Globalization With a European Face

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DOI: 10.1177/026327640602300275

2006 23: 414Theory Culture SocietyHermann Schwengel

Globalization with a European Face

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414 Theory, Culture & Society 23(23)

Globalization with a European Face

Hermann Schwengel

Mediating Emerging Powers

Should globalization have a face as civilizations andcultures, states and societies, economic and socialorders historically had or have? We may think of

friendly or ugly faces of power our culturalmemory includes colonial and racist faces ofpower. One generation in 1968 had the dream ofsocialism with a human face, and another of capi-talism with a human face in the good times of the

new economy at the end of the last century. Thecultural memory of historical representations ofpower matters when new emerging powers arebeginning to shape the global order. The Europeancultural memory may enable Europeans to

mediate emerging powers beyond the world of

traditional empires and their global economies,beyond the worlds of nation-states and their inter-national economies, and beyond the world ofliberal empires and their global economy, sincethey know something about the reflexivity ofpower. The double character of power, being atonce asymmetrical, as Max Weber characterized it,as well as creative, i.e. the ability to do somethingwith somebody else, as Hannah Arendt stressed,has to be turned into a tool for mediation. Theemerging powers are structurally diverse: there are

nation-states and societies as extended as conti-nents and civilizations like India and China, associ-ations of regional states as in Europe, South-eastAsia, and South America, and all the varieties ofreflexive territorialism between them. There arenetworks of global firms and technology hubs, thenodes of capital markets and knowledge systems,

and the new economic archaeology of power.There are these widespread media-, techno-, ideo-, religious, and cultural scapes that Arjun Appadu-rai talks about, and the old and new ecumenical

spheres, diasporic locations and islands of meaningwith their flows of images, text, sound, andartefact. Last but not least, there are global citiesno longer defined only by financial headquarters,historical functions and home for the creativeclasses, but by their position in the permanentstruggle for centrality in the global urban landscapeof power, as Saskia Sassen (1995) has taught us.

Their emerging powers work from above and frombelow, within global societies and within theirinterdependency: people see, hear, taste, feel, andsmell this emergence. Discourses on globalizationare an essential part of globalization everywhereand are mirrored and reflected by multiple audi-ences. One may argue that these emerging powersdo not allow, do not need or should not ask formediation, because the flows and stocks of theglobal complexities, as John Urry (2003) has char-acterized them, will find their own way. But the

realities of globalization demand a rethink of theold European ideas of mediation and Aufhebung.At the same time it is true that European thoughtis not just the naturally born candidate for theposition of mediating emerging powers. Europeanreflexive modernity is less universal and more

particular than Europeans often like to believe. Itis true that it would be better to speak of 5000years of globalization rather than of 500 years, asAndr Gunder Frank (1998) has suggested; thatthe project of globality is different from the

project of modernity, and the global universe aftermodernism will not be defined by the postmod-ernism we know. Modern individualism and indi-vidual choice in all spheres of life, the interactionof markets as a social research process and thedriving force for mobilization and differentiation,popular democracy and individual conflictmanagement, the dominance of rational culturesforcing secularists as well as believers to come upwith their reasons and intensities, all these modernachievements are confronted with emerging

powers and the empty place of globality. Beforesuggesting a European reflexive empire, as UlrichBeck does (Beck and Grande, 2004), Europeans

have to break with their idiosyncratic identifi-cation of globalization and modernization, reflecton their position in the rise of the modern worldsystem and reshape their illusions after recoveringfrom their own two world wars.

