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Globalization is understood here as "hybridization," in which forms become separated from existing practices & recombine with new forms in new practices. It is argued that globalization primarily involves neither universalization nor even multiculturalism, but instead, interculturalism. Globalization is not a condition of modernization, but instead, a historical epoch, beginning from the 1960s & contemporaneous with postmodernity. Both functionalist modernization theory & Marxist dependency theory are modernist paradigms of the period of the nation-state, while true globalization theory is the postmodern analysis of hybridity. Cultural hybridity is a universal, eg, the interface of transnational firms & host national government in offshore banking, or instances in which multiculturalism becomes interculturalism, in which an individual has a choice of a plurality of ethnic organizations as a basis of a multiple identity. Of special interest is a cultural hybridity between enemies, involving the formation of a "global field" of "global memory," circumscribed by conflictual unity -- bound by common political & cultural experiences of, eg, Jew & Arab. 101 References. V. Rios

Globalization is used to spatialize modernity in two senses. First, the globalization problematique enunciates that about which the previous temporal notion of modernity was suspiciously silent, that it is spatial, Western, & white. Modernity is not about the spread of ideas, but is fundamentally structural & world systemic. Second, modernity is also spatial in that it happens in cities, especially global cities. Urban & global modernity is that where "all that is solid melts into air." Modernity is no longer in metropolitan but in colonial space, where the solid is melting into air at the greatest speed. The most frantic development of migrant & finance flows takes place in colonial space. The global colonial cities have long ago undergone the sort of class polarization that core global cities have just begun to experience. There is no need for a concept of postmodernity when modernization on a world scale (& global colonial cities) has only been with us in the last quarter century. 47 References. V. Rios

Argues that disputes arising from the FL vote in the 2000 presidential election should have been resolved by Congress rather than the Supreme Court. An analysis of Bush v. Gore maintains that the US Supreme Court's decision to remand the case & stay the recount indicates an inherent conflict of interest on the part of the justices that sets it apart from earlier election law cases reviewed by the Court. Charges of partisanship would have been avoided if the Court had left the matter to the political sphere. Claims that failure of the Court to intervene in the election would have caused a constitutional crisis are based on unfounded fears stemming from distrust of the political process. Not only is there no evidence that the political crisis would have damaged the institutions of governance, but it is likely that the dispute could have been resolved by state actors. If not, it is contended that the proper forum for determining the outcome was the US Congress, which has a framework for constraining opportunism & channeling deliberation. J. Lindroth

A systemic approach is used to "classify the classifiers" who are popular if not dominant in globalization debates. It is argued that Western theorists of hybridity are in fact not much of an improvement on straight-forward modernization theory. The notion of hybridity, like the cultural universalism of modernization theory, is seen as denying the peripheries of their own identities. Implicit & integral to theories & strategies of creolization & hybridity is the disauthentication of Third & Fourth World identitites. It is claimed that the growing influence of hybridization theorists is due to the crisis of modernity in the core itself. World systems theory is given a culturalist twist through the views that globalization is essentially civilizational in nature, ie, already being present millenia before the hegemony of world capitalism, & that world systems are not primarily political or economic, but cultural phenomena. The systemic critique of hybridity theories informs the understanding of culture, not as substance, but as process. The focus is not on the hybridity of cultural artifacts, but on the cultural practices in the creation & reproduction of identity spaces. 1 Figure, 18 References. V. Rios

A scenario of postmodernity as dystopic hypermodernity is offered. The new world order of (modern) nation-states is seen as being replaced by a set of neo-world orders in today's postmodernity of global flows. The thesis is that there is: a shift from a realist new world order of nation-states to hyperrealist neo-world orders of global flows; & a shift from real politics carried out by nation-states in historical space to one of hyperreal politics carried out by sub- & supranational collective actors in posthistorical cyberspace. Aesthetic realism, ie, Renaissance perspectival space & single point perspective, is paradigmatic in the modern nation-state order. It is the state that is doing the painting. The state as illustrator paints in the sovereignty in the new world order. This nation-state exogenizes conflict & endogenizes discipline. The informationalized neo-world orders consist of the replacement of national organizations by global flows in the familiar set of media-, techno-, info-, & finanscapes. This new global & eminently disorganized capitalism should be understood in terms of Jean Baudrillard's hyperrealism. 26 References. V. Rios

Explores a nonexceptional mode of counterknowledge for the human sciences with sources in Gaston Bachelard & the poetics of the imagination. The argument is for a sort of knowledge that passes through the immediacy & privacy of memory traces. This idea of knowledge involves temporalizing knowledge-creation, instead of understanding it through the static categories. Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (1969) is drawn on to show how the problem of knowledge is reconceived through a phenomenology of the imagination, which is understood as a spatially constituted complex of memory traces. Bachelard's imagination is spatial because the spatial complex of memory traces constitutes a sort of architectonic & because its assumptions of privacy & intimate space are spatial. Most important, it is spatial in that memory is like a dwelling place; it is a "house of memory" in which lived time is lived space. Memory, as the private (housed) space of childhood daydreams, as the intimate space of memory, is experienced as a shelter & a place for the well-being of the self. 31 References. V. Rios

"The concept of social capital has in recent years become increasingly common in debates across Europe about local economic and social development, social exclusion and the growing social economy. A definition familiar to the European Union through its Article 6 Local Social Capital programme describes it as 'features of social organisation such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for mutual benefits'. Thus, the role of social capital in 'restoring social cohesion, reinforcing local networks and formal and informal groups which seek to facilitate integration of excluded persons into work and start-up businesses and co-operatives' is increasingly recognised, especially in the development of intermediate organisations under Article 6 Local Social Capital. What is more, the 'main drivers of the creation of social capital are people and non-profit organisations that develop initiatives that contribute to the creation of employment and strengthening of social cohesion'. But how can we indicate that social capital has contributed or has been created in such ways? This is one key task of the CONSCISE Project 'The Contribution of Social Capital in the Social Economy to Local Economic Development in Western Europe' - a European Framework V project carrying out fieldwork in 8 different localities in 5 European regions." (author's abstract)

Explores the spatialization of temporality through the theme of modernity's search for a center that holds. Following Arnold Gehlen (1980), a center that holds is seen as an eternal problem for human beings because of their characteristic poverty of instincts. This silencing of our instincts, which is not natural but cultural, is the necessary other side of humankind's being a "bunch of possibilities." Thus, the basic contradiction at the heart of human existence involves "systemness," a substitute set of instincts for our species, on the one hand, & "contingency," the open-ended more existential side of the human condition, on the other. Neither systemness nor contingency is inevitable; humans are a complex amalgam of both & must learn to live with this ambivalence. It was in response to this need for a center that the notion of identity as characteristic of the self initially emerged in the seventeenth century. Nineteenth-century elites tried to provide a center that held for all, based on individualism, choice, & democracy, & incorporated in the nation-state. With the imminent demise of the nation & its supersession by the new global order, there has been a turn to community in postmodernity, & a shift toward an ethos in which constraint is not an unmitigated disaster. 10 References. V. Rios