Localism: Yesterday's Solutions to Tomorrow's Problems

In his book Travels with Charley, recalling his trek across the United States, John Steinbeck noted the waning presence of localism. The diversity that exemplified an earlier version of America was giving way to a set of standardized practices, leading to the loss of local accents and even the depersonalization of cuisine. While Steinbeck noted this with a certain sense of regret, he also understood that this was the price to pay for an overall improvement in education and the standard of living for all. Since Steinbeck's book in 1960, that sense of standardization has overwhelmed the entire world. Today, wherever we go, we find people dressed in a similar fashion, the same food stores, and the same expectations in education and even the same political practices. Any sense of the exotic or the historic is carefully mothballed as the heritage of a bygone time, with the surviving remnants of the past presented in museums as window dressing for tourism. There have always been voices of resistance to this globalization. Until recently, they have been dismissed as nostalgic individuals and groups unwilling or unable to withstand the triumphant march of modernity. Some groups, such as the various fundamentalist movements in the Middle East and elsewhere, have become inwardly tyrannical and even more violent than the modernity they wish to resist. Most, such as the regional artistic movements, by creating a space to express cultural distinctiveness, have sparked local economic and social regeneration. Today's economic and environmental issues challenge the omnipresence of gigantic standardized systems. Germany's locally driven energy transition may point to a solution that may seem positively medieval: the best response to environmental deterioration is local sustainability. We might be saved by the existence of a network of small-scaled systems, of dams, watermills and gardens that date back centuries…