The Globalizing Trope: Social Capital, The World Bank and Discursive Change

• In Event: Understanding Intercultural Communication in a Global World

Abstract

This paper extends Burke’s Depression Era thinking into the current globalizing milieu and argues for the study of globalizing tropes as rhetorical devices aimed at shaping a new discursive era under globalizing conditions. The study at the heart of the paper identifies the World Bank’s usage of the term “social capital” as a globalizing trope aimed at replacing liberal rights as the fundamental agency of social and political relations.

Author

• John Thompson, University of Texas, Austin