ABSTRACT
In this chapter1 I will, after outlining my general perspective, investigate the following assertions:
(i) that the processes of ‘globalization’, and their ‘local’ impacts, result not simply from economic factors or from global social interaction, but from an orientation to compete within the global arena, and that such an orientation operates as a form of cultural capital;
(ii) that such an orientation is often seen to be in conflict with the localist perspective, which is among the cultural values of ‘traditional’ workingclass communities;
(iii) that these cultural practices combine with material factors to produce certain exclusionary mechanisms; and
(iv) that the ‘global’ is itself constructed through these local practices, and that the construction of ‘locality’ is a fluent social process built around essentially political struggles over the ‘ownership’ of space, place and identity.
