Local Responses to Global Integration

Charlambos Kasimis, Apostolos G. Papadopoulos

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429819582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Politik

First published in 1999, this volume features articles from 19 contributors on local responses to global integration, with a focus on rural areas and their adoption of new functions as both producers and consumers. It responds to a crisis in the regulatory framework and reconsiders globality, revealing new forms of production and consumption developing in diverse ways amongst these global rural communities. Authors from Australia, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Venezuela are represented.

1 Introduction: Local Boundaries or Embeddedness in the Global?

CHARALAMBOS KASIMIS AND APOSTOLOS G. PAPADOPOULOS

Globalization: the concept and the arguments

Reference to the global aspect of economic, social, political and cultural processes has been very popular in the majority of analyses of the 1990s. The concept of globalization conditions the whole discussion concerning the social and economic restructuring of different localities and/or regions in any part of the globe. Moreover, in many treatments the ‘globalization process’ is used as a shorthand for describing the character of rapid changes occurring across the globe, referring to the increasing inter-connections among different localities, practices and systems as well as illustrating the impact of particular incidents or processes which have occurred in specific areas upon the rest of the world. Often the globalization process is considered as an exogenous factor to particular localities, thus stressing the significance of macro-structures and macro-processes for explaining micro-instances and/or concrete cases. Moreover, it is based upon an implicit assumption of an increased concentration of power (e.g. economic, political, cultural), which tends essentially to push towards the intensification of integration processes within wider social and economic contexts. In respect with the impact of globalization upon specific localities it is normally considered that the latter are based upon wider processes and interdependencies for their existence and that the world space is the arena for local action (indicative is the expression, ‘think globally act locally’ Holton, 1998, p. 18). The primacy of the global space over the local is stressed by the inter-connectivity and networking of localities and the domination of trajectories leading to a formation of a global economic and social system.

Rural space, as any other space, constitutes an arena of the globalization process. The alleged specificity of ‘rural’ local responses only reinserts the common theme of different forms of local reflexivity towards globalization. Despite the discussion concerning the particularity of agriculture for the capitalist integration or, in modern terms, of global integration, we do not consider the agricultural sector as a special case presenting problems for the integration of concrete localities in the global economy. Agricultural production relations constitute just one set of relations along with other sectors within concrete localities in geographical space. In this respect, the utility of the socioeconomic restructuring thesis for examining localized processes of social change appears to be increasing (Marsden et al., 1990). The tendency to treat agriculture as an example of the wider process of globalization, increased economic integration and subordination of family farming to large agro-industrial capital, has gained significant weight and merits particular attention especially when studying the spatial implications of internationalized commodity production and circulation chains (Friedland, 1991).

One of the basic arguments regarding globalization, refers to the novelty of this process (Weiss, 1997). In fact, globalization signifies changes which have started long ago during the 16th century. However, it refers today to a transformation of the elementary time-space relationship, it initiates a reflexive process of change, designates the decline of universalism and particularism; and combines an ambiguous mixture of risk and trust (Waters, 1995, pp. 62–64). The ‘sociology of globalization’ intricately links such trajectories closely to the all-encompassing concept of ‘modernity’. Apart from a specification of modernity, Giddens describes globalization as a ‘stretching process’ between local and distant social forms and events, ‘in so far as the modes of connection between different social contexts or regions become networked across the earth’s surface as a whole’ (1990, p. 64). This ‘stretching’ process has triggered off contradictory tendencies at the local level. Local transformation is increasingly caught between the lateral extension of social relations over time and across space and the reiterated need for local autonomy, regional identity and cultural specificity. For Giddens, such a process of uneven development signifies the ‘incompleteness’ of modernity as a ‘Western project’ (1990, p. 175).

