Indifferent globalities: world-making through contagion and connection

Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins

Chapter 10 in A Modern Guide to Globalization, 2025, pp 232-257 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The chapter addresses the implied agency of microbes, pathogens and smart internet technologies in global structuration; though attributing their agency may seem a hostage to fortune. Be that as it may, the argument here also makes a plea for scholarship to canvass the objective and subjective processes found in such structuration, with all globalities formed in their weave. This plea has increased piquancy when essayed under the rubric of what has become known as the “new” materialism. Along the way the chapter revisits debates very familiar to global scholars and referenced in the competing claims of system-centred and actor-centred theories of social constitution. As we know, the conceptual terrain of such debates has always been highly contested and is littered with mostly laudable attempts to move away from the stark antinomies of structure versus action; local versus global. The aim is to reframe socio-spatial theorizing in the context of plausible threats and opportunities from sources of unlooked-for agency.

Keywords: Indifferent globality; Posthuman; Anthropocene; Global structuration; Materiality; Immateriality; Agency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781802205688
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