IngentaConnect Performing the global through the local-globalisation and individ...

Authors: Hörschelmann, Kathrin¹; Schäfer, Nadine²

Source: Children's Geographies, Volume 3, Number 2, August 2005 , pp. 219-242(24)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

This paper aims to show how young people in former East Germany respond to the globalising processes that are part of the transformation of their society from a state-socialist to a capitalist one. It focuses particularly on the differential ways in which young people perform their identities as global/local subjects through the uses that they make of urban space. While emphasising the agency of young people, the paper seeks to examine the dialectic between globalising forces that are largely beyond their control and the negotiation of these forces in everyday practices of identity-formation. Conceptually, the paper draws particularly on the work of Beck (2000), Beck and Gernsheim (2002) and Giddens (1994) in order to conceptualise the connections between globalisation and individualisation, as well as on feminist and recent geographical work on performativity (Butler, 1990, 1993; Rose, 1996; Gregson and Rose, 2000; Thrift, 1996; Dewsbury, 2000; Dewsbury and Naylor, 2002) in order to gain an embodied understanding of the ways in which individuals construct themselves as global/local subjects.

Keywords: Globalisation; youth; performativity; post-socialism; East Germany

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/14733280500161651

Affiliations: 1: Department of Geography, University of Durham, Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK 2: School of Geography, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

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Performing the global through the local—globalisation and individualisation in the spatial practices of young East Germans