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Globalisation or glocalisation?ROLAND ROBERTSON

Published online: 04 Apr 2012.

To cite this article:ROLAND ROBERTSON (1994) Globalisation or

glocalisation?, Journal of International Communication, 1:1, 33-52, DOI:10.1080/13216597.1994.9751780

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'lobolisotion or alo(ftlisotion

ROLAND ROBERTSON

This paper deals with the idea of glocalisation as a refmement of the concept of globali

sation. Globalisation

is

apparently widely thought of as involving cultural homogeni

sation; even more specifically, as a process involving the increasing domination of one

societal or regional culture over all others. However, by no means all of those who

have directly theorised

the

concept of globalisation h ve seen

it

is as inherently

homogenising. In order to make very explicit the heterogenising aspects of globalisa

tion the idea of glocalisation is introduced. The idea of glocalisation seems to have

originated, in the specific context of talk about globalisation, in Japanese business

methods in the late 19 80s; although by now it has become quite a common marketing

perspective. Regardless, however, of both its apparent national origin and ofits signifi

cance in contemporary marketing procedures, it

is

argued

th t

glocalisation has some

defmite conceptual advantages in the general theorisation of globalisation. It also

facilitates the thorough discussion of various problems th t attend a simple distinction

between the global and the local. In this paper some of these are examined, in particu

lar the ways in which localities are produced on a globe-wide basis. The bearing of

such considerations on the idea of cultural imperialism is briefly addressed, as is the

problem of confming the discussion of communication on

n

extensive, potentially

world-wide, basis to n international perspective.

It

is argued

th t

world communi

cation

is

best referred to as global communication. The problem of global communica

tion is related directly in this paper to the theme of glocalisation.

GLOB US TION S N ISSUE

s the general topic of globalisation grows in importance in a number of academic

fields

it becomes increasingly necessary to attend to some very basic analytical nd

interpretive matters. One such issue, probably the most central one, is discussed here:

the general and basic meaning

th t

is

to

be

attributed to the very idea of globalisation.

In addressing this theme I write primarily as a cultural sociologist. I do, however,

connect my social-theoretical considerations to issues in

the

area of international

communication at certain points, most explicitly in the fmal phase of my discussion.

1

There is a strong tendency to think of globalisation in a loose sense as referring to

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ROBERTSON

essentially very large-scale phenomena, as being the preoccupation of sociologists

who are interested

in

big macro-sociological problems,

in

contrast to those who have

micro-sociological - indeed, local - perspectives. s far as the general

thrust

of

the debate about globalisation

is

concerned, I believe this to be extremely misleading.

There is

indeed a mythology about globalisation which sees

that

concept as referring

to developments which involve the triumph of culturally homogenising forces over

all others. That view of globalisation- which is well represented by Ferguson (1992)

- may involve even more extensive attributions, such as the view

that

bigger

is

bet

ter,

that

locality- even

history- is

being obliterated, and

so

on. There are numer

ous dangers that such conceptions of globalisation will

in

fact become part of discipli

nary wisdom - that, for example, when sociology, as well as other disciplinary, text

books come fully to reflect the current concern with globalisation they

will

convey the

impression

that

globalisation indicates a special

or

sub-disciplinary field of interest

that it

is but

one sort of interest

that

sociologists may have, and that interest involves

lack of concern with micro-sociological

or

local issues.

In all of this there is already

an

issue of considerable confusion, which arises

in

part from the quite numerous attempts to internationalise - to extend culturally

and anti-ethnocentrically - the curriculum of sociology and other disciplines. Such

attempts sometimes involve, for example, an argument in favour of a global sociology,

conceived of as a universal sociology

which

makes the practice of the discipline

increasingly viable on a global scale. Some of these ventures in the direction of global

sociology make the incorporation of indigenous sociologies into a global sociology

an

imperative. The problem

of

global sociology as a discipline

which

confirms and

includes native sociologies parallels a more directly analytical issue.

This is

the prob

lem of the relationship between homogenising and heterogenising thrusts

in

globalisa

tion theory. Many sociologists are apparently happy to agree

that

sociology should be

internationalised and/or de-ethnocentrised,

but

they seem

to be

much less inclined

to engage

in

direct and serious study of the empirical, historically formed, global field

p r

s

(Robertson 1992b).2

There is, in any case, an important difference between international and global

perspectives. The first is less inclusive than the second. International suggests rela

tions between nations

or

nationalities. Global - at least as it

is

used

in

the present

context -

is

the more inclusive concept. t does

not

involve the assumption

that

international relations

or

communications cover all

that is

to be known about the

world as a whole (Robertson, 1992b). I will intermittently deal with this issue.

The need to introduce the concept of glocalisation firmly into sociological - as

well as communication - theory arises from the following considerations. Much

of

the talk about globalisation has, almost casually, tended to assume

that

it

is

a process

which overrides locality, including large-scale locality such as

is

exhibited

in

the vari

ous ethnic nationalisms which have arisen in various parts of the world

in

recent

years. This tendency neglects two things. First, it neglects the extent to which

what is

called local

is

in large degree constructed

on

a global, or least a pan-or super-local,

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GLOBAUSATION OR GLOCALISATION

basis.

