ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the politics of the global event is not something peripheral in market life. It also argues that the basic idea of globalisation can indeed provide a useful context to understand and engage the politics of the global event. The chapter explores two major events, the Chilean mine disaster and the Charlie Hebdo attacks to uncover how particular narratives of what had happened and how to respond are elaborated. The literature on globalisation provides an important set of co-ordinates for thinking about the basic tenets of the global event: scale, interconnectivity, supra-territorial qualities. The chapter introduces an important mode of crisis analysis in International Political Economy (IPE) – namely, critical constructivism – in order to begin to draw out this contingent politics of the global event. The politics of globalisation – of hierarchy, exclusion and various inequalities of subject position – were argued to fit well into a critical perspective on the global event.
