ABSTRACT
When evoked as a counterpoint to globalisation, the term ‘locality’ conjures up images of communities where cultural traditions and social networks are closely integrated and rooted in Cartesian space. Localities are described as thriving as a result of global connectedness, and place-based sentiments and ‘strategies of localisation’1 are fuelled by collective desires to resist ‘global localisation’ in which economic capital, the state and technoscience produce locality in their own favour (Escobar 2001: 161). Apart from studies of refugees forced into new socio-spatial configurations by physical violence, most scholarly accounts suggest that strategies of localisation are effective political resources because they draw upon territorialised culture. This is especially true for indigenous movements, for which continuous physical and cultural occupation of land underwrites claims of ownership. It is also true for migrants reterritorialising their identities in new places, both in their residential communities and public spaces. The ‘politics of recognition’ (Taylor 1994) through which social groups seek to legitimate their claims to resources, social position and self-determination more often than not depend upon recognition of culture and society as rooted in place.
