glocalization

glocalization, the simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems. The term, a linguistic hybrid of globalization and localization, was popularized by the sociologist Roland Robertson and coined, according to him, by Japanese economists to explain Japanese global marketing strategies.

The notion of glocalization represents a challenge to simplistic conceptions of globalization processes as linear expansions of territorial scales. Glocalization indicates that the growing importance of continental and global levels is occurring together with the increasing salience of local and regional levels. Tendencies toward homogeneity and centralization appear alongside tendencies toward heterogeneity and decentralization. But the notion of glocalization entails an even more radical change in perspective: it points to the interconnectedness of the global and local levels. Most users of the term assume a two-level system (global and local), citing phenomena such as hybridization as the result of growing interconnectedness. Local spaces are shaped and local identities are created by globalized contacts as well as by local circumstances. Thus, globalization entails neither the end of geography nor declining heterogeneity.

In the marketing context, glocalization means the creation of products or services for the global market by adapting them to local cultures. For example, in France, McDonald’s replaced its familiar Ronald McDonald mascot with Asterix, a popular French cartoon character.

Robertson rejects essentialist polarities between the global and the local, such as between economic globalization and local culture. Traditionally, local identities have been invented and nurtured mainly through contacts with others. They have been stimulated and shaped primarily by translocal interaction, comparison, and trends. There are two typical reactions and results of this interplay of global and local forces; both encourage diversity. The opportunistic reaction is the creation of hybrids. Especially in world cities where immigrants and elites must adjust to each other and maintain ties abroad, mixed cultures and identities arise. The rebellious reaction is to foster a resistance identity defending local history, traditions, and authentic cultures.

The local is fundamentally shaped by the global, but the opposite is also true. The opening of national boundaries to trade and investment only increased the economic importance of location. Similarly, the expanding information economy did not disperse production and consumption across geographic space. The resulting economic environment is instead characterized by the clustering of companies in specific city-regions and by geographic concentration. Examples are the financial districts of London and New York and the Silicon Valley computer industry. Thus, globalization increases territorial differentiation in both cultural and economic terms. Local milieus play an important role in a networked economy and society by providing content and contextual support for innovations. Furthermore, there is leeway for local agency; there are many divergent scales and flows linking places and people. Certainly, the economy is at the forefront of glocalizing processes, but beyond the dynamics of capital accumulation there are further motives. Culture and environment, for example, provide other focal points and perspectives for glocalized networking and innovation.

Glocalizing processes can also be understood in a three-level system containing subnational (or local), national, and supranational (or global) levels. The modern political system has been fundamentally shaped by the norm of national sovereignty. National executives occupy a gatekeeper position between the international and the domestic political spheres because they are the only legitimate actors in both spheres. In this context, glocalization points to increasing transnational interactions among subnational entities from different countries and to contacts among subnational and supranational entities—both generally circumventing the national level and undermining the gatekeeper position of national executives.

That subnational political entities such as states, provinces, and cities are getting involved in international activities can be interpreted as a reaction to the socioeconomic processes of glocalization. City regions that serve as nodal points for the information and network economy are becoming disembedded from the national context because their fates depend more on their international contacts than on their national ones. Diverging interests and autonomous activities in the international field are the consequences.

There is another line of argument for explaining the stronger involvement of subnational political entities in international activities. The starting point of this line of reasoning is the assumption that transnational socioeconomic integration has strengthened the roles of national executives. To regulate socioeconomic interactions on a larger scale, national executives have successfully acquired more competencies and have managed to reduce the restrictions and controls they usually face in purely domestic political processes. From this viewpoint, the transnational activities of subnational actors are strategies to either defend autonomy and competences or to compensate for the loss of regulatory leeway using nonregulatory means of governance.

Brian Hocking, Localizing Foreign Policy (1993); Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (1995); Kevin R. Cox (ed.), Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local (1997).