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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 have 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 that glocalisation has some
defmite conceptual advantages in the general theorisation of globalisation. It also
facilitates the thorough discussion of various problems that 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 an extensive, potentially
world-wide, basis to an 'international' perspective. It is argued that 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.
GLOBAUSATION AS AN ISSUE
As 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 and
interpretive matters. One such issue, probably the most central one, is discussed here:
the general and basic meaning that 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
THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ( 1994), I (I) 33
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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. As 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
per se (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. It 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,
J4 THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION (1994), 1(1)
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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 global 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-
THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ( 1994), I (I) 3 S
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ROBERTSON
stance, whereas the juxtaposition of the notion of globality with that of modernity
raises directly the problem of the relationship between two sets of qualitatively differ-
ent conditions. In that perspective the issue of space is more specifically and indepen-
dently raised via the concept of globality. The idea of modernity in itself suggests a
general homogenisation of institutions and basic experiences in a temporal, historical
mode -even though there is increasing recognition that there have been a number of
specific spatial locations where modernity has developed (Therborn forthcoming).
Therborn identifies three major sites, other than Europe, where modernity devel-
oped relatively autonomously: the New World, where modernity developed as the
result of the wiping-out of existing institutional conditions and many people; East Asia,
where modernity arose as a response to a threatening external challenge; and much of
Africa, where modernity was largely imposed by colonisation or imperialism. This per-
spective points to defmite recognition of the relatively independent significance of space
and geography under the rubric of globality. Emphasis on globality enables us to avoid
the weaknesses of the proposition that globalisation is simply a consequence of moder-
nity. Specifically, globality is the general condition which has facilitated the diffusion of
modernity, globality here being very generally defmed by the inter-penetration of geo-
graphically distinct "civilisations." (A crucial issue which cannot be directly discussed
here is indicated by the addition of a third variable- namely, nationalism- to the
ideas ofglobality and modernity [Amason 1991; Robertson 1993].)
GLOCALISATION
According to The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1991. 134), the term 'glocal' and
the process noun 'glocalisation' are "formed by telescoping global and local to make a
blend." Also according to the Dictionary, that idea has been "modelled on Japanese
dochakuka (deriving from dochaku, 'living on one's own land'), originally the agricul-
tural principle of adapting one's farming techniques to local conditions, but also
adopted in Japanese business for global localisation, a global outlook adapted to local
conditions." (Emphasis in original.) The terms glocal and glocalisation became fea-
tures of business jargon during the 1980s, but their major locus of origin appears to
have been Japan, a society which has for a very long time strongly cultivated the spa-
tio-cultural significance of Japan itself and where the general issue of the relationship
between the particular and the universal has historically received almost obsessive
attention (Miyoshi and Harootunian 1989). By now it has become, again in the words
of The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1991. 134), "one of the main marketing buzz-
words of the beginning of the nineties." My own general reading of recent business
news confirms this.
The idea of glocalisation in its business sense is closely related to what in some
contexts is called, in more straightforwardly economic terms, "micro-marketing": the
tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to
increasingly differentiated local and particular markets. Almost needless to say, in the
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GLOBALISA TION OR GLOCALISA TION
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 Dictionary of 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-
THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ( 1994), I (I) J7
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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 idea 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 an aspect 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 and 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
3 B THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ( 1994), I (I)
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GLOBALISA TION OR GLOCAUSA TION
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 of
such cultures with the notion of homogenisation of 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." It 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 IN 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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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 form- 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-
etal- more generally, extra-local- processes and actions. If 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 Birth of 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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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 of 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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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.
GLOCALICA TION AND THE THESIS OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
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 of Africa- 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 encounters
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between one region of civilisation and another. Within such interactions (many of
them historically imperialistic) there has developed a sense of particularistic locality.
But the latter is in large part a consequence of the increasingly global "institutionalisa-
tion" of the expectation and construction of local particularism. Not merely is variety
continuously produced and reproduced in the contemporary world, this variety is
largely an aspect of the very dynamics which a considerable number of commentators
interpret as homogenisation. So in this light we are again required to come up with a
more subtle interpretation than is usually offered in the general debate about locality
and globality.
Some important aspects of the local-global issue are manifested in the debate about
and the discourse of cultural imperialism (Tomlinson 1991 ). There is of course a quite
popular intellectual view which would have it that the entire world is being swamped
by Western- more specifically, American- culture. There are, on the other hand,
more probing and subtle discussions of and research on this matter. For starters, it
should be emphasised that the virtually overwhelming evidence is that even "cultural
messages" which emanate directly from "the USA" are differentially received and inter-
preted; that "local" groups "absorb" communication from the alleged "centre" in a
great variety of ways (Tomlinson 1991). Second, we should note that the major
alleged producers of 'global culture'- such as those in Atlanta or Hollywood-
increasingly tailor their products to a differentiated global market. For example,
'Hollywood' sometimes attempts - particularly in well publicised serials about great
world events - to employ mixed, 'multinational' casts of actors and a variety of 'local'
settings when it is particularly concerned to get a global audience. Third, there is
much to suggest that seemingly 'national' symbolic resources are in fact increasingly
available for differentiated global interpretation and consumption. For example, in his
discussion of the staging of Shakespeare's plays, Billington notes that in recent years
Shakespeare has been subject to wide-ranging cultural interpretation and staging
(Billington 1992). Thus Shakespeare no longer belongs to England. Shakespeare has
assumed a universalistic significance; and we have to distinguish in this respect
between Shakespeare as representing "Englishness" and Shakespeare as of "local-
cum-global" relevance. Fourth, many have seriously underestimated the flow of ideas
and practices from the "periphery" to the "centre" (Hall 1991a and 1991b; J. Abu-
Lughod 1991). Much ofglobal'mass culture' is in fact impregnated with 'Third
World' ideas, styles and genres concerning religion, music, art, cooking, and so on. In
fact the whole question of what will 'fly' globally and what will not is a very important
question in the present global situation. We know, of course, that the question of what
'flies' is in part contingent upon the matter of power. On the other hand, we would be
ill-advised to think of this simply as a matter of the hegemonic extension of Western
modernity. As Tomlinson has said in a complex but cogent argument, "local cultures"
are, in Sartre's phrase, condemned to freedom (Tomlinson 1991).
The issue of 'local' diversity has been raised in a particularly salient way by
Balibar. He talks of world spaces, which can be conceptualised as places in which the
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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,
inter 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.
MEDIASATION AND GLOBALISATION
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. It
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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1992b, 59)- 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. It 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 its own "national" origins- at least for the foreseeable future.
CONCLUSION
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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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).
NOTES
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 of 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 199 2b) 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 particularism of 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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