In

other words, much of the promotion of locality is in fact done 'from above.'

Much of what appears at first experience to be local is the local expressed in terms of a

generalised recipe of locality. Even in cases where there is

no

concrete recipe- as

in

the

case of some forms of contemporary nationalism - there

is

still,

or

so I would

claim, a translocal factor

at

work; the basic idea here being

that

the assertion of eth

nicity and/or nationality

is at

least made within contemporary glob l terms of identity

and particularity (cf. Alter 19 8 9, 24-40 .

Second, while there has indeed been increasing interest in spatial considerations in

sociological theory and in the intimate links between temporal and spatial dimensions

of human life, these have made relatively little impact as yet on the discussion of glob

alisation and related matters. In particular, there has been little attempt to connect the

discussion of time-and-space to

the

thorny issue of universalism-and-particularism

(Robertson 1992b, 97-114). The recent interest in the theme of postmodernity has

involved much attention to the supposed weaknesses of dominant concern with 'uni

versal time' and the claim that 'particularistic space' be given much greater attention.

But,

in

spite of a

few

serious efforts to resist the tendency, universalism has been per

sistently counterposed to particularism, perhaps most thoroughly in the theorisation

of societal modernisation in the 1950s and 1960s;

3

while the emphasis on space has

frequently been expressed as a diminution of temporal considerations.

To be sure, 'time-space' has been given quite a lot of attention by Giddens and in

debates about his structuration theory, but for

the

most part such discussion has been

conducted

in

abstract terms, with relatively little

attention

to concrete issues.

Nonetheless

an

important aspect of the problematic which is under consideration here

has been delineated by Giddens. Giddens argues that:

... in a general way. the concept of globalisation

is

best understood as expressing funda

mental aspects of time-space distanciation. Globalisation concerns

the

intersection of

presence and absence. the interlacing of social events and social relations at distance'

with local contextualities (Giddens 1991. 21).

He goes on to say

that

globalisation has to be understood as a dialectical phenom

enon, in which events at one pole of a distanciated relation often produce divergent or

even contrary occurrences

at

another (Giddens 1991, 22). While the idea that glob

alisation involves in a very general sense the intersection of presence and absence is

entirely acceptable, my view is

that

Giddens remains captive of old ways of thinking

when he speaks of the production of divergent or even contrary occurrences.'' The

first part of his statement suggests simply

the

connecting of localities, whereas the sec

ond implies an 'action-reaction' relationship.

Some of the ambiguity here

may

arise from the tendency to use the term 'globali

sation' instead of the term

globality -

as in

the

idea of globalisation as a 'conse

quence of modernity' (Giddens 1990). The conjunction modernity-globalisation

in

itself suggests a process, and a temporal outcome of a social and psychological circum-

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GLOBALISA

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world of capitalistic production for increasingly global markets the adaptation to local

and other particular conditions is not simply a case of business responses to pre-exist

ing global variety - to civilisational, regional, societal, ethnic, gendered and still

other sets of consumers, as if such variety or heterogeneity existed simply in itself.

To a considerable extent, micro-marketing - or, in the more comprehensive phrase,

glocalisation - involves

the construction

of increasingly differentiated consumers, the

'invention' of 'consumer traditions' (of which tourism, arguably the biggest 'industry'

of the contemporary world, is undoubtedly the most clear-cut example).

To

put it very

simply, diversity sells. On the other hand, from the consumer's point of view it is an

important basis of cultural capital formation (Bourdieu 1984 . That, it should be

emphasised, is not its only function. The proliferation of

for

example, 'ethnic super

markets', in California and elsewhere caters not so much to difference for its own sake,

but to the desire

for

the familiar and/or to nostalgic wishes. But the latter tendencies

may nonetheless

be

bases of cultural capital formation.

It

is

not my purpose here to delve into the comparative history of capitalistic busi

ness practices.

4

Thus the accuracy of the etymology concerning glocalisation provided

by

The Oxford ictionary

o

New Words

(1991) is not a significant issue.

5

Rather, I want

to use the general idea of glocalisation to make a number of points about the global

local problematic. There is a widespread tendency to

regard that problematic as

straightforwardly indicating a polarity, which assumes its most acute form in

the

claim

that

we live in a world of local assertions

against

globalising trends, a world in

which the very idea of locality is sometimes cast as a form of resistance to the hege

monically global or one in which the assertion of 'locality' or

Gemeinschaft

('communi

ty')

is seen as the pitting of subaltern 'universals' against the 'particular universal' of

dominant cultures and/or classes.

An

interesting variant of this general view

is

to

be

found in the replication of the German culture-civilisation distinction

at

the global

level; where the old notion of ('good') culture is pitted against the ('bad') notion of

civilisation.

In

this replication local culture 'becomes' national culture, while civilisa

tion

is

given a distinctively global, world-wide flavour.

