Global Dimensions
Space, Place and the Contemporary World
John Rennie ShortThe concept of globalization is supposed to be bringing everyone closer together and making everywhere the same, but this book disagrees, arguing that the world culture of today actually thrives on local differences, and that a global polity tends to reinforce the power of individual nation states.
Globalization is one of today's most powerful and pervasive ideas – for some a welcome dream, for others a nightmare. The term is used in the popular press as a sort of shorthand for the notion that all parts of the world are becoming more alike. It is also used as a marketing concept to sell goods, commodities and services. ‘Going global’ has become the mantra for a whole range of companies, business gurus and institutions.
John Rennie Short disagrees with this interpretation, arguing that the world today actually thrives on local differences and that a global polity tends to reinforce – not repress – the power of individual nation-states. He insists that globalization is not so much replacing difference with sameness as providing opportunities for new interactions between spaces and locations, new connections between the global and the local, new social landscapes and more diversity rather than less.
The concept of globalization is supposed to be bringing everyone closer together and making everywhere the same, but this book disagrees, arguing that the world culture of today actually thrives on local differences, and that a global polity tends to reinforce the power of individual nation states.
Globalization is one of today's most powerful and pervasive ideas – for some a welcome dream, for others a nightmare. The term is used in the popular press as a sort of shorthand for the notion that all parts of the world are becoming more alike. It is also used as a marketing concept to sell goods, commodities and services. ‘Going global’ has become the mantra for a whole range of companies, business gurus and institutions.
John Rennie Short disagrees with this interpretation, arguing that the world today actually thrives on local differences and that a global polity tends to reinforce – not repress – the power of individual nation-states. He insists that globalization is not so much replacing difference with sameness as providing opportunities for new interactions between spaces and locations, new connections between the global and the local, new social landscapes and more diversity rather than less.
-
'
. . . well written . . . there is certainly plenty of argument based on personal viewpoints [and] drawing extensively on straightforward examples.
'Progress in Human Geography
1. The Dialectics of Globalization
2. What Time is this Place?
3. Does a Global Polity Mean the End of the Nation-State?
4. A Global Economy?
5. Global Cultures
6. Border Spaces
7. The Annihilation of Space, the Tyranny of Time
8. Democratizing Globalization
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
John Rennie Short is Emeritus Professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His many books include The Urban Now: Living in an Age of Global Urbanism (2023).
