CRITICS: globalisation, yes

[Tove Skutnabb-Kangas]

Robert Phillipson already wrote about some of our joint interests in
the area - and thanks, Norman. I also think that the counterpart
should be discussed, the lack of globalisation in certain areas.
Associations, books, treatises, research, which claims to be global
or international - and only covers Europe (with a very narrow
definition of Europe at that) and Neo-Europes, with a recent addition
of South Africa. Claims about what exists of research or what has or
has not been done - and the coverage is in the very best case what
has been published in English, French and German, in the worst case
what has been published in Britain and the US in English. Universals
which are based on a study of half a dozen Indo-European languages or
discourses in them. Etc etc - many of us in CRITICS have of course
been struggling to point us the problem and trying to counteract it
in our own practises for a long time (as Teun exemplified in today's
posting) - but still, there does not seem to be an awful lot of
change. Invalidation through invisibilisation, and through that
reinforcing the belief in that only structures, patterns, norms,
languages etc emanating from the few econopolitically powerful
centers are valid. OSCE, UN, Council of Europe, dozens of US
and UK research centres and "conflict management" bodies sending
"missions" to eastern and central Europe to investigare their human
rights situations, and pronouncing, and making "aid" conditional on
their advice being followed - but not the opposite. And still, many
of those areas have much more progressive minority right laws etc
than many of the sending countries (I have one student group working
on Lithuania, and I have myself been asked to go to one of these
missions with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in a
few weeks' time). - Are any of you others interested in these
questions, and can you, Norman, see them as related to/being within
the globalisation field as you envisaged it?

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University, Dept of Languages and
Culture, 3.2.4., PB 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, phone 45-46-75 77
11/2740, fax 45-46-75 44 10, private: Troenninge Mose 3, DK-4420
Regstrup, Denmark, phone 45-53-46 44 12
OBS OBS New address from 15 Sept. 1995: TOVESK at babel.ruc.dk