The Rise of the Global Imaginary Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror

by Steger, Manfred B.

• ISBN13: 9780199286942
• ISBN10: 0199286949
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-31
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Neoliberalism. Neoconservatism. Postmarxism. Postmodernism. Is there really something genuinely new about today's isms? Have we moved past our traditional ideological landscape? Combining political history, philosophical interpretation, and good old-fashioned story-telling, Manfred Stegertraces ideology's remarkable journey from Count Destutt de Tracy's Enlightenment "science of ideas" to President George W. Bush's "imperial globalism." Rejecting futile attempts to "update" modern political belief systems by adorning them with prefixes, the author offers instead a highly originalexplanation for their novelty-their increasing ability to articulate deep-seated understandings of community in global rather than national terms. This growing awareness of globality fuels the visions of social elites who reside in the privileged spaces of our global cities. It erupts in the hopesand demands of migrants who traverse national boundaries in search of their piece of the global promise. Stoked by cross-cultural encounters, technological change, and scientific innovation, the rising global imaginary has destabilized the grand political ideologies codified during the national age.The national is slowly losing its grip on people's minds, but the global has not yet ascended to the commanding heights once occupied by its predecessor. Still, the first rays of the rising global imaginary have provided enough light to capture the contours of a profoundly altered ideologicallandscape. Pointing in this direction, the book ends with a timely interpretation of the apparent convergence of ideology and religion in the dawning global age-a broad phenomenon that extends beyond the obvious cases of Christian fundamentalism and Islamic jihadism.

Author Biography

Manfred B. Steger is Professor of Global Studies and Academic Director of the Globalism Institute at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Globalization Research Center at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. His academic fields of expertise include global studies, political and social theory, peace studies, and international politics. He has served as consultant on globalization for the US State Department and he has been an adviser for the 2005 US PBS television series, "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism." He has presented dozens of invited lectures and keynote addresses on globalization in Australia, Asia, North America, and Europe. His most recent publications include Globalism: Market Ideology Meets Terrorism, 2nd ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; 1st ed. 2002); Judging Nonviolence: The Dispute Between Realists and Idealists (Routledge, 2003); Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. viii
Introduction: Political Ideologies and Social Imaginaries	p. 1
The National Imaginary
Ideology and Revolution: From Superscience to False Consciousness	p. 19
The Grand Ideologies of the Nineteenth Century: British Liberalism, French Conservatism, and German Socialism	p. 44
Twentieth-Century Totalitarianisms: Russian Communism and German Nazism	p. 84
The Global Imaginary
Third-World Liberationism and Other Cold War Isms: No End to Ideology	p. 129
Market Globalism and Justice Globalism in the Roaring Nineties	p. 170
Jihadist Globalism versus Imperial Globalism: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-First Century?	p. 213
Notes	p. 249
Selected Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 306
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