Ino Rossi - Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Ino Rossi has produced and edited a wide ranging collection of essays on globalization considered in its broadest sense. In his preface, Rossi provides the background of, and rationale for the volume. My main concern here, however, is to introduce briefly and sketch the main points of the book as well as placing it in an even larger and longer context.

There is quite a large number of sketches of the development of ideas concerning globalization. But the most significant aspect of what Rossi calls globalization research is that presently it has become a major aspect of contemporary political, economic, social, and, certainly not least, cultural discourse(s). One should add to this list of themes the overriding significance of worldwide concern with climate change. This has a strong bearing on present concern with the Anthropocene, generally preoccupation with the contemporary increasingly human-made geological condition of the world as a whole.

Even though there are a few climate change deniers, paralleling holocaust deniers, there can be no doubt that this issue has entered the mainstream of global consciousness. Indeed it is almost impossible in contemporary discourse to avoid one aspect or another of the effects or consequences of climate change. At the present time of writing, the heat and the fires in south eastern Australia are providing dramatic manifestations of this. The Australian infernos constitute but one of many manifestations of climate change, including such phenomena in virtually every part of the world as flooding, droughts, hurricanes, salination, melting glaciers, and unpredictable and vacillating weather patterns. Apart from Australia, specific examples of the present crisis include floods in Brazil, Madagascar, Spain, and the USA, while many serious economic problems in Somalia have undoubtedly been caused by a series of droughts and floods. The examples could be multiplied and these are well documented in the reports of the Committee on Climate Change.

Taking place at this time of writing is the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A highlight, if one may use that term, has been the highly controversial insistence by President Trump that what he calls the apocalyptic, pessimistic thought on climate change is merely left-wing rhetoric. On the other hand, that stance has been thoroughly opposed by the Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg. Needless to say, both Thunberg and Trump have supporters. However, overwhelmingly support has been on the side of Thunberg.

Climate change, really climate crisis, also involves the making available ofsomewhat paradoxicallyopportunities and incentives for both pleasure and the making of profit. This is well exemplified by the rapid increase in the availability of cheap air flights and, on the other hand, somewhat ironically the development of different forms of green energy and its accoutrements to replace fossil fuels. In other words, there can be no doubt that while climate change as a negative phenomenon is high on the agenda of much of everyday discourse, across the world there are people who undoubtedly benefit, at least in the short run, from its negative consequences.

Coming to the fore in early 2020 has been the health crisis surrounding the rapid spread of the Coronavirus, apparently from Wuhan in China. At the present time of writing, the World Health Organization is considering declaring this health issue a pandemic, classified as a Global Health Emergency. This is the second pandemic of the twenty-first century, following SARS. However, Coronavirus is obviously much more threatening in the global sense than the latter. This kind of issue must be at the very least, connected analytically to any discussion of the frontiers of globalization research.