Recovering the local: From glocalization to localization

Introduction

It is impossible to talk about ‘the global’ without at least implicitly referencing ‘the local’. According to Google Trends, since 2004 the two correlate, which arguably should not happen if the two were unrelated. Of course, mere correlation does not offer conclusive support for their relationship. Though globalization and cosmopolitanism have captured intellectuals’ imagination, the local has emerged as a powerful new blueprint of social, political and cultural mobilization. Localism is prominent in Euro-scepticism or American protests against neoliberalism, whereas ultra-right parties and groups, ranging from France to the US, deploy the local as a key ingredient of their worldview. Its presence is visible on the political agendas of most nations, and it takes many different forms. Thus far, theoretical explorations of the local do not by any means come close to the detailed and voluminous literature on cosmopolitanism and globalization. To address this lacuna, the following discussion aims to: (1) present the main strands or interpretations of the local as they have emerged in social scientific discourse, (2) explore the repercussions of treating the local as a secondary or derivative (Alexander, 1988) category in sociological analysis and argue in favour of its analytical autonomy, and (3) offer a different account of the local and localization as a focal point of research. In this regard, the argument covers the theoretical terrain from glocalization to the notion of localization. While pursuing this agenda, it is important to distinguish between the process of localization and the worldview or outlook of localism. In fact, what follows takes this significant distinction as its point of departure.

It is necessary to clarify from the outset that, for the purposes of the following discussion, globalization refers to the general notion of the spread of any specific topic, process, condition, artefact, blueprint, idea or cultural item to an inter-regional, planetary or transnational level (Albrow, 1997: 88; O’Byrne and Hensby, 2011: 10–11; Roudometof, forthcoming). This general definition enables one to relate globalization to a multitude of instances, fields and areas of interest without necessarily having to revert back to a totality. Given the multitude of definitions of globalization in the literature, this definition is restrictive and is meant to allow for a clearer conceptual distinction among global, glocal and local. From the perspective adopted here, globalization applies solely to those instances in which phenomena, practices, ideas, models or, in general, a specific theme X or domain of human action spread throughout the globe or come reasonably close to it.

How social theory lost the local

Numerous interpretations of globalization contain theorization of trans-local links or relationships. An impressive array of terms – such as place polygamy, nomadic lifestyle, global fluidity, spaces of flows, ‘-scapes’, time–space compression, de/re-territorialization and many others – have been developed in an effort to capture such links and relationships. Unlike the intense scrutiny of global and transnational links and/or relationships, the local is typically seen through the lenses of post-1989 ‘globalization’ (usually identified with regimes of economic neoliberalism) or cosmopolitanism. In the post-1989 period, dominant trends within social theory have paid insufficient attention to the analytical autonomy of global, local and glocal (Roudometof, 2016b), and as a result, the significance of local as such has been underestimated. In contrast, the entry point of the current discussion is Kennedy’s (2007) insightful observation that it is necessary to pay more attention to the lives of ordinary people, for these lives continue to be determined by affiliations, affections and obligations constructed around place; most people live ‘local lives’ that are largely dependent on co-presence and interpersonal sociability (see also Perkins and Thorns, 2011: 2).

It is a truism that the local is present in theorizing about globalization. The issue is whether the analytical frames employed to study it allow its examination on its own terms, and not in terms of other concepts, which are elevated into a greater standing and hence subordinate the local into the status of a derivative or secondary notion. In terms of theoretical trajectories, there are three pairs of binary relationships that involve the local: the local–global oppositional relationship; the cosmopolitan–local relationship, which in turn might be oppositional or complementary; and the local–global symbiotic or complementary relationship, typically expressed through the notion of glocalization.

