“glocalization” of International Arbitration— Rethinking Tradition: Modernity and East-west Binaries through Examples of China and Japan

In the main streams of comparative law, general legal theory and the study of globalization, there is a general lack of consideration of non-Western legal experience. Such general omission is deeply rooted in the static binaries such as “tradition-modernity” and “East-West,” which make up ‘legal Orientalist’ discourses. This article fills the gap by studying the case China and Japan and analyzing the role of their tradition on the contemporary development of international arbitration. Through the specific example of international commercial arbitration, it illustrates that even in specialism where “national identity” seems relatively weak, and thus the effects of globalization is particularly strong, local culture remains to play a significant role. Rejecting the cultural homogenization thesis, this article puts forward the theory of “glocalization of arbitration,” which describes the entanglement process between “global standards” and “local norms” in international arbitration. The concept of glocalization is used to analyze the ways in which social actors construct meanings, identities, and institutional forms within the sociological context of