REFLECTIONS ON “CRITICAL THINKING” IN
GLOBAL STUDIES

Manfred B. Steger

Abstract

Much of what passes today as “global(ization) theory” falls within the new transdisciplinary framework of “global studies” (GS). GS constitutes an academic space of tension that generates critical investigations into our age as one shaped by the intensifying forces of globalization. Indeed, the young field both embraces and exudes the “global imaginary” – a sense of the social whole that frames our age as one shaped by the forces of globalization. Moreover, few GS scholars would object to the proposition that their field is significantly framed by “critical thinking.” But they need to be prepared to respond to a number of questions regarding the nature of their critical enterprise. What, exactly, does critical thinking signify in this context and how is it linked to GS? Do globalization scholars favor specific forms of critical thinking? If so, which types have been adopted and for what purposes? Finally, what forms of internal and external criticism have been leveled against GS itself and how have these objections been dealt with? These four questions provide the guiding framework for these reflections on the significance of critical thinking in GS.

Introduction

Much of what passes today as “global(ization) theory” falls within the transdisciplinary framework of “global studies” (GS). Emerging as a new field of academic inquiry in the late 1990s, GS explores globalization’s central dynamics of interconnectivity, reconfiguration of space and time, and enhanced mobility of people, goods, and ideas (Steger 2013). Although globalization has been extensively studied in the social sciences and humanities, it falls outside the established disciplinary framework. It is only of secondary concern in traditional fields organized around different master concepts: “society” in sociology; “resources” and “scarcity” in economics; “culture” in anthropology; “space” in geography; “the past” in history; “power” and “governance” in political science, and so on. By contrast, GS has placed the contested keyword “globalization” at the core of its intellectual enterprise. The rise of GS represents, therefore, a clear sign of the proper academic recognition of the new global interdependencies that cut across all disciplines and geographical scales. Moreover, as the work of leading GS scholars suggests, interconnectivity does not merely manifest in objective processes in the world “out there” but also operates on a subjective level through people’s consciousness “in here.” Hence, GS both embraces and exudes a certain mentalité I call the “global imaginary” – those largely pre-reflexive convocations of the social whole colored by globalization (Steger 2008).

Increasingly institutionalized in today’s global higher education environments, the evolving field has attracted scores of single-discipline based faculty and students. They are committed to studying transnational processes, interactions, and flows from a broader perspective. Such inter- and transdisciplinary framings constitute but one of four central conceptual and methodological “pillars” of GS: globalization, transdisciplinarity, space and time, and critical thinking (Steger and Wahlrab 2017). Notwithstanding sensible attempts to gauge the conceptual coherence of GS by delineating its main contours and central features, we should remember that it still constitutes a fluid and porous intellectual terrain rather than a novel, well-defined item on the dominant disciplinary menu. To use Fredric Jameson’s apt characterization, GS operates as an academic “space of tension” framed by multiple disagreements and agreements in which the very problematic of globalization itself is being continuously produced and contested (Jameson 1998, xvi).

One of these agreements relates to the field’s affinity for “critical thinking” – what I consider to be the “fourth pillar” of GS. Indeed, few globalization theorists – to whom this article loosely refers to as “GS scholars” – would object to the proposition that critical perspectives significantly frame their field. But if GS scholars claim to analyze globalization processes through a critical prism, then they need to be prepared to respond to a number of important questions regarding the nature of their critical enterprise. How, exactly, is critical thinking linked to global studies? Do globalization scholars favor specific forms of critical thinking? If so, which types have been adopted and for what purposes? Finally, what forms of internal and external criticism have been leveled against the field itself and how have these objections been dealt with?

These four fundamental questions provide the guiding framework of this article. Its ultimate purpose is to provide both a conceptual orientation and a thematic overview indispensible for a full appreciation of the significance of critical thinking in GS. But let us pave the way for our ensuing discussion by first reflecting on the various understandings of critical thinking.

Two Stages of Critical Thinking: Analytical and Ethico-Political

The term “critical” derives from the ancient Greek verb krinein, which translates in various ways as “to judge,” “to discern,” “to separate” and “to decide.” The compound “critical thinking,” then, signifies a discerning mode of thought capable of judging the quality of a thing or a person by separating its essence from mere attributes. While modern social thinkers have pointed to a strong philosophical affinity between “critical” and “thinking,” the conceptual connection between these terms goes back for millennia. Both Western and Eastern cultural traditions have celebrated the ethical virtues of critical thinking as epitomized in such heroic tomes as Plato’s Republic or the Bhagavad Gita. Indeed, most global philosophical traditions do not understand critical thinking solely in analytic terms as “value-free” operations of the discerning mind, but insist that it also entails a normative commitment to justice.

However, these vital ethical dimensions and political implications of rational thought were given short shrift in the contemporary critical thinking framework created by leading Anglo-American educators during the second half of the twentieth century. Turning a philosophical ideal into a popular educational catch phrase, these influential pedagogues elevated the program of “enabling students to think critically” to the universal goal of schooling. A teachable method of self-directed reasoning, such critical thinking expressed itself in cognitive operations like “seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth” (Willingham 2007, 8).

Undoubtedly, these analytical capabilities of objectivity, balance, and problem solving should be the foundation of any form of critical thinking. Still, the well-meaning efforts of pedagogues to enhance the educational effectiveness of their vocation should not remain unconcerned with political and ethical reflexivity, lest they reduce the activity of critical thinking to a mere analytical “skill.” The presentation of critical activity as a form of cognitive dexterity betrays a rather impoverished social and ethical imagination. After all, confined to such a value-free analytic framework, critical thinking connects to the life-world only in rather instrumental ways. For example, it resonates with the exhortations of many business leaders who demand from schools to improve their students’ “critical thinking skills” in the hope of taking material advantage of a “well-educated workforce.” Other than making more profitable work-related judgments, however, the notion of “well-educated” in this neoliberal context has no explicit ethico-political connection to the social world. Rather, it refers to economic efficiency, productivity, flexibility, and other instrumental skills highly valued in advanced capitalist societies.

Conversely, an ethico-political understanding of critical thinking emphasizes the crucial link between thinking and its social practices. Thought processes should not be isolated from the entire spectrum of the human experience. It is not enough to engage things merely in terms of how they are but also how they might be and should be. And to be mindful of this socially engaged dimension of thinking also means to be aware of the connection between contemplation and action, and between interrelated analytical and ethico-political forms, which we could conceptualize as Stage 1 and Stage 2 of critical thinking.

Critical Theory: Old and New

This emphasis on the crucial link between theory and practice has served as common ground for various socially engaged currents of critical thinking that have openly associated themselves with “critical theory.” Originally used in the singular and upper case, Critical Theory was closely associated with mid-twentieth-century articulations of Western Marxism as developed by thinkers of three generations of the...