Global Thinking, Local Acting

Luther P. Gerlach
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Luther P. Gerlach: University of Minnesota

Evaluation Review, 1991, vol. 15, issue 1, 120-148

Abstract: Environmental and futurist movements have taken up the issue of managing global environmen tal change. They have transformed "thinking globally, acting locally" from its original use as cautionary caption to its new use as militant maxim for change. René Dubos coined thinking globally, acting locally to warn that global programs cannot be easily translated everywhere into local actions. Movements now use it as a maxim to encourage people to act locally to save the world. Thinking globally, acting locally has become a model for a future in which planet Earth is to be managed comprehensively as a living system, not centrally, through command from a global government, but polycentrically, up from the global grassroots. Globalizing en vironmentalist and futurist movements have thus reinterpreted thinking globally, acting locally because the changed interpretation helps its user to deal with two major contradictions: (a) the goals of managing comprehensively and integratively to serve global system interests versus the goal of promoting freedom, equality, and personal or ethnic identity to serve individual or local interests; (b) the goal of protecting the biophysical environment versus the goal of expanding economies to advance material welfare. Thinking globally, acting locally functions like myth to promise that these contradictions can be overcome, and charts paths to victory. This motivates people to act to make change and legitimates the movements that promote the changes. Also, thinking globally, acting locally mirrors movement organization: many local groups, each pursuing its local goals, yet interacting in networks coordinated by overarching ideology.

Date: 1991
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:evarev:v:15:y:1991:i:1:p:120-148

DOI: 10.1177/0193841X9101500107

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