The Global Turn. Eve Darian-Smith
are also political and cultural acts (Juergensmeyer 2000, 2001). Reinserting global processes into historical contexts allows us to reconnect the dots and make sense of what may otherwise appear to be discrete phenomena and random events. Global analyses look for patterns of both change and continuity, highlighting the deep historical continuities between the past and ongoing global processes (McCarty 2014b).
It is important to note, moreover, that histories are always plural. Global histories should be decentralized and not privilege one historical narrative over another. One community’s understanding of the past must be situated against other peoples’ narratives and historical memories, which may be contradictory or even oppositional (Trouillot 1995). It is not sufficient to tell a singular or dominant Eurocentric understanding of history. Further, it is not sufficient for us in the Euro-American academy to tell the histories of others as if we knew better or had a more sophisticated understanding of what really took place. A global historical perspective recognizes that each society and people has its own unique understanding of the past, and that these various social understandings inform each other in dynamic interplay across time and geopolitical space.
Sachsenmaier writes that new directions in global history suggest that history as a discipline “can contribute significantly to the study of globalization and to the struggles to establish global paradigms of thinking” (Sachsenmaier 2006: 465).1 He goes on to remark:
Now that scholars have begun to pursue global agendas while remaining sensitive to the full complexity of the local, the devil is in the detail. Or, seen from another perspective, the treasure trove is in the detail. In lieu of a detached macro-theoretical synthesis, the relationship between the global and the local will need to be explored through a myriad of detailed studies … Global and transcultural history can be at the very forefront of such an endeavor. (Sachsenmaier 2006: 461)
For global scholars the historical/temporal dimension includes historical narratives as well as different conceptions of time itself. Not only do different cultures have different understandings of time (Ogle 2015), but global processes often occur on time horizons that are not recognized by fast-paced modern societies and the dominant global political framework (Hutchings 2008; Lundborg 2012). For example, some forms of environmental damage, such as leaching of toxins into water catchment areas, can be lethal to local residents. This kind of ecocide, however, is not classified as criminal violence in modern legal systems in part because the damage may occur over decades and generations (Nixon 2013). The slow pace of processes such as climate change, ocean pollution, and habitat destruction present unique regulatory challenges. The short time cycles associated with media, politics, and public attention make it difficult to develop multidecade strategies and implement long-term policies.
Global Social Structures
It is not an exaggeration to say that the concept of social structure was the cornerstone on which the modern social and behavioral disciplines were built. The founding fathers of social theory, including Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sigmund Freud, each contributed their own systemic or structural theories of society. This is one of the main reasons their contributions remain influential to this day.
The ability to see beyond individual behavior to identify enduring patterns in society that constrain this behavior is perhaps the singular skill of a social scientist. This skill is analogous to what C. Wright Mills called the “sociological imagination” (Mills 1959). It is the ability to see that the individual’s free choices, called individual agency, are actually constrained or influenced by a myriad of preexisting conditions, norms, values, institutions, and structural relations. How an individual acts is hugely influenced by language, culture, nationality, legal system, age, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, family, education, geographic region, and so on. These social factors thoroughly shape individual “free” choices—choices such as whom to marry, what job to take, or what kind of transportation to use. The influence of social structures is such that the outcomes of individual “free” choices become overwhelmingly, statistically, and distressingly predictable.
Recognizing that individual agency is constrained by social structures also almost inevitably leads to the recognition that social systems are not value neutral. Social and economic systems function, but the existing systems function better for some people than for others. With the recognition of social structure comes the realization that inequality is not a natural or random occurrence. Inequality is socially structured, determined by preexisting patterns, norms, and institutions of society. Structural and critical thinking are hence very closely linked.
The concept of social structure remains crucial to understanding global issues. We argue, however, that there is a need to revisit the notion of social structure and expand it beyond the modern nation-state and single-society paradigm in which it was developed. We need to rework the concept of social structure so that it can be applied to larger geopolitical economic structures and their varied impacts around the world. This kind of global political economic approach focuses our attention on the structural features of the current world order, highlighting the enduring political and economic inequalities within and between states and a variety of nonstate actors.
Breaking Down Binaries
Increasing levels of communication, integration, and interdependence in the global system require us to complicate simple binaries such as East/West, colonizer/colonized, First World/Third World, and developed/developing. Such binaries can be used effectively to emphasize inequality and injustices between continents and regions of the world. These same binaries, however, also obscure the complexity of global issues. We may talk of rich and poor countries, but only a handful of countries are unequivocally rich or poor; the large majority of them fall somewhere in between. Dichotomies such as rich/poor obscure variations between countries, as well as internal variations within each country. Even the poorest countries have wealthy elite, middle, and working classes. Conversely, even the richest regions have poverty and inequality. Moreover, assuming the conventions of a global north/global south divide may preclude us from recognizing a multitude of relations that can be characterized as south/south or south/east (Roy and Crane 2015). These new binaries are themselves problematic in their monolithic essentializing of human difference, yet they are important for shaking up modernist conventions of how to view the world in which “the West versus the rest” has prevailed for centuries.
Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems approach is a good example of systemic thinking that moved beyond nation-states and simplified binaries (Wallerstein 1974). Even though Wallerstein’s core/semiperiphery/periphery model is often used as if it were a simple triad, this is not an accurate portrayal of his work. Wallerstein described a complex global system made up of distributed systemic processes that are deterritorialized in the sense that they can exist side-by-side in the same place. In his approach, core and periphery are the two ends of a spectrum. Along this spectrum some nations have more diversified economies and more total core processes than other nations. It is important to note that in his model this spectrum could also be applied to subnational regions. Within every nation there are subregions made up of predominantly core, semiperipheral, or peripheral processes. “Global cities,” for example, can be understood as core areas containing many diverse core, semiperipheral, and peripheral processes, and these cities are in some ways more closely linked to each other than to the peripheral, rural areas that surround them (Sassen 1991).
One must always be careful when applying Western binary logics and abstractions to non-Western regions. As the world becomes more globalized, the lines between East and West, First World and Third World, and global north and global south are increasingly blurred. These analytical conventions should be treated with care so as to avoid replicating categories of thought associated with modern imperialism and colonialism. The people and issues that Europeans historically positioned “out there” at the margins are now right next door, and vice versa. At the same time, while it has always been appropriate, only recently have scholars recognized the need to apply developmental and human rights paradigms to postindustrial societies. In global studies and across the humanities and social sciences more generally, scholars should avoid using binary logics that oversimplify and obscure variation and inadvertently perpetuate a singular worldview. We should continually work to develop new terminology that more accurately reflects a wider range of