글로컬리즘과 지역문화연구 = Glocalism and Local Cuture As a Suggestion for a Joint Research

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The concerns about the local culture have grown rapidly since the local autocracy system began in the early 1990s in Korea. As a reflection of such a phenomenon, the concept of the glocalization or glocalism has widely spreaded so far recently in the academical society of Korea. The ``glocalization`` is a newly-coined word which was combined with both words, globalization and localization. The glocalization or the glocalism means that the today`s world has inclination to develop both the globalization and the localization which are quite different and contradicted each other in appearance. The glocalization or the glocalism was used as a business terminology at least before 1990, but it is used now also as a cultural or sociological concept explaining the new phenomenon which happens between the regions(local communities) nowadays. The ``Hanlyu``(the spread of the Korean styles) is often incited as one of examples which support such a view. The glocalization does not mean the parallel phenomenon of both the globalizaion and localization. It expresses a will to make the new formation of the horizontal relation between the local communities through the various information networks. In other word, it could be translated into the inter-local relation, which is different from the inter-national relation. It is generalized more and more rapidly in a few decades. It is a cultural-social phenomenon internationally, but can not be identified with the cutural imperialism. Today the great concern about the glocalism demands the new recognition on the local culture. That is, we have to study and interpretate the local culture newly from the perspective of the glocalism. Because the local culture is not the sub-culture subjective to the national or global culture, but it belongs to its independent category of the local culture itself from the viewpoint of glocalism. In short, the space of glocal cuture explained as a local space and a global space at same time. This explanation of cutural space, so-called ``the culture glocalism`` is supported by the culture theorist such as Ramond Williams and other theorists on cultural science. There are many examples which explain the glocal phenomenon of culture in the past pre-modern society as well as in modern or post-modern society. Through all the times the best example of the glocal cultural space is the city. As we know, the city has been and is now the symbolic space of the cultural exchange between the local communities. Especially, the open ports of the modern East Asia will be good examples of the research if we want to study the urban culture as a local culture at this time from the view of the glocalism. So, I suggest the joint research of culture, history, and the other social sciences about the he open ports of the modern East Asia, which will help us understand more deeply the phenomenon of the cultural glocalism in the 21th century.