Globalizing Culture
Globalizing Culture
A World of Ideas
1.
Media (technology, internet)
2.
Religion (World religions)
3.
Education (QS rankings, “internationalization”)
4.
What else?
Basic Premise on Culture
National cultures are built over generations of
interactions in shared experiences. Those
people would have a shared space.
➢
National identity
➢
National Values
Basic Premise on Culture
Interaction is critical component: to
sustain culture, interaction must be
sufficient in quantity and duration
for people to develop some
common understandings, even if
there is disagreement over the
particulars. Interaction is the locus
of culture.
Meaning of Culture in a Global
Age
“globalization of culture (way of
life) is implicit in all forms of
globalization”
Culture provides basis of meaning
for people’s actions”
Meaning of Culture in a
Global Age
Globalization changes how people view
themselves--- their needs, desires, goals, and
motivations.
Meaning of Culture in a
Global Age
It changes what people
expect from their society in
its obligations around the
world.
Globalizations changes how
individuals view their
relations to humanity, their
responsibilities to other
humans in light of their
common humanity
Global Culture and Cultural
Flows
Because much of culture exists in the form of
ideas, words, images, musical sounds, and so
on, culture tends to flow comparatively easily
throughout the world.
Global Culture and Cultural Flows
• In fact, that flow is increasingly
easy because culture exists
increasingly in digitized forms
(example: language, symbols,
norms of beauty/ femininity,
etc.).
• The internet permits global
downloading and sharing of
digitized cultural forms such as
movies, videos, music, books,
newspapers, images , and so
on.
Global Culture and Cultural
Flows

BUT not all cultures and forms of
culture flow as easily or at the same
rate.
– the cultures of the world’s most
powerful societies (mostly US) flow
around the world much more readily than
the cultures of the global south.
– some types of culture (pop music, for
example) move quickly and easily around
the globe,
– while others (innovative theories in the
social sciences, ideologies) move in slow
motion and may never make it to many
parts of the world.
Responses to Globalization of
Culture
1. Cultural Differentialism
2. Cultural Hybridization
3. Cultural Convergence
CULTURAL
DIFFERENTIALISM
“resistance to global
culture”
1.
Civilizational
identity
2.
Nationalism
3.
Fundamentalism
Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order
(1992, 1996)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Sinic (Chinese),
Japan (sometimes combined with the Sinic as Far
Eastern)
Hindu
Islamic
Orthodox (centered in Russia),
Western Europe,
North America (along with the closely aligned
Australia, and New Zealand)
Latin America
Africa.
Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order
(1992, 1996)
Post-cold war era, people’s cultural and religious
identities will be the primary source of conflict.
Civilizational divides are so deep that
homogenization on issues like human rights and
individual liberties, may not be achievable.
Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order
(1992, 1996)
Conflict will occur at the fault lines among and between
civilizations, especially the Western, Sinic, and Islamic
civilizations.


dangerous clashes in the future between

the West (and what he calls its “ arrogance”),

Islam (and its “ intolerance ”),

Sinic “ assertiveness. ”
Much of the conflict revolves around the West ’s view of itself as
possessing “ universal culture, ” its desire to export that culture to
the rest of the world, and its declining ability to do so (i.e., ideas of
democracy, human rights, etc.)
Nationalism
Nationalism is also a way that people fight against
globalization.
People are protective of their identity. Threats to
cultural identity can be paramount to threats to
their survival as a people.
Nation-saving efforts to preserve cultural distinctions
abound in both developing and developed
nations

“make America great again”;

Preserving native tongue
CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION
emphasizes the mixing of cultures as a result
of globalization and the production, out of the
integration of the global and the local of new
and unique hybrid cultures that are not reducible
to either local or global culture.
CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION

the focus is on the integration of
global processes with various local
realities to produce new and
distinctive hybrid forms that indicate
continued global heterogenization
rather than homogenization.

Hybridization
 a very positive, even romantic, view of
globalization
 creative process out of which emerges
new cultural realities
CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION

Hybridization : External flows interact with internal
flows producing a unique cultural hybrid that
combines elements of the two.

Glocalization can be defined as the interpenetration
of the global and the local, resulting in unique
outcomes in different geographic areas.

Creolization involves a combination of languages and
cultures that were previously unintelligible to one
another.
CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION
Muslim Girl Scouts
Appadurai’s “Landscapes”
White Helmets of Syria
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE

based on the idea that globalization tends to lead to increasing sameness
throughout the world.

see cultures changing, sometimes radically, as a result of globalization,

flows of global culture and the relative weakness of barriers to those flows.

The cultures of the world are seen as growing increasingly similar, at least to
some degree and in some ways.

See global assimilation in the direction of dominant groups and societies in
the world.
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
However…
While globalization
often overwhelms
local realities, or at
least changes them
dramatically, those
realities frequently
survive in some form
or other.
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
Cultural Imperialism
indicates that one or more cultures are imposing
themselves, more or less consciously, on other
cultures thereby destroying local culture, in whole, or
more likely in part.
Indian sari weavers
Deterritorialization
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
World Culture
there has developed, especially in recent years, a series of global
models in a variety of different domains – politics, business,
education, family, religion, and so on – and that their spread has
led to a surprising amount of uniformity throughout the world.
Isomorphism (global models)
World
bank models of development , etc.
CCT
UNESCO
preservation
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
McDonaldization
the process by which the principles of the
fast - food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and more sectors of
American society, as well as the rest of the
world.
McDonaldization, expansionism, and
globalization
Beyond fast food
CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
The Globalization of Nothing
implies growing
convergence as
more and more
nations around the
world are increasingly
characterized by
various forms of
nothing