ABSTRACT
The activation of regional identities—and, in general, the cultural dynamics at the sub-national regional level resulting from the citizenry's reaction to globalization's homogenizing drives—will take a different turn. Multilinear rather than unilinear conceptions of the evolutionary type should guide the study of globalization's effects. Comparative studies of industrialization processes have shown the importance of the factors leading to embeddedness. The explanatory factors that are most obvious, like capital, labor, resources, and the like, move on a macro-structural level and constitute necessary but not sufficient conditions for the rise and consolidation of regional production systems. These processes involve complex decisionmaking based on motives that go beyond these macrofactors and will only be well understood through an actor-orientated approach. Processes of standardization and diversification, unification and fragmentation are often occurring simultaneously and account for a rather chaotic and contradictory picture. Globalizing tendencies interact constantly with localizing processes.
