ABSTRACT:
The central contradiction of globalization is not that between capital and democracy as such. It is much broader and it concerns the degree to which neo-liberal globalization is serving to generate a crisis of social reproduction on a world scale, a crisis that is ecological as well as social (Gill). - Social development can no longer be simply geared to material aims and achievements but must include nonmaterial dimensions. It can no longer be anthropocentric but must encompass the planetary ecology. It's meaning may be summed up as a collective learning process and humanity's self-management (Pieterse). - The learning process is the life and the activity of all complex systems, regardless of whether they were once conceived as organisms, machines, cultures or economies, they haven't to proceed in isolation, but leak into and cross-infect each other as they converge on their virtuality (Plant). - It is doubtful therefore that any culture can ever be identifiable simply as what takes place within its spatial limits. Space (both as a mythical-scientific-philosophical notion and as a material, "lived in" territory) is a cultural product, shaped by human beings, technologies, and the "Earth itself". The Earth too is social and socializes us (Menser/Aranowitz).
