Author Description

Nowadays globalization tends to encompass not only the properly technological activities but all areas of human activity. Education, welfare, culture, environment, water, transport, telecommunications, energy and all public services are constrained into a system which is more and more economic, private, and competitive. The cases of Asia and Africa are, in a way, more complex and subtle than those of the Western continents. While these areas are very often successfully developing new technologies and sometimes become important players in the global economy inside the process of capitalization, it is doubtful that they will change all their traditional values and customs to integrate Western influences in the dynamic of their societies. Does in fact modernity come only from the West? Is globalization the only way to "develop" in the postmodern condition? Agency and desire in late capitalism are extremely individualistic and, more often than not, motivated by selfish interests, whereas the experience of cultures in Asia and Africa suggests that communal welfare might supersede the objective of individual profit. The multidisciplinary approach of this collection of articles, where some of the speakers are social scientists and others specialists of literature, explores the multi-faceted aspects of this very contemporary issue. The authors give us their personal reflections on the geographical and cultural areas under their scrutiny and their viewpoints, which oscillate from the detailed and descriptive to the analytical, theoretical and philosophical. They are mostly very critical, but they also underline the necessity to go largely beyond Ngugi wa Thiong'o's concept of "decolonizing the mind" to cope with the recent challenges of the Global World.