The geography of collective identities in a globalizing world

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Abstract
One of the many key questions in the political economy of globalization concerns the implications of this broad trend for forms of collective identity and the associated shapes and strengths of communities in the contemporary world system. Globalization ‐ conceived here in a distinctly geographical sense as the rise of supraterritoriality ‐ has contributed to a general shift over recent decades away from a situation thoroughly dominated by national identities. Globalization has helped to reinvigorate or newly invent a host of substate localisms as well as a diverse array of transborder solidarities. Concurrently, recent moves away from territori‐alist geography have in other respects reproduced the nationality principle and have also prompted a number of nationalist reactions. These different and often contradictory tendencies have resulted in widespread fragmentation of identities in the world political economy of the late twentieth century. The article concludes with some (admittedly problematic) suggestions for the construction of fluid, post‐nationalist global communities of difference.

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