ABSTRACT
In conventional understandings of “globalization”, the term is often conceptualized as a powerful force from the outside that steers the social, political, and economic systems of nations or localities in a particular direction. This conventional “top-down” approach to globalization, however, has been increasingly criticized for its global-local dichotomy, which is based on a dualistic separation of globalization as being “out there”, and of nations or localities as being “in here”; hence, globalization is understood as an external force that impinges on specific nations or localities. On the basis of this critique, an alternative view has been suggested that emphasizes multi-scalar processes of globalization. Emphasizing the spatiality of globalization, for example, Dicken et al. (1997) suggest that globalization processes are intrinsically heterogeneous rather than homogeneous in their forms and effects; they involve highly intricate interactions among a whole variety of social, political, and economic practices and institutions across a spectrum of geographical scales. In this sense, it has been argued that globalization is not the universal cause of contemporary social, political, and economic changes (Yeung, 2002), but an outcome of class conflict and power struggles occurring at various geographical scales (Cox, 2002).
