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 Contemporary process of globalization has generated important and urgent issues to be approached by academics as well as other agencies and actors of civil society.
One of the fundamental dimensions of these approaches is the one related to the legitimacy of the wide spread notion that contemporary globalization means social and cultural homogenization. The core idea that defines this workshop is that beneath and beyond the epidermal interpretation provided by the notion of homogenization an extremely complex dynamics take place in the present process of globalization. Understanding what this complexity means in the context of contemporary globalization requires articulating new ideas about social fabrics and relations. And more, it means that a broader notion about the scope and about the character of political participation in the globalization process necessarily imposes the demand of including the diversity of points of view in its discussion.
The terrain of Ethics constitutes a second crucial dimension as a contemporary domain for politics and social life. By Ethics here one must not think of abstract philosophical reflections. To the contrary, Ethics here must be taken as predicates that are embodied in the practices of institutions, organizations and in production of knowledge. This perspective was opened by the consideration that social and political processes occurred along last decades of the XX century eroded the referential pillars to politics and to the production of knowledge that were emblematic of modernity. In the context of these processes of erosion one can locate the end of master-narratives, the decline of modern political and ideological utopias; and the rearrangements experienced by established forms of political organization, such as national states, political parties and unions. This process has opened spaces and paths for different forms of positioning of the self, be it from the point of view of citizen, be it from the point of view of producer of knowledge. In this sense we witness possibilities that go from extreme individualism to highly creative ways of building and sustaining the senses of belonging, as well as the sense of community and political life.
Thus, to approach the terrain of present social and cultural dynamics means to move in a terrain that is not orchestrated by certainty or consensus. To the contrary, it is to move in a terrain in which homogenization indeed occurs, but it happens simultaneously – and it is affected by – processes of fragmentation, tension and various types of protagonisms. This scenario is concomitantly the product and the producer of agendas that are generated by individual and collective identities; cultural codes (aesthetic, behavior, patterns of taste, patterns of consumption, etc); migration processes; diasporas; network buildings; social movements; civil society organizations activism; national and regional alignments; and so forth.
The shapes and contents of these processes vary from the rejection of tradition and previous ways of social organization ( as the cases of the extreme fragmentation and deep adherence to commodified patterns of culture) to their re- creation or reinforcement ( as are the cases of the various religious revivals and of the various types of fundamentalism)
This means that the context produced by contemporary process of globalization demands to consider the following points or tensions:
- cultural hegemony and the production of cultural diversity;
- subttle – althought efficient – forms of social inclusion and exclusion: lifestyle, consumption, cultural codes, access to knowledge and to information, configuration of neo-tribes ;
- the meaning of community signaled by the relation “global versus local”. The reinforcement of the notion of locality and the emergence of new collective identities;
- new and traditional forms of political arenas and practices: political parties and unions versus networks and civil society fora. The experience of the World Social Forum can serve as the exemplary case to be approached in this topic;
- emergence of new political actors, their potentialities and limits: NGOs, networks, civil society organizations and movements;
- contemporary agenda for gender and ethnic issues;
- religious revivals and their connections to politics;
- hegemony versus multilateral organizations;
- the configuration of the North and the South : possibilities and challenges in the building of articulations.
The workshop comprises the production, the presentation and the discussion of papers.
  
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Local: BNDES - Auditório Reginaldo Treiguer |
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Dates: Mar 23th 2006 |
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