Post-Doctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

WHO DEFINES THE GLOBAL SELF Inquiry from women and the periphery.

Globalisation, new technologies, demographic changes, environmental crisis, as well as epistemic changes are all crucial drivers of change that are radically transforming the way we think about and envision our common future. An increased inter-dependence of nations and higher proximity of cultures and civilizations together with the current speed of social change are demanding a better understanding of human differences and similarities, as well as a discussion about visions of possible and desirable world futures. Such understandings and discussions are being hampered by the imposition of a one-dimensional “global” futures vision. These impositions are being carried out by social groups who are in a structural position to invest finances and resources in time and energy to develop and expand ideologies, visions and perspectives that benefit them. In our hierarchically organized world this means that the more dominant social/cultural groups are in the position to exert their own particular ideologies and make them a “global” one.
 
In this context, the creation of a global soul/mind and action will only favor the images of those in definitional, political and economic power. In such a climat, the less dominant social groups are left with two basic choices: (1) to mainstream their own visions of desirable futures into a global vision, or to (2) focus on developing alternatives within a localized context. Women have been actively involved in both processes. After an analysis of how the current global is self is being imagined, alternative understandings and visions of the global self especially as being developed by women from the periphery will be articulated.