‘The Liberal Project’: Globalization, Modernity and Identity

This article argues that globalization, or rather the globalization of modernity, can be conceived of as a ‘liberal project. ’ At the heart of the ‘liberal project ’ is the creation of a global civil society based upon universal values: human rights and the rule of law. However, a ‘liberal ’ global civil society requires, as a precondition for its existence, the erasure of difference: the creation of ‘unencumbered’ individuals out of communal identities and the universalization of liberal democracy and capitalism. Historically, a product of the European Enlightenment, the ‘liberal project ’ has taken the form of colonialism, imperialism and genocide in the non-European world, in the process compromising its central ideal of universal freedom. However, it will be argued that, in the light of the present ethno-religious revival, this ‘liberal ’ project has failed. Three different but interrelated sets of explanations help account for its failure to transform the world in the image of the West: the incommensurability of cultural value systems, the dynamism of modernity and the distorting effects of pre-modern practices which make multiple non-western modernities possible