Of the three pairs, the first has become part of the oppositional rhetoric of the Left and the Right and has penetrated into the actors’ life worlds all over the globe. That has been in large part fuelled by neoliberal advocacy proclaiming the coming of a post-1989 New World Order that guaranteed the undisputed legitimacy of a single economic system as the only viable model for all societies. Globalization is seen as inevitable, and the local is viewed as reactionary, counter-modern or simply an uninteresting relic of the past. The local occupies a theoretical terrain similar to that of tradition in classical modernization theory: an under-theorized term that signifies what is presumably left untouched by modernization (for a counter-argument, see Shils, 1981). This modernist bias is replicated in discussions of globalization, whereby often the local is what stands in the way of globalization. Resistance or protection of the local is thus seen as running against the currents of history. For some, the local no longer exists (Caldwell and Lozada, 2007; Ritzer, 2003). Tacit acceptance of this narrative fuels localist rhetoric, as it de facto legitimizes localism while delegitimizing voices pointing out any actual benefits coming out of globalization. Although local places are said to be produced through globalization, scholarship does not offer truly sufficient accounts of the processes that lead to their construction; agency is not always present (Massey, 2005: 101). The defence of ‘local places’ remains a mere counterpoint to global neoliberalism.

The global modernization narrative, Latour (2016) notes, is predicated upon the unexamined and false premise that the entire planet can successfully modernize toward a single convergent point (‘Globe Central’). In this master narrative, people’s attachments become obstacles to modernization’s success, whereby globalization is associated with macro-processes (such as economic integration driven by interstate agreements and multinationals) and localization is associated with micro-processes (such as resistance or opposition movements to such processes). This formula assumes the existence of societies contained within nation-states (for a critique, see Touraine, 2003). Next, such societies develop inter-national contacts that operate through macro-forces (such as international banking, trade, diplomatic and commercial agreements). Global capital and its impersonal agencies organize these macro-structures while the local, the worker, the student, the civil servant, are left to cope at a micro-level with the structural imbalance between the local and the global. This logic fails to take into account the endurance of place within a globalized world (see De Blij, 2009).

The second of these pairs concerns the cosmopolitan–local relationship and has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Most of these struggle with the dilemma between oppositional versus complementary readings. The oppositional reading of the cosmopolitan–local relationship is typically invoked in all descriptions that identify cosmopolitans with the privileged nomads of 21st-century transnational capitalism – versus those locals who are left behind (Bauman, 1998). It is clear that the global success of cosmopolitanism rests upon its successful reconciliation with the local –thereby preventing cosmopolitanism from turning into a caricature associated with the ‘class consciousness of frequent flyers’ (Calhoun, 2003), the upper mobile classes that are routinely identified as the privileged minority that benefits from contemporary globalization (Douthat, 2016). The result of such efforts has produced an impressive terminological vocabulary with a range from rooted cosmopolitanism to vernacular, to glocal or local cosmopolitanisms (for overviews, see Delanty, 2018; Roudometof, 2005; Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). Although intellectuals have championed various notions (vernacular, rooted, thick or thin) of cosmopolitanism, the local is rarely placed on equal footing with the normative aspects of the cosmopolitan. In most instances, it serves merely as a geographical location for the successful articulation of the cosmopolitan. Such readings fail to give the local its due; the local is subsumed under the cosmopolitan by turning the local into mere location where cosmopolitan ideals might be realized. The legitimacy of the non-cosmopolitan is not recognized as such – that is, on its own terms.

The third pair of relationships involves looking upon the local–global relationship as complementary; it suggests the dissolution of the local–global antithesis into a new synthesis captured by the neologism of glocal and glocalization (Roudometof, 2015). This complementary reading is prominent in Asian-centred perspectives (Chan, 2007; Deng, 2012) that reject various streams of cultural homogenization. It is related to the ways in which social scientific discourse subjects the local into realist or constructivist readings. In realist terms, the local no longer exists in the globalized world of the 21st century (Ritzer, 2003). But this understanding lacks historical depth; nearly all the world’s cultures have been interconnected and, if isolation from the global (or standing ‘outside’ the global) is taken as a key prerequisite for the existence of the local, then it is doubtful whether this is a description applicable to the majority of human history (Kraidy, 2005). In short, realism turns the local into a mirage, e.g. the concept itself becomes illusionary. There is a long and venerable bibliography of historical works that have demonstrated the migration of numerous cultural items – ranging from germs and diseases to ideas, material items and relationships – across the globe. Such relationships extend far into humanity’s past and, irrespective of the various authors’ proposed timelines, the legitimacy of trans-regional connections over the longue durée is generally recognized (see Braudel, 1972; O’Brien, 2006; Pieterse, 2012; Stearns, 2016). ¹

