Global Villages and Rural Cosmopolitanism: Exploring Global Ruralities

This paper explores the meaning of globalization in rural places, as well as the emergence of rural globalities, and even of rural cosmopolitanisms. While the discussion about globalization has been mainly localized in urban places, and mostly in some core cities, rural places are also intertwined with globality, and can became important nodes in the production and circulation of capital, culture, and ideology. To account for this, I explore a new meaning for the concept of ‘global villages’, not used in McLuhan's sense, but rather in terms of rural places that become truly global. As case studies, the paper addresses three ‘global villages’ in Latin America: the Central Valley in Chile, a node in the global food system; Otavalo in Ecuador, a core of cultural representations; and La Realidad, in Chiapas, Mexico, a center of ideological production.