ABSTRACT
The juggernauts of internationalization and globalization are mixing up the world in all sorts of new ways. Nation-states are under pressure, either dissolving in the face of these global conformities or changing their form and function while they have to adapt to these new international and transnational coercions (Cohen 1997: 156). Despite the pressure for all places to become globalized and ‘cosmopolitan’, all kinds of new contestatory ‘spaces’ have emerged where clearly-observable counter-nationalist, counter-ethnicist, counter-racist, counter-sexist and religious fundamentalist movements have begun to flower or re-flower. Scores of subdued populations now use the fissures within the postcolonial mood of the globalizing moment to forge a return (to varying degrees!) to what was/is local and what was/is familiar to them (Hall 1997: 35-6). They reach out for old/new groundings in response to the changing ethical, cultural and spiritual demands which stem from the tensions brought about by the leviathan of new global order.
