ABSTRACT
The diversity amongst the chapters of this book suggests the process of globalization is proving difficult to pin down conceptually and to demonstrate empirically. One theme nevertheless stands out. Questions are increasingly being posed about the appropriateness of ‘the nation’ as the level of aggregation at which the most important governing decisions are made and, consequently, as the predominant unit in social scientific analysis. Academics from the many disciplines which have long taken nations, (national) societies and national governments as their frames of reference have become more interested in supra-national and sub-national issues and analyses not only for the light they shed on national ones but as important variables in their own right. The interplay between global and local forces, in addition to or independently of national ones, has thus attracted more attention. It is clearly a critical issue for this volume. In this context, urban/locality studies have experienced a resurgence. Urban geographers, sociologists and political scientists still tend to plough their own furrows. A lively debate has none the less begun to develop within, and occasionally across, disciplines about the extent to which sub-national levels of analysis—and the economic, political and cultural processes that operate sub-nationally—have become more or less important in a period of increased globalization.
