Think Globally, Study Locally. Tyranny of the Moment, Structural Violence and Modern World-system Cover Image

Myśleć globalnie, badać lokalnie. Tyrania chwili, przemoc strukturalna a nowoczesny system-świat
Think Globally, Study Locally. Tyranny of the Moment, Structural Violence and Modern World-system

Author(s): Andrzej W. Nowak
Subject(s): Cultural Essay, Political Essay, Societal Essay
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Actor-Network Theory; world-system analysis; holistic/ecological ontology; “ontological imagination”; “tyranny of the moment”

Summary/Abstract: Article is a trying to merge two theories: actor-network theory (ANT) and world-system analysis (WSA). Such a synthesis gives us an opportunity to combine an ethnographic approach, focused on actors analysis of ANT, with a networked, global perspective proposed by WSA. Both theories share the same type of holistic/ecological ontology of human societies. This similarity is fully visible if we compare a notion of the collective (Latour) and a notion of world-system (WSA). This is challenge to traditional, modernist views of social ontology. Author propose a concept of “ontological imagination”, as a solution. This is proposition a radicalized version of “sociological imagination (C. W. Mills), more suitable to technoscientific societies. In the paper the theoretical considerations are supplemented by a case study about “tyranny of the moment” as an example of acceleration in contemporary culture. Article propose model of social time in global context. Time is treated as a very important factor in global inequalities within structures if modern world-system.

  • Issue Year: 16/2013
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 148–166
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Polish