ABSTRACT
Across the contemporary world, the question of connectivity has emerged as the normal condition of being and acting as a person-in-the-world. An important part of laying an alternative analytical foundation involves developing a definition of globalization that recognizes both the objective and subjective dimensions of the manifold processes that bring people into relation with others across the globe. A relation can be spatially close and proximate or involve substantial absence. It can be layered across more embodied to more abstracted connections and disconnections. When used in abstract terms, connectivity tends to be linked in the literature to only two of the modes, communication and exchange, in particular through mediated communication systems and financial exchange systems. Like other major social phenomena, ideas about connectivity are associated with patterns of meaning related to and about forms of material practice. Designing creative ontological connectivity entails building localities in a way that explicitly and reflexively recognizes ontological difference across different social formations.
