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Global Learning and the 
Myth of Borders
Examining Theological Education and 
Librarianship through World-Systems 
Theory
Anthony J. Elia 
Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

ABSTR ACT In the last few years, the language of globalism and 
borders has been pervasive in the narratives of politics and social 
commentary. Despite the flurry of opinions, debates, and claims of “fake 
news,” those who are practitioners in theological education broadly 
speaking, and theological librarianship, specifically, recognize the 
deep and profound reality of global education and the impact that it 
has on both domestic students and the international representation of 
students and faculty as one community of learners, practitioners, and 
seekers. In this paper, we will look at how the language of globalism 
has been expressed both in popular terms and theological terms, how 
the evocation of borders and boundaries is not a new idea but a dated 
trope reused throughout history for steering narrative claims, and how 
World-Systems theory enables a broader understanding of theological 
education and librarianship.

INTRODUCTION

In 1974 Immanuel Wallerstein published his seminal book The Modern 
World System, in which he outlined the basic components of what would 
later be called “World-Systems Theory”1 by other scholars in fields as 
diverse as sociology, history, and anthropology. Wallerstein himself, 
however, insisted this was not theory, but analysis. Nonetheless, this 
assessment of the world in another distinctly articulated approach 
was something novel and important, because it afforded not simply 



30  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

an evaluation of how the world was set up, but a re-evaluation of how 
the world was viewed through the prism of nation-state units that has 
dominated especially in the West. 

World-Systems analysis, then, also coincides with boundary and 
border studies, which are themselves heuristic exercises in question-
ing both the meaning of one’s self and homeland and the places from 
which we separate ourselves—those things that are distinct, differ-
ent, and indicative of how we do not define ourselves, or rather in fact 
those things we define ourselves against. Perhaps this is one of the key 
problems with how borders, boundaries, and divisions are expressed 
in the current world, whether by designations of land and lines across 
barren earth and bodies of water, or by being in concert with the inven-
tions that we’ve recognized in nations and states since the seventeenth 
century. But in terms of border studies, the recognition of these cate-
gories as more fluid than rigid has put an entirely new focus on what 
it really means to be a point of separation, division, and apartness. In 
fact, the complex nature of associating a “border” with a “wall” is in 
itself an assumption of this separation, which is driven by socio-polit-
ical narratives of the state. Throughout history, despite the fact that 
borders and boundaries demarcated space, almost the entirety of global 
borders have been places of fluid commerce, interactive exchange, and 
combined human productivity and intercourse in all aspects of life. Far 
from being divisive spaces, borders and boundaries were designations of 
space that in reality were flexibly interwoven into the fabric of quotid-
ian individual, familial, and community interactions. 

As we consider what constitutes the language of “borders” and 
“boundaries,” we must acknowledge that the majority of world bound-
aries, which separate nations, came into existence in the nineteenth 
century, precisely at the time when nations and nationalism were on 
the ascent and colonialism was in full swing. Looking at the field of 
border studies more closely, and how this discipline evolved into what 
it is today, Joshua Hagen offers an exemplary introduction to how 
this field developed and changed especially during the late twentieth 
century. He writes:

As a distinct field of academic inquiry, border studies drew its 
initial impetus from geopolitical rivalries among European 



Paper  31

powers coinciding with rapid colonial expansion and devastat-
ing world wars during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As 
such, early border scholars generally focused on advancing the 
strategic interests of their home states pertaining to territorial 
claims and border demarcation. After 1945, however, scholars 
worked to disassociate their field from the narrow, prejudiced 
interests of their respective governments. As a result, border 
research tended to be rather descriptive, focusing on terminol-
ogy and classification. This began to change around 1980—ironi-
cally, as some scholars, mostly from business and technology 
backgrounds, began predicting an imminent “borderless” 
world. In response, geographers and other social scientists 
developed new methodological and theoretical approaches 
for border studies. ... Despite its breadth and interdisciplinary 
nature, there are some general themes that run through early-
21st-century border research. Most prominent is the under-
standing of borders as a process; that is, borders result from 
processes of bordering that differentiate among places, peoples, 
and jurisdictions.2

With such an evocation in mind, it makes us wonder not simply 
about the terms themselves—like “a borderless world”—but instead 
about the language and narrative that is pushed by various sides of 
the discussion. It would seem that invoking the language of a “border-
less world” in contrast to the world “of borders” is to characterize the 
world of some utopia against the one of reality. There will always be 
borders, because there will always be a need by the modern nation to 
keep track of populations, to monitor movement, to stabilize people, 
and to control the masses—the very nature of state power.

