ABSTRACT
In this chapter I seek to provide a critique of the conventional conception of globalization which views it as a pure expression of Westernization or Americanization. My aim is to provide an alternative non-Eurocentric approach to globalization, which, while not dispensing with Western agency in the making and reproduction of globalization, nevertheless raises the ontological status of Eastern agency; something which has been entirely obscured by, or erased from, the conventional Eurocentric narrative. In recent years a non-Eurocentric school has emerged, which has tended to bend the polemical stick to the opposite Occidentalist pole, reifying Eastern agency and dismissing Western agency. At the same time, the paradox emerges that for the latest period of globalization (c. 1830–2000), the non-Eurocentric school has implicitly deferred to the Eurocentric position by assuming that contemporary globalization is in effect pure Westernization. And so in this chapter I seek to go beyond the polarities or antinomies of Eurocentrism and non-Eurocentrism (as well as to iron out the inconsistencies within the non-Eurocentric school) by providing an alternative non-Eurocentric third-way position. In this way, then, I seek to produce a fresh research agenda for globalization theory.
