Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Thirty years on, Fukuyama’s claim regarding the end of history almost seems quaint. What has been lost during the intervening years between his writing and contemporary challenges to liberal democracy is Fukuyama’s argument against materialism. In characterizing the political developments of the late 1980s, Fukuyama focused on the role of ideas, emphasizing “consciousness and culture.” To what degree has the process of neoliberal globalization during these thirty years been prescriptive and materialist in both orientation and effect, disregarding the need to attend to consciousness and culture? What Fukuyama ignored and proponents of neoliberal globalization dismissed were key principles of liberal democracy, central norms which I consider “orphans at the end of history.” Fukuyama characterized an ongoing elite debate over how best to organize society. Missing from his treatment and absent in neoliberal models of globalization is cognizance of the bottom-up construction of societal identity through deliberation and practice. I propose a paper for the 2019 Global Studies Conference that explores the sources of discontent with neoliberal globalization, focusing on the erosion of key liberal democratic norms within the neoliberal globalization enterprise. I locate dissatisfaction with neoliberal globalization in the penetration of materialist incentives into the construction of identity, the process of higher education, and in the role of societal elites. I address the degree to which the promotion of liberal deliberative norms in the debate over ideas and culture, was replaced by a materialist ethos that alienates and divides, to such an extent that despite Fukuyama’s optimism, history has returned.