Thread by @ericchendriks

Thread on the global power structure:

Forget about concepts like ‘glocalization,’ the ‘Global South,’ and ‘Eurocentrism.’ We live in a world dominated by three hierarchized regions: Coastal U.S./Anglosphere, Western Europe, and post-Confucian East Asia.

2a. The U.S./Anglosphere is the leading block among the three leading regions, with coastal American politics and culture—in my terminology: American politeia—being the leading politico-cultural regime or politeia.

2b. On this, also see @sbabones' theory of American Tianxia.

Book: asianreviewofbooks.com/content/americ… Paper: cambridge.org/core/journals/…

@sbabones 3a. Academic prestige/capacity is at least as unevenly distributed between regions as wealth and political power are. It, too, concentrates in the Anglosphere, Western Europe, and East Asia, though its centers do not proportionally overlap with those of the economy and diplomacy.

@sbabones 3b. Our contemporary world academic rankings seem to reflect the power of three educational traditions in particular: 1) the medieval European university and British liberal art, 2) the modern German university, and 3) the schools and canonical exam culture of Neo-Confucianism.

@sbabones 4a. This world-regional hierarchization has been a recurrent focus in my research. I didn't choose this thematic consciously; the empirical subject matter forces me to return to it.

@sbabones 4b. I have researched the spread of American-style self-help coaching culture to China and Germany*, China's troubled integration into globalized function systems, and the asymmetries in Sino-American educational connectivity.

*See: brill.com/view/title/333…

@sbabones 5a. The hierarchical-world-regions perspective isn’t, as I see it, encouraged by the major theoretical frameworks in globalization studies.

@sbabones 5b. The closest thing to a regional-power-block-perspective is probably Wallerstein’s neo-Marxist world society theory, though it focuses exclusively on the economy, neglecting cultural influence and prestige and the multidimensionality of functional differentiation.

@sbabones 6a. The Luhmannian school that is influential here in Germany denies that hierarchization between world regions plays a vital role in “functionally differentiated world society.”

@sbabones 6b. In Luhmannian world society theory, fully autonomous, fully global function systems (e.g., religion, politics, education, research, sports, economy, etc.) are leading. These supposedly eclipse the import of regional variations in societal structure.

@sbabones 6c. In my opinion, the Luhmannian framework suffers under a globalistic and a formalistic bias. It is globalistic because it sees regional differences and inequalities as secondary to global structures.

@sbabones 6d. The Luhmannian framework is formalistic because it privileges the formal equality of countries and the formal autonomy of function systems over the actually existing inequalities and messiness. In China, for example, functional differentiation is not very strong. And…

@sbabones 6e. The interactions between, for example, the Chinese and American education systems tend to be highly unequal (see points 10 and 11), reflecting not only a function-system internal hierarchization but also a general—system-external—prestige difference between the US and China.

@sbabones 7a. A term like “glocalization,” which was in fashion in the 1990s and 2000s, doesn’t capture the world’s three-blocked, yet America-centric regional power structure either.

Yes, inter-regionally-mobile stuff glocalizes in new environments, but under what conditions?

@sbabones 7b. Much ‘glocalization’ is a manifestation of American power and influence.

Ideas, norms, ideals, products, capital, and organizational forms spread from the U.S. to other world regions, where they then glocalize. Meanwhile, less is traveling in the opposite direction.

@sbabones 8. The term “Global South” does foreground world-regional inequality, but it seems to neglect the three-blocked structure of “the Global North,” while downplaying the inequality between the leading blocks.

@sbabones 9. Finally, the critical concept “Eurocentrism” overlooks the primacy of the Anglosphere/American region, as well as the essential position of East Asia. I find it more fitting for the Eurocentric world that existed up to the early 20th century.

@sbabones 10a. I am contemplating writing a book about the three-blocked (America+, Western Europe, East Asia) structure of power in global higher education, but I may first write some more papers.

@sbabones 10b. Right now, I’m publishing journal papers on the Chinese education consultancy industry that prepares Chinese students for (higher) education in the United States. Chinese parents hire U.S.-educated mentors to help their child with her application essays and extracurriculars.

@sbabones 10c. Lots of Chinese money and time go into accommodating to American ideals. It's a whole industry; there's an entire institutional complex facilitating Sino-American student mobility.

@sbabones 10d. So, the Sino-American coupling is very asymmetrical, not just because many more Chinese students go to the U.S. than vice versa, or because American tuition fees are higher, but also because student movement from China to the U.S. has a much greater institutional footprint.

@sbabones 11a. Another asymmetry that fascinates me is that elite American universities set up centers in China and Europe (e.g., the UChicago Center Beijing) in which their students ‘on exchange’ in China/Europe receive support while abroad, as well as all or most of their teaching.

@sbabones 11b. The teachers in those abroad study centers are flown in from the American campus or selected from among the local host institute faculty. The regular curriculum of the host institution is deemed inferior, incapable of guaranteeing the quality expected of the American school.

@sbabones 11c. In contrast, Chinese and European students on exchange at an elite American university enroll in the American system. They want to be in the classes offered by the American institution as these classes are considered the best (and may, in fact, be the best).

@sbabones 11d. Note how, in this format, the talk of an “exchange”—which implies equality and symmetry—cloaks the actual situation. There is no real exchange because the students of the elite American university do not integrate into the host country’s curriculum. There’s no exchange!

@sbabones 11e. The asymmetrical inequality in such “fake exchange” arrangements comes on top of other structural inequalities, such as that...

@sbabones 11f. Native English speakers can enroll in English-taught graduate programs at elite Chinese and continental European universities. Such programs are offered. In contrast, no American university would teach programs in Mandarin or German. Students have to adjust fully to English.

@sbabones 12. So much to research and reflect on.

We live in a world of asymmetries in which most of the capital, power, and prestige concentrates in a few centers in three world regions: coastal U.S./Anglosphere (the leader among the leaders), Western Europe and post-Confucian East Asia.

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