Glocalism

This article addresses Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013). The narrative, which imitates a self-help or how-to guide, offers an intriguing textual terrain to engage questions of innovation and renovation. The writer uses a global model of writing, which enjoys high circulation and consumption, to engage in local concerns. Hamid's novel provides a portrait of an entrepreneur as a young man. It engages in a diagnosis of Pakistan's social and political maladies. I argue that Mohsin Hamid is particularly concerned in this novel with innovation on narratological and thematic levels. My investigation of the novel orientations in Ha-mid's text attempts to press the borders of narratology to cultural territories. The narrative provides a pertinent example of the glocal, wherein literature becomes a site of dialogue and negotiation between the local and the global.

Today, capital, people and information flows have increased more than ever before among different regions in the world. Every flow creates a different local-global interaction in its own social environment. One of social environments in which this kind of interactions occurs is property markets. There are some theories to explain the nature of local and global interactions in social sciences literature. However, the success of these theories in explaining the nature of local-global interactions in a property market became subject to a research very few. This research aims to make a contribution to this area. The study also intends to find general answers to some important questions emerge in the internationalization process of property markets. The study focuses on the three well-accepted interaction theories of social sciences, which are imperialism, globalisation and glocalisation. The validity of the assumptions of these theories in the case of Istanbul's retail property market is questioned in this research. The emergence of social structures and the specific behaviours of these structures in local property markets may be understood better when true point of view is found out about interactions. A qualitative methodology is followed; interview and document analysis methods are used in the study. Findings show that the nature of local-global interactions experienced in Istanbul's retail property market is very unique so it is not possible to explain this unique nature using the perspective of only one settled theory.

The old adage states that humankind moves " one step forward " before it moves " two steps backward " , suggesting that there is no such thing as a linear evolution. This is particularly true when applied to our present time, the " age of globalization ". In the case of globalism, " two steps back " are needed in order to assess more soberly the present historical trajectory, and capture the " internal dialectic " of globalism. In fact, what we are witnessing today in many parts of the world is a backlash to globalism, manifest in an upsurge of traditional nationalism, if not chauvinism and ethnocentrism. The core issue is a difficult relation between nearness and distance, between the concretely singular and the general/universal which the term " globalism " seeks to capture but, of course, cannot explain. My reflections in the following seek to explore and shed some light on this relation. In a first step, I venture into philosophical (and theological) terrain in an effort to discern the meaning of human situatedness in a place, a space, or a " world ". Next, I discuss the inevitable tensions or conflicts between nearness and distance, that is, the inner " dialectic " between the local and the global. Finally, I translate the local/global syndrome into the correlation of " earth and world " , " roots and routes " , familiar loyalties and unfamiliar pere-grinations.

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the conversation towards democratic alternatives in a post-development scenario, and it is based on the following question: Given that development has partially failed in effectively addressing poverty, as it was not sufficiently political to challenge neo-liberal power structures, what possibilities lie ahead?  Drawing on a concrete, yet small-scale experience by campaigning
organisation Global Justice Now (GJN), I argue that the crisis in the field of international development creates an opportunity to challenge the
North/South paradigm and consolidate a transnational global movement
based on shared values of justice and solidarity, whose “legitimatory power” represents an important approach to overcome the dominant neo-liberal
discourse

In Israel, as in many other countries, local government is the arena in which national policies are carried out and through which direct social services are provided to the older population. However, issues around local ageing policies have yet to be studied in terms of understanding the role of the heads of these local communities. This study describes and analyses how mayors and heads of local municipalities perceive the consequences of ageing and its effect on their communities, and how it influences the specific social policies they have adopted as part of their responsibility for addressing this phenomenon. A qualitative, phenomenological methodology was used. Sixteen mayors and heads of municipalities from across Israel were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. All interviews were transcribed and then thematically analysed. Three main themes were identified: the complicated tension with the central government; personal attitudes and beliefs towards ageing; and the policies and initiatives actually adopted by the mayors in the field of ageing. Overall, this study emphasises the significance of the subjective construction of local versus central government power relationships by mayors and heads of localities. It supports the “strong mayor” approach within the local political-gerontology literature, hence pointing to the potential importance of political activism by older persons at this governmental level.