This said, the dichotomy between the physical world and the virtual 
world is one which plays into what constitutes the new game of barri-
ers, borders, and boundaries. We live in both, but the physical world is 
the one which has the most significant restrictions on how we move, 
live, and operate. The virtual world may have its own boundaries, but 
the freedom and flexibility of communications between and among 
all people around the globe thus affords us with unlimited opportu-
nities—of course, in countries and designated nation-states where 
there is not censorship or control of distinct populations; most of us 



32  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

can likely predict where those places are that don’t have this kind of 
flexibility. 

Globalism language has been around for a long time, but how it has 
been perceived in the last eighty years is distinct. We often see terms 
that are interchanged, though they have specifically different mean-
ings, such as cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and most similar, 
globalization. Globalism is a term that is often described in political 
science as an extension of affairs across and beyond the boundar-
ies of nations and nation-states; the Cambridge Dictionary defines 
it specifically as “the idea that events in one country cannot be sepa-
rated from those in another and that economic and foreign policy 
should be planned in an international way.”3 Globalism is a term and 
idea that predates the pervasive nature of capitalist economies that 
are themselves global phenomena. In distinction to globalism is global-
ization, which the same dictionary defines as “the development of 
closer economic, cultural, and political relations among all the coun-
tries of the world as a result of travel and communication becoming 
easy.”4 A further definition includes “the way in which economies have 
been developing to operate together as one system.”5 Each definition 
includes the key component of worldwide interaction, but depending 
on the narrative of each definition, the descriptor could be either posi-
tive (global reach toward participation) or negative (global reach toward 
control), for example. According to the usage of the term “globalism” 
in the Google N-gram search, the word appeared in the early 1940s, 
and had for some time been used in negative terms by nativists in the 
United States, while the same language has reappeared in recent years 
with the same feeling of negativity spun by certain factions. Again, 
though, it depends on who is using (or weaponizing) the language for 
the purpose of understanding what globalism really means.

Now let us turn to the particular role that theological schools, semi-
naries, and their libraries have in the greater role of global learning, 
and how the notion of borders and boundaries plays in this complex 
relationship. 

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND GLOBAL LEARNING

We are in a world now, more than ever, that has struck out at the 
concept of the global educational marketplace. The language of “global 



Paper  33

theology,” “global theological education,” and “globalization” is well 
used throughout the field of theological and seminary education. The 
terms indicate a variety of things to a variety of people. And these 
distinctions have very different meanings when considering their 
origins and historical backgrounds. 

In an article from 2015, in the Journal on Lutheran Ethics, J. Paul 
Rajashekar writes about some of the issues around the use of “global-
ization” language in the present time, and how it has both limitations 
and opportunities. He writes:

The intensification of the globalization process in recent 
decades however has forced us to rethink our engagement 
with this reality with respect to theology and theological 
education. Robert Schreiter, years ago, wrote about “global 
flows” and “local logics” and identified four global flows: liber-
ation, feminism, ecology and human rights (see Schreiter). 
These four flows, in his view, are important global/universal 
concerns that transcend geographical and cultural bound-
aries. To this list, I would add interreligious/intercultural 
engagement as another important theme that has emerged 
as an universal issue.6

As members of theological communities, we are faced with a 
number of issues and questions, some pressing, some imperative, 
that have to deal with the whole vibrancy and existence of our own 
churches, religious organizations, denominations, and ultimately our 
communities themselves. That is why, for instance, if we are to look at 
Rajashekar’s comments on Schreiter and the idea of “global flows”—
namely, liberation, feminism, ecology, and human rights—these are 
certainly core ideas in both our theological schools or seminaries and 
the church itself. In turn, this sort of research and curricular focus 
then has its relationality to what the theological library must do in its 
collections and support of the institution and church. 

We also look at what is being done in the cultivation of students in 
our theological institutions—those students who are already denomi-
nationally centered in a tradition and culture, and then seek a connec-
tion to these theological schools and institutions in Europe and the 



34  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

United States. The question, in part then is “What are the ethical 
responsibilities of the institution and, by association, the libraries 
of these schools in cultivating and sustaining those who come from 
the global context?” We might initially say that the theological library 
provides services, but also jobs for many of those who come from 
other contexts. But what else, and how can this be cultivated to provide 
optimal support?

