In this week’s reading for global societies Bamyeh describes what he believes is post-nationalism. He starts the article by saying that you must pick a side when talking about nationalism itself, for either good or evil and there is no way of evaluating nationalism without some sort of moral judgment. He then dives into the first post-nationalism, which began in Europe after WWII. He says this starts because people finally start to believe in interdependentence and that there needs to be a dilution of sovereignty that so many Europeans held so high. They thought that they had also embodied the nationalism spirit in all Europeans, that they need to take this out of culture until is dissolved into nothing. After talking about Europe, Bamyeh shifts gears to the “American path” in which America has the right idea about post-nationalism until the end of the cold war in which American found themselves with a lot of money and toys in the military to use. They almost went backwards in time. The east coast started a new imperialism in which they used what is called six major irrational features. Also, American did not fight nationalism or against anyone else as the fought against socialism and communism to keep there capitalist economy. So in a sense they did not fight against anyone but on the type of government they wanted. He then talks about the four types of post national solidarity, material, humanistic and life emancipatory solidarities.
I enjoyed this article however I wish he would go into more of where the Middle East is. I think America and Europe are interesting places, but where does the rest of the world lie, or where are they now?
One Discussion I wanted to bring up was one that happened in class on Monday, which was having a global power. In class I was adamant that this could not happen. After thinking about it I retract my statement. I think it is possible, if you look at the global economy and how long it has taken for it to prosper, why it can’t happen with government. I think we are still some 700-1000 years from this, but it is still possible right?
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This is an interesting argument you bring up at the end here J-Bone. I am surprised to see that you retracted your statement made in class and now believe we could have a global power or world government in the future. Are you thinking we could have an intergalactic battle in 2012 because that was the only reason we could think of in class of how this could happen? Alien attacks aside, I could see some kind of global/world government, but I don’t think it would be the say all end all when it came to what the laws and culture of individual region. I think an interesting argument would be of what would bring the world government together because I know right now there are too many people that dislike or don’t agree with too many other people. I would make the argument that the only thing that would bring the global entity together would have to be global economics and this would have nothing to do with culture but just a simpler way to run economies. But this would still be difficult to do and you would need something like a terrible recession and stabilization of third world countries that have illegal black markets bringing in their regions money.
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