It's little things that count

摘要

In this age of Masdar and McDonalds, cross-border collaboration and CCTV, WebEx and Westfield, globalisation can be portrayed as rampant. But the jetsetting, capitalist view of it, which ultimately serves corporate interests, strips the term of any broader validity and reduces it to its most utilitarian tendencies. Cultural globalisation is by far the most vital component in the whole process. Nor is this phenomenon new. In 18th century Britain it was seen as important to visit and study a Palladian villa. Think of many cathedrals and it's clear: they were a northern European project, there were lots of cross flowing ideas. But that isn't about smoothing everything out and creating a single world order. In actuality it is constantly creating new kinds of difference and heterogeneity, and in ways that will never be uniform or consistent.