In contrast to realist readings, the long history of global or trans-regional interconnectivity is not a problem for constructivism. In turn, constructivist readings stress the degree to which local and global are mutually constituted and one is inseparable from the other (Appadurai, 1995; Robertson, 1992). Conventionally, interconnectedness is often taken as seamlessly leading into social integration. However, in reality there is a great gulf between the two, and if the latter is an attribute routinely associated with the global then the former is an attribute associated with ‘the glocal’. The glocal in this sense is a feature of cultural connectivity that does not necessarily lead to social integration but rather to new forms of heterogeneity. This perspective offers a better insight into the dynamics of the local but fails to clearly articulate or accept a meaningful difference between local and glocal. In Robertson’s (1992, 1995) interpretation, globalization becomes glocalization, and in turn glocalization bridges the gap between global and local (Roudometof, 2016a). This does not in effect leave space for an analytical difference between glocal and local. As Robertson (2014: 8) writes, ‘globality and locality are relative terms’. Such a reading begs the question: ‘How are “local” and “global” cultures to be identified as analytically separate if they are completely enmeshed in one another?’ (Radhakrishnan, 2010: 27). Indeed, the almost common criticism of such an interpretation is that glocalization becomes a means through which the local can be integrated back into the global, thus leaving no room for oppositional politics to neoliberal capitalism (Korff, 2003; Thornton, 2000).

At this point, I directly pose the question: What is the local? Realist readings often take the local to be identical to a geographical locale or sheer location (see, for example, Giddens, 1984). This is a designation most often implicit when authors refer to ‘multiple social scales’ or advocating a ‘multilevel approach’ that views ‘global relations at multiple scales of interaction’ (Pieterse, 2013: 11). In Sassen’s (2006) work, the presence of such scales of interaction is used to advance the argument that globalization does not operate against the state but rather through the state. Such interpretations subscribe to a geographical reading of space. Space is seen as abstract or physical. As such, it can be divorced from ‘global relations’ and these relations can be mapped onto different spatial scales (which can range from local to global). Such scales might form a nested hierarchy but they can also form a multitude of other possible combinations. In contrast, from a constructivist point of view, space is seen as primarily social space and hence social relations are seen as articulated through (social) space and not merely in (absolute or geographical) space. Overall, realist interpretations typically see the local as a layer in a hierarchy of homogeneous absolute or geographical space, or as an intersection formed by various spatial scales.

In the US’s indigenous tradition of symbolic interactionism, the local is viewed as the very foundation that provides the cornerstone for the creation of social order. The localism of this tradition registers the image of US society as part of a New World where all the baggage of the Old World is left behind. That is more an expression of intent and of attitude than a description of actual social reality. From within this tradition, Fine (2010: 355) acknowledges the necessity for a ‘robust theory of how local circumstances create social order’ and stresses the importance of local context in constituting social worlds. But in Fine’s framework, that is done at the expense of global and glocal.

The local as a place

To give the local its due requires recognition of the relational quality of space (Harvey, 1996) or what humanist geographers typically refer to as ‘sense of place’ (Relph, 1997), that is, the experiential, emotional and aesthetic feeling of a particular location being endowed with meaning and value. These dimensions feature prominently in urban research. It is no accident that in the 1990s early research on localism took place within the context of an urban renewal policy agenda (Goetz and Clarke, 1993), whereas later work was predicated upon the notion that globalization is not ethereal but rather grounded at the local level (Eade, 1996; for a reappraisal, see Eade and Rumford, 2016). The return of this theme to public debate is also far from accidental (Katz and Nowak, 2018). The ‘lure of the local’ (Lippard, 1998) registers powerfully with one of the most common references to the notion of the local, namely, the notion of a ‘local place’. Massey’s (2005: 5) remark on the totemic importance of ‘local place’ points to the renewed significance of place for 21st-century global life.

