Globalization, organization and the ethics of liberation

Abstract

The paper discusses three related issues that have a growing importance in the light of current developments in the contemporary debates around modernity and its future. These are globalization, organization and the ethics of liberation. The first section recognizes the specific meaning of globalization when it is confronted with the prevailing Eurocentrism. The result should be a critical posture that understands the world as a system that goes far beyond Europe. The second section discusses the nature of the problems of organization related to globalization. The organization of human activities related to production and commerce required a permanent process of 'simplification'. This was achieved by means of the 'rationalization' of the world of life in all its economic, political, cultural and religious subsystems. One of its undeniable consequences has been the production of victims and exclusion, proving the asymmetrical organization of 'modern' life. The final section, centred in the ethics of liberation, will allow us to clarify the elements and determinants for the transformation of this modern condition to guarantee the production, reproduction and development of life. A new type of theoretical possibility emerges to think of the world as a trans-modern organization of life characterized by its plurality, diversity and reasonability. Copyright © 2006 SAGE.