Longing for the global West: Georgian women’s organisation representatives’ perceptions of the global and the local

Abstract

In academic discourses, the “globalisation process” is often described as multidimensional, non-unitary and erratic. Globally spread ideas, practices and values are commonly regarded as being re-interpreted and changed in local contexts. Early theories about globalisation being the same as homogenising “westernisation” have been criticised and many scholars claim that the world is not becoming more and more uniform to the extent that the non-western world looks more like the western world. Henrietta Moore suggests that all people, scholars and ordinary individuals, have implicit assumptions and presuppositions about what constitutes “the global” and “the local” and that these are concept-metaphors whose exact meaning cannot be specified in advance. How we perceive these concepts and the connection between them, informs the way we perceive globalisation. Adopting a people-oriented approach, I have analysed how a group of women’s organisation representatives in Georgia perceive the concept-metaphors the global and the local. I have focused on exploring how the women perceive the connection between the nation’s amplified contacts with the western world, combined with increasing involvement in the global neoliberal economy, and change of gender structures. This specific case has served as a lens through which I have analysed the interrelation between the global and the local. The data for my research has been collected through interviewing ten women’s organisation representatives and their answers have been analysed with the help of theories about NGOisation, cultural feminism, rights-based approach and discursive market society etcetera. The interviewed women’s valuing of western models, their gratefulness towards western donors and their ascribing of civil and political rights and gender equality as being ethic-historical pillars of “the West”, indicate that the women are desiring homogenising westernisation. They understand the West as being the global in the sense of a “whole” or “holistic entity”. The global neoliberal economy is perceived as an overarching but autonomous and unifying structure while Georgia is perceived as one part, demarcated by local “culture”. The global is simultaneously viewed as a one-dimensional homogeneity and a multidimensional heterogeneity, composed by different local entities.