Blackwell Reference Online

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Comment on this article   Contemporary discussions of the local and the global invoke many concepts and themes that are fundamental to the ways in which scholars of international studies understand and study the world. Many of the constructs such as territory, states, nations, and sovereignty that have traditionally been foundational to the academic discipline of International Relations are inherently connected to how we think of the local and the global. More recently, issues of space, identity, and power in its various forms have become important concerns in international studies specifically and the social sciences more generally and are also inextricably linked to the local–global nexus. The increased attention to and appreciation of the significance of the local and the global in recent years have drawn upon traditional insights as well as suggesting new ones in our quests to comprehend the increasingly complex arenas in which geographies and spaces are produced. The emergence of the local and the global as topics of concern to students of international studies can usefully be understood to revolve around three broad and overlapping themes or insights. These three themes, which will serve as points of orientation for this essay, include the following: (1) the critical scrutiny of older concepts and the emergence of new concepts and alternative vocabularies; (2) an appreciation ... log in or subscribe to read full text