Glocal Politics

Some months ago, while I was reading the New York Times, I saw the word glocal for the first time. My immediate suspicion that it sounded like a marketing term conjured up for a focus group by a PR firm was confirmed a couple of days later when I heard it on one of the Sunday morning news shows. In today's New York Times, (July 6, 2010) David Barboza in his technology column reviews the Supply Chain for iphone in order to highlight the costs in China, but in the process provides ample information of the interconnection of the world. (Never mind the profit margin for Apple)

While Roger Cohen in his column (NYT, July 6, 2010) A World of Hope uses the backdrop of the World Cup in South Africa to give another angle of this international system which appears to be less state-centric arguing that states " are as obsolete as my old Olivetti? Networks outstrip nations that are left playing catch-up, like those long-haired Argentines chasing trim German shadows. Networks are hopeful. They’re where the coming generations live and love."

Are we in the age of Glocal Politics, where it is the networks and not the distinct boundaries of the states that determine and separate domestic from international.