Thus all scales are interconnected through
the burrows or roots which penetrate to different strata of the soil. In the
latter two metaphors we move away from the idea of bounded scales.
When we conceptualize them at opposite ends of networks this alters
the way we think about the global and the local. 
Global–local interaction
In many ways, human geography is made distinctive by its simultaneous
concern for both the global and the local. As geographers we want
to know more about particular places ‘in depth’, at the same time as
‘broadening our horizons’ and learning about the wider world. Concern
with the ‘global’ has peaked at certain times in the discipline. Thus we have seen the rise of geographies associated with imperialism and
exploration in the early twentieth century, through to environmental
and developmental concerns in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently
that seeks to tease out geographies of ‘compression’. Concern with the
local has permeated this transition and sometimes eclipsed globalism –
especially in the 1980s with the rise of new cultural geography.
What has become clear, however, is that we cannot explain one without
the other. The global and the local are two sides of the same coin. The
call for focusing on big issues is welcome but it will not be successful
without simultaneous concern for the local. Joe Painter points out that
recent locality studies have been influenced by the ‘upsurge of interest
in globalization during the 1990s [which] has involved a recasting of
the issue of local specificity in terms of global–local relations’ (2000,
p. 458). How, then, have geographers interpreted the local? Crang (1999)
argues that this has come in three forms tied up with how we conceive of
place:
● Empirical significance of place – Emphasizing actual existing
differences. Every place is not the same – ‘we are where we are’.
● Normative significance of place – The ‘local’ can stand for ‘good’
things. A celebration of difference and authenticity and resistance to
homogeneity.
● Epistemological significance of place – How locality is important in
knowledge formation. How ideas and perspectives are situated.
The importance of locality studies is emphasized when we consider
what we mean by ‘global’. The global is constructed from local action
– and when we refer to the global process we are usually describing
local-to-local flows that have become stretched across space to become
global in extent. This is the process that is referred to in the definition of
globalization provided in Chapter 1. In short, to be of use geographies
need to be multi-scalar.
Crang (1999) provides a useful three-part framework in terms of how
different thinkers have conceptualized global and local interaction
(Figure 2.2; see also Gibson-Graham, 2002):
● World as mosaic
● World as system
● World as network
World as mosaic. This concept sees the world as resembling a jigsaw
puzzle with different localities juxtaposed but independent.