Page 433 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

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404 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

more of its populations relative to what it did older forms of ecological dominance of polit-
in the past, the global – corporations, courts, ical empires, based on enforced allegiance.
international governmental agencies, new The world of states is being replaced by a
transnational regions – has preempted national global political order, however incipient and
autonomy in several domains, notably in inchoate, with floundering institutions such
trade, finance, and human rights, and to some as the UN, the World Trade Organization, and
extent, in environmental health policies. the International Criminal Court. Because
Globalization, the consequence of decades of this began to happen before many areas of the
development at local and national levels, world had become fully integrated into the
feeds those processes, speeding up develop- hierarchies of their newly founded states with
ment (Teune, 2001). stable and effective national governments,
local political order often broke down into
tribal, ethnic, and religious wars. Many of the
newly independent states were façade states,
GLOBALIZATION pretending to have control through a working
bureaucracy and loyal army. In fact, they
As emphasized, globalization is the summa- were manipulated by religious, economic,
tion of the processes by which human and ethnic interests that generated conflicts.
societies become integrated at higher, more These divisions, threatening overt conflict,
inclusive levels of aggregation, moving from often led states to engage in suppressing
small groups, to tribes, to empires and states cultures, classes, and ethnicities to maintain
with a higher level of integration, and finally order. Russia as a weak state is considered a
to the world as a total human system. The puppet of economic interests and several
processes of social and human development Middle Eastern countries are in the hands of
for the past 8–10 thousand years have religious leaders.
yielded higher, more encompassing, levels of In the politics of empire, strong neighbors,
human organization. Agricultural societies, or the competing centers, invade localities
by occupying territory, have obliterated and either extract resources through local
nearly all hunting-gathering ones, often intermediaries or simply incorporate local
through massive displacements and killing. groups, thereby absorbing local diversity
Hierarchical states attempted to incorporate into the larger system. Using and mixing
local religious, ethnic, economic and other many elements of diversity from their territo-
differences into singular identities of either ries, empires may emerge as creative civiliza-
subjects or citizens, but with few exceptions, tions adding technologies, institutions, and
incompletely. Most states today retain a art to the human stock. The limit of empires
structure of differences among religious and is their hierarchical control through domina-
ethnic groups, as well as between rural and tion. Developmental processes, in contrast
urban populations. to these strictly competitive ecological
By the end of the twentieth and into the dynamics of dominance and control, feed on
twenty-first century, many globalization variety, and the agents of developmental
processes are underway, especially the trans- change – new components and new relation-
formations of the remaining agricultural ships – must nurture the creation of variety.
societies into urbanized social orders based Development, emanating from the commin-
on some mixture of industries, services, gling of populations and exchanges, at some
information, and research. During those point becomes variety-intensive based on
same decades, a world of states had just innovation. This is reflected in the comings
about come into its own as the dominant and goings of innovation-driven researchers
form of successful human organization based into enclaves and groupings. The conse-
on individual citizens. States replaced the quence of integrating diversity is a structure