THE POWER OF THE MACHINE GLOBAL INEQUALITIES OF ECONOMY TECH

THE POWER OF THE MACHINE GLOBAL INEQUALITIES OF ECONOMY TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT怎么样

The case study starts with the story of how the indigenous group protested against the cooperative intention to set up a quarry upon the local spiritual mountain.One thing pinpointed there,is the native voice,in striving to be heard by the mainstream,re-adapted themselves to fit in the niche identity given by the mainstream non-indigenous Canadians (feather-wearing,chanting,drumming...).Well,this is hardly surprising.As many of us who experienced intra-culture would know:"when a person begins to talk about his or her own 'culture',it is a sign that another life-world is being objectified and decontexutalized." That we de-localize ourselves by having to justify "why we are who we are".This also could be seen as a predicament of the (environmental/human rights...) movements:"to confront modernity through public discourse is,paradoxically,to be absorbed by it." Here is the picuture to re-locate the postition of the social movements.For example,in the case of Mi'kmaq quarry,it is not about the confrontation between "pre-modern" and "modern"; it,instead,demonstrates a process within modernity - the process of objectification and decontextualization taking place in "the local".It goes without saying how the cosmology of economics,science have dominated our world,along with its language such as "cost-benefit"; or how hard it is for our mind-frames to accept anything but a discourse based on "objectiveness".- We are living in the middle of "the encompassment of the local".And that is what modernity(or "development") is about.It also explains why modernity is not about a linear progressive line of "development","illumination",an advanced "European culture" for the rest of the world to catch up with.The "unmodern" world play as much the role and demonstrate as much the properties in and of modernity,as North America and Europe.- which by the way,is further elaborated by the social historian Kenneth Pomeranz's observation () ; that the development of super-power is not decided by the capacities of the cores,but by the capacity of the peripheries attached to the cores.Other than the linear progressiveness,modernity is to create polarity.Polarity not as some sort of categorizing; but a tension between the local and the global identity.That is how our problems of development,environmental,feminist,racist becomes unsolvable knots.They essentially reflect the tension between particularity and decontextualization.These problems are the consequences of modernity."Modernity cannot be challenged in local terms,but only by turning its own logic against itself."