ABSTRACT
The global also includes the local. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1995) reminds us, the local can be globalized (globalized localism, such as the cases of Mickey Mouse, Coca Cola, and the English language), and the global can be localized (localized globalism, when local conditions such as national laws are changed in response to global pressures). This point is of crucial importance as it highlights the unequal nature of globalization. The changes forced on individuals by globalism are felt to a far greater extent by people in those areas of the world that have no or little say on globalism, that are in other words mainly subjected to localized globalism, such as residents of third-world countries and various indigenous peoples, than by people in areas of the world that actively export globalized localisms, such as the privileged residents of first-world states. This is certainly true in the case of international law and international human rights. In both cases, the products of Western culture have become part of the global landscape, presented as universal values and imposed on non-Western worlds.
