#3amm

Well, one thing I object to is the very notion that they have of ‘geography’ being a tyranny. To begin with: why is distance always negative, something to be overcome? There could be a whole thesis countering this but at the most simple of levels, what of the pleasures of travel? This inattention betrays a deeper attitude. Our overvaluation of speed (time here as only money) has robbed us of many things that are at least equally precious. But, second, ‘geography’ is more than distance. What an impoverished view of the planet! What of the variety of place? What of specificity and difference? If time is the dimension of change, then space is the dimension of coexisting difference. And that is both a source of nourishment (something that the globalisation gurus seem altogether to have foregone), and a challenge (how negotiate difference, how to address inequality, and so forth). So I don’t accept the terms of debate, that ‘geography’ is just a negative tyranny. And that critique is before we get to the more standard criticisms of neoliberal globalisation – that it has produced a world even more unequal than the one it inherited. Incidentally, I don’t think there is a non-adjectival ‘globalisation’. What we have now is a particular form: dominated by finance and multinational corporations and by a rhetoric (though not a reality) of ‘free trade’ and market forces. So I’m not a localist. I’m an internationalist, but one who believes (a) that such a thing is really only possible through a prior grounding and (b) that the terms of our present globalisation have to be challenged politically

how do you gett sick in august!!