‘Globalisation’ is a looming, powerful word. It trips off
the tongue in plummy tones and an almost onomatopoeic way and immediately
recalls images of tall glass buildings and stifling smog from industrial
chimneys. I feel like I’m allergic to
the word, almost.
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| Hong Kong from TST. Image courtesy of Snowboarder - thanks! |
But put the word ‘community’ after the word ‘global’ and my
muscles relax and I glaze over into a warm fuzzy daydream. I visualise thatched
roof cottages next to grassy Hobbiton-esque burrows with round wooden doors,
and the kind of organic ‘lifestyle’ corner shops you come across in Hackney
Wick, London.
My definition of this word and these terms are most likely
entirely different to yours. My concept of community and what is ‘local’ is
completely different to yours. It is our unique and individual experiences
which shape our ideas and learning.
So what is the future of local? That’s what
InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts have partnered with TED and one of my heroes Daniel Raven-Ellison to ask and no, the answer isn’t so straight-forward (as the long thread of conversation and replies back up). People get passionate about this topic. People get profound. And that’s why I’m
interested.
Global doesn’t have to be a beastly word though now, does
it? One commentator spits, “Franchises will be everywhere and pollution too. In
the end everywhere will be the same...” Very Orwellian.
I can’t say I agree. How can everywhere be the same?
Climates, physical geography, cultures, and as a result, people, cuisines,
society. Even I’ve changed, but over the years I feel that thanks to travel and
technology, yes, my world has gotten that tiny smidge smaller. And that’s where
I want to pick up the conversation.
I remember as a teenager how excited everyone got when my
hometown of Carlisle opened its first branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was
the new hangout and the only
alternative to McDonalds (which is, like so primary school). So we all flocked
to KFC and swapped our McNuggets for Hot Wings. To my teenage self, KFC
represented the big city, America and bright lights and big brands – right
there, all on my doorstep on a Saturday afternoon.
I learned in later years that KFC don’t source locally –
when I moved to Nepal, I remember the uproar that was caused because my
‘Generation Self’ Nepali counterparts in their twenty-somethings found out that
the only branch of KFC in Nepal air-freighted their frozen chicken in from
Brazil. This was around the time that McDonalds started advertising the fact
that they used ‘British’ chicken in their McChicken Sandwiches back at home.
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| Ronald never took Denny seriously enough. |
My point? Well really it’s a point my brother made first
when he was the tender age of nine and I was 12 – “Don’t you think the
McDonald’s here in Hong Kong tastes better than the McDonalds back home Cindy?”
All this talk of globalisation and Starbucks and losing our
cultural identities is missing the original point. The things that matter, the
details, the salt and pepper of our universe, they’re all still unique.
To my brother, a Big Mac in Hong Kong was a rare treat,
something he could have every day (and he did) every year and a half we visited
our family. The Big Macs from the McDonalds Drive Thru back in Carlisle? They
didn’t cut the mustard (I couldn’t resist).
More to the point, Denny’s Hong Kong Big Mac was a symbol of
the exotic, of our childhood, of summers running through our grandma’s village.
It was part of the bigger picture, it wasn’t the only picture.
The inherent fear is that the Coca Colas of this world can
take over local culture now that our world has become so much smaller – but how
could this ever affect something so intangible? To do so we’d have to carefully
define what is and isn’t an affectation of culture – and who are we to say what
a culture is and isn’t?
