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- Title
Glocommodification: How the Global Consumes the Local -- McDonald's in Israel.
- Authors
Ram, Uri
- Abstract
One of the more controversial aspects of globalization is its, cultural implication. Does globalization lead to universal cultural uniformity, or does it leave room for particularism and cultural diversity? The global-local encounter has spawned a complex polemic between homogenizers and heterogenizers. This article proposes to shift the ground of the debate from the homogeneous-heterogeneous dichotomy to a structural-symbolic construct. It is argued here that while both homogenization and heterogenization are dimensions of globalization, they take place at different societal levels. Homogenization occurs at the structural-institutional level. The proposed structural-symbolic model facilitates a realistic assessment of global-local relations. In this view, while global technological, organizational and commercial flows need not destroy local habits and customs, but, indeed, may preserve or even revive them, the global does tend to subsume and appropriate the local, or to consume it, so to say, sometimes to the extent that the seemingly local, symbolically, becomes a specimen of the global, structurally.
- Subjects
GLOBALIZATION &; society; MULTICULTURALISM; PARTICULARISM (Political science); ORGANIZATIONAL change; SOCIAL change; CULTURE
- Publication
Current Sociology, 2004, Vol 52, Issue 1, p11
- ISSN
0011-3921
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0011392104039311