In this context, globalization is considered either as a ‘late modern’ or a ‘post-modern’ project referring to ‘Western’ societies. Giddens’ view that ‘modernity is inherently globalizing’ implies a particular variant of modernity (i.e. ‘reflexive’). Two reservations on Giddens’ version of globalization have been raised. The first is Mouzelis’ (1997) consideration of modernity drawing from the distinction between ‘formal and substantive differentiation’ as a basis for defining ‘variants of modernity’, leading to a ‘multi-polar’ conception of global economy and society. The second is Therborn’s (1995) analysis of ‘routes to/through modernity’ allowing for open possibilities and institutional differentiation against a dynamically developing and multiply defined modernity. Therborn treats globalization as a spatial concept, thus stressing the decentralized character of modern development processes (see Therborn, Chapter 2). Both critics reject the ‘hyper-globalization’ thesis which connects globalization with the deconstruction of the nation-state and the fragmentation of the wider economy and society into its basic elements. Instead, they acknowledge the significance of new phenomena, such as the prevalence of the logic or values of one institutional subsystem and their ‘colonization’ of other institutional spheres (Mouzelis, 1997, p. 39), or that a notion of ‘global village’ which ‘stands a chance as another global modernity, thriving from local responses, rather than from central fantasies of power’ (Therborn, Chapter 2, p. 38).

Apart from being a socioeconomic process globalization is part and parcel of a sociopolitical discourse and cannot be conceived in terms of any kind of inevitability, as is often the case in the neo-liberalist or neo-conservative literature (Koc, 1994). Nevertheless, globalization does not constitute an era although it significantly marks a ‘post-developmentalist’ period in world economy. For McMichael (1996), globalization labels the project which succeeded the so-called ‘development project’ that predominated in the post-war period until the early 1970s. McMichael examines globalization retrospectively and seeks its ‘legitimization’ as a ‘project’ in a world-view perspective. Globalization in itself signifies both the process and the end-state of global integration dynamics. The periodization of world economy implies some sort of evolutionism and externality of social change. In McMichael’s conception of globalization economistic arguments are implicit under the view that ‘the globalization project represents an institutional form for stabilizing capitalism’ (1996, p. 39). Although such a political economy approach conceives a significant part of globalization in both its political and institutional implications, it reproduces the preconception that it is essentially another variant for the spatial reflection of capital and labour (Friedland, 1994). However, one cannot deduce from this that the global-local relationship can be conceived wholly in these terms. Neo-liberalism has not yet completely dominated world economy and the local should not be reified in terms of local voluntaristic responsiveness. In reality, the particular character of the ‘local’ can only be conceived in view of the global-local interconnections. Moreover, far from merely constituting an alternative sociopolitical regime, globalization only creates the space for reconsidering the locality dynamics and, in fact, allowing for local diversity. In the more recent sociological literature globalization cannot be dissociated from localization processes. In this connection, one should not neglect to examine the ways and types of local or regional specificities of rural/local production processes which deserve in-depth analysis not only for dealing with regional development issues but also, and more importantly, for responding to external and ‘top down’ policy design or implementation (see Papadopoulos, Chapter 12).

Globalization cannot be defined as the inverse of localization, but rather as a concept which incorporates a dual identity of ‘the global in the local’ and ‘the local in the global’. This dual identity of globalization is better described in the use of ‘glocalization’ as a more precise term dealing with the time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity axes of the restructuring process (Robertson, 1995, p. 40). It should not be forgotten that such an analysis concerns processes referring to the nation-state, the cultural interactions and the localities. For example, ‘glocalization’ has been considered useful for international relations and political analyses (Holton, 1998) while it provides the basis for dealing with concrete cases in terms of interlocking global and local processes. It suffices here to say that the analysis of the global-local relationship faces, in spatial terms, a seemingly unbridgeable dilemma. Within a rapidly changing socioeconomic terrain, the ‘locale’ or the region may be of two variants: a locality or a region which ‘wins’ and a locality or a region which ‘loses’ (Lipietz, 1992). This structuralist analysis of a virtually ‘closed’ socioeconomic setting does not leave space for an ‘intermediate’ position for localities or regions.

On the part of the specific locality or the region, choices are not self-evident since they require an evaluation of a number of factors, such as entrepreneurship, networking, availability of (skilled) labour force, availability of resources, subsidiarity of state actions at a macro-economic level etc., in order to obtain a ‘winning’ case status and clearly initiate an endogenous development process (Barquero, 1991; Verschoor, 1997). In this respect, it has been argued that localities apart from being defined as localized social structures, they may also undertake the role of an agent. Stressing the agency part of localized social structures (taking into account class analysis), Cox and Mair (1991) aim at producing a radical redefinition of localities as virtual or potential agents. In this discussion, we may distinguish two programmatic options concerning local development: one which stresses the reconstitution of the local essentially in view of a ‘bottom up’ approach (see Mack, Chapter 10); and a second which takes account of the larger state (regional and/or rural) policy orientation to redefine the context of local development opportunities and its character in view of the restructuring dynamics (see Ruuskanen, Chapter 11).

