Local Economy,

Vol. 19, No. 2, 97–101, May 2004

VIEWPOINT

The Responsibilities
of Place

DOREEN MASSEY*
*Department of Geography, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

It is one of the accepted mantras of our times that we live now in a

globalised world. Or at least, in a rather more considered version, that we
live in a world which is in the process of globalisation. And if this
characterisation is modified yet further—as I believe it always ought to be—
we live in a world which is in the process of being reorganised along the
line of a particular form of globalisation: neoliberal globalisation. That is, a
form of globalisation working primarily to the benefit of major multinational
corporations, legitimated by particular forms of economic understanding
(for instance, as promulgated, and enforced, through the International
Monetary Fund) and energetically pursued by numerous elites and national
governments around the world, most notably in the United States of
America and the United Kingdom.
The fact of global flows—of economic transactions and trade, of cultural
influences, of populations, and of political ideologies—is, of course, not
new. The societies which were on the receiving end of European colonia-
lism and imperialism, for instance, knew all about the power of external
forces, the disruption of local cultures and societies, the need to negotiate
mass immigrations (of white colonisers), way before, so far as I am aware,
the term ‘globalisation’ was ever coined to try and capture what was going
on. Indeed it could be argued that the very coinage resulted in part from the
fact that the colonising and imperialist countries were now on the receiving
end of what in previous centuries had been their own medicine. And to
emphasise the earlier point (that ‘globalisation’ is a general term for global
interconnectedness, but that global interconnectedness can take many

Correspondence Address: Doreen Massey, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open

University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
ISSN 0269–0942 Print/ISSN 1470–9325 Online ß 2004, LEPU, South Bank University
DOI: 10.1080/0269094042000205070
98 Doreen Massey

different forms), it could well be argued that the imperialist form was in
many ways quite different from the present, neoliberal, one.
The reason for emphasising that last point is, of course, to hold open
the possibility, the political aim, that yet another form of globalisation
might be created—one which might be, or which could aim towards being,
more egalitarian, mutually respectful, and democratic. To adapt the words
of the Social Fora, which form one of the crucial meeting-points of
the groups currently campaigning against the neo-liberal form: ‘another
globalisation is possible’. That kind of slogan, and political imagination,
is really important to keep in mind. For it prevents us slipping into easy
oppositions such as global ¼ bad, local ¼ good. It prevents us facing up
to neoliberal globalisation simply by retreating into the defensive laager of
local place. The aim has to be not to oppose local and global, for not only
does that persistently lead to suspect kinds of localisms—nationalisms,
exclusivist parochialisms, racisms—but also it is simply impractical,
doomed to failure: the local can never be walled off from the global.
Rather than opposing local to global, the aim should rather be better to
understand the relationship between the two and to work towards both
better ‘local places’ and better ‘globalisations’.
Sometimes, though, I feel that the very way we think about ‘local places’
and ‘globalisation’ makes this very hard to do. Knowing something
intellectually is very different from embedding that knowledge in one’s
intuitive imagination, one’s gut feelings.
The very way in which I characterised imperialist globalisation gives
a clue to this: ‘the power of external forces, the disruption of local cultures
and societies, the need to negotiate mass immigrations’, etc. There is no
doubt that one of the crucial ways in which we have come to understand,
and indeed to experience, neoliberal globalisation is as an invasion
from the outside by external forces. This is, perhaps, particularly true in
relation to issues of local economy. The now global reach of so many
competitive forces (‘space’ no longer affording much protection), the
perceived need to attract international investment, but, then, the perceived
problems of external control, the disintegration of linkages within what
might once have been a more coherent local economy, and so forth.
We have, in other words, come face to face in very practical ways with what
in more conceptual language might be characterised as ‘the global
construction of local place’. This refers to the fact that the character of
a place is not somehow a product only of what goes on within it, but
results too from the juxtaposition and intermixing there of flows, relations,
connections from ‘beyond’. Flows, relations and connections which may,
indeed, go round the world. It is what I have tried to capture in the phrase
‘a global sense of place’. Places as necessarily open to the outside,
and that very openness being a significant part of what makes them what
they are. My own view is that places have always been like that; in other
words, that this is a conceptual point. But the new forms of globalisation
as they impacted upon localities in the developed world have reinforced
the argument in immediately practical ways. And that understanding of
 The Responsibilities of Place 99

