ABSTRACT
In contrast to the placeless and faceless global, the local holds out the promise of real relationships with real people and places. Yet eco-localism is only one amongst a complex array of localism discourses, which increasingly include anti-immigration localisers or other populist appeals to community identity. Neither does a localist sustainability agenda offer a robust response to global social and economic forces and planetary ecological trends. If localist approaches to sustainability governance are to realise their full progressive potential, they should therefore move beyond – not just against – globalism as presently constituted. In contrast to rapacious corporate-driven globalisation, organic globalism envisions a world of locally based, globally networked citizens’ initiatives. Such a higher-order synthesis is evident in a growing number of global activist networks rooted in strong localist agendas. Implicit in their work is the very practical question: what should be localised and what should be globalised? This translates into eminently political questions about the limits and range of our caring and sharing.
