Our Big Little Glocal Community
My passport has three stamps. I’ve been to Bolivia, South Korea and Spain in the past year and a half. Before that I’d been to the Netherlands, Israel, Chile, and Mexico. It took me almost ten years to amass those seven countries. Last week I went to work and saw the Sudan, Romania, El Salvador, Jordan, Albania, Peru, Thailand and Egypt. And that was all before lunch.
Although being employed by a hotel does lack the spiritual and intellectual creativity I crave, I have had a chance to see the world. Before last month, I thought the world was an expensive plane ticket and a passport away. Now I realize it is down the street, cleaning my room by day and making my food by night. I used to think the world was at my doorstep. Now I realize that I am at the world’s doorstep.
The thin line that separated us as Americans from the rest of the world came crashing down on September 11. We saw how easily terrorists from other countries can access our homes and schools, businesses and airports. If 9/11 is remembered for anything, let it be known as the day the world became borderless.
The imaginary lines that divide one country from another on a globe are still there, but the differences between these countries melt away every day. When you call customer support for a computer software program, chances are good that you’ll hear someone speaking English to you from India on the other end of the line. Outsourcing of jobs will be a major issue come November, but not all jobs are outsourced. Some are insourced.
When you stay in a hotel, it takes no less than 9 countries to make that stay happen. A Mexican built the nightstand, a Vietnamese cleaned the room, a Sudanese helped position the furniture, a Peruvian booked the reservation, a Puerto Rican cooked the room service meal, an Egyptian brought it to you, a Romanian brought you more towels, a Chilean delivered the newspaper and an American fixed the remote control.
The familiar children’s song rings true: “It's a world of laughter/ A world of tears/ It's a world of hopes/ And a world of fears/ There's so much that we share/ That it's time we're aware/ It's a small world after all.[1]” But the best word for tomorrow’s community will not be ‘international,’ ‘transnational,’ or even ‘multi-national.’ It’s a shorter one: glocal.
This word, coined by a cultural theologian, describes the way our world community now interacts with one another in a post-9/11 boundary-less world. The global has become so commonplace that it seems local. Coca-Cola is now in every hamlet and hut from Atlanta to Afghanistan. But glocal can also describe how the local grows big. In an instant, I can send a letter to a friend on a cruise ship near Kiribati. Or insurgents can make headlines when they attack a convoy in Iraq, burn bodies and hang them for show.
What does the glocal community look like for us in the future? And when will it happen? I’ve got news for you: it’s here now. There are over two thousand Sudanese living in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. They have their own soccer team, playing teams made up entirely of Mexicans, Argentineans, and Egyptians.
Countries aren’t so far away anymore. The politics of Asia and Africa are now our politics. The economies of Europe and South America are now our economies. And the people of the Middle East and the Far East are now our people. When will we realize that diversity, once the building block of America, is at the very core of our future and that ignoring the pressing reality that is ‘glocalization’ will leave Americans unprepared for the America of the future, when words like global and local lose their meaning?
Aren’t we all immigrants looking for a place to call our own, a community in which to thrive and belong? America has long provided a home to many a seeking soul. Immigrants have always arrived en masse not to inhabit a geographic region bound by Canada, Mexico, the Atlantic and the Pacific, but to take part in an ideology that has shaped their part of the world for years. And now they, by embracing this same ideology, are shaping our part of the world as well. We are officially at the world’s doorstep. Welcome to America. What you see now will be gone in 25 years. The great melting pot of diversity has boiled over and the runoff is the glocal future. You will soon have 40 countries represented in your subdivision. ‘Minority’ will be a word for the museums. The United Nations meets Music City. When will we learn?
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[1] http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/smworld.htm
Although being employed by a hotel does lack the spiritual and intellectual creativity I crave, I have had a chance to see the world. Before last month, I thought the world was an expensive plane ticket and a passport away. Now I realize it is down the street, cleaning my room by day and making my food by night. I used to think the world was at my doorstep. Now I realize that I am at the world’s doorstep.
The thin line that separated us as Americans from the rest of the world came crashing down on September 11. We saw how easily terrorists from other countries can access our homes and schools, businesses and airports. If 9/11 is remembered for anything, let it be known as the day the world became borderless.
The imaginary lines that divide one country from another on a globe are still there, but the differences between these countries melt away every day. When you call customer support for a computer software program, chances are good that you’ll hear someone speaking English to you from India on the other end of the line. Outsourcing of jobs will be a major issue come November, but not all jobs are outsourced. Some are insourced.
When you stay in a hotel, it takes no less than 9 countries to make that stay happen. A Mexican built the nightstand, a Vietnamese cleaned the room, a Sudanese helped position the furniture, a Peruvian booked the reservation, a Puerto Rican cooked the room service meal, an Egyptian brought it to you, a Romanian brought you more towels, a Chilean delivered the newspaper and an American fixed the remote control.
The familiar children’s song rings true: “It's a world of laughter/ A world of tears/ It's a world of hopes/ And a world of fears/ There's so much that we share/ That it's time we're aware/ It's a small world after all.[1]” But the best word for tomorrow’s community will not be ‘international,’ ‘transnational,’ or even ‘multi-national.’ It’s a shorter one: glocal.
This word, coined by a cultural theologian, describes the way our world community now interacts with one another in a post-9/11 boundary-less world. The global has become so commonplace that it seems local. Coca-Cola is now in every hamlet and hut from Atlanta to Afghanistan. But glocal can also describe how the local grows big. In an instant, I can send a letter to a friend on a cruise ship near Kiribati. Or insurgents can make headlines when they attack a convoy in Iraq, burn bodies and hang them for show.
What does the glocal community look like for us in the future? And when will it happen? I’ve got news for you: it’s here now. There are over two thousand Sudanese living in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. They have their own soccer team, playing teams made up entirely of Mexicans, Argentineans, and Egyptians.
Countries aren’t so far away anymore. The politics of Asia and Africa are now our politics. The economies of Europe and South America are now our economies. And the people of the Middle East and the Far East are now our people. When will we realize that diversity, once the building block of America, is at the very core of our future and that ignoring the pressing reality that is ‘glocalization’ will leave Americans unprepared for the America of the future, when words like global and local lose their meaning?
Aren’t we all immigrants looking for a place to call our own, a community in which to thrive and belong? America has long provided a home to many a seeking soul. Immigrants have always arrived en masse not to inhabit a geographic region bound by Canada, Mexico, the Atlantic and the Pacific, but to take part in an ideology that has shaped their part of the world for years. And now they, by embracing this same ideology, are shaping our part of the world as well. We are officially at the world’s doorstep. Welcome to America. What you see now will be gone in 25 years. The great melting pot of diversity has boiled over and the runoff is the glocal future. You will soon have 40 countries represented in your subdivision. ‘Minority’ will be a word for the museums. The United Nations meets Music City. When will we learn?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/smworld.htm
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