We

have, in my judgment, to be much more subtle about the dynamics of the pro

duction and reproduction of difference and, in the broadest sense, locality. Speaking in

reference to the local-cosmopolitan distinction, Hannerz has remarked

that for

locals

diversity happens to be the principle which allows all locals to stick to their respective

cultures . At the same time, cosmopolitans largely depend

on

'other people' carving

out

'special niches'

for

their cultures. Thus there can

be

no cosmopolitans without

locals (Hannerz 1990, 250). This point has some bearing on the particular nature of

the intellectual interest in and the approach to the local-global issue. In relation to

Hannerz's general argument, however, we should note that in the contemporary

world, or at least in the West, the

current

counter-urbanisation trend (Champion

1989) (much of which in the USA is producing fortress communities ) proceeds in

terms of the

standardisation

of locality, rather

than

straightforwardly in terms of the

principle of difference.

In

contemporary 'international communication' the standard-

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ROBERTSON

isation of locality

is

crucial. A 'lifted'

locality-

a sense of locality

that is

communicat

ed

from above - has to

be

a standardised

form

of the local (whether it be a neigh

bourhood, a city, a country, or even a world region).

An

'international'

TV

enterprise

like

CNN

produces and reproduces a particular pattern of relations between localities,

a pattern which depends on a kind of recipe of locality. This standardisation renders

meaningful the very ide of locality, but at the same time diminishes the notion that

localities are things in themselves.

In

any case, we should become much more historically conscious of the various

ways in which the deceptively modern, or postmodern, problem of the relationship

between the global and the local, the universal and the particular and so on,

is

not by

any means as unique to the second half of the twentieth century as many would have

us believe. This is clearly shown in Greenfield's (1992) recent study of the origins of

nationalism in England, France, Germany, Russia and America. With the exception of

English nationalism, she argues that the emergence of national identities- such con

stituting the most common and salient form of particularism in the modern world

(Greenfield 1992,

8

developed as a part of an essentially international process

(Greenfield 1992, 14).

The more extreme claim concerning the contemporary uniqueness of these alleged

opposites is a refraction of what some have called the nostalgic paradigm in Western

social science (Robertson 1990;

cf

Phillips 1993). It is a manifestation of the not

always implicit world view that suggests

that

we - the global we - once lived in

and were distributed not so long ago across a multitude of ontically secure, 'communi

ties'. Now, according to this

narrative-

actually a 'grand' narrative- our sense of

communal home is rapidly being destroyed by waves of (Western?) 'globalisation'. In

contrast I attempt - although I present here only part of my overall argument- to

show

that

globalisation has involved the reconstruction, in a sense the production, of

'home', 'community' and 'locality'.

To that

extent the local

is

not best seen,

at

least as

an analytic premise, as a counterpoint to the global. Indeed it can

be

regarded, subject

to some qualifications, as

n

spect of globalisation. One part of my argument which

must remain underdeveloped in the immediate context

is that

we are being led into

the polar-opposite way of thinking

by

the thesis

that

globalisation

is

a direct conse

quence

of modernity (Giddens

1990;

cf. Robertson

1992a . In

this perspective

Weber's iron cage (Weber 1958, 181)

is

globalised. Moreover, in this perspective

there could never have been any kind of globalisation without the instrumental ratio

nality often taken to be the hallmark of modernity (a rationality which, it

is

readily

conceded, Giddens sees as carrying both disabling nd reflexive enabling possibilities).

Thus. as far

as

I am concerned, the notion of glocalisation actually conveys

much

of what I have in fact been writing in recent years about globalisation. From my stand

point the concept of globalisation has involved the simultaneity and the inter-penetra

tion of what are conventionally called the global and the local, or - in more general

vein - the universal and the particular. Talking strictly of my own position in the cur

rent debate about and the discourse of globalisation, it may even become necessary for

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GLOBALISAT ON

OR

GLOCAUSAT ON

me (and others) to substitute occasionally the term glocalisation for the contested

term globalisation, in order to make my, or our, argument more precise. Of course I

certainly do not wish to fall

victim. cognitive or otherwise, to a particular brand of cur

rent marketing terminology. Insofar as we regard the idea of glocalisation as simply a

business term (of apparent Japanese origin) then I would of course reject it as not hav

ing sufficient analytic-interpretive leverage. On the other hand, we are surely coming

to recognise that seemingly autonomous economic terms almost invariably have

deep cultural groundings (Sahlins 1976; cf. Wallerstein 1992). In the Japanese

and

many other societal cases the cognitive and moral struggle even to recognise the

economic domain as relatively autonomous has never really been won. We now live

in a world which increasingly acknowledges the quotidian conflation of the economic

and the

cultural. But we inherited from classical social theory, particularly

in

its

German version of the decades from about 1880 to about 1920, a view that talk of

'culture' and 'cultivation' is distinctly

at

odds with the rhetoric of economics and

instrumental rationality. In any case, much of 'international' communication in the

late-twentieth century world is 'capitalistic' and the most striking recent develop

ments in this sphere, notably CNN, (more recently, and so far much less ambitiously,

BBC

World Service Television

and

the projected Sky International) have involved

great attention to the theme of what is here called glocalisation.

My reflections in this paper on the local-global problematic hinge upon the view

that contemporary locality is largely produced in something like global terms, but that

certainly does not mean that all forms of locality are thus substantively homogenised.

