Page - 47 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

47 | www.limina-graz.eu of globalization over the past three decades by looking at distinctive fea- tures that emerged in each of the three decades. Many authors see the current phase of globalization beginning with the development of information technology in the 1980s, reaching its crucial turning point in 1989, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. A worldwide realignment in economic, social and political realities followed this event. Marxist-inspired socialism collapsed in the countries of the Soviet bloc and was severely challenged in China. The demise of economic socialism left neoliberal capitalism with an open playing field. Countries in Europe and in Central Asia rejected the Soviet hegemony and most moved toward em- bracing some form of democracy. There was a great deal of euphoria in the early 1990s, which lasted into the turn of the millennium. An international liberal social order, as had been envisioned by the founding of the United Nations, now seemed to be emerging. The European Union expanded to in- clude most of the countries of Europe, fulfilling the dreams of its founders as an economic and social combine that would preclude war among the na- tions of that continent. Accelerating the momentum in all of this was the advance in electronic communications. Students used it to undermine autocracies in country after country, starting in Serbia, and spreading to Ukraine and Georgia, among others. Its impact on news reporting was such that those connected with the world in this new way could actually witness events around the world as they were taking place. A new connectivity among people appeared to be laying the groundwork for the possibility of a united humanity such as had never been possible before. This new connectivity compressed both time and space through the speed of communication, and the extension of reach that was not possible before. In the decade of the 1990s, then, there was great hope of a genuinely new, united world (Fukuyama 1992). But even in the midst of this optimism, there were concerns about the shadow side of the increased connectivity and the sheer speed with which everything seemed to be moving. There was a real fear of greater cultural homogenization at the hands of those countries who controlled the levers of economic globalization (especially the United States); many were concerned that local cultures would be oblit- erated by the “McDonaldization” of the world, leaving everyone and every- robert J. schreiter | Globalization and Plural theologies A new connectivity among people appeared to be laying the groundwork for the possibility of a united humanity.