Disney and Microsoft are more likely victors than the US State Department, despite what conspiracy theorists in Belgrade, Baghdad, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur believe. It has flourished because the economy has been global, expanding, while identity has been national, fixed, as has politics. Localist movements the fourth alternative hope to capture the spaces created by the loss of national identity. However, in their attempts to be authentically local, to challenge corporatism, they find they must link with other environmental, spiritual, labor, organizations. Cyber-lobbying, the politics of the Net, too, forces them into global space.
Localism only succeeds when it becomes global.
Marx s dream all along. Already, elite intellectual labor does, and soon other forms will. The next wave will be the multicultural. News not the details of reporting but what we report about will begin to flow not just downwards from Hollywood, New York and London, but upward as well. Already, the best newspapers are those that include the feeds of many cultures.