Introduction: The World in Times of Globality

Abstract

Globality, the unfinished consequence of globalization, has intensified the degree of contact and interaction around the globe. Yet, globality has remained incomplete as a human promise. Between 1938 and 1943, the philosopher Karl Popper wrote his masterpiece The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper was driven by the idea that mankind should find decent ways to advance “from tribalism to humanitarianism”. Eight decades after Popper’s publication, the world is a completely different place. Yet the main argument of his book is still intriguing: past enemies of the open society have been replaced by today’s enemies of the global society. The challenges to human civilization in the twenty-first century differ tremendously from the challenges Popper and his generation were facing in the middle of the twentieth century. But around the world, people sense an epochal shift which is not so different from the atmosphere of the mid-twentieth century. Globality is a starting point and not the answer. Globality is not just about violence or the absence of it. Globality is also about non-violent shifts of ideas, soft or hard power, human skills and emerging societies (Kühnhardt, L.& Mayer, T. (Eds.). Bonn handbook of globality. Springer (forthcoming)).