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Glocalization or glocalisation (a portmanteau of globalization and localism ) is the "simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems". [1] The concept comes from the Japanese word dochakuka and "represents a challenge to simplistic conceptions of globalization processes as linear expansions of territorial scales. Glocalization indicates that the growing importance of continental and global levels is occurring together with the increasing salience of local and regional levels." [1]
Glocalization represents the fusion of "globalization" and "localization," emphasizing the need for global entities to tailor their offerings to suit the unique characteristics of individual regions or communities.
Glocal, an adjective, by definition means "reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations". [2] The term "glocal management" in a sense of "think globally, act locally" is used in the business strategies of companies, in particular by Japanese companies that are expanding overseas. [3]
The concept comes from the Japanese word dochakuka, which means global localization. It had referred to the adaptation of farming techniques to local conditions. It became a buzzword when Japanese business adopted it in the 1980s. [5] The word stems from Manfred Lange, [6] head of the German National Global Change Secretariat, [7] who used "glocal" in reference to Heiner Benking's exhibit Blackbox Nature: Rubik's Cube of Ecology at an international science and policy conference. [8] [9]
"Glocalization" first appeared in a late 1980s publication of the Harvard Business Review . At a 1997 conference on "Globalization and Indigenous Culture", sociologist Roland Robertson stated that glocalization "means the simultaneity – the co-presence – of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies". [10]
The term entered use in the English-speaking world via Robertson in the 1990s, Canadian sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in the late 1990s [11] and Zygmunt Bauman. [12] Erik Swyngedouw was another early adopter. [13]
Since the 1990s, glocalization has been productively theorized by several sociologists and other social scientists, [14] and may be understood as a process that combines the concerns of localism [15] with the forces of globalization, or a local adaptation and interpretation of global forces. As a theoretical framework, it is compatible with many of the concerns of postcolonial theory, [16] and its impact is particularly recognizable in the digitization of music [17] and other forms of cultural heritage. [18] The concept has since been used in the fields of geography, sociology, and anthropology. [19] It is also a prominent concept in business studies, particularly in the area of marketing goods and services to a heterogenous set of consumers. [19]
The concept of glocalization is included in the discourse on social theory. This is first demonstrated in the way it challenges the notion that globalization overrides locality by describing how the concept of local is said to be constructed on a trans- or uper-local basis or is promoted from the outside. [20] There is also the position that the association of temporal and spatial dimensions to human life, which emerge in globalization, exert little impact. [20] Glocalization is also said to capture the emergence of unique new indigenous realities that result in the interpenetration of the global and local spheres. [21] The term ‘glocklization’, combining the glocal concept with a Glock pistol, was coined in 2018 to indicate forms of glocalization that are perceived as unbalanced and destructive to local cultural heritage. [22]
Additionally, the concept of glocalization has strong ties to the more commonly understood term globalization, and has been described as a more general treatment of the term. Elements unique to glocalization under this umbrella include the idea that diversity is the essence of social life, that not all differences are erased, history and culture operate autonomously to offer a sense of uniqueness to the experiences of groups (whether cultures, societies or nations), glocalization removes the fear that globalization resembles a tidal wave erasing all differences, and that glocalization does not promise a world free from conflict but offers a more historically grounded and pragmatic worldview. [23]
Glocalization can be represented throughout virtually every sphere of social society, including religion. An example of this can be seen in a study that focused on the differences in Islam in various regions of the world. In this particular study, observations made between the religious pillars in Indonesia and Morocco indicated a significant difference in religious form between the two, blending the fundamental roots with indigenous traditions and local customs. Similar studies have found that regions of the world practicing Christianity and Buddhism experienced similar shifts based on local cultural practices and norms. [24]
While the term "glocalization" is one that developed later in the 20th century, the idea behind it is closely related to the economic and marketing term known as micromarketing – by definition, the "tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets." [25]
Glocalization can be recognized, perhaps most profoundly, in tourism operations throughout the world – particularly in reference to countries in which tour guides and locals are up to date on global pop culture and technology, but still present their communities, heritage, history and culture as distinctively "local." [26] A notable example is referenced by Professor Noel Salazar of the University of Pennsylvania, whose study dove into these distinctive glocalization attributes on the island of Java in Indonesia. [26]
Glocalization works best for companies which have decentralized authority. [27] The cost to the companies increases as they cannot standardise products and projects, different cultures have different needs and wants which is highlighted in this challenge. An example of a company succeeding in creating new products for their emerging market is McDonald's new rice meals in India and China. [28] This shows that McDonald's has done research on and understands their new market's requirements for a successful takeaway food. This however can be very costly and time-consuming. [28] One of the main challenges for the future of glocalization is to govern it. Glocal governance [29] is the interlinkage between global, national and local formal and informal actors that aim to find common ground, take decisions, implement and enforce them.
