Exploring Sameness and Difference: Fundamentalisms and the Future of Globalization

Abstract

The rise of fundamentalisms—both secular and religious—threatens to become a key element in the functioning of the international system over the coming decades. But what exactly are fundamentalisms? This article provides a response to this question by taking up the relationship between sameness and difference, arguing that fundamentalisms are predicated on a deep desire for sameness. This desire for sameness becomes all the more potent in a period of rapid change and dislocation, and with the loss of ideological certainties. In the light of this, the implications for the emphasis on sameness are pursued in terms of what fundamentalisms make of the international system and globalization.

Notes

1 These reflections were first stimulated by my attendance at a series of seminars held at the LSE under the title ‘Intolerance’ in 2005.

2 Narcissism is the self-regard for the self. So the self itself is always and already differentiated. This thus renders problematic any simple relational structure involving ‘the Self and the Other’.

3 Without wishing to appear over crude, in psychoanalysis this fascination with small differences arises because of the primacy of touch in the organization of desire. Touch is the primary sensation. The visual is also predicated on touch. Thus the desire to look – voyeurism – is driven by a desire to touch the object of the look. And touch has two obvious components: the smooth and the rough. The smooth (sameness) is interrupted by the rough (difference), which accounts for the fascination with (small) protrusions and crevices in the bodily make up. The smoothness of surfaces so delightful to the touch is interrupted by the roughness of differences. This sets up a whole ‘economy of desires’ that is not limited to exploring the human body, though it is clearly predicated upon it. Just think of the ‘body politic’ in this respect, linked to which is the discussion in the main text about ‘fundamentalists desires’.

4 On a personal note, elsewhere in a methodological discussion about the analysis of globalization (Thompson 2005c) I would have to describe myself as a deeply critical, non-humanistic, pragmatic and sceptical fundamentalist! Or (given the issues of reluctance just mentioned in the main text) I try not to be this. I try not to be this at the same time I find it difficult to avoid it, because of some important points that follow in the main text.

5 ‘Submission’ is also a key aspect of religious fundamentalism. God exists because we serve him. If he did not exist we would not serve him. So, the fact that we do serve him confirms his existence.

6 For a completely different way of considering the role of toleration in respect to the international sphere see Thompson 2004 and 2005a.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Grahame F. Thompson

Grahame F. Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the Open University, UK. His main research interests are in the political economy of the international system and the theme of ‘globalization’. In particular, this concentrates upon the possible limits to globalization and on the notion of ‘global corporate citizenship’. In addition, he is working on related issues around different forms of coordination and governance, particularly network forms of organization. His most recent books are Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Politics and Power in the UK (ed., with Richard Heffernan, Edinburgh University Press, 2004). In early 2008, he will be publishing a third edition of his book Globalization in Question (originally written with Paul Hirst, now being redrafted with Simon Bromley).