orate managers to social activists, from advertisers to cultural theorists.
For many years, the creek makes only gradual changes in the landscape.
Then a storm sweeps the flux beyond its accustomed boundaries, shifting every
bank and eddy. Trees are uprooted, and what was once on the right side is now
on the left. So, too, the social world has shifted around us. Market enthusiasms
have replaced communism; national governments prostrate themselves before
international finance; social movements market "culture" on a global scale.
How should social scientists analyze these changes? This question is muddied
by the fact that social science changes too. "Global" practices challenge social
scientists to internationalize their venues, as North American and European
scholars are brought into discussion with scholars from the South. Social science
theories no longer take Western genealogies for granted but, rather, require
fluency with a wider range of perspectives, from Latin American dependency
theories to South Asian subaltern studies. The excitement of this internationalization
of scholarship encourages many of us to throw ourselves into endorsements
of globalization as a multilayered evolution, drawing us into the future.
Sometimes our critical distance seems less useful than our participation. And
yet, can we understand either our own involvement or the changing world without
our critical skills? This essay argues that we cannot