SUMMARIES OF THE ARTICLES

Summaries of the Articles



Summaries of the Articles

Article 1

The article "The local and the global: globalization and ethnicity" written by Stuart Hall was published in Culture, Globalization and the World-System in 1997. The article reexamines some of the main questions regarding globalization and it's cultural, ethnic and identity related contexts. As an Englishman, Hall examines globalization from the British point of view for which globalization is not a new phenomenon, however one that today bears rather different characteristics than it did in the time of the British Empire. And this is one of Stuart Hall's main points in "The local and the global: globalization and ethnicity" were he claims that the identity of Englishness was formed in the wake of England dominant position in a world that was dominated by nation-states through imperialism. This identity, Stuart Hall claims, is an exclusivist one which stems from a certain historical moment in which British discourse saw England and the English as ruling and commanding virtually anyone who was not English. All subjects of the British Empire were placed in the position of the "other" in relation to the British eye which saw itself as central. Hall notes that the "British eye" was very good at observing everything else but failed at acknowledging the very fact that it was itself looking at something. This positioning eye positioned everything else in relation to the British, and by knowing what everything else is, it knows what it itself is not.

Global cities are also distinguished by the fact that their elites have a strong orientation to the world market. The dominant social strata of these cities have about "their" city is primarily a class, but less of a territorial or national interest. They operate globally and locally are relatively few roots. The result is a divergence between local institutions and concerns of large populations on the one hand, and the "outward" oriented activities and interests of global elites on the other.

The author finds the British identity to be a masculine one. Being English means being an Englishman. In addition, it is quite the demanding task nowadays to convince the British that they are "just" another ethnicity with its own indigenous characteristics, like any other ethnicity. The British ideology is presenting itself as natural, unified and static. Identity, however, is neither one of these and is in constant need of a contradiction in order to stabilize itself. However, in the current age of globalization British identity is challenged by a number of factors and processes. First the demise of England's economic stance that went from being the first industrialized country to being one of many and not the first among those many. The 70's economic crisis opened the global markets to new game rules of capital and technology. The new relations of production in the age of globalization links developed countries with developing ones and transforms relationship structures between different countries and societies. A second consequential factor which fragments the traditional British identity is the ...