization of religion
as a mode of social communication.
 Revitalization of religion is a way of asserting
a particular (group) identity, which in turn is a
prime method of competing for power and
influence in the global system.

4.  The key to the problem of SV for many
Muslims is that it represents the larger global
pressure towards the relativization of religion
and group-cultural identity as the price for
fuller inclusion in the global system. They are
being asked to bracket who they are and what
they hold most sacred.

5.  Dichotomy – Profane/sacred
 Primarily about something beyond the normal
 Immanence/Transcendence
 Posits the transcendent to give the immanent
world meaning
 Transcendent is not subject to the root
indeterminacy of the immanent
 Transcendent as a social partner, logically
beyond the perceptible and humanly social
world

6.  The situation is new and unique in the history
of humanity
 Discontinuity between past and now or future
 Wallerstein – cycles and crises
 Dunn and Rubinson – a Change in the
fundamental nature of the world system
 Meyer and Hannan – radical change in the
future because the current patterns will run
up against global limits

7.  Stems from the logical difficulty of conceiving
a whole without something to differentiate it
from and compare it to.
 We cannot conceive the whole in terms of one
of its parts
 Conceiving the global whole is a highly
problematic and contested but central to
theory and actors (Robertson)
 Globalization theories are developments of
the fundamental modernization thesis.
 Expansion of Western modernity

8.  Western imperialism
 Leads to repeated clash of different particular
cultures
 British Empire’s civilising project and
American free world
 The spread of one historically existing culture
at the expense of all others
 Global social reality relativizes all particular
cultures including religions –
homogenization, disappearence of local
cultures?

9.  Religions express the wholeness of societies
(Durkheim)
 To survive they face challenges from
relativization
 Being absolutes this results in crises
 Nothing fundamental is changing is not the
only way
 Openness to change a prime warrant for the
continued authenticity of the tradition

10.  ‘Immanuel Wallerstein - analyse the social
whole from an economic determinism
 European world economy created
geographical divisions – core, periphery and
semiperiphery
 The struggle between those who benefit and
who do not – class conflicts - cycle

11.  Meyer – Political economy – World Political
system operates to restructure and alter this
economy and transform social life
 States are the legitimate representatives of
their citizens because they pursue the
globally legitimate ends of progress and
equality
 Conformity to world polity norms carries its
rewards
 World economy and polity mutually reinforces
modes of value creation

12.  Robertson - Individual – society
 Modernisation in every society
 To intrasocietal problems to intersocietal one
globalization
 How societies respond to individuals and inter-
societal one
 National societies continue to exist and are
prime actors in the global system of societies as
well as prime, but no longer sole determinants
in personal identity
 Good society on the basis of progress –
universalization of particularism and
particularization of universalism

13.  Luhmann – society consists of social systems –
which in turn actions – which are based on
meaningful communication
 Stratified and differentiated societies
 Domination of upper strata
 Stratification and rationalisation results of
modernity
 Communication displays cognitive and
adaptive orientations
 Expectations – normative and learning
 Normative rationality and structuring of
society – no powerful hindrance to modernity