Changing formations of globalization: ontological disjunctures in the postcolonial pluriverse

For as long as theories of globalization and global encounter have existed, they have had difficulty explaining a set of processes that both generalize relations across the globe and engender plural differences. For all its generalizing power, globalization is characterized by these kinds of counter-processes, including localization and resistance. Debates have emerged about both the world and the theories that describe this world. There are divergences over questions of homogenization in relation to differentiation. There are debates over the universalizing consequences of European imperialisms in relation to particularistic encounters with local autonomies. Writers contest the dialectic of domination and resistance, and there are implicit differences emphasizing glocal processes versus more disjunctive tensions between globalization and localization. However, all too often, questions of ontological and epistemological difference are either left out or elided. These tensions and the questions they generate remain crucial. They are linked to methodological antinomies: theory versus description; generalization versus particularism; and Grand Theory versus grand rejections of Grand Theory.