It is only when we integrate our different kinds of knowledge that the people without history emerge as actors in their own right. When we parcel them out among several disciplines, we render them invisible. --Eric R. Wolf Five centuries ago, the world became global. The rise of the West, the conquest of the Americas, New World slavery, and the Industrial Revolution can be summarized as "a first moment of globality," an Atlantic moment, culminating in U.S. hegemony after World War II. The massive and rapid changes that mark our post-colonial and post-modern age attest to the emergence of a new, fragmented moment of globality: world histories and local histories are becoming both increasingly intertwined and increasingly contradictory. The purpose of this Institute is to stimulate dialogue, reflection and research that links these two global moments, their limits, continuities and disjunctures -- as these affect Culture, Power and History at the local level. The experience of globality is always that of historically situated individuals with specific resources and limits. The Institute's emphasis is thus on the local level seen in a global context; on the impact of these two moments of globality on groups and individuals, especially in the non-West; on the resources they use to cope or to conform, to accommodate or to resist. A central question in much academic work on the non-West after the late 15th century is how its segments were defined by their relation to the Western center. If that center is disappearing, or changing qualitatively, how do we rethink the nature of the global context and its significance for local experiences of culture and power? We assume that the ground-level experience of humans outside Europe and North America is indispensable to the understanding of the world, and that the social sciences and the humanities have neglected that experience. We assume also that the social sciences and the humanities are now in a state of flux; that the changing state of the world requires a vision that challenges and transcends disciplinary boundaries; that the changing state of the liberal arts can be seized as an opportunity to launch this challenge. We recognize, however, that the institutionalization of disciplines has both enabling and limiting effects, and that these cannot be easily dissociated. | 
