Reconsidering Localism

摘要

Delivering fourteen chapters from seventeen well-respected contributors, the book makes a perfect addition to the discourse covering localism. Debates and theories are brought together in the book to construct strong arguments, making them relevant to researchers, practitioners and students. Previous localism-oriented books have engaged with either a practical and legal framework (Ricketts and Field, 2012); localism as a response to globalisation (O'Riordan, 2001); or most recently a devolution and regional perspective (Smith and Wistrich, 2014). To reconsider localism, the chapters deliver an excellent breadth of literature across three parts charting what it means to be local, concepts of localism and democracy and finally a sorely needed four chapters on the contribution of localism to sustainability. An epilogue of four pages brings the book to a conclusion, meeting its objective of charting the 'promises and pitfalls of the local and localism' (275) in a global context. Within the epilogue, each of the three parts of the book is discussed in turn, and a myriad of debates are drawn together crisply, yet the reader may wish to see the editor's suggestions for further investigation here.