An example of a global business that has faced challenges due to localization of their products can be presented through the closing of a Starbucks in the Forbidden City of China in 2007. Starbucks' attempt to localize into the culture of China by accommodating their menu to local elements such as serving green tea frappuccinos and enlarging their stores was prevalent in most areas of China, but when Starbucks spread to the Forbidden City, a problem surrounding cultural identity arose. Factors surrounding "western influences" related to Starbucks were seen as a threat by a web-based campaign which was successful in initiating the closing of the Starbucks in the Forbidden City. The leader of this campaign, Rui, stated, "All I want is that Starbucks move out of the Forbidden City peacefully and quietly, and we'll continue enjoying Starbucks coffee elsewhere in the city." [30]
Although there are many challenges to globalisation, when done right it has many benefits; allowing companies to reach a larger target market is just one of them. Society also benefits when globalisation occurs as an increase in market competition generally pushes the price of products down which means the consumers benefit by gaining a lower price point. [31] This decreases the inequality gap as people who couldn't previously afford products when the market was controlled by local monopolies are able to purchase the product more cheaply.
Although globalisation has benefits for the consumer, it does not always benefit the producer, with newer and smaller companies struggling to keep up with the low production costs of the multi-national competitors. This results in either a higher price and loss of consumers, or a lower profit margin, which in turn results in less competition within the market. [32]
This section is missing information about the timing of changes in the soy market.(January 2023) |
Glocalization is also occurring within the agricultural sphere. One case brought up by of this has been in soy farming. Previously,[ when? ] there were numerous small-scale soy farms along the east coast of the US. [33] However, as larger corporations outcompeted smaller ones, attentions have been turned abroad. Anthropologist Andrew Ofstehage refers to this change from small, personal farms to large corporate ones as an aspect of "financialization". Ofstehage expands on this concept by giving the example of the current soy market in Brazil. As financialization has led to land being more expensive and harder to come by in the states, farmers have turned their attention abroad. This farm crisis in the US was a result of increasingly large corporate farms driving out small family farms and acquiring more and more land. Due to this, farmers both new and experienced who are privileged to have capital or investors, have turned their attention abroad. [33] Many have begun to invest in Brazilian land to grow soy with the money from friends, investors, neighbors, or savings. These transnational farmers have had great success but as more farmers have followed these steps the cycle has begun anew. Looking to further expand, farmers often take three paths for further profit and financialization. [33] They either sell their Brazilian farms to a new hopeful farmer, or they keep their farm but return to the states to manage it internationally, or they truly begin anew. Specifically, the farmers sell their Brazilian land and turn Piauí or Tocantins, places where soy grows well, and land is still cheap. [33]
Glocalization of education has been proposed in the specific areas of politics, economics, culture, teaching, information, organization, morality, spirituality, religion and "temporal" literacy.[ clarification needed ] The recommended approach is for local educators to consult global resources for materials and techniques and then adapt them for local use. For example, in information, it involves advancing computer and media understanding to allow students and educators to look beyond their local context. [32]
Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat talks about how the Internet encourages glocalization, such as encouraging people to make websites in their native languages.
Television
Besides the usage of Internet, television and commercials have become useful strategies that global companies have used to help localize their products. Companies, such as McDonald's, have relied on television and commercials in not only the Western Hemisphere but in other parts of the world to attract a varying range of audiences in accordance with the demographic of the local area. For example, they have used mascots ranging anywhere from a male clown in the Western Hemisphere to attract younger audiences to an "attractive" female clown in Japan to attract older audiences. [34]
Glocalization, or glocalism, in community organization refers to community organizing that sees social problems as neither local or global, [35] but interdependent and interconnected (glocal), [36] necessitating organizing practices that concurrently address local problems and global issues. [37] Glocal organizing techniques are commonly associated with The New Community Organizing, and are distinguished from other methods by emphasizing "play, creativity, joy, peer-based popular education, cultural activism, and a healthy dose of experimentation." [38]
One of the most common glocal models of practice, functional community organization, seeks to organize communities (functional communities) around a function (i.e., a need, interest, or common problem that glocally affects people). [39] Functional community organization emphasizes a deep understanding of issues (e.g., power, empowerment, and community interests), strategies for change (e.g., popular education, direct action, and collaboration), and communication strategies that promote "inclusive networking." [40] The goals of functional community organization are to organize communities through direct action in order to meet immediate community need while addressing glocalized problems. In so doing, functional communities act as their own unique forms of protest, vehicles for community empowerment, and alternatives to institutionalized social welfare systems. Popular examples of functional communities include community projects such as community gardens, Community Technology Centers, gift economy markets, food sharing, and other forms franchise activism and mutual aid.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)A community is a social unit with a shared socially significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable good relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, TV network, society, or humanity at large. Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large group affiliations such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.
