Glocalism

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Source: Glocal Democracy; a Philosophical Platform for Democracy 2.0 . By: Leif Thomas Olsen

By: Leif Thomas Olsen

The Term ‘Glocal

"The term ‘glocal’ has Japanese origin (Khondker, 2004). First used by Japanese farmers adopting rice strains to local conditions, it became more widely known as a term used by Japanese multinationals to refer to products developed for global markets, but modified to suit the expectations of the individual markets where it was to be consumed.

In ‘the West’ the term first surfaced in the 1990’s, initially in commerce, but eventually as a cultural term (ibid). A typical translation of it is the slogan “think global, act local”. The term’s popularization in academia was much due to Robert Robertson’s work in the field of sociology. Following e.g. Anthony Giddens, Robertson argued that globalisation did not only involve economic and political streamlining, but also a methodological streamlining – in reality equating to methodological imperialism (Robertson, 1994). In sociological terms that threaten local cultures’ possibilities of expression, and eventually their outright existence. Hence must ‘the local’ be recognised not only as a mere recipient of global influences, but also as an interpreter of the same, mixing such influences with its local culture. From this follows, as Bordieu (1993) also suggests, that the ‘local’ not only plays the role of the ‘receiver’ of global influences, but also that that of a ‘sender’, impacting the shape and form of global influences as they hit the ‘local’, are mixed at the ‘local’, and then continue their flows around the ‘global’, now in a partly modified state (Robertson, 1995; Khan 1998; Kraidy 1999; Raz 1999; Khondker, 2004).

Robertson stresses that ‘glocal’ does not assume global to be pro-active and ‘local’ to be re-active. Since there is mutuality in the relationship will both remain dependent upon the other (Robertson, 1994; 1995). Critics of Robertson’s (et.al) work however point to the fuzziness and fluidness of the ‘local’, making it difficult to identify the ‘locals’ that make up the ‘global’, in turn blurring the analysis as such (Agnew, 1997). In fact, this criticism developed into an entirely new debate surrounding the term ‘glocalism’, now focusing on ‘scale’. This debate tried to specify the exact relationship between ‘local’ and ‘global’, and was to quite an extent (albeit now subsiding) conducted among ‘human geographers’.

The leading voice in this ‘new’ debate was Eric Swyngedouw. To Swyngedouw - who had studied under Marxist geographer David Harvey - are scales historical constructs, mediated by social relations, making up the playing fields for ‘action’ and ‘inaction’ (Swyngedouw, 1997:1). Swyngedouw is critical to the effects of glocalism, noting that as long as the ‘local’ (i.e. the ‘smaller’ scale) is seen as a component of the ‘global’ (the ‘larger’ scale) - which is how the scale-debate typically comes down on the local-global relationship, often with reference to ‘nested scales’ (Swyngedouw, 1997:2; 2004; Ash 2002; Collinge 2005) - will the capacity of ‘place’ (i.e. the ‘local’) be dependent on the control of ‘space’ (i.e. the ‘global’). By this follows that those controlling ‘space’ (e.g. Big Business and Global Politics) can - and possibly will - also control ‘place’, reducing the ‘local’ to a dependent rather than a contributor (Swyngedouw, 1997:2; Merret, 2001).

In essence does this view suggest that the ‘local’ is subordinate to the ‘global’, which is quite the opposite of what Robinson et.al. claim, when they argue that there is ‘mutuality’ in the relationship - one that makes both sides dependent upon each other.

Although these are the two key trajectories that have dominated the academic debate on ‘glocalism’, there are also at least two other trails to follow. One can be seen as an effort to actually negate Swyngedouw’s scale-thesis, by arguing for “human geography without scale” (Marston, et.al, 2005, 2008). Another is the efforts to link the term ‘glocal’ to the neo-liberal agenda, putting an economic rather than a social or scalar emphasis on how to interpret this concept. Since neo-liberalism views globalisation as a primarily positive development, is also this approach negating Swyngedouw’s arguments; the latter viewing glocalism as a threat to the ‘local’, while the former typically views it as an opportunity.

Starting with ”human geography without scale”, it must be recognised that this is a niche-debate that although it spanned over several years, it attracted only a small number of contributors. In order to understand the philosophical platform of Glocal Democracy it is nevertheless important to understand the ideas brought forward by Marston et.al. Their main arguments stem from what they refer to as ‘flat ontology’ (Marston et.al, 2005, p 422). Here they refer both to historical thinkers such as Spinoza (2000) and contemporary ones such as Latour (1997), suggesting that flat ontologies consists of self-organizing systems ‘where the dynamic properties of matter produce a multiplicity of complex relations and singularities that sometimes lead to the creation of new, unique events and entities, but more often to relatively redundant orders and practices’. In differing from what e.g. Smith (2003:1, 2003:2) refers to as a ‘horizontal ontology of flows’ (building on, among other influences, the ‘actor-network theory’, see Marston et.al, 2005, p 423), Marston et.al. argue that a flat ontology ‘consist of localized and non-localized event-relations productive of event-spaces that avoid the predetermination of hierarchies or boundlessness’ (ibid pp 424, 425). By this they mean that permanent borders between binaries such as ‘here / there’, ‘us / you’, ‘now / then’ (etc) are non-existent – but may appear as consequences of the events actually taking place. In other words; such fixed scalar hierarchies are simply imagined. In ontological terms they would hence qualify as ‘a priori’. By ignoring them, they could just as well either turn out not to exist at all, or to have very different scope and content as compared to what had otherwise been ‘a priori’ assumed, why it would only be possible to recognize their true relationships ‘posteriori’. As will be briefly elaborated on below, is this an - although small – fairly important detail of Glocal Democracy’s philosophical underpinning.

Turning to the neo-liberal take on glocalism (Courchene 2001:1, 2001:2, Friedman 2005), are economic advances in the ‘local’ often seen to be driven by smart utilization of the ‘global’. The global influx, of which the local can make such smart use, is often seen as a part of what Storper and others refer to as ‘untraded interdependencies’ (Storper, 1997). By this is meant that apart from traded relations (or ‘traded interdependencies’) such as labor, input materials and commodities of various types, traded in the open market, there are other competitive advantages that certain sub-national levels (e.g. regions or cities) can plug into and benefit from (Taylor 2000, Sassen 2002, Brenner 2004, Heiden 2007). Such competitive advantages could include universities and/or government institutions located in the same region or city as the actor enjoying these untraded interdependencies. It could also involve multilingual populations, strategic geo-location, good infrastructure provided by the national government, or particularly well connected regional leaders.

This approach brings us to the only application of ‘glocalism’ that public life (here seen as separate from academic) has actually trialed. The next chapter will look closer at this. “