Geography Reference
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including, for example, the globalization of fast food, dress, or cinema, all of
which are bound up with people's world views and daily lives (Barber 1995).
Often contemporary globalization is equated with cultural homogenization,
as if the world economy stamped a monoculture (typically American in
nature) throughout the world (Friedman 2005), i.e., for much of the world,
globalization is synonymous with Americanization. As the world's largest
economic, military, and political power, the U.S. is simultaneously envied,
imitated, and despised across the globe. Admiration for American culture is
typically strongest among the young, so that globalization creates a generation
gap in terms of outlook and preferences.
While there can be no denying that cultural homogenization often takes
place in the wake of globalization, generally at the expense of old, deeply
held traditions, it is equally true that globalization has meant di
ff
erent things
in di
c. To one degree or another,
all forms of capital are embedded in local territorial relations, a process con-
tinually
ff
erent places, i.e., it is geographically speci
fi
filled with tensions and undergoing revision (Yeung 1998). Moreover,
global trends are mediated through national policies in di
fi
erent ways, and
local regions do not just passively absorb changes imparted to them by the
global economy, but in turn shape that world system, in
ff
uencing it in ways
that originate from diverse circumstances. The dualities and complexities
brought into being by postmodern globalization are well expressed by Graham
and Marvin (2001:4), who argue “Airports, freight zones, retail malls, sports
stadia and university, research, hospital, media and technology campuses are
similarly emerging as zones of intense regional and global interchange whilst
at the same time walls, ramparts and CCTV systems are constructed which
actively
fl
filter their relationships with the local urban fabric.” Worldwide con-
nections are thus paradoxically accompanied by reinforced local boundaries
within communities. The global and local are therefore intimately intertwined,
or “glocalized” (Swyngedouw 1997).
Globalization is often portrayed as some unstoppable, teleological force
independent of human intervention. In this reading, globalization is inevit-
able, and countries can do little to stop it but accommodate to its needs and
requirements. Such a view denies the historical origins of globalization and
the fact that people create it. In fact, globalization has historically undergone
occasional reversals, such as during the trade wars of the 1930s. Moreover,
globalization is often resisted, sometimes successfully and sometimes not,
often by those who feel that it presents a secular, amoral threat to established
local traditions, who view the market as a mechanism for reducing everyone
to a consumer, annihilating all forms of identity except those that have to do
with the commodity. For populations with values that lie largely outside of
the market, globalization can be deeply o
fi
ensive morally. Thus, the more
globalization has disrupted local value systems around the world, the greater
has been the backlash against it. One of the most common forms of resist-
ance to hypermobility is the withdrawal into locality. Castells (1984:331)
writes that “When people
ff
fi
find themselves unable to control the world, they
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