Universalization

Not to be confused with Universalism or Universalisability.

Universalization (social work)

In social work practice universalization is a supportive intervention used by the therapist to reassure and encourage their client. Universalization places the client’s experience in the context of other individuals who are experiencing the same, or similar challenges, and seeks to help the client grasp that their feelings and experiences are not uncommon given the circumstances. The therapist or social worker using this supportive intervention intends to "normalize" the client's experience of his/her emotions and reactions to the presenting challenge. By normalising the client’s experience the therapist is attempting to help avert the client's natural feelings of being alone or not understood.

For example, a therapist working with a 21-year-old client who is experiencing rejection from her family and friends after admitting that she is a lesbian will use universalization. The therapist will explain that many other young adults who have revealed their sexual orientation undergo the same rejection and scrutiny from peers and parents. The therapist will follow this up by telling her that her emotional response to the rejection is likewise normal and not at all uncommon given the circumstances.

Universalization (cultural studies)

Lorna Jean Edmonds and WE (Ted) Hewitt introduced a definition of universalization as an incipient concept describing the next phase of human development, marking the transition from trans-national to interplanetary relations and much more aggressive exploitation of opportunities that lie beyond the confines of Earth. As both a process and an end state, universalization implies an increasingly pervasive, abiding and singular human focus not only on global issues per se but on social, technological, economic and cultural challenges and opportunities extending into our solar system, our galaxy, and well beyond, where cooperation supersedes conflict negotiation. Its origins are associated with the incipient expansion of social, economic, and political relationships that have emerged in the wake of globalization and that increasingly define the planet, its place within the broader universe and the sustainability of humanity and our diversity.

For many, the concept was inspired by Kwame Anthony Appiah's work on cosmopolitanism, and particularly his emphasis on the need to develop a transcendent, collaborative model of human interaction that looks beyond the limited confines of current human relationships. Underlying principles and activities associated with universalization have also been discussed in a number of works dealing with prospective human exploitation of natural resources in space.

Evidence of the transition from globalisation to the century of "universalization" is provided by the exponential growth in outer space activity across all sectors of human endeavour, including exploration (global investments by national governments and consortia of $65 billion annually), governance (the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, the International Association for Space Safety), commerce (aerospace industries such as Boeing, Teledyne, MDA), resource exploitation (Moon Express), Tourism (Virgin Galactic, XCOR), communications (satellites, probes, inter-planetary internet), education (the International Space University, Singularity University, International Institute of Space Commerce), research (observatories at Hawaii, Chile, the Square Kilometer Array, Hubble), and settlement (Mars One).

Another reading of "universalization" has been suggested by Gregory Paul Meyjes. Questioning the various processes (economic, political, cultural) by which globalization or globalisation has favored expeditious Anglo-cultural dominance at the expense of a more broadly-based, gradually-emerging world civilization, Meyjes argues for cultural policies that support "ecological" relations between local ethnocultural traditions, to protect cultural specificity in the short term and thus to allow as great a variety of groups as possible to voluntarily and organically contribute to the global whole. Meyjes thus proposes universalization as a process of (largely) unfettered yet non-threatening exchange (such as with the aid of an International Auxiliary Language) between and among the world's state-level and sub-state-level groups and "nations" – i.e. a participatory transnational process that informs the gradual emergence of an optimally-inclusive world civilization.