Glocalization and identity politics reflections on globalization theories from the Taiwanese experience

Abstract

Globalization theory elicits debates on the subjects of nation‐state, locality, and cultural identity. As Tomlinson (1997) points out, the boundaries of the nation‐state are traversed by the interconnections of globalization in the form of global capital markets, global media flows, and cultural identifiers. Nevertheless, nation‐states also try to play the roles of active agents to territorially curb the globalizing tendency. In the debates on the essence of ‘local’, ‘local’ no longer stands for geographic place; it is a willed construct. However, little discussion has been devoted to the external forces involved in the process of willed construction, and this elicits debate between globalization theorists and theorists of colonialism and cultural/media imperialism. A similar deficiency is also present in the analysis of the history of colonization and the operation of colonized subjects’ identification. This paper explores several unsettled key arguments revolving around the relationship between the local and the global, and aims to reassess Taiwan's experience of globalization within a new framework.