Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Performing the Global Through the Local - Globalisation and Individualisation in the Spatial Practices of Young East Germans

Hörschelmann, K.; Schäfer, N.

Authors

K. Hörschelmann

N. Schäfer



Abstract

This paper aims to show how young people in former East Germany respond to the globalising processes that are part of the transformation of their society from a state-socialist to a capitalist one. It focuses particularly on the differential ways in which young people perform their identities as global/local subjects through the uses that they make of urban space. While emphasising the agency of young people, the paper seeks to examine the dialectic between globalising forces that are largely beyond their control and the negotiation of these forces in everyday practices of identity-formation. Conceptually, the paper draws particularly on the work of Beck (2000), Beck and Gernsheim (2002) and Giddens (1994) in order to conceptualise the connections between globalisation and individualisation, as well as on feminist and recent geographical work on performativity (Butler, 1990, 1993; Rose, 1996; Gregson and Rose, 2000; Thrift, 1996; Dewsbury, 2000; Dewsbury and Naylor, 2002) in order to gain an embodied understanding of the ways in which individuals construct themselves as global/local subjects.

Citation

Hörschelmann, K., & Schäfer, N. (2005). Performing the Global Through the Local - Globalisation and Individualisation in the Spatial Practices of Young East Germans. Children's Geographies, 3(2), 219-242. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280500161651

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date 2005-08
Deposit Date Apr 5, 2007
Journal Children's Geographies
Print ISSN 1473-3285
Electronic ISSN 1473-3277
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 3
Issue 2
Pages 219-242
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280500161651
Keywords Globalisation, Youth, Performativity, Post-socialism, East Germany.

Downloadable Citations