One of the ways of considering the idea of global culture is in terms of its being consti

tuted by the increasing interconnectedness of

many

local cultures both large and

small (Hannerz 1990), although I certainly do not myself think that global culture is

entirely constituted by such interconnectedness (Robertson 1992b, 61-84

and

108-

14). For example, we should not equate the communicative

and

interactive connecting o

such cultures

with the notion o

homogenisation

o all cultures We should not, in other

words, conflate discussion of the culture of interaction between two or more socio-cul

tural collectivities with the issue of whether a generalised process of homogenisation

of all cultures

is

occurring.

We

should also be interested in the conditions for the pro

duction of cultural pluralism (Moore

1989

as well as geographical pluralism.

Moreover, we should recognise that the idea oflocality, indeed of globality, is very rel

ative.

In

spatial terms a village community is, of course, local relative to a region of a

society, while a society is local relative to an area of civilisation, and so on. Relativity

also arises in temporal terms. Contrasting the well-known pair consisting of locals

and

cosmopolitans, Hannerz (1990, 236) has written that what was cosmopolitan in the

early 1940s may

be

counted as a moderate form of localism by now. I do not in the

present context get explicitly involved in the complexities of

this

problem of relativity.

But sensitivity to the problem does inform much of what I say.

There are certain conditions

that are currently promoting the production of con

cern with the local-global problematic within the academy. King (1990,

420

has

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ROBERTSON

addressed

an

important aspect of this. In talking specifically of the spatial-compression

dimension of globalisation

he

remarks on the increasing numbers of proto-profes

sionals from so-called 'Third World' societies who are travelling to the core for pro

fessional education. The educational sector of core countries depends increasingly

on

this

input

of students from

the

global periphery.

I t is the

experience of flying

round the world and needing schemata to make sense of

what

they see, on the one

hand,

and

encountering students from all over

the

world

in the

classroom,

on the

other, which forms an important experiential basis for academics of

what

King

(1990,

401-2) calls totalising and global theories. I would maintain, however,

that

it

is

inter-

est

in

the

local

as

much

as the totally global which

is

promoted in this way.

THE LOCAL N THE GLOBALl THE

GLOBAL

IN THE LOCAL

In one way or another the issue of the relationship between the 'local' and the 'global'

has become increasingly salient in a wide variety of intellectual and practical contexts.

In some respects this development hinges upon the increasing recognition of the signifi

cance of space, as opposed to time,

in

many

fields

of academic and practical endeavour.

The general interest in the idea of postmodernity, whatever its limitations,

is

probably

the most intellectually tangible manifestation of this. The most well known maxim -

virtually a cliche - proclaimed in the diagnosis of the postmodern condition

is

of

course

that

grand narratives have come to

an

end, and

that

we are now in a circum

stance of proliferating and sharply competing narratives (Lyotard 1984).

In this

per

spective there are no longer any stable accounts of dominant change in the world. This

view itself has developed, on the other hand, at precisely the same time that there has

crystallised

an

increasing interest in the world as a whole as a 'single place'.

As the sense of temporal uni-directionality has faded so, on the other hand, has the

sense of 'representational' space within which all kinds of 'narratives'

may

be placed,

expanded. This, of course, has increasingly raised in recent years the vital question as

to

whether the apparent

collapse of

the

heretofore

dominant

social-evolutionist

accounts of implicit or explicit world history are leading rapidly to a situation of chaos

or

one in which, to quote Giddens

an

infinite number of purely idiosyncratic 'histo

ries' can be

written.

He

claims, in fact,

that

we

can

made generalisations about defi

nite episodes of historical transition (Giddens 1990, 6). However, since he also main

tains

that

modernity on a global scale has amounted to a rupture with virtually all

prior forms of

life

he

is

seemingly unable to provide any guidance as to how history

or

histories might now actually

be

done.

As

I have said, in numerous contemporary accounts globalising trends are regarded

as in tension with 'local' assertions of identity and culture. Thus ideas such as the glob

al

versus

the local, the global versus the 'tribal', the international

versus

the national,

and the universal versus the particular are widely promoted. For some, these alleged

oppositions are simply puzzles, while for others the second part of each opposition

is

seen as a reaction against the first. For still others they are contradictions.

In

the per-

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GLOBALISATION OR

GLOCALISA

TION

spective of contradiction the tension between,

for

example, the universal and the partic

ular may

be seen either in the dynamic sense of being a relatively fruitful source of over

all change

or

as a modality which preserves an existing global system in its present

state. We

fmd

the latter view in Wallerstein's argument

that

the

relation between the

universal and the particular

is

basically a product of rapidly expanding world-systemic

capitalism and that,

at

least in the short run, it greatly assists in the preservation of

the

latter (Wallerstein 19 91 ). Only what Wallerstein calls anti-systemic movements- and

then

only those which effectively challenge its metaphysical presuppositions - can

move the world beyond the presuppositions of its present (capitalist) condition. In that

light

we

may regard the contemporary

proliferation of

minority

discourses

GanMohamed and

Lloyd

1990) as being encouraged by the presentation of a world

system. Indeed there

is

much to suggest

that

some adherents to minority discourses

have, somewhat paradoxically, a special liking

for

Wallersteinian or other totalistic

forms of world-systems theory; in the sense that the promotion of minority discourse

may

carry the intention or hope that hegemonic metaphysical presuppositions will

be

overthrown, or at least destabilised. But it must also

be

noted that many of the enthusi

astic participants in the discourse of minorities describe their practices in terms of the

singular minority discourse GanMohamed and Lloyd 1990). That suggests

that

there

is

indeed a potentially

global

mode of writing and talking on behalf

of,

or at least about,

minorities. Cf. McGrane 1989.)

