Globalization from the Edge: A Framework for Understanding How Small and Medium-Sized Firms in the Periphery ‘Go Global’

Abstract

The great majority of theoretical and empirical writing on economic globalization continues to focus on urban and semiurban regions, while largely ignoring the vast rural and peripheral spaces of the world. This paper uses research with small and medium-sized enterprises in remote regions of British Columbia, Canada, to develop a way of understanding the unique practices involved in ‘performing’ global economic action from the rural periphery. Specifically, a framework based on insights from three theoretical approaches is advanced—relational network theory, an actor-network approach to distance, and complexity theory in economics—that, in combination, allow the capture of what is unique about efforts to ‘go global’ from marginal geographies.