World Systems

The real challenge of Immanuel Wallersteinsworld system theory is to speak of a singular worldsystem. Archaeologists as well as historians wouldprefer to speak about world systems. They suggest,as Gil Stein (1999) does, alternative frameworkssuch as trade-diaspora and distance-parity modelsof interaction, they have empires and their worldeconomies, as Fernand Braudel has documented,

Keywords emerging powers, Europe, Euro-pean globalization, Westphalian order ofsocieties, world systems

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and last but not least the world of nation-statesand their global economy. The singular modernworld system marks the special place in-betweenhistorical-archaeological empires and exchangesystems, on the one hand, and modern capitalism,democratic republic and open culture, on theother. In this modern world system, however,some basic questions remain: whether thedynamic towards universal nations or the balance

of strategically acting powers, and the commercialand credit institutions of economic power or theprofessional and industrial commodification oflabour are shaping economic life, and whether theinstitutionalized coexistence of beliefs, traditions,and cultures, or the mediation of different humanexperiences in a single universe of science, ethics,and aesthetics makes the world go round. It is thatsingularity that now is reappearing on the globalpolitical, cultural, and economic stage, but thistime in terms of a true global world system. Euro-peans do not own the reflection on the singularworld system at all; they have to accept theirhistories of rising, rivalling and declining power ina collective psychoanalysis in order to contributeto and mediate the antagonisms of a true globalworld system. After their centuries of religiouscivil war and reason, revolution and development,life and difference Helmuth Plessner has

suggested the sequence of reason, developmentand life for the European centuries Americanmodernization emerged in the first half of the 20thcentury as the only mediator between universal-ism and the balance of powers, industry andcommerce, pluralism and belief. As the challengeof socialism disappeared in the second half of thatcentury, and the aspirations of the Third Worldremained limited because the constitution of manyindependent states was not embedded in an insti-tutionalized global economic order, for a momentit seemed that the American unification ofmodernity and globality would be the end ofhistory and that globalization would get anAmerican face. But after only a few years the basicquestions of the one-world system are back andmore open than ever before. If Europeans areentering the contemporary struggle and competi-tion for the mediation of the emerging powers of

globalization, they not only have to understand theshift of economic, political, and cultural power tothe American project of global modernizationduring the last century, but maybe even more the

global limits of their own post-war Europeanproject which proves to be much more inward-looking, historicist and passive than most of thembelieve.

European Illusions

After the post-war-recovery, with the crisis of the1970s, Europeans became conscious of theirreflexive capacities and developed sublimefeelings of superiority regarding the liberal projectof modernization. At the end of the century most

of these feelings proved to be illusions, softwarewithout hardware. Nevertheless, this amalgam of

reflexive social capacities and sublime illusions isan obstacle to any global mediating role givingglobalization a European face. Europe seemed tohave some civilizational advantages resulting froma longer and more intensive period of industrial-ization creating the appropriate institutions andthe appropriate behaviour of mass society, sophis-ticated organization and democracy. More thanthis, European urban experience seemed to

preserve an idea of public life, depth of collectiveexperience and vital senses for the division ofmeaning between urban and rural landscapes.Some people even thought that the Europeanexperience of family, marriage and intensive bondsbetween individuals had the better historicalchances to be cultivated and extended. When,three decades ago, the first waves of our contem-porary globalization arrived, many Europeans, dueto their mature historical institutions, the

complexities of their urban life and their differen-

tiated family life believed themselves to be betteradjusted to the uncertainties of modernity.Indeed, the American way of life having beenEuropeanized by war, welfare-statism andcommunication had moved into the global crisis ofthe 1970s, seemingly unable to work with thisdecline. By turning this decline upside downhegemonic American liberals and their Britishfollowers first of all learned from their Japaneseand German competitors and then used the newopportunities of globalization, information

industry and global mediascapes to make theirproject of modernization reflexive, raising produc-tivity, including vital parts of European and Asiansocieties. The seemingly civilizing Europeanadvantages were doubted. The long and extensiveexperience of industrialization could also be adisadvantage in flexible high-tech production or

high quality service structured by global expansionof the tertiary sector. The European urban experi-ence with its historical-cultural core might not beopen enough for the productive effects of migra-

tion, transnational media experience and anthro-pological reflexivity. Even the often quotedstability of personal bonds, reciprocity and publiclife expressed in public places, theatres andmuseums could be doubted as too slow, too homo-geneous and too inflexible for a vital post-colonialworld of intensive differences. The European faceseemed to be looking old, not only against the new

