Debates on globalization continue to evoke Eurocentric geographical imaginaries whereby the core is synonymous with the West, while the periphery is Third World. Furthermore, dichotomies such as the global/local and centre/periphery often construct the West as the site of production of global capitals while the 'Third World', with limited self-determination, is perceived primarily as the receiver of Western influences. It is widely acknowledged, by postcolonial scholars in particular, that such dualisms reify the direction of global flows as being primarily from the centre to the margins, with greater density and intensity at the metropole. Challenging the notion that global flows are always and inevitably from the core to the margins, theorists foreground instead the movement of ideas, people and material goods and services within the Third World and from the Third World to the centre (see Bhabha 1994; Said 1993). Most obviously, the migration of people from devel oping to industrialized countries continues to have substantial and diverse cultural, political and economic influences on Western societies (see Held 1999). While we are sympathetic to explanations that equate globalization with Westernization (Amin 1996) and argue that globalization extends the reach of Western power and influence, here we draw on postcolonial approaches that emphasize how global flows of, for example, media and finance, are not necessarily transferred intact and applied unchanged in other places, even though they may indeed articulate Western interests and representations (Miller 1 998a 1 998b). Rather, we underline that they are mediated in local spaces in multiple, contextual and heterogeneous ways and are interpreted variously reflecting the diversity of subjectivities on the ground (Axford 1995; Burbach et al. 1997). Taking these debates further, below we argue that even though much critical work empha sizes how local spaces are not simply 'impacted upon' but also create spaces of contestation, produce acts of subversion and instigate processes of negotiation (Hall 1980), many critical discourses still tend to perceive the centre as dynamic, cosmopolitan and proactive, while unwittingly constructing the so called Third World parochial and reactive. In the observations that follow, we challenge dualistic and homogenizing understandings of global ization that continue to represent Third World spaces, and the people within and from them, as reactive to global forces rather than creative in shaping them. Indeed, we argue that between the core and periphery flows are not uni-directional and the relationship is highly complex and dynamic. The local and global are not in opposition, but are interrelated and mutu ally constituted (Massey and Jess 1995). Thus, since 'globalization . . . is neither a singular condition nor a linear process' (Held et al. 1999, 23), there is a need for greater acknowledgement and understand ing of its different spatial and temporal consequences. In order to understand processes of globalization and modernity, Urry uses the notion of 'global com plexity' and asks,