Barber argues that tribalism and globalism have become what he specifies as

the

two axial principles of our time. Barber himself, like numerous others, sees these

two principles as inevitably in tension- a McWorld ofhomogenising globalisation

versus

a Jihad worid ofparticularising Lebanonisation (Barber 1992). He would

now almost certainly add Balkanisation. ) Barber is primarily interested

in

the bear

ing

which

each of these supposedly clashing principles

have

on the prospects for

democracy. That is certainly

an

extremely important matter, but my reasons for

selecting his argument is that he has

put

as succinctly as any writer with whose work

I

am

familiar the argument

that

I

am

in fact opposing in the global-local debate.

Like

many others Barber defmes globalisation as the opposite of localisation. He argues that

four imperatives make

up

the dynamic of McWorld: a market imperative, a resource

imperative,

an

information-technology imperative, and

an

ecological imperative

(Barber 1992, 54). Each of these contributes to shrinking the world and diminishing

the salience of national borders and together they have achieved a considerable vic

tory over factiousness and particularism, and not least over their most virulent tradi

tional orm nationalism (Barber 1992, 54). Remarking

that

the Enlightenment

dream of a universal rational society has to a remarkable degree been realised , Barber

emphasises that its achievement has been realised in commercialised, bureaucratised,

homogenised and what he calls depoliticised form. Moreover, he argues that it is a

very incomplete achievement because it is in competition with forces of global break

down, national dissolution, and centrifugal corruption (Barber 1992, 59). While

notions of localism, locality and locale do not figure explicitly in Barber's essay they

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certainly inform it cf. Barber 1993).

However, there

is

no good reason, other than recently established convention in

certain quarters, to define globalisation largely in terms of homogenisation. Of course

anyone

is

at

liberty to so defme globalisation, but I think

that

there

is

a great deal to be

said against such a procedure. Indeed while each of the imperatives of Barber's

McWorld appear superficially to suggest homogenisation, when one considers them

more closely, they each have a local, diversifying aspect. I maintain also that it makes

no good sense to defme the global as if the global excludes the local.

In

somewhat tech

nical terms, defming the global in such a way suggests that the global lies beyond all

localities, as having systemic properties over and beyond the attributes of units within

a global system. This way of talking flows

along the lines suggested by the macro

micro distinction, which has held much sway in the discipline of economics and has

recently become a particularly popular theme in sociology and other social sciences.

Without denying that the world-as-a-whole has some systemic properties beyond

those of the units within it, it must be emphasised, on the other hand, that such

units themselves are to a large degree constructed in extra unit processes and actions and

in terms

of increasingly

global

dynamics. For example, nationally organised

societies-

and the 'local' aspirations for establishing yet more nationally organised societies (in

spite of some, often exaggerated, West European tendencies in the opposite direction)

- are not simply units within a global context or texts within a context. Both their

existence and, particularly, the form of their existence is largely the result of extra-soci

e t l

more

generally, extra local processes and actions. f we grant with

Wallerstein (1991, 92) and Greenfield (1992)

that

'the national'

is

a 'prototype of the

particular' we must, on the other hand, also recognise that the nation-state - more

generally, the national society is in a crucial respect a cultural idea (as Greenfield

seems to acknowledge). Much of the

apparatus

of contemporary nations, of

the

national-state organisation of societies, including the form of their particularities -

the construction of their unique identities -

is

very similar across the entire world

(Meyer 1980; Robertson 1991), in spite of much variation in levels of 'development'.

This feature of the world situation is what I have elsewhere addressed in terms of the

relationship between the universalisation of particularism and the particularisation of

universalism; a matter to which I will return.

Before coming directly to the contemporary circumstance it

is,

however, advisable

to say a few words about what many now call globalisation in a longer, historical per

spective. One

can

undoubtedly trace far back into

human

history developments

involving the expansion of chains of connectedness across wide expanses of the earth.

In

that

sense 'world formation' has been proceeding for many hundreds, indeed thou

sands, of years; even though such formative processes did not necessarily involve the

entire world as we presently and differentially know it. At the same time, we

can

undoubtedly trace through human history periods during which the consciousness of

the potential for world 'unity' was in one way or another particularly acute. One of the

major tasks of students of globalisation is to comprehend

the

form in which the pre-

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sent, seemingly rapid shifts towards a highly interdependent world was structured. I

have specifically argued

that

this form has been centred upon four main elements of

the global-human condition: societies, individuals. the international system of soci

eties,

and

humankind (Robertson 1992b).

It

is

around the changing relationships

between. different emphases upon

and

often conflicting interpretations of these

aspects of human life that the contemporary world as a whole has crystallised.

