The Retreat from Globalism and the Reconstruction of the Global Imaginary

This thesis examines the deeper conceptions driving the retreat from globalism and identifies their origins in the failure to generate a more cohesive global imaginary. The global imaginary refers to the shared conceptions binding humanity together. And since countless factors contribute to the world we imagine, understanding the global imaginary means examining a range of forces. Yet, this thesis focuses on a set of incipient global institutions that are essential to taking action on a multitude of shared global threats. And it explores how the perception that these institutions have in some way failed is leading people to retreat into more limited ethnic and national identities.

The retreat from globalism has been widely commented upon through the lenses of ethnonationalism and economic globalization, but comparatively little has been written about how our conceptions of the world drive the retreat. A dangerous and dysfunctional world has been conjured up in the imaginations of people the world over. Yet, it is not the actual world that they imagine, but rather a set of scattered narratives about the way the real-world works, and it is these narratives and their sources that will be explored in greater detail.

The thesis explores the porousness of social imaginaries in the first chapter and provides a comprehensive account of the global imaginary in the second. It examines how global institutions structure our thinking about the world in the third. And it explores how the practices of peacekeeping, statebuilding, and development aid contribute to the shape of the global imaginary in the next three respective chapters. It concludes that stronger global institutions can generate a more cohesive global imaginary. And it argues that through participation in a shared global community, humanity might generate a global imaginary able to meet the great global challenges of the twenty-first century.