Conceptualising globalisation – the global and the local

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Introduction:

At a Rotorua hotel, guests from a variety of countries gasp appreciatively as their feather and flaxed host lifts the stainless steel basket from the steaming hangi pit.  He unwraps the foil, releasing delicious odors of pork, puha and yes, Tegel chicken.  He holds up an empty drink bottle and grins: “Today’s flavor, Fanta.  I find that adding a dash of soft drink before sealing the foil really helps the flavor.”  The guests take plastic plates and line up, well satisfied with their daring in venturing into this territory of “other”, and well satisfied with this “authenticity” recoded for their consumption.  Out the back the pit diggers grab a quick Big Mac before the next tourist onslaught.

The modernist discourse on tourist consumption of native spectacles and goods, whether these form part of contemporary local life or not, is only one theme in a variety of discourses possible when discussing food in terms of the global and the local in our late capitalist world.  This anecdote highlights themes of disjuncture in the global/local debate, of the clashing of cultures, of standardization and diversity, of the search for identity, and of the ‘them and us” conceptualizing. (Robins, 1997, p 13)

         It is important to stress that food is discussed here as a social activity where we express identity and negotiate meaning by our food choices.  It is not about subsistence. Food in this sense has always been a marker of shared cultural identity.  For the British in the past, snails and frog legs were very much for “Fogies”.  However, the forces of globalization can undermine previously stable identity categories.  Alison James (1996, p. 78) reflecting on the increasing creolisation of food in Britain asks, “If food is literally for thinking about identity – ‘you are what you eat’, ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’, and so on – then does the confusion of culinary signposts … signify the loss of the markers of distinctiveness which separate Others from ourselves?”  This essay argues that the global/local debate “illuminates” the study of food as a marker of culture, to the extent that it shows that previously relatively fixed categories that expressed cultural identity are under attack in the world of late capitalism. (Robins, 1997, p.14)

Conceptualising globalisation – the global and the local

Globalization in its current phase broadly refers to the sense we have of the world as a single space, and of the existence of a specifically global point of view that operates with some kind of independence from nation-states. This viewpoint is an outcome of technological advances operating on a worldwide scale, particularly in communication.  These cut across national boundaries and connect communities in new time- space configurations, in a way not possible before.  People, goods, images and ideas flow across nation-state boundaries.  In cultural terms “Were a single, largely identical entity.” (Robins, 1997, p. 29).

Robins (1997, p. 33) identifies two key discourses on globalization. The first discourse links globalization with the creation of homogeneous culture.  In a march through time the world moves “forward” relentlessly from tribal group to nation-state and then to global culture. The modernist “progress” is from center to periphery with the center identified as America or the West.  Today, “third cultures” of professionals who are no longer tied to the nation-state and who work from global cities like London, Tokyo and New York are evidence of global culture at work (26). Robin’s second discourse sees globalization “manifest’s itself as the revalidation of particular cultures and identities (often against the perceived threats of either homogenization or cosmopolitanization), reinforcing diversity.”(P. 33) Here the emphasis is on heterogeneity and fragmentation and on greater diversity in culture.  

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We can also conceptualize the “local” in two ways.  On the one hand it is the bounded concrete space that is characterized by face-to-face contact and by the shared common ground of customs and traditions.  In imperialist discourses it is often conceptualized as a backwater left out of modernist “progress”.  But “local” can also be symbolic, “it relates to the distinctive identities and interests of local and regional communities”(P. 37).  The British pub in your locality is literally your “local”.  Local can be about nostalgia for things now past. It can be a lament for lost authenticity in changing ...

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