Envisioning the World: Mapping and Making the Global

1. Why did you choose this topic?

We are a group of authors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and varying views as on how we envision the world in relation to different geographical, social, and historical environments. We took this diversity as a starting point and sought to turn it into an asset for demonstrating the rich diversity of practices behind construction in different realms of society.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

The book provides vivid examples of how globalization is constantly re-made and enacted in manifold everyday practices. It provides a rich variety of cases that demonstrate how this process takes place in many localities and at different times: diplomats, social workers, lawyers, anti-Semitic groups, travelers, philosophers or revolutionaries all have diverging, sometimes contesting views on a global world. Such a perspective demonstrates that our view of the world is not self-evident, but related to relevant social environments which evolve over time.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

The current CoVid-19 crisis has shown how an event of global outreach can be experienced very differently – or even be neglected/denied – depending on where people are and how they position themselves/are positioned in the world. However, we show that ›the global‹ is not something that is simply ›there‹, or something that can simply ›decrease‹ or even go away. It is constantly recreated and reshaped by the ways in which people envision the world.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

Hannah Bennani.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

The global is not something abstract that is just ›out there‹, but is part of people's living realities and embedded in a wide range of observations of the seemingly ›everyday‹.