So

in

my perspective the issue of what is to

be

included under the notion of the global is

treated very comprehensively. The global

is

not in and of itself counterposed to the

local. Rather. what is often referred to as the local is essentially included within a flexi

ble conception of the global. In that sense globalisation, defmed in its most general

sense as the compression of the world as a whole, involves the linking of locales. At the

same time it involves the 'invention' of locality, in broadly the same sense as the idea

of the invention of tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

There is, indeed, currently something like an ideology of 'home' or 'community'

(Phillips 1993) which has in fact come into being partly in response to the constant

repetition and global diffusion of the claim

that

we now live in a general condition of

rootlessness; as if in prior periods of history the vast majority of people lived in 'secure'

and homogenised locales. Two things, among others. must

be

said in objection to such

ideas. First. the form of globalisation has involved considerable emphasis, at least until

quite recently. on the cultural homogenisation of nationally constituted societies; but.

on

the other hand, prior to

that

emphasis, which began to develop rapidly at the end of

the eighteenth century. what O'Neill (1985) calls polyethnicity was the norm. Second,

the phenomenological diagnosis of the generalised homelessness of modern man and

woman has been developed as if the same people are behaving and interpreting

at

the

same time in the same broad social process (Meyer 19 9 2.11

);

whereas there

is much

to suggest

that

increasingly global

expectations

concerning the relationship between

individual and society have produced both routinised and existential selves. On top

of

that

the very ability to identify home, directly or indirectly.

is

contingent upon the

(contested) construction and organisation of interlaced categories of space and time.

It is

not my purpose here to

go

over this ground again

cf.

Robertson 1992b) but

rather to emphasise the significance of certain periods prior to the second half of the

twentieth century when the possibilities for a single world seemed

at

the time to be

considerable. but also problematic. Emerging research along such lines will undoubt

edly pinpoint a variety of areas of the world and different periods. But as far as relative

ly recent times are concerned, I would invoke two arguments, both of which draw

attention to rapid extension of communication across the world as a whole and the

matise the crucial issues of changing conceptions of time-and-space.

On

the one hand.

Johnson has in his book.

The irth o the Modem

argued

that

'world

society -

or. in

his

own

words, international society in its totality Oohnson

1991, xviii)-

was

largely crystallised in the period 1815-30. Here the emphasis

is

upon the crucial sig

nificance of the Congress of Vienna which was assembled following Bonaparte's first

abdication in 1814. According to Johnson. the peace settlement in Vienna. following

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ROBERTSON

what was in effect the

frrst world

war (Fregosi 1990), was reinforced by the powerful

currents of romanticism sweeping through the world .. Thus was established

an

international order which, in most respects, endured for a century Uohnson 1992,

xix).

Regardless of its particular ideological bent, Johnson's book

is

important because

he does attempt not merely to cover all continents of the world but also to range freely

over many aspects of everyday life

not just 'world politics' or 'international relations'.

He raises significant issues concerning the development of consciousness of the world

as a whole, which was largely made possible by the industrial

and

communicative

'revolutions', on the one hand, and the Enlightenment, on the other.

Second - and, regardless of

the

issue of the periodisation of globalisation

(Robertson 1992b,57-60),

much

more

important-

Kern (1983)

has

drawn atten

tion to the crucial period of 1880-1918, in a way

that

is

particularly relevant to the

present set of issues. In his study,

The Culture

o Time and

Space

Kern's most basic point

is

that

in the last two decades of the nineteenth century

and

the frrst twenty years or

so of the twentieth century very consequential shifts took place with respect to the

global patterning of

our

sense of both time and space.

In

both cases there was both

universal, public standardisation and privatisation. Homogenisation went

hand

in

hand

with heterogenisation, universalisation with particularisation. They made each

other possible. It was in this period that the world became locked into a particular

form

of a strong shift to unicity.

It

was during this time

that

the four major compo

nents of globalisation which I have previously specified were given formidable con

creteness. Moreover, it was in the late-nineteenth century

that

there occurred a big

spurt in the development of organised attempts

to

link localities

on

an international

or

ecumenical basis. An immediate precursor of such was the beginning of international

exhibitions in the mid-nineteenth century, involving the international display of par

ticular national glories and achievements.

The last two decades of the century witnessed many more such international or

cross-cultural ventures, among them the beginnings of the modern religious ecumeni

cal movement, which at one and the same time celebrated difference and searched for

commonality within the framework of an emergent culture for doing the relation

ship between the particular and the, certainly not uncontested, universal. Another

interesting example of this from the same period is the International Youth Hostel

movement. which spread quite rapidly and not only in the Northern Hemisphere. This

movement attempted

on an

organised international, or global, basis to promote the

cultivation of communal, 'back to nature' values. Thus at one and the same time 'tra

ditional' particularity was valorised, but this was done

on

an increasingly globe-wide,

pan-local basis. Generally, these kinds of developments formed the global context of

the patterning of modern mass, and more particularly, 'international' communica

tion; although, clearly, new media of electronic communication facilitated

much

of

the intensive globalisation (or glocalisation) of the late-nineteenth century

and

early

twentieth century period.

The present century has seen a remarkable proliferation with respect to the 'inter-

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GLOBALISATION OR

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national' organisation and promotion oflocality. A very pertinent example is provided

by the current attempts to organise globally the promotion of the values and identities

of native peoples (Chartrand 1991). This was a strong feature of the Global Forum

in Brazil in

1992

which, so to say, surrounded the 'official' United Nations 'Earth

Summit'. Another example is the attempt by the World Health Organisation to pro

mote 'world health' by the reactivation and,

if

needs be, the invention of 'indigenous'

local medicine.