BORDERS, SPACES, AND THE DECOLONIZATION MOVEMENT

Why does the question of “the global” or “globalization” come into 
public discourse? Is this something that is solely dictated by isolation-
ist and nationalist tropes and language? The theme for the present 
section that I want to discuss is about “borders” and the “construc-
tion of space”; the latter is important, because we often create space 
by cordoning it off, creating borders, or walls, or barriers. It is the 
contemporary debate that has run through the American political 
system in the last few years that has prompted and caused this conver-
sation in many ways. 

The common tropes of borders and separation of entities is consti-
tuted by how one nation is set against another—or all others, depending 
on how those places are seen, identified, and understood. One of the 
key models of World-Systems Theory is a critique of the way that the 
modern world is constructed and viewed. As Carlos A. Martínez Vela 
articulates this, as an assessment of Wallerstein’s system, he notes: 

[Wallerstein] aimed at achieving “a clear conceptual break with 
theories of ‘modernization’ and thus provide a new theoretical 
paradigm to guide our investigations of the emergence and 
development of capitalism, industrialism, and national states” 
(Skocpol, 1977, p. 1075). Criticisms to modernization include 
(1) the reification of the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis, 
(2) assumption that all countries can follow only a single path of 
evolutionary development, (3) disregard of the world-historical 
development of transnational structures that constrain 
local and national development, (4) explaining in terms of 
ahistorical ideal types of “tradition” versus “modernity,” which 
are elaborated and applied to national cases.7



Paper  35

The problem, in effect, is the idea of “the nation.” As we are 
conditioned to think and believe that the only way to see the world 
is through the distinction of nations and nationalism, we fail to 
recognize the distinctions that existed before there were nation-
states (an invention of the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648); but also, 
we fail to see the nuances of cultures today, situated within each and 
every person and their identities within their societal makeup—
even in the examples of Native Americans or First Nations in our 
current surrounds here in Vancouver. For Wallerstein, the core of 
World-Systems is to deconstruct the assertion and hegemony of this 
narrative, the nation-state narrative, as much as this predominates 
because of international law prescriptions or guidelines governing 
citizenship, for example. These are superficial constructions that 
afford uniformity and a means of dictating functionality, but systems 
of human action, behavior, and ecologies are driven by a host of other 
factors. This notion, too, is what the second point expresses—that 
countries must follow a single path of evolutionary development. This, 
of course, cannot be further from the truth. Each and every country 
has its own developmental and evolutionary process that is based on 
countless factors and questions. 

The same can be said about the evolutionary assumptions about 
theology, theological systems, architectures, and constructs that 
have perpetuated our understandings within the religious contexts 
of Western thought for centuries. There are, for certain, many kinds 
of boundaries that we put up—because of difference and similarities, 
because of appearances, shared beliefs, and national heroes—which 
is really a question of the narrative that we tell about ourselves in 
relation to others and to the past. 

As we look at the distinctions of the World-Systems Theory analysis 
and the role that nations and nationalism have played in the greater 
assessment at hand, it should also be recognized that along with 
nations, the idea of empires also was part of the conversation. Both 
empires and nations had colonies, which projected and manipulated 
power throughout the world. The legacy of empire and colonialism is 
something that is still felt and experienced today and, with that, there 
are subsequent counter-movements in motion today which seek to 
decolonize the way the world operates. Appropriately, this is often called 
the decolonization movement. Part of this entails the question of “who 



36  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

owns” or “controls” such notions, terms, language, and practices. Who 
owns the narrative, effectively? Wallerstein expresses the critique that 
nationalism and nations have dominated our ability to understand the 
structure of world systems as post-Westphalian units exclusively. That is 
to say that we have been conditioned to see the development and growth 
of the world in one way—not as something multivalent or multicultural—
because of this coopting of expansive thinking by an emblematic 
problem that only sees nations and national growth. In some ways, this 
can be said of almost all that influences our ways of seeing such things 
as theology, history, and even ethics: because even the structures of 
our thinking have been colonized by western constructs. How often do 
we hear “German philosophy and theology” in distinction to “French 
mysticism,” for example? Our categories presume that a “nation” must 
designate and qualify the meaning of that philosophy, theology, or 
mysticism, rather than something that is perhaps a bit more provincial, 
local, or even different by designations of gender, presentation, or 
thought itself—though it is presumed that categories themselves help us 
visualize, guide, and understand the world around us. In the twentieth 
century, though, it was with the profound distinctions and seismic 
shifts that occurred with thinkers like Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and then 
James Cone, who pushed the boundaries of identifying the essence of 
philosophical theology with the character of the self—the identity of the 
culture of that author was shifted to the essence of both humanness and 
ethno-racial terms, in the case of James Cone. World-Systems Theory 
expressed itself in the form of a cultural system, rather than a nation or 
state system, and by viewing it through this lens the move toward a real 
decolonization of theology can be seen more clearly. 