Moreover, a modern analysis of local integrity or local identity, may also involve an evolutionist consideration, within a rapidly changing post-modern and – consequently – fragmented socioeconomic reality, and may well argue that the local is still significant to study for its particularities (see Starosta and Draganova, Chapter 7). Local integrity and identity are often considered in cultural terms, while the importance of the social fabric and social bonds is underlined for the maintenance of local or cultural specificity which is considered to downplay the impact of the globalization process (see Vera-Toscano and Chapman, Chapter 8). The persistent stress on social bonding, which in fact constitutes the gist of the ‘community spirit’, identifying itself with a cultural variety of social capital (Putnam, 1993), has been criticized for being conservative and disorientating from the actual (i.e. the contradictory) question of social cohesion and social integration at the local level (Portes, 1998).

This discussion brings us to the issue of global-local relations which is, in real life, a tug-of-war between macro- and micro-social dynamics conditioned by economic restructuring, political and cultural processes. In order to differentiate among various types of global-local relations, we may refer to basic trajectories of the social construction processes. Analytically, there are two different modes of social construction or structuration: one is through conflict and the second through consensus. In this respect, and considering these two modes of social construction as elementary ideal types upon which ‘civil society’¹ may be based, we classify local responses to global integration along two basic (not necessarily contradicting) variants: ‘the local as a boundary’ which formulates the local in contradistinction to the global and where the local postulates its recognition or its reinstatement; and the ‘local embeddedness’ in the global which describes a coexistence of local opportunities and global needs and where external calls are transferred to internal mechanisms reflexively. In this way, the ‘local as a boundary’ may well imply conflictual conditions for local responsiveness to global integration, whereas the ‘local embeddedness’ may be based upon collective agreements, social pacts or consensual actions and/or practices.

Local responses to global integration

The dynamics of the local, according to the restructuring thesis, can only be conceived with respect to the global situation, the socioeconomic integration trajectories and the growing internationalization of industrial and financial capital. In such a world, the local is defined in terms of local social structures which, however, are increasingly linked to wider issues of class formation and civil society (Marsden et al., 1990). On the other hand, the conceptualization of the local on the basis of the restructuring thesis does not leave much space for local ‘reactions’ to wider processes. This is the reason why, often more action-oriented schemes were employed to illustrate the new character and dynamics of the local. Mixtures of structural explanatory schemes and situational socio-cultural analyses have been proposed to examine the local occurrence of social transformation. More particularly, rural local resistance to global processes may be treated as the inter-penetration between intended and unintended effects of purposive, and socio-historical actions signifying the existence of countervailing forces (see Llambí et al., Chapter 5).

The discussion so far has raised some challenging questions about the globalization process. In this respect, one may argue that any local boundaries posed to globalization are neither circumstantial or implicit. Rather they can be systematic and visible only when local and/or national concrete socioeconomic conditions are examined and/or appraised. Thus, the diversity and the specificity of the local signifies not only the modus operandi of the globalization process but also, and more importantly, the limits to this process (Papadopoulos, 1999). The strength that local resistance is expressed with depends upon a number of factors linked to the socio-political, economic and cultural sphere. For Scott, there are three axes along which limits to globalization are raised: a) the contestation and resistance to this process; b) the complexity of culture and agency; and c) the resilience of the nation state (Scott, 1997, pp. 18–20). All these three axes provide the coordinates for studying local responsiveness.

The role of the state remains a central issue of debate in the discussion of globalization. Often, the simultaneous trajectories of market integration (e.g. EU, NAFTA, WTO) and state disintegration (e.g. USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) appear to contradict each other forming a new situation (post-Cold War period), which allegedly points to the existence of a multi-polar globe (Roumeliotis, 1996)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Local Boundaries or Embeddedness in the Global?
• Part I Globalization, Diversity and Rural Space
• Part II Farmers and Farming Women
• Part III Communities and Households
• Part IV Local and Regional Development