GLOC LIC TION ND THE THESIS OF CULTUR L IMPERI LISM

Some of the issues which I

have

raised are considered from a different angle in

Appiah's book

on

the viability ofPan-Africanism. Appiah's primary theme

is:

... the question of how we are to think about Africa's contemporary cultures in the light

of the two main external determinants of her recent history- European and Afro-New

World conceptions ofAfrica- and of her own endogenous cultural traditions (Appiah

1992, ix-x).

His contention is that the ideological decolonisation which he seeks to effect can

only be made possible by fmding a negotiable middle way between endogenous tra

dition and Western ideas, both of the latter designations being placed within quota

tion marks by Appiah himself (Appiah 1992,

x .

Appiah objects strongly to what he

sees us the racial and racist thrusts of much of the Pan-African idea, pointing out that

insofar as Pan-Africanism makes assumptions about the racial unity of all Africans,

this derives in large part from the experience and memory of non-African ideas about

Africa and Africans which were prevalent in Europe and the

USA

during the later part

of the nineteenth century. Speaking specifically of the idea of the decolonisation of

African literature, Appiah insists, I think correctly, that in much of the talk about

decolonisation we fmd what Appiah himself calls (again within quotation marks) a

reverse discourse :

The pose of repudiation actually presupposes the cultural institutions of the West and

the ideological matrix in which they,ln turn, are imbricated. Railing against the cultural

hegemony of the West, the nativists are of its party without knowing it .. (D)efiance is

determined less by 'indigenous' notions of resistance than by the dictates of the West's

own Herderian legacy -

Its

highly elaborated ideologies of national autonomy, of lan

guage and literature as their cultural substrate. Native nostalgia, in short

Is

largely

fuelled by that Western sentimentalism so familiar after Rousseau; few things, then. are

less native than nativism in its current form (Appiah 1992, 60).

Appiah's statement helps to demonstrate that

much

of the conception of contem

porary locality and indigeneity is itself historically

contingent

upon

en ounters

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GLOBAUSATION OR GLOCALISATION

world-as-a-whole is inserted (Balibar 1991

).

The idea of world-space suggests that we

should consider the local as a 'micro' manifestation of global variety - in opposition,

int r

alia to the implication that the local indicates cultural, ethnic, or racial homo

geneity. Balibar's

analysis

which

is

empirically centred on contemporary

Europe-

suggests

that

in the present situation of global complexity, the idea of home has to be

divorced analytically from the idea oflocality. There may well be some who equate the

two, but that doesn't entitle them or their representatives to project their perspective

onto humanity as a whole. In fact there is much to suggest that the senses of home

and locality are contingent upon alienation from home and/or locale. How else could

one have (reflexive) consciousness of such? We talk of the mixing of cultures, of poly

ethnicity, but we also often underestimate the significance of what Lila Abu-Lughod

(1991) calls halfies : individuals who are of mixed cultural or ethnic inheritance. As

Geertz (1986, 114) has said, like nostalgia, diversity is not

what it

used to be

cf.

Gupta and Ferguson 1992). One of the most significant aspects of contemporary diver

sity is indeed the complication it raises

for

conventional notions of culture (Robertson

1992b). We must be careful not to remain in thrall to the old and rather well estab

lished view that cultures are organically binding and sharply bounded. In fact, Lila

Abu-Lughod opposes the very idea of culture because it seems to her to deny the signif

icance of those who combine in themselves as individuals a number of cultural, ethnic

and general features.

MEDI S TION ND GLOB LIS TION

While I have been concerned in this discussion with general problems in the theorisa

tion of globalisation, it is appropriate

at

this point to say something more specific

about the role and function of media of mass communication in the process of globali

sation. Undoubtedly, inanimately mediated communication has, over the centuries,

been of increasing importance. But it is the mid- to late-nineteenth century that seems

to

have been crucial with respect

to

the beginnings of international communication.

t

was during that period that the initial technologies of international communication

(Fortner 1993,

11

such as the electronic telegraph, the telephone, the submarine

cable and the wireless - emerged. In this period and the first thirty years or so of the

twentieth century these and other such innovations were increasingly institution

alised on

an

expanding international basis. From a different angle we can say that the

period since the 1830s has been one of extensive 'mediasation.' Thompson (1990, 11)

defmes the mediasation of modern culture as the rapid proliferation of institutions

of mass communication and the growth of networks of transmission through which

commodified symbolic forms [have been] made available to

an

ever-expanding

domain of recipients.

Even though mediasation has played a crucial role in the formation of the modern

world as a whole, not least during the phase that I have termed the take-off phase of

recent globalisation which lasted from the 1870s until the mid-1920s (Robertson

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ROBERTSON

1992b, 5 9 it has actually, at the

same

time, occurred in terms of a certain form

(Robertson

1992b,

25-31). One of the central

components

of globalisation has,

indeed, been the nation-state. Inter-societal, or international,

relations

have constitut

ed

another

central component. I

have

suggested

that

the

remaining

central

compo

nents have been individual selves, on the one hand, and

humankind, on

the

other

(Robertson

1992b,

25-31). Even

though

I

maintain

that extensive mediasation

has

occurred

in

terms of a

form

of globalisation (or glocalisation),

there

can be little doubt

that mediasation on a world-wide basis has increasingly,

during the

twentieth centu

ry, become implicated in the reproduction of the shifting form of globalisation, most sig

nificantly

in

recent and prospective developments concerning world

TV

(as well as

other contemporary types of electronic communication)

As I

have

maintained, the national society

has

been a central component of

modern

globalisation. This claim renders problematic the quite common argument

that

'inter

national communication

is now

severely undermining the nation-state

(e.g.