Decolonization too has been an expression of the response to all the 
colonial matrices and problems that have been put upon marginalized 
cultures, societies, and peoples. It emphasizes how certain systematic 
oppressions have been put into place and ways in which they can 
be treated and corrected by concerted efforts to make policies and 
practices equitable, fair, and just.

DEPENDENCY THEORY

The main point of dependency theory is one which acknowledges the 
long history of colonialism throughout the world. In effect, it is an 



Paper  37

example of how we look at and acknowledge the role of the “core” 
and “periphery” relationship. If “core” represents those societies, 
countries, and nations which have wealth, prosperity, and control 
of capital, then “periphery” has been designated as those places 
that are often described as un- or under-developed but may in fact 
have very rich resources. Yet the relationship comes with a power 
dynamic, whereby the country that possesses the power (the “core”) 
seeks and reaps the resources from the country which does not have 
the advantage of power (the “periphery”). How this fits the Marxist 
models is in its dynamics of power, and who or what exerts that very 
power over elements in the global marketplace, which can only be 
guided and manipulated, but never rise to any place of equilibrium. 
The acknowledgement of this may be present in some theological 
schools, libraries, and even pulpits. How we engage, though, is the 
important part—where we support this bibliographically or through 
digital resources, knowledgeable staff, and other means is integral. 
Recognizing the distinctions made on a global scale, including the 
“flows” of capital, information, communication, and education, 
while understanding the historical and contemporary meanings and 
outcomes of these “flows” in World-Systems is part of how we will best 
accommodate and engage future generations.

KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENT AND IDEA CAPITALISM

The value of information and knowledge has been around since the 
beginning of time. The old Roman expression Scientia est potentia—or 
“knowledge is power”—was not merely a simple expression taught in 
high school Latin classes. It had real meaning behind it. “Knowledge,” 
however broadly defined and related to information, is that which can 
and will yield tremendous advantages to those who hold that informa-
tion and knowledge. That power can be harnessed by the what, why, 
where, when, and how you possess that information and knowledge, 
whether that’s a combination number on a lock, or a lottery number, or 
even the right answer to a game show or a trial cross examination—one 
word or phrase could have the potential to be worth a million dollars 
or zero dollars—all or nothing. 

The question for us, as we touched upon in the last section, has to do 
with how we come to understand that there really is exceptional value 



38  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

in information, knowledge, and ideas—these have often been described 
in terms of information capital, knowledge capital, and to a lesser extent 
idea capital(ism). These forms of “flows,” as we have discussed above, 
can exist anywhere, but there are advantages to those with greater 
means of faster, broader distribution, which includes everything 
from control of radio and television stations to the debates around 
internet access and net neutrality. These concepts are not bound by 
nation states or borders. And in this day and age, we must be more 
cognizant of the roles played by the various actors, who dominate the 
global controls on information, knowledge, and ideas—from media 
operations, conglomerates, and big business to the democratized 
decentralization of individuals in Egypt, China, and the United States. 
At the same time, we need to realize that there are controls and censor-
ship from some nations and state actors. But the overall theme for us is 
that the versatility of information, knowledge, and ideas as commodi-
ties has become far more relevant and important in the present age, 
and one which we as educators, administrators, and librarians must 
continue to be alert to. 

THE ROLES OF THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES?

What is the ethical responsibility of the theological school that must 
acknowledge its past as a mission-centered movement or as a product 
of nations, nation-states, and the colonial enterprise? Specifically, how 
should it understand and reconcile the circumstances of the present, 
where it seeks to recruit students, and to a lesser extent faculty, from 
around the globe, and how can an understanding of World-Systems 
analysis better equip those institutions for these challenges? The 
legacy of core and periphery remains with us, even if many of the struc-
tures have disappeared. Should we recognize the past, the truths and 
difficult expressions of colonial power that manifested in some of 
the inequalities that still drive this world or even the perpetuation of 
imbalanced political and economic power that is often described as 
a form of “democratization”?