Problematizing Global Knowledge Genealogies of the Global/Globalizations 415



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America but against the new Second World ofemerging powers from India and China to SouthAfrican and South American states and societies.But neither the old nor the new Europe, neitherthe old nor the new America, neither the oldThird World nor the new Second World, matchthe questions of our time. In 1973 economicglobalization began to recover from the de-globalization of the world wars; in 1989, after the

collapse of the Berlin Wall, the question of politi-cal globalization returned, and after 2005, withthe end of the post-war constitution for Europe,the German question is over, but the Europeanquestion of that time is now embedded in the realinteraction of global emerging powers.

Global Expectations

At the beginning of the 21st century expectationsfor Europe come more from the periphery thanfrom the centre. The East and South Europeansocieties of the EU are re-inventing themselves toget into the markets, networks, and institutions,although these efforts are embedded in thenervous intertwining of local and global desire.Emerging powers like China and India as well asassociations of growing economies are interested ina better balance of power and are looking for

attractive, cooperation cultures in a competitiveworld. Beyond nation-building, beyond the histori-cal interaction of civilizations and beyond theWestphalian Order of states, global complexitiesare framed in a different manner. But instead ofdeveloping global governance software without thehardware of global government, a new Westphalianorder of societies may be the future. The treatyfor this contract is not yet signed, but overlapping

societies, migration from above and from below,permanent comparison and exchange of ideas and

values are demanding new arenas for conflict andconsensus in and between societies linking thepower structure of one society much closer to thepower structure of the others. As high-technologyenterprises, media and cultural industries areproviding the interaction of markets, oppor-tunities, desires, and life chances, Europeans couldoffer a model for an order of open societies attrac-tive for a globalized world. However, the Europeaneconomic unity in diversity is not established, thedifference between a Scandinavian and British

welfare regime is unbalanced, and the creativecores of development are partly chic nodes in theglobal enterprise network. From the glorious timesof European modernity there might remain adistinguished sense of global complexities, the

fluidity of objects and subjects between words,histories, and experiences, as well as some senseof the dignity of places, persons, and artefacts, butas in history Europeans have to re-invent them-selves to mediate the emerging powers. The longshadows of the European 19th century, nation andclass, have to be reflected when Europeans aremediating work and service within and betweensocieties, and have to mediate taxation and repre-

sentation within and between societies whileleaving the shadows behind in contributing to atruly globalized world. European intellectualtraditions are characterized by the same ambiv-alence. The intellectual history of critical socialtheory, structuralism and cultural theory, modern-ization and systems theory is somehow exhaustedfrom the great post-war recovery, the post-colonialfragmentation and the post-totalitarian difference,but at the same time offering tools of reflexivityfor the management of emerging powers. As oftenin history Europeans prove to be the mostuniversal and the most particular human beings atthe same time. They are born to invent the idea of

Weltpragmatismus, but could get lost betweentheir history and the compression of time andspace.

References

Beck, U. and E. Grande (2004)Daskosmopolitische Europa. Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp.

Frank, A.G. (1998)ReOrient: Global Economy inthe Asian Age. Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press.

Sassen, S. (1995) On Concentration andCentrality in the Global City, pp. 6378 in

P.L. Knox and P.J. Taylor (eds) World Cities ina World System. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Stein, G.J. (1999)Rethinking World-Systems:Diasporas, Colonies, and Interaction in UrukMesopotamia. Tucson, AZ: University ofArizona Press.

Urry, J. (2003) Global Complexity. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Hermann Schwengel is Head of the Departmentfor Sociology at the Albert-Ludwigs-UniversityFreiburg and Dean of the Faculty for Philosophy.

He works in the field of interdisciplinary culturalstudies and historical and political sociology,including his Globalisierung mit europischemGesicht: Der Kampf um die politische Form derZukunft (Berlin, 1999).

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Globalization With a European Face