Thompson

1990;

Keane

1992;

Miyoshi 1993). How, in

other

words, can we reconcile

the argument, on the one hand, that globalisation has involved in the twentieth centu

ry the consolidation

of the nation-state with

the

thesis,

on

the

other

hand,

that

extensive

mediasation (as well as

other

contemporary trends) promotes an increasingly border

less world (Miyoshi 1993)? This is, needless to say, a complex problem, one

which

needs extensive discussion in its own right. Suffice it to say here that these two views

together constitute a 'contradiction' or a 'paradox' of contemporary globalisation

and

mass communication.

I t

seems that 'international' communication both undermines

the

autonomy

of the national society and, at the same time, consolidates

it

in the glocal

ising tendencies of

the

newer types of world,

or

global,

TV

notably CNN

It

should also be said

that

CNN - and, perhaps, more recent developments

in that

genre- conform to and, in fact, (re )produce the form of globalisation

that

I have outlined.

While, in a simple sense, we are now in a phase of rapid and extensive internationalisation

of communication, some developments are more genuinely global

than

others.

At the

same time, it should be emphasised

that any

particular glocalising endeavour

will,

in

varying degrees,

bear

traces

of

ts

own national origins at

least for the foreseeable future.

ON LUSION

My emphasis

upon

the significance of the concept of glocalisation

has

arisen mainly

from

what

I perceive to be major weaknesses

in the current

employment of

the

term

globalisation. In particular, I have tried to transcend the tendency to cast the idea of

globalisation as inevitably

in

tension with the idea of localisation. I

have

instead

main

tained that globalisation - in the broadest sense, the compression of the world-

has

involved and increasingly involves the creation and the incorporation of locality, a

process which itself largely shapes,

in turn, the

compression of the world as a whole.

Even

though

we will probably continue to use

the

concept of globalisation, it

might

well be preferable to replace it for

certain

purposes with glocalisation. Glocalisation

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GLOBALISATION

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has the definite advantage of making the concern with "space" as important as the

focus upon temporal and historical issues. At the same time emphasis upon the global

condition -

that is,

upon globality - further constrains us to make

our

analysis

and

interpretation of the contemporary world both spatial and temporal. geographical as

well as historical (Soja 1989).

NOT S

1 An early form of this paper was presented at the Second International Conference

on

Global

History. Technical University. Darmstadt, Germany, July, 1992. A revised and longer ver

sion was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Miami

Beach. Florida

in

August.

199

3. The present paper

is

an

edited

and

modified version

ofthe

latter. I

am

grateful to two anonymous reviewers for The

Journal o

International

Commwlication for their helpful written comments. I am particularly grateful to Ingrid

Volkmer of Bielefeld University for

her

suggestions. Another version

is

to be published

in

Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds). Modernity

and

Difference (provi

sional title), Sage, London.

2.

My

comments are equally applicable to a number of other disciplines, not least to the

"metadiscipline" of cultural studies. I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Robertson 1992b) that, in

any case, the thematisation of globality and globalisation is likely to become a, perhaps

the

major site of the reconstitution of disciplines

and

disciplinarity.

3 Much of this was centered on the sociological theory of Talcott Parsons (e.g. Parsons

19

51),

whose contrast between the universalism supposedly governing interaction in modem soci

eties with

the

particularismof social relationships in pre-modem societies was extremely

influential among practitioners

of

modernisation theory cf. Nett and Robertson 1968).

While Parsons was certainly

an

inspiration for much of this

thrust

of modernisation theory

in the

1950s

and

1960s. the way in which he developed his

own

views on

the

relationship

between particularism and universalism, as part of his scheme of 'pattern variables' of role

orientation, showed considerable sensitivity to

the

ways

in

which universalism

and

particu

larism were empirically interpenetrative. For early discussion of this issue in Parsons's work,

see Parsons 1937. 686-74). The general theme of the relationship between the universal

and

the

particular-

and

between universalism and

particularism-

has,

in

fact, been a

major theme in German social theory. particularly since Hegel. Parsons's early concern with

this kind of issue was centered upon his critical assessment ofToennies 's influential distinc

tion between

Gemelnschaft

(roughly. community) and Gesellschaft (roughly, society) which

was first published in Germany in

1887

(Toennies 1957).

4 For some provocative

thoughts

on the

connection between multiculturalism

in the

universi

ty curriculum, consumer culture and current trends in commodification and product diversi

fication in contemporary capitalism, see Rieff(1993).

5 Akiko Hashimoto (University of Pittsburgh) informs me that in 'non-business' Japanese

dochakuka

conveys the idea of making something indigenous'. I

am

grateful to her for this

information and for

her

general encouragement in my writing of the present paper.

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ROBERTSON

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