The Ecumenical Analytic: ‘Globalization’, Reflexivity and the Revolution in Greek Historiography
European Journal of Social Theory 8 (2):99-122 (2005)
Abstract
‘Globalization’ has become in recent years one of the central themes of social scientific debates. Social theories of globalization may be regarded as specific academic and analytic manifestations of wider forms of ‘global consciousness’ to be found in the social world today. These are ways of thinking and perceiving which emphasize that the whole world should be seen as ‘one place’, its various geographically disparate parts all being interconnected in various complex ways. In this article we set out how both a general ‘ecumenical sensibility’ involving such ways of thinking, and its specifically academic variant, an ‘ecumenical analytic’, are simultaneously responses to ‘globalizing conditions’ and also products of the latter. We demonstrate how social theories of globalization, locatable in the overall set we call the ‘ecumenical analytic’, are reflexive thought-products, in that they both seek to investigate, and are made possible by, ‘globalizing conditions’. Rejecting the view that both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic are solely products of modernity, we show how such modes of consciousness and analysis were present in the period of Greek history between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire. We show how at that period a socio-political situation akin in certain ways to modern ‘globalizing conditions’ generated both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic, the latter most forcefully represented by a revolutionary new genre in historiography called Universal History. By examining the ideas of its most famous practitioner, the historian Polybius, we demonstrate that Universal History both provided a framework for understanding what we today would call ‘globalization’, and exhibited a remarkable degree of reflexive awareness about its own conditions of possibility. We seek to show that an attentiveness to ‘global’ processes and a reflexive understanding of what makes that form of thinking possible in the first place, are not solely confined to modernity but were identifiable features of intellectual production in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. In this way we argue that scholars today should not imagine that the contemporary ‘global turn’ in social thought is either unique or wholly historically unprecedented.My notes
Similar books and articles
From republican virtue to global imaginary: changing visions of the historian Polybius.David Inglis & Roland Robertson - 2006 - History of the Human Sciences 19 (1):1-18.
The self in a globalizing world : a study of globalization and its impact on identity.Xu Zhao - unknown
The Ecumenical Imperative After Vatican II: Achievements and Challenges.Susan K. Wood - 2018 - In Vladimir Latinovic, Gerard Mannion & O. F. M. Welle (eds.), Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions: Vatican Ii and its Impact. Springer Verlag. pp. 309-325.
How ecumenical expressivism confuses the trivial and the substantive.Andreas L. Mogensen - 2018 - Analysis 78 (4):666-674.
The problem of interfaith dialogue in the process of world globalization.O. Ihnatieva - 2013 - Epistemological studies in Philosophy, Social and Political Sciences 2 (23):130-135.
Global Christian Forum: A New initiative for the Second Century of Ecumenism.John A. Radano - 2010 - Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 27 (1):28-35.
Ecumenical Engagement Resurrected: The Demise and Rebirth of the National Council of Churches, Singapore.Thomas Harvey - 2009 - Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 26 (4):258-268.
The ecumenical dialogue: issues and answers by John Paul II.Sergiy Prysukhin - 2016 - Ukrainian Religious Studies 79:28-32.
Beyond Social Science Naturalism: The Case for Ecumenical Interpretivism.Cornel Ban - 2019 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 31 (3-4):454-461.
A Preface to Ethics:. Global Dynamics and the Integrity of Life.William Schweiker - 2004 - Journal of Religious Ethics 32 (1):13-38.
The Ecumenical and Non-Ecumenical Dialectic of Christian Bioethics.K. W. Wildes - 1995 - Christian Bioethics 1 (2):121-127.
Nikos Nissiotis – an Orthodox Approach of the Mission.Iuliu-Marius Morariu - 2018 - Philotheos 18 (1):135-144.
Social theory and global history: The three cultural crystallizations.Wittrock Björn - 2001 - Thesis Eleven 65 (1):27-50.
Al-Farabi’s ecumenical state and its modern connotations.Georgios Steiris - 2012 - Skepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research:253-261.
Analytics
Added to PP
2020-11-25
Downloads
3 (#1,313,916)
6 months
1 (#447,993)
2020-11-25
Downloads
3 (#1,313,916)
6 months
1 (#447,993)
Historical graph of downloads
Citations of this work
From republican virtue to global imaginary: changing visions of the historian Polybius.David Inglis & Roland Robertson - 2006 - History of the Human Sciences 19 (1):1-18.
The Significance of Scientific Capital in UK Medical Education.Caragh Brosnan - 2011 - Minerva 49 (3):317-332.
Reflexive historical sociology: consciousness, experience and the author.Peter McMylor - 2005 - History of the Human Sciences 18 (4):141-160.
References found in this work
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.Ulrich Beck, Mark Ritter & Jennifer Brown - 1993 - Environmental Values 2 (4):367-368.
The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change.Randall Collins - 1998 - Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Poetics: With the Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics Ii, and the Fragments of the on Poets.S. H. Aristotle & Butcher - 1932 - Hackett Publishing Company.