Sunday, May 13, 2012
PARAG KHANNA - on multiple identities
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARAG KHANNA on ' How to Run the World :" Wharton
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2811
Stephen J. Kobrin: In How to Run the World, you talk about the fact that we are entering a "postmodern Middle Ages" and that 21st-century diplomacy is going to be very complex. Technology and money, rather than sovereignty, [will] determine who has authority and who calls the shots. And you talk about "mega-diplomats." Who are these mega-diplomats?
Parag Khanna: Well, let's go back to the "postmodern Middle Ages." This is a very important analogy -- it's not just a clever historical reference. The Middle Ages was that period a thousand years ago when East and West were simultaneously powerful -- when China was the world's most advanced civilization under the Song Dynasty, when the Chola Dynasty of India was a great naval power, and when the Arab and Islamic Caliphates ruled all the way from North Africa to Central Asia. Europe was weak and divided between the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that it was a multipolar landscape around the world is a very important attribute of the Middle Ages.
ON MULTIPLE IDENTITIES : It's either your ethnic identity or your religious identity or your national, state identity -- or what's on your passport. That's not a very creative way of understanding how identity can take shape in a technological environment and an environment where money talks as much as it does. I meet a lot of young people who subscribe to a generational identity. They identify with certain causes that they are either members of physically or financially or through technology communities in the clouds -- like Facebook and various other groups and causes. Corporate identities are also extremely important today. When I meet young people who work for multinationals, but who have citizenship from Brazil or India or China or Russia, they realize that, in fact, their national identity will not allow visa-free access to the West or other parts of the world for years and years to come. The corporate identity is what allows them that access -- and the visas that their corporation gets for them.
PARAG KHANNA on ' How to Run the World :" Wharton
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2811
Stephen J. Kobrin: In How to Run the World, you talk about the fact that we are entering a "postmodern Middle Ages" and that 21st-century diplomacy is going to be very complex. Technology and money, rather than sovereignty, [will] determine who has authority and who calls the shots. And you talk about "mega-diplomats." Who are these mega-diplomats?
Parag Khanna: Well, let's go back to the "postmodern Middle Ages." This is a very important analogy -- it's not just a clever historical reference. The Middle Ages was that period a thousand years ago when East and West were simultaneously powerful -- when China was the world's most advanced civilization under the Song Dynasty, when the Chola Dynasty of India was a great naval power, and when the Arab and Islamic Caliphates ruled all the way from North Africa to Central Asia. Europe was weak and divided between the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that it was a multipolar landscape around the world is a very important attribute of the Middle Ages.
ON MULTIPLE IDENTITIES : It's either your ethnic identity or your religious identity or your national, state identity -- or what's on your passport. That's not a very creative way of understanding how identity can take shape in a technological environment and an environment where money talks as much as it does. I meet a lot of young people who subscribe to a generational identity. They identify with certain causes that they are either members of physically or financially or through technology communities in the clouds -- like Facebook and various other groups and causes. Corporate identities are also extremely important today. When I meet young people who work for multinationals, but who have citizenship from Brazil or India or China or Russia, they realize that, in fact, their national identity will not allow visa-free access to the West or other parts of the world for years and years to come. The corporate identity is what allows them that access -- and the visas that their corporation gets for them.
Labels: Knowledge at Wharton