Before proceeding further, it is important to clarify some definitional and conceptual issues regarding the notions of space and place. Space and place are among the most widely circulated concepts in geography, and their intertwining requires a reappraisal of their conventional interpretations. The space–place binary opposition in geography almost routinely carries with it a duplication of the classical sociological distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society).The thematization of the place–space binary relationship across Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft lines has broader implications, as it reproduces within geographical discourse all the sociological binary oppositions that come with sociology’s master discourse on modernity. Historically, space has been the dominant concept in geography, and it is telling that even recent efforts to explicitly introduce spatiality into sociology almost ignore the space–place relationship (see Fuller and Löw, 2017).

Over the second half of the 20th century, however, humanist geographers have sought inspiration from phenomenology to articulate perspectives that focus explicitly on experiential understandings of place (Creswell, 2004; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1977; for a historiographical survey, see Withers, 2009). Accordingly, space is seen as a location that has no social connections for a human. No value or meaning has been added to it, and it is more or less abstract in nature (Tuan, 1977: 6). Though open, space can be marked off and defended against intruders (Tuan, 1977: 4, 164–165). Space does not invite or encourage people to fill it by being creative. In contrast, place can be described as a location created by human experiences. ‘The basic meaning of place’, Relph (1976: 43) writes, ‘does not . . . come from locations [but] lies in the largely unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centers of human experience’. Tuan (1975: 164–165) concludes a long overview of various places – ranging from the home to the nation-state – with the telling statement that traditionally it is space and not place that has captured the American (or more generally, Western) imagination. ² In the literature, place identity often revolves around identity politics that involve differential access to power in different locales. Place becomes raw material for identity construction (Creswell, 2004: 32). The size of geographic location does not matter and is practically unlimited: a city, a neighbourhood, a region or even a classroom, etc. In fact, place exists as space filled with meanings and objectives by human experiences in this particular space.

The space–place relationship has been further explored by philosophers (Casey, 1993, 1997; Janz, 2017; Malpas, 1999). Place is considered as a primary foundation for classical Greek thought, which however is superseded by space during the Hellenistic era. Western philosophy has inherited and amplified the notion of space, and only during the 20th century has it begun to recover the notion of place. This return of place as a point of reference is related to the politics of globalization – and in particular to the contradiction between the extensive proliferations of space that prompt the retreat of people to ‘their’ place. The rediscovery of place in 20th-century geography has grown out of ecological considerations as well as the necessity to justify the preservation of the natural environment. Conceptualizations of place involve both human and non-human components, bridging the gap between humanity and non-human aspects of the world at large (Latour, 1993).

The philosophical ideas notwithstanding, it might be more appropriate to reframe the space–place relationship not as a strictly binary opposition but as referring to qualitatively different notions that do not necessarily need to be seen as dialectically opposed. Space and place therefore might not be necessarily opposite; in fact, globalization itself is often related to the notion of ‘the world’ becoming a ‘single place’ (Robertson and White, 2007). As Short (2001: 18) puts it,

. . . the spatial dialectic of globalization is the construction of space and the creation of place. Globalization constructs space through space–time convergence, cultural homogenization, economic re-globalization, and political (dis)integration. But the same things are also creating places. Nationalism, community consciousness, and the self-conscious construction of ethnic identity are as much part of globalization as 24-hr. markets and global travel.

