Globalizing Cosmologies

Few terms are as ubiquitous and yet as deceptive as 'globalization'. 1 Although historians quarrel over chronology and characteristics, it is conventionally understood to mean the specific historical process initiated by the European 'discovery' of the Americas in 1492, which culminated in our interconnected planet, our modernity. This is a modernity profoundly shaped by the demands and ideologies of capitalism, and so its history is traced principally through the movement of commodities and growth of markets. 2 Methodological considerations, including perceived availability of source material, have reinforced the tendency among historians to prioritize such approaches. 3 Thus, in the established narrative of intensifying 'global' integration, the 'globalizing' is done largely by Europeans and their empires; it is among them that the capacity for thinking and operating on a worldwide scale is concentrated, and their specific approaches and achievements are treated as archetypal. Communities and societies that are not seen as playing an active part in this particular process tend to be excluded by default: mere forerunners, spectators or victims of the progress of more advanced nations. Yet their exclusion does not seem to provoke doubt about whether the contemporary world is really 'globalized', or prompt reflection on whether employing the terminology of 'the global' is more ideologically driven than geographically accurate. 4 Despite multiple challenges to these Eurocentric 1 For just a sample of terminological debates, see Paul Bowles, '''Globalizing'' Northern British Columbia: What's in a Word?', Globalizations, x, 2 (2013); and Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan and Ge rard Stoudmann, 'Definitions of Globalization: A Comprehensive Overview and a Proposed Definition', Geneva Centre for Security Policy (Geneva, 2006). 2 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, 2nd edn (London, 2002). 3 Works which (implicitly or explicitly) assume globalization to be synonymous with a 'world economy' include Jan de Vries, 'The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World', Economic History Review, lxiii, 3 (2010); and co-authored articles by Dennis O'Flynn and Arturo Gira ldez, beginning with their 'Born with a ''Silver Spoon'': The Origin of World Trade in 1571 ', Journal of World History, vi, 2 (1995). 4 Moyn and Sartori ask: 'Even today are there not spaces on the earth that fall outside the networks of social life and intellectual circulation but whose inclusion is required for a truly global framework? . . . It may even be that the expansive space that is today called ''the global'' has never really existed': Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, 'Approaches to Global Intellectual History', in Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori (eds.), Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013), 5. The World Bank, for example, reported: 'many poor countries -with about 2 billion people -have been left out of the process