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Introduction
In our era of globalisation, with its concomitant global marketplace where goods, services and information gets circulated and consumed on a worldwide basis ([3] Alon and Higgins, 2005; [8] Arnould and Thompson, 2005; [15] Belk, 1996; [35] Burton, 2009; [130] Lury, 1996; [152] Ritzer, 2004), various responses to globalisation have been identified ([45] Cochrane and Pain, 2000). From globalists and traditionalists through to transformationalists (El-Ojeili and Hayden, 2006 cited in [84] Held, 2000), each of these perspectives focuses on the impact of globalisation at the collective level. Adding to this extensive opus, the present paper aims to contribute further to our understanding of globalisation from the vantage point of how the individual encounters globalisation.
In order to do this, this paper re-evaluates the significance of the Self/Other divide. Nineteenth-century globalisation experiences, brought about largely by colonialism, manifested a rigid expression of a Self/Other encounter between coloniser and colonised ([157] Said, 1978). By contrast, it is suggested here that modern globalisation signals a blurring of this rigid divide. Despite the enduring theoretical importance of the Self/Other binary as a way of constructing identity ([20] Bettany and Belk, 2011), a re-conceptualisation of the Self/Other trope is prompted by the specific conditions of twenty-first century globalisation. It is the aim of this paper to re-evaluate the nature of the Self/Other motif, arguing that its blurring in the twenty/twenty-first century can be traced back to its earliest contestation in the work of nineteenth-century author and colonial navy captain Julien Viaud, or Pierre Loti (nom de plume ). As such, a reading of Loti's work is presented here as a foundation for discussion of more contemporary challenges to self-identity in our own age of globalisation. This paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to our understanding of globalisation as a phenomenon experienced at the individual level and to challenge the classical boundaries of the Self/Other binary.
Current theories of globalisation have generally focused on the broad impact on economies and societies. Prominent among these is what might be termed the homogenising effect ([65] Friedman, 2000; [105] Lane and Husemann, 2008). This position suggests that through a global exchange or systemisation of information ([67] Georgantzas et al. , 2010) and an intractable participation in the global marketplace, people...