Let us first step back a few moments and consider the place of 
World-Systems Theory in this conversation and how elements of WST 
can help us better understand the questions at hand. For example, we 
have seen that this approach and methodology have forced us to recon-



Paper  39

sider how certain elements of language, culture, society, ideas, and 
information are understood, broadly speaking, in respect to the long 
conditioning of social ideas. In WST we have seen that this condition-
ing has played out in the formulation of nation-state creation as the 
singular method of acknowledging the evolution and development of 
societies in the post-Westphalian world. If we are to take this method-
ology and apply it to theology, ethics, and even church historical processes, 
as well as those associated with the evolutions of libraries, the question 
might be reoriented to say that these Enlightenment-focused catego-
ries must also be developed in only one way—the Western Eurocentric 
process that created “all” categories. But this, we have seen since the 
mid-twentieth century, with deconstructionism and more recently 
decolonization, is no longer the case. Categories of theology, ethics, and 
church historical ideas may have been predominant, and languages 
like German, French, Italian, Latin, and English may have been cate-
gorically central to what was being taught in the European models, 
but closer examination in other cultural milieus shows us that there 
are other typological examples in a multiplicity of cultures around the 
world, especially within Christian history and theology.

Yet when we consider some of these ideas about how the 
development of language and terminologies and historical 
expressions have evolved or been manifest, are we saying that these 
are universals, or are we saying that we are in fact creating new 
boundaries of thinking, language, and human expression, which then 
prevent a more fluid and open communication? The Christian Church, 
broadly speaking, is a church that has a deep history in the idea of 
its missionary stance in the world and history. It is, then, necessary 
that the reflections that each and every Christian community has are 
those which seek to understand the relational history that has evolved 
out of the missionary historical context—even if the denomination 
in question is not an active missionary tradition. The expanse of 
what “mission” means in the Christian world(s) is very diverse and 
distinct and is one that is deeply involved in the definitional process 
of explicating the language of borders and boundaries. Why? Because 
within missional history, the idea of bringing people together into the 
community of the professed in one faith tradition or another already 
presumes that there are boundaries and borders between people 
culturally, but also spiritually.



40  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

The same for libraries—what are the historical traditions behind 
those things we consider in a library and their position in relation to 
WST? The theological library is an operation that underscores much 
in the way of assuming the beliefs and practices of the past: we are 
entrenched and committed to the preservation of both an historical 
legacy and the ways that information has been codified. Even when 
we discover that there are in fact boundaries that exist in the way that 
this information and knowledge was categorized more than a hundred 
years ago—by people like Dewey or Cutter or anyone else who designed 
the rubrics of bibliographic and library classification—because their 
biases, prejudices, and often limited and myopic ways of looking at 
the world, still influence and guide the way that we plan and organize 
and classify our own circumstances and worlds.

And so, even if we speak of the myth of borders, this expression is 
far more complex than what we may have initially suggested because 
there are myths about the way that a border exists and the role that it 
plays, but there are meanings to what border and boundary constitute. 
Some are porous and only supply meaning as delineating, rather 
than inhibiting. Some lines mark where a place ends and begins, just 
as a comma or period demarcates the flow of a sentence. And some 
boundaries are imagined—like imagined communities. They project 
something that may not actually be there, but that we and others have 
been conditioned to believe. 

As we look out upon the world with its grand landscapes, big skies, 
and magnificent human diversity, we are also reminded of the gran-
diose narratives that often overtake our sensibilities to think clearly 
and act justly and with tempered resolve. The systems that make up 
this world possess great staying power; they influence how we think, 
how we see the world, and how we operate within it. But we must also 
pause now and again to consider the implications of these systems, 
of these structures, and how they often coerce us as unaware agents 
in the nation-state narrative. We must also be better stewards of the 
places we inhabit, our homes, our classes, our schools, our libraries, 
our communities, and our societies. Once we do this, the recognition 
of borders and boundaries will be recast as extensions of ourselves, 
where we come to meet and embrace the stranger, rather than reject-
ing them.



Paper  41

ENDNOTES

1  In general usage, the orthography includes a “dash,” as in 
“World-Systems Theory,” but if the term is used in passing, as in 
“there are world systems,” it is left without a dash and expressed 
in lowercase.

2  Joshua Hagen, “Introduction,” Borders and Boundaries (Oxford 
Bibliographies): https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/
document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0056.xml

3  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/global-
ism

4  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/global-
ization

5  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/global-
ization

6  J. Paul Rajashekar, “Theological Education in an Era of 
Globalization: Some Critical Issues,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 
15.1 (Jan. 2015). https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/1069

7  Carlos A. Martínez-Vela, “World Systems Theory,” 2. http://web.
mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/WorldSystem.pdf

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0056.xml
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0056.xml
https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/1069
http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/WorldSystem.pdf
http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/WorldSystem.pdf

