Although the universities in the non-Western world have taught social science from the colonial times, the contributions of non-Western scholars have remained 'on the margins of global social science' (Alatas, 2006: 105). Except for adumbrating several overlapping metatheories that diagnose the afflictions plaguing the state of communication/social science, non-Western scholars have failed to produce outstanding theories or methods to supersede the center nations' grip on the field.In his survey of the state of social science in Asia, Syed Farid Alatas ( 2006) claims that the numerous alternative discourses, such as the social thought of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) whom the Arab world considers to be the forerunner of social sciences, and is best known for his Muqaddima (known as Prolegomenon in Greek, the first volume of his book on universal history, Kitab al-Ibar); Jose Rizal (1861-96), the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era, and whose most famous works were the two social commentaries, Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo; Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941, a Bengali philosopher and literary giant who won the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature; or Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869Gandhi ( -1948, the pioneer of Satyagraha -a philosophy that is largely concerned with truth and 'resistance to evil through active, nonviolent resistance' -which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world, have failed to reach the mainstream level: … because their ideas have not been developed over the centuries or decades by theorists, to make their work more systematic like sociological theory and, therefore, more accessible.

This article is an attempt to expand the theoretical, methodological, and historical boundaries of communication/journalism studies to suit the beginning phase of the contemporary Digital Era. First, this article suggests that communication scholars should consistently use the term ‘globalization’ to describe the current endeavor to apply the horizontally integrative macro-history approach to produce a universally acceptable body of knowledge encompassing communication/journalism studies. Second, it demonstrates the potential of deploying the principles of Buddhist phenomenology, which broadly reflects the major aspects of Eastern philosophy, to ‘globalize’ communication/journalism studies by dismantling the unrealistic separation of science from philosophy, as well as the division of philosophy into epistemology, ontology, axiology, etc. Third, it demonstrates the possibility of identifying global developments in communication as a series of life-spans similar to the Buddhist wheel of becoming ( bhavacakra) circling around our perpetual cyclic existence ( samsara). It concludes by asserting that because existence is coterminous with communication, tracing communication history will require a global effort that extends the methods of inquiry beyond empiricism to cover quantum mechanics and phenomenology.

This essay asserts that the discourse on globalization—as filtered through the social science oligopoly of Britain, France, and the United States—is an extension of the dominant (classical) modernization/development paradigm*, traceable to Weber and Hegel, whose views contributed much toward what critics identify today as Orientalism* and Eurocentrism*. Anthropocentrism* and the belief that progress involves emulating the West (center) by the rest (periphery) are part and parcel of social science,* which tends to project its European universalism as universal universalism. This essay argues that an alternative view of globalization is possible through the perspective of Eastern, particularly Buddhist, philosophy,* which sees globalization as an ongoing dynamic process involving the entire environment in which humanity is only one actor. Daoism sees globalization as increasing diversity (engendered by the interaction of yin and yang) in perpetual interaction within unity, which the ineluctable Dao represents.
* The terms marked with an asterisk are defined in the .

Habermas's critical theory of society and modernity, which he developed by reconstructing the concepts of public sphere/civil society and rationality, suffers from some of the same weaknesses attributed to the structural-functionalist modernization theory. Both theories lean solely on European historical experience despite their proponents' claim for “universalism.” The theory of communicative action, wherein Habermas has now implanted the public sphere, is the product of merging philosophy of history (or historical hermeneutics) and empirical social science—an attempt “to free historical materialism from its philosophical ballast,” according to Habermas, and “less a promise than a conjecture.” This monograph calls for a revision or “glocalization” of Habermas's theory to remove its lingering traces of “universalism” that promote domination through globalization—a euphemism for Eurocentric hegemony as we move from theory to practice. The aporetic presumptions of Habermasian theory do not necessarily match the ontological, epistemological, and historical reservoir of the non-West. Therefore, the project of provincializing “Europe” is in order.