The politics of place therefore are equally complex as the politics of space. Massey’s (1994) evocative statement of the necessity to develop or articulate a ‘global sense of place’ is testimony of such complexity (see also Massey et al., 1996). Transnational or trans-local spaces might also contribute to the articulation of places (Casey, 1997; Low, 2009), whereas the ICT (information and communications technology) revolution of the 21st century has contributed to the popularization of new digital or locative places (Evans, 2015; Horan, 2000) that provide new formats for articulating notions of place. This notion of place has been proposed by Gieryn (2000), who suggests that a place should be considered as having the following attributes: geographical location, material form or physicality, and be further invested with meaning and value. Gieryn (2000: 465) formulates the space–place nexus as follows: ‘Space is what place becomes when the unique fathering of things, meanings, and values are sucked out . . . [whereas] place is space filled up by people, practices, objects and representations.’ Through these lenses, then, it is possible to think of the local as a place. ³ An important reason for such a move is the conceptual impossibility of marking off or ‘bounding’ a local space (Creswell, 2004; Massey, 1994). That in turn suggests that to think of local as a space becomes inherently deficient as an intellectual strategy. This difficulty can be successfully resolved through changing metaphors or moving from space to place.

Contemporary research on mobility has offered some highly relevant empirical examples of place-making: these range from work on the recovery of local in the context of contemporary tourism (Russo and Richards, 2016) to the locality constructed via international migration (Yu, 2018) to place-making in the context of labour or leisure though the use of ICTs (Flecker, 2016; Hjorth and Richardson 2017; Ozkul, 2017). In particular, the use of ICTs for place-making has rendered Gieryn’s (2000: 465) exclusion of cyberspace from notions of place premature. Mobile media are connected to people’s sense of place through a variety of modalities of presence, whereby ‘placing’ becomes a dynamic process. The aforementioned examples strongly suggest that the frequent association of space with mobility and place with immobility has been overcome.

Place provides a suitable description of local and, as the next section shows, this conceptualization undermines the hold of exclusivist localism over the notion of local; enables the analytical autonomy of local; and allows the articulation of a balanced perspective with regard to the concepts of local, global and glocal. The above by no means suggests that it is impossible to think of other (global, trans-local, digital, etc.) places that are not local (for example, Low, 2009; Ortega and Schrottner, 2012). That is, place as a conceptual category is broader than the category of local.

From glocalization to localization

Thinking of the local as a place helps with the clear articulation of the processes that distinguish the local as such from related notions and enables the articulation of local as a distinct unit from the global. Of course, global and local are connected, and the issue is one of establishing the nature of their relationship as well as the key mechanisms that allow their conceptual disentanglement.

By far the most promising starting point for such a task is Robertson’s (1995) theorization of glocalization, which stresses the extent to which heterogeneity and homogeneity are both equally possible outcomes of interaction among cultures. But the notion of heterogeneity associated with glocalization is vague for, in fact, heterogeneity might assume two different blueprints or forms. The first of these is the construction of cultural hybridity (Burke, 2009) or a cultural mélange (Pieterse, 2009) or glocal hybridity (Roudometof, 2016a). Such a hybridity is predicated upon the fusion between local and global cultural forms. Not all hybridity is necessarily glocal – only those hybrid forms that include a local element. As I have discussed elsewhere (Roudometof, 2016a, 2016b), globalization can be conceived in terms of trans-local waves that emanate from one locality and spread to others – and when passing through other localities it is possible to think that these waves are refracted, thereby producing new forms of glocal heterogeneity. In these cases, glocal hybrids are the result of this refraction. In nearly all such cases, actors reflexively recognize these glocal hybrids as such: they are seen as ‘new’ additions or forms that relate to non-local forces.

The second form of heterogeneity is the construction of a new or seemingly ‘authentic’ local cultural form, either food or clothing or other material or immaterial item. In this case and in contrast to the first form, actors recognize such forms as local, as belonging to their place or being ‘in place’. For an outsider or a third party observer or a historian, the difference between these two forms of heterogeneity might seem spurious. In effect, historically speaking from the perspective of the longue durée, such a difference is unfounded: in most cases ‘authenticity’ does not actually translate into parthenogenesis but is constructed. To understand the difference between glocal and local then requires a recontextualization of their differences that goes beyond realism. Although realism might be sufficient when speaking of the ‘facts’ of the historical record, a different viewpoint is required to capture the difference between glocal and local. Suffice it to say, the difference between the two is quite significant and apparently real in people’s own interpretations or in their own ‘definition of the situation’, and it is at that level that the validity of the distinction between the two forms is grounded.

