Robertson’s interpretation
becomes a good approximation of social reality when time is infinite or nonexistent . The vexing issue, though, is how to deal with shorter
or meso-temporal levels of change , and it is in that particular time-frame
that Robertson’s formulation is less helpful. To put it differently, there is no
answer to the question of the specifics of interaction—of “how” the global–local
relationship is reconfigured within time intervals.