Setting a New Stage: Small Scale as a Way Forward

Mapping complexity in deglobalisation: A typology of economic localisms from ‘hyper-localism’ to ‘strategic autonomy’

“…Indeed, there are already signs that – under capitalist and growth-oriented structures – exploitation of people and nature may simply be regionalised, as supply chains shorten (Ciravegna and Michailova, 2022; Smith et al, 2022). Reshoring and local production are still primarily framed along capitalist logics (Barbieri et al, 2018; McIvor and Bals, 2021), rather than being built around diverse local ethics (Dartnell and Kish, 2021; Gibson-Graham et al, 2013; Klepp et al, 2022; Smith et al, 2022). Indeed, as Mocca (2020: 89) notes, ‘discourses of local development are often driven by the logic of economic growth’.…”

“…The last thing to do is repeat the exact same thing we were doing before. (Latour, 2020) Amongst economic geographers, critical geographers, management scholars and others, there has been a rapid expansion in discussion of what direction capitalist-led globalisation will take in future (Alexander et al, 2022;Barbieri et al, 2020;Gibson et al, 2021;Klepp et al, 2022). Gong et al (2022) usefully identify four key macro-forces driving contemporary reshoring trends: geopolitical uncertainties, climate change, technological change, and crises and shocks.…”

“…According to its proponents, ‘Open localism…is cosmopolitan and diversified, and consists of reorienting the organisation of human communities towards personal relationships of proximity, and reduces that distance that has grown with production for trade and related economic, social and political management’ (Schneider and Nelson, 2018: 228). This is actively and vocally differentiated from localism as being in some way reactionary or exclusionary (Klepp et al, 2022; Schneider and Nelson, 2018). Rather, Open Localists point out that the global system as we know it is itself the key driver of social division and radical inequity (Norberg-Hodge, 2022), and thus taming that system will be central to equitable socio-ecological transformation.…”

“…It is incompatible with private or public industrial, commercial or professional monopolies’. In their study of wool and textile production, for instance, Klepp et al (2022: 110) point out the huge increase in demand for local products in the face of COVID-19, with local production becoming a way to ‘find peace and meaning in new everyday life, as it has done earlier during wars and other times of acute crisis’ (see also Dartnell and Kish, 2021; Norberg-Hodge, 2022). In line with an ethos of OL, this sense of meaning and sustainability through ‘place-based textile sovereignty’ has been spreading worldwide with the rise of the Fibreshed movement for regenerative, regionally produced textiles.…”