Introduction. From the First Galaxies to the 2040s
Almanac: Globalistics and Globalization Studies Global Evolution, Historical Globalistics and Globalization Studies
Out of the past into the future is the mainstream of the research into Big History and global evolution. Of course, it is impossible to embrace the vast time span of universe. That is why no matter how many publications appear on this subject, they always will be grains compared to the ocean of truth, about which Isaac Newton spoke (1989 [1729]). The scope of human thought along with its ability to proceed from reconstruction of the most ancient periods to anticipation of the distant future, from small objects to galaxies and the Universe as well as, to embrace different trends and dimensions of reality never ceases to amaze us. Generally speaking, such comprehension has always been characteristic for creative and inquiring human mind that tries to perceive the world in its grandeur and diversity.
You are reading a new issue of the Yearbook which contains some ‘grains’ of the description of the billion years' path. This Yearbook presents the global studies which cover different fields of research. The present volume is the sixth in the series of yearbooks with the title Globalistics and Globalization Studies [1].
However, why Globalistics, not Global Studies? Elsewhere we explained that the notion of Globalistics first appeared in Russia, this is a translation of the Russian term globalistika; however, we believe it might be useful within the English Global Studies thesaurus. We are sure that the introduction of this term is meaningful, because it expresses the vision of systemic and epistemological unity of global processes, the presence of a relatively autonomous field with its own research subject. Morphologically this term is identical with such well-established designations of academic disciplines as Economics, Linguistics, Physics, and so on (for more details see Grinin, Ilyin, and Korotayev 2012b, 2013b, 2014b; see also Mazour and Chumakov 2003, 2006; Ilyin, Mazur and Chumakov 2012; Chumakov, Mazour and Gay 2014).
The subtitle of the present volume is ‘Global Evolution, Historical Globalistics and Globalization Studies’ which reflects the contents. The present issue brings together a variety of contributions devoted to mega- and global evolution (Part I); historical globalistics (Part II); globalization and glocalization (Parts III–IV).
Part I ‘Big History and Global Evolution’ comprises six articles, most of them devoted to cosmic evolution. In particular, two articles by Leonid E. Grinin introduce the readers to the world of stellar and galactic evolution and evolution of the early Solar system. In the first paper together with the cosmic history he also also analyzes similarities and differences between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History. The paper by Alexander D. Panov ‘Prebiological Panspermia and the Hypothesis of the Self-Consistent Galaxy Origin of Life’ argues that panspermia can mean not only another place of the origin of life but also another mechanism of the origin of life that increases the probability of the origin of life to many orders compared to a single-planet prebiological evolution. The prebiological evolution can be an all-Galaxy coherent process due to the fact that prebiological panspermia and the origin of life are similar to Galaxy-scale second-order phase transition. This mechanism predicts life to have the same chemical base and the same chirality everywhere in the Galaxy. The paper by Anton L. Grinin is devoted to self-regulation which is considered as a universal trend of megaevolution. The paper by David Lempert analyzes the problems of cultural decay which the author denotes as a cultural suicide and uses for the analysis of models in psychology and biology. Ilya Ilyin and Arkadi Ursul in their article discuss the contribution of the great Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky to the origin of the global trend within science.
Part II ‘Historical Globalistics’ offers multi-layer, multi-level or multiple models of historical process which take into account the diversity of material and energetic, cultural, symbolical and other actors and agents of historical changes and most of all the reciprocity of any influences and idea of integrality of the world as a terrain of historical forces (for more detail see Zinkina et al. 2016, 2017; Denemark and Hall 2017; Hall 2018a). One of the goals of this issue is to explore the backgrounds to and the underlying theoretical and substantive debates about globalization, world-systems analysis to facilitate comparisons among various historical instances of globalization (Hall 2018b).
Part II comprises seven contributions. The papers by Tony Harper and Leonid E. Grinin are devoted to long-term (millennial) trends of historical globalization beginning from the fifth century B.C. The paper by Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev which deals with the dynamics of technological innovations covers the period of several hundred years. The other four articles by Julia V. Zinkina, Ilya V. Ilyin, Ivan A. Aleshkovski, and Andrey V. Korotayev and other authors are devoted to different aspects and processes that took place in the nineteenth century.
In all the issues we strive to describe the leading process of the present-day world – globalization – in all the aspects and dimensions. Though always present throughout history (as is shown in Part II) the mutual dependency is now emerging for all actors as a somewhat conscious strategic moment which includes the interpenetration of the different life worlds.
Part III ‘Glocalization’ contains only two articles which show the influence of globalization on the fates and processes in different countries and regions. The paper by
Ryan Waters and Cory Blad deals with the problems of Israel, in particular inequality, neoliberalism, and shifting nationalisms in this country. The article by Floribert Patrick Calvain Endong ‘LGBT Rights Movement in Africa and the Myth of the Whiteman's Superiority’ considers the situation with LGBT Rights Movement.
Finally, Part IV (Positive vs Negative Aspects of Globalization and the View in the Future) comprises nine contributions which analyze different issues and aspects. The paper by Michael Linke ‘Connecting Logistics Networks Globally via the UN Single Window Concept’ analyses the use of UN Single Window Concept for the improvement of global business communication and trade. The paper by R. Scott Frey and Wanjun Cui touches upon infant mortality in the world-system. The article by Rafael Reuveny is devoted to problems of illegal immigrants in high income countries.
Some of the articles of this volume analyze the present situation and also make some predictions (in particularly, papers by Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev, Valentina M. Bondarenko ‘Digital Economy: Formation, Development and Realization’, Brian J. L. Berry and Euel Elliott, Peter Kemp ‘Creating the Human Community’, Niko-lay V. Kochurov and Olga G. Leonova ‘Contemporary Russian and Foreign Science on the 21st Century Tendencies in Globalization’).
We become more and more accustomed to think globally and to see global processes. And our future can by all means be global. Yet, in recent years, especially after Trump has come to power, there is a seeming depature from globalization. However, we know that any large-scale process proceeds not in a linear manner but with fluctuations. The latter usually result from the fact that some processes unfold too rapidly while the lagging spheres should catch up. We have thoroughly discussed this in our work in the previous volume of the yearbook (Grinin, Ilyin, and Andreev 2016). So we believe that the outflow of global approaching will be followed by a tide of globalization with a new and more just basis which will allow the formation of a new world order (Ibid.).
References
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Denemark, R. A., Hall, Th. D. 2017. (Eds.). Special Section ‘Globalization in the Long Run: Spatial and Temporal Boundaries of World-Systems’. Journal of Globalization Studies 8 (1), May.
Grinin L., Ilyin I., and Andreev A. 2016. Global History and Future World Order. In Grinin L. E., Ilyin I. V., Herrmann P., and Korotayev A. V. (eds.), Globalistics and Globalization Studies: Global Transformations and Global Future. Yearbook (pp. 93–110). Volgograd: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House.
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[1] For the earlier issues see Grinin, Ilyin, and Korotayev 2012a, 2013a, 2014a; Grinin, Ilyin, Herrmann, and Korotayev 2015, 2016.