the global construction of the local has engendered a whole range of

inventive local strategies. I would include here, for instance, local economic
strategies which try seriously to address the room for manoeuvre which
nonetheless exists at local level and which also attempt to engage
with external forces; and also the gamut of policies and politics which
seek to address the range of issues thrown up by increasingly diverse
local populations. These challenges have been immense and still remain
with us.
I want to suggest, however, that for some places this is only one side
of the question of the relation between the local and the global. Above all,
it is concerned to address how the global impacts upon the local, and
in general, too, it is concerned in some way or other to defend the local
from the global or, perhaps better, to weave the local into the changing
global world in ways which are most advantageous for the local economy.
In many places this is the only possible strategy. But, I want to argue, it
is not totally generalisable. There are two steps to my argument here.
First, in this imagination of the local place in the context of globalisation,
globalisation always comes from somewhere else. It is ‘out there’. (In fact,
in some imaginations, it seems to be ‘up there’, in some ethereal realm
of virtual communication and global power perhaps.) But this cannot be
so. There is no global phenomenon which doesn’t have local origins.
Neoliberal globalisation has clear local origins, in the headquarters of
MNCs, in international institutions in Washington, in the government offices
of particular nation states, etc. Globalisation is made in places—local
places, local economies. In other words, not only is the local constructed
out of the global, but the global is constructed from the local.
And this leads into the second stage of my argument. The trouble
with focussing our imaginations on the way in which globalisation impacts
upon local places is that local places come to be understood as victims
of globalisation. Yet, if globalisation is made on earth, then there must
be local places from which it is invented, promulgated, controlled, dis-
persed. Such local places are by no means only the victims of neoliberal
globalisation; they are the very sources of its invention and reproduction.
I began to think seriously about these ideas through my interest in
the local economic strategies being devised for London. London is a global
city, one of those places where are located some of the institutions most
clearly in the business of the production and reproduction of neoliberal
globalisation. In no way can this local economy be seen as simply a victim
of globalisation. And yet, in the discussions to which I have been party,
and in the London Plan, this does not come across at all. This is most
obvious in relation to the financial sector. The London Plan understands
London’s identity primarily in terms of its being ‘a global city’, and this
global citydom is characterised primarily in terms of London’s global
position in finance and related sectors. Moreover, this global dominance
is presented as a success, as a simple fact, as an achievement. The Plan
presents no critical analysis of the power relations which have had to be
sustained for this position to be built up and maintained. It does not follow
100 Doreen Massey

those financial relations around the world and enquire what are their effects
elsewhere. On the contrary, the Plan has as its central economic aim
the expansion of the financial sector, the building up of London as this kind
of global city. It fails, in other words, to address both its own power and
the subordination of other places, and the global inequalities, on which its
wealth and status depend. It seems to me that this kind of self-positioning
is an imaginative failure which closes down the possibility of inventing
an alternative local politics—an alternative local economic strategy—in
relation to neoliberal globalisation. There are many things which could be
done to put London’s global power, and its effects in other places, on the
agenda as a political issue. And London, with its considerable wealth, has
I would suggest the room for manoeuvre to experiment in this way. Indeed,
if London can’t do it, where can? What it involves is a London economic
plan which recognises that this city is not simply a product of, and certainly
not only a victim of, neoliberal globalisation. Rather, it is a location of its
coordination and of many of its prime beneficiaries.
There is no other local economy within the UK in a position similar
to London’s. Most indeed are suffering from the effects of globalisation
produced elsewhere. But in fact each local economy is in a distinct position
in this regard; each is in a distinct position within the wider relations of
globalisation. Each local economy is a distinct mix of relations over which
there is some power and control and other relations within which the
place may be in a position of subordination. Would it be possible for local
economic strategies to analyse local economies in this way? And would
it then be possible at least to raise the question of the effects elsewhere
of those relations over which there is a degree of local power and control?
And, finally, might it be possible to hold those relations up to some kind
of political scrutiny, to make them the subject of local political debate, even
through local economic policies to challenge them?
Such questions may sound completely idealistic, and in many contexts
they will indeed be so. But I do not have in mind, at least to begin with,
anything very dramatic. I can certainly not suggest detail here, as every
area is different. But a local economic strategy aiming towards ‘global
responsibility’ in this way might try some of the following:
(i) follow the trails of ‘other’ globalisations, and encourage them: for
instance, through locally-based NGOs, local ethnic minority groups,
and cultural contacts. There is no reason why a local area’s most
prominent international links should be uniquely through private
capital;
(ii) actively encourage alternative globalisations, for instance by working
with local fair trade groups, facilitating trade unions in their international
connections, and being actively welcoming to local social forums
where these exist;
(iii) check out the practices elsewhere of locally based multinational
companies;
 The Responsibilities of Place 101

(iv) seek out opportunities to cooperate with other local authorities around
such issues;
(v) develop a politics of consumption that aims to build awareness of the
global ramifications of local daily lives: maybe take a much-used
commodity and trace the geographies and social conditions of its
production and distribution;
(vi) seize/create opportunities to debate the place of the locality within the
global world: this will be real debate: different groups within any area
will be placed in distinct positions in relation to the present form of
globalisation, some benefiting from particular connections, others
perhaps not.
Such policies would be small and in part symbolic. It would be dis-
ingenuous to claim that a bundle of strategies such as these would do
much to alter the dynamic of neoliberal globalisation. They would make
some difference in their own right, but their most important effect would
be to stimulate public debate, in which local arts groups, trade unionists,
consumer groups, academics, etc. could take part, to provoke more
awareness of the conditions of existence of our ‘local economies’.
Indeed, in fact, something of the sort has been going on in relation to the
historical geographies on which places have built their local economies.
The clearest case is that of slavery, where a number of cities, most notably
Liverpool, have explicitly recognised the unequal and harmful relations
with other peoples and parts of the world upon which the greatness of
that city was constructed. Likewise, there has over recent years been a
spate of ‘apologies’ for historical wrongs.
But what of present wrongs? A ‘global sense of place’ implies that each
local economy (and local culture, etc) is in part a product of relations which
spread out way beyond it. And that raises two questions: first, what is
the geography of those relations of construction of our local economies?;
and second, what is (or should be) the nature of our social and political
relationship to those geographies? What, in other words, are the potential
geographies of our social responsibilities?