Local Sites of Globalisation

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Taking into account that global economic and political processes are materialised and manifested on a local level, these processes provoke changes in the material culture of the city i.e. of environment, architecture, commodities etc. as well as in social interaction and cultural practice. These changes are not to be interpreted as homogenious adaptations abstract global effects, but they are translated in a dynamic process and mixed with existing (and "traditional") everyday practices. In urban space, which is composed by the materiality, historicity, social practice, and experience of the people who live this space are inscribed. Therefore urban space as a site of the local can be considered as the site where global tendencies are adopted subjectively and on the level of everyday life. Possible subjects to analyse theses complex layers of global effects and local phenomena are for example a) space, environment, architecture, b) everyday practice and experience, c) commodities and consumption. Mexico City is a place where indicators of globalisation are materialised. The economic development of the last 30 years provoked urban transformation processes, which can be recognised as an "intensification of urban space" and processes of "new centrality". The architectural and ethnographic research of specific urban spaces provide access to both "micro" and "macro" visions of the local and the global of the metropolis. In this article example of qualitative research of urban transformation in Mexico City are presented in three concrete urban spaces.