On Seeking Global History's Inner Child‪.‬

Globalization and childhood are both treacherously familiar terms. Fashionable categories used in serious and provocative scholarship, their wide currency owes too much to their indeterminacy. Almost any screed about social change, whether denouncing its direction or proclaiming its promise, acquires a tone of historical depth by attributing those changes to globalization. Almost any assessment of social values gains poignancy and power when connected to issues of childhood. Not that these moves are wrong or the motives for making them suspect; they are just too easy. Words guaranteed a warm reception tend to induce loose thinking. There is no general protection against such dangers, but let me begin by making some distinctions: between globalization and global history and between childhood and children. Globalization indicates a process of change and places it in time. Hence analysis in terms of globalization gains substance when that process is addressed directly, establishing the chronological period, social conditions, and cultural context in which it is thought to operate. Much of the writing about globalization is more interested, however, in the future than the past; for that suffix--ization--can barely contain the teleological thrust within it. To temper that, it helps to consider whether the process of change under study could shift direction or cease to matter. Furthermore, the case for globalization ought to include more than economics. (1) Not only should ideas, technology, culture, and political pressures be taken into account but analysis must weigh the possibility that these processes may not all work toward a common end nor favor the same sort of change.