George Ritzer is an American sociologist, professor, and author who has mainly studied globalization, metatheory, patterns of consumption, and modern/postmodern social theory. His concept of McDonaldization draws upon Max Weber's idea of rationalization through the lens of the fast food industry. He coined the term in a 1983 article for The Journal of American Culture, developing the concept in The McDonaldization of Society (1993), which is among the best selling monographs in the history of American sociology.
Medical anthropology studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives. It is one of the most highly developed areas of anthropology and applied anthropology, and is a subfield of social and cultural anthropology that examines the ways in which culture and society are organized around or influenced by issues of health, health care and related issues.
Local food is food that is produced within a short distance of where it is consumed, often accompanied by a social structure and supply chain different from the large-scale supermarket system.
Network society is an expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience.
Urban agriculture refers to various practices of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in urban areas. The term also applies to the area activities of animal husbandry, aquaculture, beekeeping, and horticulture in an urban context. Urban agriculture is distinguished from peri-urban agriculture, which takes place in rural areas at the edge of suburbs.
Barry Wellman was an American-Canadian sociologist and was the co-director of the Toronto-based international NetLab Network. His areas of research were community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations. His overarching interest was in the paradigm shift from group-centered relations to networked individualism. He has written or co-authored more than 300 articles, chapters, reports and books. Wellman was a professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto for 46 years, from 1967 to 2013, including a five-year stint as S.D. Clark Professor.
Transnationalism is a research field and social phenomenon grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states.
In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the process of reterritorialization.
Localism is a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity. Localism can be contrasted with regionalism and centralized government, with its opposite being found in unitarism.
The phrase "Think globally, act locally" or "Think global, act local" has been used in various contexts, including planning, environment, education, mathematics, business and the church.
Community building is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of community among individuals within a regional area or with a common need or interest. It is often encompassed under the fields of community organizing, community organization, community work, and community development.
Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location.
Sustainability standards and certifications are voluntary guidelines used by producers, manufacturers, traders, retailers, and service providers to demonstrate their commitment to good environmental, social, ethical, and food safety practices. There are over 400 such standards across the world.
Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. The idea of cultural globalization emerged in the late 1980s, but was diffused widely by Western academics throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. For some researchers, the idea of cultural globalization is reaction to the claims made by critics of cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s.
Transcreation is a term coined from the words "translation" and "creation", and a concept used in the field of translation studies to describe the process of adapting a message from one language to another, while maintaining its intent, style, tone, and context. A successfully transcreated message evokes the same emotions and carries the same implications in the target language as it does in the source language. It is related to the concept of localization, which similarly involves comprehensively adapting a translated text for the target audience. Transcreation highlights the translator's creative role. Unlike many other forms of translation, transcreation also often involves adapting not only words, but video and images to the target audience.
Noel B. Salazar is a sociocultural anthropologist known for his transdisciplinary work on mobility and travel, the local-to-global nexus, discourses and imaginaries of 'Otherness', heritage, cultural brokering, cosmopolitanism and endurance.
David G. Hebert is a musicologist and comparative educationist, employed as Professor of Music at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, where he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group. He has contributed to the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, sociomusicology, comparative education, and East Asian Studies. Since 2018, he has been manager of the Nordic Network for Music Education, a multinational state-funded organization that sponsors intensive Master courses and exchange of university music lecturers and students across Northern Europe. He is also a visiting professor in Sweden with the Malmo Academy of Music at Lund University, and an honorary professor with the Education University of Hong Kong. He has previously been sponsored by East Asian governments as a visiting research scholar with Nichibunken in Kyoto, Japan, and the Central Conservatory of Music, in Beijing, China.
Planning cultures are the differing customs and practices in the profession of urban and regional planning that exist around the world. The discourse, models, and styles of communication in planning are adapted to the various local conditions of each community such that planning approaches from one part of the world are not necessarily transferable to other parts of the globe. Planning culture can refer to how planning professionals undertake their practice in a given location, where they are "affected by both individual and collectively shared cognitive frames" that shape their view of the world. Planners, as stated by Simone Abram, are "constantly in the process of actually producing culture". The concept of planning culture also encompasses how planning actually unfolds within a community, as shaped by its culture and influenced by its people. Differing cultural contexts produce different planning and policy responses to issues "bound to specific local (cultural) contexts". Examples of planning cultures include those specific to different countries, regions, and parts of the globe, as well as differing cultures that exist within the same location, such as indigenous planning cultures.
Cosmopolitan localism or Cosmolocalism is a social innovation approach to community development that seeks to link local and global communities through resilient infrastructures that bring production and consumption closer together, building on distributed systems. The concept of cosmopolitan localism was pioneered by Wolfgang Sachs, a scholar in the field of environment, development, and globalization. Sachs is known as one of the many followers of Ivan Illich and his work has influenced the green and ecological movements. Contrary to glocalisation, cosmolocalism moves from locality to universality, acknowledging the local as the locus of social co-existence and emphasizing the potential of global networking beyond capitalist market rules.