Perhaps some examples from the world’s cuisines can help make this point clear. Although originally from China, pasta is routinely identified as Italian in origin; the Greek salad contains tomatoes, a New World produce; and to add a New World example, taco el pintor is an Old World import, originally derived from Ottoman kebab, but having been transformed and adopted into its transatlantic surroundings, is now identified with Mexico (Pilcher, 2012). The above examples are among those routinely cited as instances that debunk the layperson’s presumed misperception that authenticity as such is real or actually original. But there is a second reading that turns such interpretations on their head. What matters is not the realist absence of authenticity but the actors’ sense of what these cultural items are and what they signify. To put it differently, the presence of outside influences is immaterial to cultural decoding. Such items are not considered or recognized even as hybrid or glocal, but rather they are viewed as authentic or original.

The aforementioned examples illustrate the broader point: namely, that differentiation between glocal and local does not necessarily rest on realist grounds but rather it is the result of social processes. Cultural items become local when, and as a result of social processes, they are recognized as being ‘in place’ – as being part of the very fabric of a locality or as belonging to a place (as evoked in the expression ‘American as apple pie’, for example). In other words, cultural items are local when actors recognize them as part of the local scenery. Making the case for a difference between socially constructed authenticity and glocal hybridity rests in large part on the social conception of ‘originality’. Cultural hybridity exists not only as a social ‘fact’ or a ‘real’ thing – it also exists as a perception, and the same applies for authenticity. The difference between glocal and local rests precisely on this point. The local exists as an independent or analytically autonomous form from the glocal only insofar as the politics of representation suggest that a cultural form or item is not recognized as a fusion or as bricolage but rather as belonging to a place, as ‘homemade’ or ‘traditional’. Needless to say, this sense of traditional or local is a product of social construction as such and not ‘real’ (at least in a realist sense). Its power does not rest on its ‘reality’ but in its embodiment of moral codes, traditions and customs that are seen as offering meaning and content to local authenticity. To put it differently, the issue is whether an imported cultural item makes a difference that ‘makes a difference’. That is, if it does make a difference then actors tend to speak of glocal or global, while if it does not then actors perceive it as local.

Tuan’s (1975, 1977) thoughtful remark that place attachment takes time highlights the fact that time, or more broadly temporality, is a factor that often acts in a decisive manner on the process of decision-making about differences that count. It does so because sense of place is experiential, and therefore it requires time for its articulation. But time does not stand still and certainly its perception shifts, especially as ICTs can accelerate time, a condition that has become ubiquitous in the 21st century. ‘How long do you have to be here to be local?’ Massey (2005: 149) asks. That is a pointed question. Massey (2005) employs the example of a massive boulder unearthed in Hamburg, Germany, which soon became a local attraction – being identified as a local landmark – yet at the same time, the boulder itself was an ‘immigrant’ in terms of geological time; hence called ‘Hamburg’s Oldest Immigrant’. In fact, the solution to Massey’s question pertains directly to the resources mobilized for the construction of the local as a place and to the duration necessary to generate place attachment. Place attachment facilitates a sense of security and well-being; it defines group boundaries, stabilizes memories and is deeply involved in memory and identity formation (Gieryn, 2000: 481). It can also become a rallying point for collective action – such as in NIMBY or nativist and anti-immigrant movements – but also in terms of active local resistance to capitalist homogenizing tendencies. Massey’s (2005) discussion of the French localist farmers who actively demand rewriting the global rules of trade in order to safeguard their well-being is indicative of the double-edged nature of such movements. It is important to note that issues of hierarchy-making, power and difference are deeply embedded in the politics of place. For example, Massey points out the degree to which one’s sense of the same place is contingent upon gender – and of course gender is only one from a list of additional factors (race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, etc.). Place-making does not negate the sociological significance of these factors. Instead, these factors become influential in the contested construction of place. To call one’s actions ‘out of place’ is a normative statement or an act of symbolic power.

