ABSTRACT
Localising processes concentrate the elements of social life around a centre which is home, whereas globalising processes decentre experience – A ‘parochial’ mentality, secure in the validity of its own way of life, increasingly gives way to a ‘provincial’ mentality orientated towards the metropolis – Localising processes embody a particular conjunction of space and time in which the world is qualitatively differentiated between centre and periphery, inside and outside, home and abroad – global systems rely on separate dimensions of space and time which are rationalised and uniform – Rationalised space and time enable experience to be translated into quantitative terms, and so extracted from local contexts and integrated into wider systems – The effect is to decenter experience and subject local worlds of meaning to a globalised culture of mimesis.
