Overview

Dr.Mentan's study goes beyond the dichotomies of globalisation. He notes that certain dualities recur in the literature on this subject. In one widely influential distinction, there are two primary forces at work in the rise of globalisation: globalisation from above, a process that primarily affects the elites within and across national contexts, and globalisation from below, a popular process that primarily draws from the rank-and-file in civil society. This contrast highlights an important political dynamic (and it makes for a handy, hopeful picture of struggle and resistance on a world scale) but its widespread use obscures the ways in which these two trends are not entirely independent of one another. For example, the groups from ''above'' and ''below'' tend to merge in certain nongovernmental organisations; and the popular movements ''from below'' may still be perceived in certain local contexts as an imposition ''from above.'' Still other dualities prevail: of tensions between the global and the local; between economic and cultural dimensions of globalisation; between globalisation viewed as a trend toward homogenisation around Western (or, even more narrowly, around American) norms and culture, and globalisation viewed as an era of increased contact between diverse cultures, leading to an increase in hybridisation and novelty; and between the material and rhetorical effects of globalisation or, as it might be put, between globalisation and ''globalisation.'' Finally, there is the distinction about whether globalisation is a ''good thing''; or not: Is globalisation beneficial to the cause of economic growth, equality, and justice, or is it harmful? Does it promote cultural sharing, tolerance, and a cosmopolitan spirit, or does it yield only the illusion of such understanding, a bland,consumerist appreciation,as in a Disney theme park, which elides issues of conflict, difference and asymmetries of power?

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9781936320615

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Dr Tatah Mentan is West African born and a US citizen with a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, USA. He is a full time university lecturer and author of among a number of works including The Recolonization of Africa (Bethesda,2011).

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