Local Actors in Global Politics

Abstract

Globalization and the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have enabled a variety of local political actors to enter international arenas once exclusive to national states. Multiple types of claim-making and oppositional politics articulate these developments. Going global has been partly facilitated and conditioned by the infrastructure of the global economy, even as the latter is often the object of those oppositional politics. The article examines these issues through a focus on various political practices and the technologies used, the latter an important part of the analysis partly because they remain understudied and misunderstood in the social sciences. Of particular interest is the possibility that local, often resource-poor organizations and individuals can become part of global networks and struggles. Further, the possibility of global imaginaries has enabled even those who are geographically immobile to become part of global politics. A key question organizing this article concerns the ways in which such localized actors and struggles can be constitutive of new types of global politics and subjectivities. The argument is that local, including geographically immobile and resource-poor, actors can contribute to the formation of global domains or virtual public spheres and thereby to a type of local political subjectivity that needs to be distinguished from what we would usually consider local.