Small Planet in the Vastness of Space: Globalization and the Proliferation of UFOs, Aliens, and Extraterrestrial Threats to Humanity

John Boli

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Chapter 14 Small Planet in the Vastness of Space

Globalization and the Proliferation of UFOs, Aliens, and Extraterrestrial Threats to Humanity

In: Globalization/Glocalization: Developments in Theory and Application

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John Boli

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 260–288

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004500365_015

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The final chapter, by John Boli of Emory University, examines a quite different cultural phenomenon, as his title puts it: UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrial threats to humanity. The central hypothesis that he explores is how cultural productions, including fictional and nonfictional accounts of encounters with extraterrestrial actors (e.g. films, games, books, or reports), reflect in their content and prevalence the context of intensifying globalization, particularly in the twentieth to twenty-first century, which is to say the most recent Robertsonian phases. The underlying idea is that greater consciousness of the world as a single place and humanity as a single people generates concern about the ‘other’ side of that singleness: if we are one, then, on the model of how we are one, namely as different, there must be others to our global one. Accounts of outer-worldly encounters assume the global universal as a universal particular. We are one, but how do we relate to the assumedly many others that must be out there? Boli tests three interrelated predictions of what the data on these cultural productions will show: that they will increase as globalization intensifies over time, that they will decrease during periods of global disruption such as world wars or global economic crises, and that during periods of disruption those cultural productions that see the outside as a threat to humanity will increase. His analysis demonstrates that the first and second hypotheses are largely supported. Especially after the Second World War, UFO sightings, films, books, and then video games about extraterrestrial beings visiting earth increased and then rapidly accelerated, though they declined somewhat when disruptions occurred. However, the third prediction – that depictions of threats to the planet will increase during disruptions – is not borne out. As with wine and football, the more precise historical cultural developments are complex, perhaps underscoring the importance of Robertson’s observation that globalization is not a teleological, let alone necessary, process. In its broad outlines there is some predictability, but not always in the particularistic details.

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Globalization/Glocalization: Developments in Theory and Application

Essays in Honour of Roland Robertson

Series: International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Volume: 139

Cover Globalization/Glocalization: Developments in Theory and Application

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004500365

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 19 Nov 2021

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Chapter 14 Small Planet in the Vastness of Space

Globalization and the Proliferation of UFOs, Aliens, and Extraterrestrial Threats to Humanity

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Globalization/Glocalization: Developments in Theory and Application

Essays in Honour of Roland Robertson

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