While localization refers to the processes through which place-making naturalizes and constructs a locale as a place, it does not mean that conflicts are impossible or that a harmony of interests might prevail. In contrast, the contests over the meaning of place reveal the deeply seated politics involved; for example, Confederate flags and statutes of Confederate heroes in the South of the US are symbolic means through which a very specific ‘sense of place’ is constructed – with rather apparent racial undertones.

Long’s (2010) ethnographic study of Austin, Texas, offers an excellent example of the importance of attachment to place. In Austin, the locals’ strategies and attitudes stand in sharp contrast to Barber’s (2013) vision of ‘glocal city’. For Barber cities are the original locus of creativity, immigration and civilization. Unable to address issues of scale, cities were historically overtaken by states. But in the 21st century states are compelled to safeguard their cherished sovereignty: ‘nation-states cannot address the cross-border challenges of an interdependent world … [and as a result] the forward to cosmopolis may demand of us a journey back to the polis’ (Barber, 2013: 77). Where nations fail, cities can succeed in delivering a miracle of civic glocality that centres on ‘pragmatism instead of politics, innovations rather than ideology and solutions in place of sovereignty’ (Barber, 2013: 5). For Barber it is cities that offer the most suitable terrain for global restructuring. ‘Glocality strengthens local citizenship and then piggybacks global citizenship on it’ (Barber, 2013: 23).

In contrast to this vision of urban glocality, Long (2010) investigates the strategies of creative resistance employed by a multitude of local constituencies that fight to prevent gentrification, environmental problems and large-scale efforts at economic homogenization. The book’s thick description reveals the ways in which people demonstrate attachment to place or sense of place as well as the importance of a devoted citizenry for the success of such projects. In this context, ‘Keep Austin Weird’ has emerged as a slogan that captures the locals’ sense of distinctiveness and difference; but of course, its appropriation has been varied. There are dozens of ‘Keep ____ Weird’ movements that have appeared in the US (for example in Boulder, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and Louisville, Kentucky) in an effort to duplicate and capitalize on the success of the initial movement. These also register efforts at commercial appropriation and the employment of the slogan for the promotion of local businesses. ⁴

The appropriation of place is contested and can take place within varied political constituencies. Irrespective of their political leanings, localisms propose an essentialist view of place – and therefore align or tacitly propose definitions and processes of place-making that are deeply political and express mentalities of specific constituencies. Many political movements, Latour (2016) notes, aim toward a return to ‘the land of Old’, an imaginary place that seems to promise peace and protection against the uncertainties of the present and future. Latour correctly dismisses the impulse to disregard such an orientation as merely reactionary; such movements appeal to a deep sense of place. Long’s (2010) study further demonstrates how misguided it is to view the politics of localism as inherently geared toward conservative orientations.

Robertson’s (1992: 78–80) analysis recognizes that localism comes under two very different formats. On the one hand, there is localism that sees the world ‘ordered only in the form of a series of relatively closed societal communities’ or what I have referred to above as exclusivist localism; whereas, on the other hand, it is possible to envision a form of localism that ‘maintains that only in terms of fully globe wide community per se can there be global order’ (Robertson, 1992: 78). These are quite distinct perspectives that might share the same normative ideal but take radically different positions when it comes to universalism. Exclusivist localism contains a nostalgic element that is generationally specific; according to data from Pew Research Center (Stokes, 2017) in the US, people 50 years old and older are more likely (40%) than are 18- to 34-year-olds (21%) to say that it is very important that a person be born in the US in order to be considered truly American. In Japan, this generational divide is even more pronounced. According to the aforementioned study, in contrast to the US, nativism in Japan is far more pronounced irrespective of the generational divisions. This suggests that, although it is reasonable to expect that time has an effect on the importance of place, it does not mean that place attachment can be reduced to a mere function of age. In contrast, all generational cohorts are influenced by other factors, even in regions where birthright is not linked to national membership; that is, in Europe, Australia and Canada, language and culture play an important role in the public understanding of legitimate membership in the nation (Stokes, 2017). To insist solely on age as a determinant of place attachment disregards the unevenness of contemporary regimes of mobility (Bauman, 1998). These potentially might lead actors to identify localism with the underprivileged and, inversely, globalism with the privileged cosmopolitans.

