3rd Global Conference
Friday 16th November - Sunday 18th November 2007
Salzburg, Austria
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 5b: Globalisation and Global Citizenship
Chair: Johan Nordensvärd
Exile and Globalization in the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide: A Study of When it no Longer Matters Where You Live
Terhemba Shija
Department of English,
Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nigeria
The twin concept of Exile and Globalization are of great significance to contemporary African Literature as some African writers live and write in Exile while others deploy themes and styles that they believe, make their works relevant to the global community.
Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the cold war at the end of the 20^th Century, there has been a triumphalism of liberal democracy, free-market economy and other norms of the capitalist world order. Consequently there appears to be an increasing tendency among scholars to homogenize or globalize the practices and values canvassed by the advanced countries of the west. In Ojaide?s: When It No Longer Matters Where You Live, the poet acknowledges the inevitability of some African elites living in exile in western cosmopolitan centers but rejects the uncritical notion inherent in globalization that western culture and values were synonymous with universal norms or superior to those of the Africans.
The Effect of Socioeconomic Fractionalisation
of Population on Government Policy in Developed Countries
Primož Pevcin
University of Ljubljana,
Faculty of Administration, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The main purpose of the paper is to present the effect of social and economic fractionalisation of population on government policies in modern developed and democratic societies. Namely, possible theoretical explanations for this effect are that fractionalisation affects government activities primarily through political process or through changed political and fiscal preferences of different social groups in society. The results of selected government policies can ultimately be observed in the size of government spending and regulatory activities. The results of the empirical analysis presented in paper revealed that larger economic fractionalisation of population negatively affects the variations in the extent of regulatory activities of government, whereas smaller social fractionalisation of society positively affects variations in the size of government transfer spending in observed sample of 32 developed countries. In addition, also some aspects of determinants of socio-economic fractionalisation of population in modern societies are presented in the paper. For instance, first of all, globalisation is promoted by trade liberalisation. The theory, presented in the paper, suggests that one of the socioeconomic effects of trade liberalisation is the emergence of smaller countries, because various regional or cultural minorities can afford in economic terms to split from larger nations because trade liberalisation causes that market size can go well beyond political borders. Second, in contrast to the first assumption, it should be noted that trade liberalisation also promotes migrations of population, which can ultimately reflect in increased social fractionalisation of society. Third, larger role of market in global economy inexplicably causes larger economic fractionalisation of population due to increased income and wealth inequalities. Finally, the dynamic effects of these three aspects on government policy formation in developed countries are also discussed in the paper.
The 'Inter' of Intercultural Encounters
Said Faiq
American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
By definition, intercultural communication involves contact, mostly through language, between two or more different, even opposing, cultures. On the one hand, this contact takes place in the same culture, between mini cultures, so to speak, (feminist and non-feminist camps, for and anti abortion groups, for and anti war policies, racist and anti racist views, and many other for and against groups within the same culture/society). This situation may be defined as intracultural communication, whereby the tensions between the differing groups are manifested through different modes of representation and different discourses that may easily lead to violence. Contact between different cultures, as separate nations or societies, on the other hand, is the prime domain of intercultural communication.
While a breakdown in intracultural communication may lead to cracks in a particular culture (society) - civil wars, for example - societies tend to negate, even oppress, their internal differences when dealing with other nations or cultures. In such cases, the inter in intercultural communication assumes a particularly important dimension in demarcating difference and yielding a space between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the other.
Particularly between civilizationally and power-unequally related cultures, intercultural encounters, through translation, for example, demonstrate the ‘persistent’ use and abuse of othering strategies that regulate and shape the complex process of cultural contacts. This complex process stems from the carrying-over of specific cultural products (texts) to and recuperated by receivers that have at their disposal an established system of representation with its own norms for the production and consumption of texts. This system ultimately evolves into a master discourse through which identity, similarity and difference are identified, negotiated, accepted and/or resisted.
Drawing primarily on textual import from the Arab and Islamic worlds, the purpose of this article is to examine how a culturally defined master discourse, with its pressures, particularly centripetal ones, affects the ‘inter’ of intercultural communication. In a rapidly globalized world, a master discourse emerges as the all powerful in its hegemonic discursive norms, leading naturally to desperate and often violent measures from ‘other’ equally self-perceived master discourses.