ABSTRACT
In chapter one it was stated that globalization has produced various competing centres, where a number of new actors are demanding to be heard both locally and globally. Globalization, it was argued, has facilitated the use of nationalism even in cases when people do not react against globalization as such. The struggle may be regional or local, where the grievances expressed as national feelings are reactions against cultural domination and humiliation as well as against material exploitation through global economic mechanisms. At the core of the discussion are those global/local nodal points that emerge when the global or regional meet the local. These are the forces that change the character of an individual’s relationship with her immediate surroundings. It is when domination meets resistance that change is initiated (Kinnvall 2002b). From an identity perspective it reflects the view of identity as a process of becoming rather than a process of being, where the result is something that is social and unique at the same time. This is at the heart of psychoanalysis, which is concerned with how discursively constructed subject positions are taken up by concrete persons through fantasy identifications and emotional ‘investments’. As exemplified by one Sikh granthi (scripture-reader), named Iqbal Singh:
When someone disturbs the way I want to live, and the Indian government wants me to do it another way, then it becomes politics for them. But not for me. I just have my way of life. I may have to fight for the right to live it that way, but I don’t call it politics.