Conclusions

What unites academic and non-academic strands of writing about globalization is the inscription of the local as a secondary or derivative term; the local is seen as meaningful only through and in terms of its relationship to the global. By failing to give local its due, social theory has unintentionally opened the door for various strands of localism to lay claim upon localization. Thus, localism can successfully claim to appear as the only legitimate representative of the local. The local is subject to a two-fold constraint: on the one hand, it is the product of complex processes of localization; whereas on the other hand, it is also shaped by the influence of various localisms. To the extent that intellectual engagement with the local has been limited, the agents of various localisms are successful in shaping the public understandings of the local. Recovering the local is therefore an intellectual strategy that can reclaim this conceptual terrain without the appearance (and hopefully also the substance) of a condescending or elitist or highbrow attitude. In other words, taking the local seriously can address the central conventional accusation levelled against some of the influential strands of cosmopolitan thinking.

In the article’s first section, a brief overview of the various renderings of the local in relation to the dominant discourses of sociological perspectives is offered. This primer is not aimed as an exhaustive account but only as a means of establishing the fundamental premise of the analysis: namely, that taking the local seriously is an important task for theory construction and one that has not been pursued with the same rigour as the discourses of globalization and cosmopolitanism. To effectively do that though requires the very question that is directly posed in the article’s next section: What is the most effective way of thinking about the local? To think of the local as a space fails to provide the necessary closure mechanism for or bounding of the local, which is an attribute universally accepted as a key characteristic of the local. Consequently, the solution is to shift conceptual metaphors: instead of thinking of local as a space, it is best to think of the local as a place. The notion of place in this context is adopted from the tradition of humanist geography, and the overview of some of these ideas in the article’s second section is meant to offer a context for this particular interpretation.

Through these lenses, then, the article’s final section offers a conceptual elaboration of an approach that grants analytical autonomy to the notion of local. The notion of the local’s analytical autonomy is an extension of an approach pursued elsewhere (Roudometof, 2015, 2016a, 2016b) with regard to the notions of globalization and glocalization. This article offers an extension of this conceptual strategy by addressing the local and localization. Given the conceptual impossibility of sorting out the local from the glocal in terms of space, the suggestion is that the difference between local and glocal lies precisely in the notion of local as a place. Boundary creation is therefore possible and that in turn means that, as a place, the local is certainly not imaginary but real to the inhabitants of local places. Moreover, the analysis has sought to offer examples that illustrate the significance of the distinction between the more exclusivist localisms and those that follow a more communitarian worldview. In this respect, and in order to highlight the significance of the distinction between the two, examples are used from news stories that have received considerable publicity in the press. These help shed light on the perspective outlined in this discussion. The underlying suggestion should be clear: research should take the emotional connections between people and locales seriously and place should have a place in analysing globalization’s impact upon our lives. Such an effort can be successful only insofar as it recognizes the analytical autonomy of the local and avoids a view of the local as a secondary or derivative concept vis-a-vis globalization.

Lastly, the contested nature of place-making within a locality does not imply the absence of additional arenas. These involve the articulation of global, transnational, trans-local or glocal places, all of which could provide loci of identity, memory and attachment. For the overwhelming majority of the Millennial generation, for example, cell phones and digital communities might be thought of as involving place-making. By the end of the 21st century, the notion of local places might include digital, locative and other forms of place-making. The Earth itself might also be viewed as a place: Latour (2016) suggests that we think of earth (or Gaia, in his vocabulary) as local – a suggestion not fundamentally different from Robertson’s (1992) invocation of the world as a ‘single place’ or the advocacy of Sanders’ (2010, 2011) cosmopolitics. It is against the background of these ideas that the fundamental premise of the preceding discussion has been to take the local seriously; recovering the local could make it possible to alter the lenses through which different scenarios for our present and future are constructed.