Theorizing Modern Society as an Inverted Reality: How Critical Theory and Indigenous Critiques of Globalization Must Learn From Each Other
Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges
ISBN: 978-1-78560-247-4, eISBN: 978-1-78560-246-7
Publication date: 6 November 2015
Abstract
Purpose
To examine whether indigenous critiques of globalization and critical theories of modernity are compatible, and how they can complement each other so as to engender more realistic theories of modern society as inherently constructive and destructive, along with practical strategies to strengthen modernity as a culturally transformative project, as opposed to the formal modernization processes that rely on and reinforce modern societies as structures of social inequality.
Methodology/approach
Comparison and assessment of the foundations, orientations, and implications of indigenous critiques of globalization and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of modern society, for furthering our understanding of challenges facing human civilization in the twenty-first century, and for opportunities to promote social justice.
Findings
Modern societies maintain order by compelling individuals to subscribe to propositions about their own and their society’s purportedly “superior” nature, especially when compared to indigenous cultures, to override observations about the de facto logic of modern societies that are in conflict with their purported logic.
Research implications
Social theorists need to make consistent efforts to critically reflect on how their own society, in terms of socio-historical circumstances as well as various types of implied biases, translates into research agendas and propositions that are highly problematic when applied to those who belong to or come from different socio-historical contexts.
Originality/value
An effort to engender a process of reciprocal engagement between one of the early traditions of critiquing modern societies and a more recent development originating in populations and parts of the world that historically have been the subject of both constructive and destructive modernization processes.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Michelle Christian, Lawrence Hazelrigg, and Daniel Krier for helpful comments on various versions of this paper, Rhiannon Leebrick for excellent formal and substantive suggestions on how to clarify the overall argument of the paper, Lain Myers-Brown for a very close reading of the final version that improved the grammar and style, and Enkeshi Thom for pointing out two major deficits in the frame of the overall argument.
Citation
Jalata, A. and Dahms, H.F. (2015), "Theorizing Modern Society as an Inverted Reality: How Critical Theory and Indigenous Critiques of Globalization Must Learn From Each Other", Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 33), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 75-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-120420150000033004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited