Glocalisation

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Glocalisation (or glocalization) is a portmanteau of globalization and localization. By definition, the term “glocal” refers to the individual, group, division, unit, organisation, and community which is willing and is able to “think globally and act locally.” The term has been used to show the human capacity to bridge scales (from local to global) and to help overcome meso-scale, bounded, "little-box" thinking. The term 'glocals' is often used to describe a new social class: expat managers who travel often and switch homes often, and are there for both glocals and local.

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[edit] A variety of usages

In various uses, glocalisation has entailed elements of the following:

  • Including and combining local, regional, and global, or micro-meso-macro, as one dimension, the magnitudes or scale dimension. Manfred Lange [1] used the term"glocal" in late 1989 during preparations for the Global Change exhibition, and the presenting of a poster on local and global change [2]. [more below and external links]
  • Using electronic communications technologies, such as the Internet, to provide local services on a global or transregional basis. Craigslist and Meetup are examples of web applications that have glocalised their approach.
  • Individuals, households and organisations maintaining interpersonal social networks that combine extensive local and long-distance interactions.[1]
  • The establishment of local organisation structures, working with local cultures and needs, by businesses as they progress from national to multinational, or global businesses. As has been done by many organisations such as IBM.
  • The creation or distribution of products or services intended for a global or transregional market, but customised to suit local laws or culture.
  • The declaration of specified locality - a town, city, or state - as world territory, with responsibilities and rights on a world scale: a process that started in France in 1949 and originally called Mundialisation.

[edit] Development of the concept

Glocalization as a term originated in the 1980s from within Japanese business practices. How it was "developed" or coined was recorded from the work for the Global Change Exhibition, as opened May 30th, 1990 in the German Chancellery in Bonn, Germany. Dr. Manfred Lange [3] was the director of the touring exhibit development team at that time. He described the interplay of local-regional-global interactions as "Glocal", showing the depth of the Space presented and drawn. See the SYSTEM EARTH poster presenting the scales involved: [4] The term was not printed on the original exhibit's poster itself (Spatial and Temporal Scales [5], as this was considered "newspeak", but was used often when presenting the exhibition, and lead to the Local and Global Change Exhibition, Geotechnica, Cologne 1991 [6] The three dimensions presented in a built model or exponat were called "Blackbox Nature". [7], see this entries in the Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics: [8] [9]

The term glocalization was subsequently (and independently) developed in the English-speaking world by the British sociologist Roland Robertson in the 1990s, the Canadian sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in the late 1990s,[2] and Zygmunt Bauman.

Very often localisation is a neglected process because globalization presents an omnipresent veneer. Yet, in many cases, local forces work to attenuate the impact of global processes. These forces are recognisable in efforts to prevent or modify the plans for the local construction of buildings for global corporate enterprises. For example, in The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the Internet encourages glocalisation, such as encouraging people to make websites in their native languages. Several NGOs are working to develop glocalisation, including the Glocal Forum (active since 2001) and the nascent Glocal University. In their papers, Hampton and Wellman describe how the Internet intensive local involvement as well as far-flung "global" connectivity.[3]

The glocalization approach suggests that reconsidering frames of references and order schemas is useful for both global and local research and management. Indeed,global and local are really two sides of the same coin as a place may be better understood by recognising the dual nature of glocalisation. The combination of glocal-dimensions with temporal- and cultural- and other dimensions is a challenge, but being concrete about the scales involved is a basic first step.

[edit] See also

  • Internationalization and localization
  • Globalocal
  • International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics [10] and [11]
  • GeoJournal, Access and Assimilation - Springerlink & [12]
  • [13]
  • Barry Wellman, “Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism.” Pp. 11-25 in Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches, edited by Makoto Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar, and Toru Ishida. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2002.


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Barry Wellman, “Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism.” Pp. 11-25 in Digital Cities II, edited by Makoto Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar, and Toru Ishida. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2002.
  2. ^ Barry Wellman and Keith Hampton, “Living Networked On and Offline” Contemporary Sociology 28, 6 (Nov, 1999): 648-54
  3. ^ Hampton, Keith and B Wellman. 2002. "The Not So Global Village of Netville." Pp. 345-371 in The Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell.

[edit] External links