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She writes that by the end of the twentieth century, the “Western civilizational imagination” had shifted from nation-building toward “a far fuzzier conception of a common humanity … human rights became the language of international legitimacy, its idioms fundamentally moral, not ideological.” But a big change was coming, what Ong describes as a “global event” that disrupted these ideas.
Yes. As she tells it, the economic rise of Asia “triggered a turning point in the worldview of elites assembled at the World Economic Forum … and seemed to mark something of a turning point in a broader movement away from global business as usual toward a concerted grappling with the challenges posed by rising powers.” India threw a lavish Bollywood ball that year, but China was the real story, or rather the “challenge.
The best known anthropological joke about the WEF was made in 2004 when the political scientist Samuel Huntington started talking about “Davos Man.” Is he mentioned? Just the once, but with impact. Ong wonders whether “Davos man’s” view of civilization versus nationalism can prevail, and whether “muscular stakeholder capitalism” can meet the challenge of “China’s assertive state capitalism.” She is not convinced they can. “Western leaders need to come down from the mountain and recognize that they no longer have a monopoly on ways to describe the global future.”Actually, yes.