The Expanding World: Towards a Politics of Microspection

Are we really living in a shrinking world? Is it true that diversity is on the decline everywhere? Are we condemned to live on a planet without difference or hope? The Expanding World challenges the basic notion of a shrinking world in current debates around globalization and argues that it informs ways of thinking and doing which are deeply damaging to the emergence of a progressive politics. The work proposes instead a new kind of politics based on a notion of an expanding rather than a shrinking world. This implies a different way of looking at the world and a different way of doing politics. The Expanding World is fundamentally about looking more closely at what is around us and acting on that knowledge. It is about considering what it means to have whole worlds reflected in the looking glass of local inquiry. Cronin challenges the prevailing culture of disenchantment by highlighting the inexhaustible variety and richness of the planet and how that variety and richness can become the basis of new forms of emancipatory politics.
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