Postmodernism and Globalization University of （后现代主义和全球化大学）.pdfVIP

38 Omar Lizardo and Michael Strand Postmodernism and Globalization 1 Omar Lizardo and Michael Strand Abstract Interest in postmodernity that has stagnated over the past decade has come to be replaced by a concern with globalization. While the two terms are often considered to be divergent there is a continuity as theoretical discourse transfers from one to the other. In what follows, we first distill the heuristic models employed by various knowledge-geographical traditions of social thought in conceptualizing postmodernism. We then transpose these models into recent debates on globalization. Globalization theory has become the provence of British and American theorists because of a contiguity that extends back to a propitious model employed to understand postmodernism. Globalization theory in France and Germany are largely non-existent or tangential for similar reasons that find opposite tendencies. The spatial and temporal aspect inherent to both the modern and postmodern indicates that both already present a stance on globalization. Among the key factors predicting the for- tunes of heuristic models is the continuation of classical theoretical concerns in the present situation of globalization. Post-classical tendencies in heuristic models indicate that more cloistered postmodern concerns do not transfer well to globalization. Those heuristic models that conceive of a postmodernist break are those whose application to present instantiations of globalization is subsequently limited. 1 Introduction Recent writings on the relevance of postmodernism for contemporary inquiry in social theory appear to have largely converged in reaching the conclusion of the increasing waning of concern with the modern/postmodern problematic and its gradual replacement by the notion of globalization (Albrow 1997; Tom- linson 1999). This s