At a time when many voices are proclaiming the dominance of local knowledge and cultural relativism, of privileged otherness and ironic deconstruction, and when local conflicts and cries for particular ethnic or religious communities hover over the lands, it may seem an ill-considered moment to assert claims for a global history. Yet as it is argued in the introduction to this book, signs of the emergence of global history are all about us, needing only to be interpreted, clarified, and brought into conjunction and dialogue with these other claims. Does globalism – the claim to be entering a global epoch – compete as a periodization with modernism and postmodernism, or does it exist in consonance with them? Initially, this requires addressing more specific questions about the relation of modernism to postmodernism and to the theme of progress and about the relation of all three of these terms to globalism and thence to global history. In addition, the author examines the role of the city – urban life – as the site of both modernism and postmodernism and then to ask about its status in regard to globalism and global history.
