Chapter 5
The cultural dimension of
globalization
As this book’s opening discussion of Matt Stopera’s lost iPhone
demonstrates, even a very short introduction to globalization would be
woefully inadequate without an examination of its cultural dimension.
Cultural globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of cultural
flows across the globe. Obviously, culture is a very broad concept.
Referring to patterns of meaning and ways of life, it is frequently used to
describe the whole of human experience. In order to avoid the ensuing
danger of overgeneralization, it is important to make analytical distinctions
between various aspects of social life. For example, we associate the
adjective ‘economic’ with the production, exchange, and consumption of
commodities. If we are discussing the ‘political’, we mean practices related
to the generation and distribution of power in societies. If we are talking
about the ‘cultural’, we are concerned with the symbolic construction,
articulation, and dissemination of meaning. Given that language, music, and
images constitute the major forms of symbolic expression, they assume
special significance for the dynamics of cultural interactions.
The exploding network of cultural interconnections in the last decades has
led some commentators to suggest that such practices lie at the very heart of
contemporary globalization. Yet, cultural globalization did not start with the
worldwide dissemination of rock ’ n’ roll, Coca-Cola, or football. As noted
in Chapter 2, expansive civilizational exchanges are much older than
modernity. Still, both the volume and extent of cultural transmissions in the
21st century have far exceeded those of earlier times. Turbocharged by the
digital social media and our proliferating mobile digital devices, the
dominant symbolic systems of meaning of our global age—such as
individualism, consumerism, and various religious discourses—circulate
more freely and widely than ever before. As images and ideas can be more
easily and rapidly transmitted from one place to another, they profoundly
impact the way people experience their everyday lives. As we noted in our
lost cell phone story in Chapter 1, cultural practices have escaped the prison
of fixed localities such as town and nation, eventually acquiring new glocal
meanings in interaction with dominant global themes.
The thematic landscape traversed by scholars of cultural globalization is
vast and the questions they raise are too numerous to be fleshed out in this
short introduction. Rather than offering a long laundry list of relevant
topics, this chapter will focus on three important themes: the tension
between sameness and difference in the emerging global culture; the crucial
role of transnational media corporations in disseminating popular culture;
and the globalization of languages.
Global culture: sameness or difference?
Does globalization make people around the world more alike or more
different? This is the question most frequently raised in discussions on the
subject of cultural globalization. A group of commentators we might call
pessimistic globalizers argue in favour of the former. They suggest that we
are not moving towards a cultural rainbow that reflects the diversity of the
world’s existing populations. Rather, we are witnessing the rise of an
increasingly homogenized popular culture underwritten by a Western
‘culture industry’ based in New York, Hollywood, London, Paris, and
Milan. As evidence for their interpretation, these commentators point to
Amazonian Indians wearing Nike sneakers; denizens of the Southern
Sahara purchasing Yankees baseball caps; and Palestinian youths proudly
displaying their Golden State Warriors basketball singlets in downtown
Ramallah. This portrayal of globalization as a ruthless homogenizing force
spreading the logic of Anglo-American capitalism and Western values at the
expense of local and national cultures has become very influential. It has
appeared as the spectre of Americanization stalking vulnerable regions of
the world. Although there have been serious attempts by some countries to
resist what is often referred to as ‘cultural imperialism’—for example, a ban
on satellite dishes in Iran, and the French imposition of tariffs and quotas on
imported films and television programmes—the spread of American
popular culture seems to be unstoppable.
But these manifestations of sameness are also evident inside the dominant
countries of the global North. American sociologist George Ritzer coined
the term McDonaldization to describe the wide-ranging sociocultural
processes 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. On the surface, these principles appear to be rational in their
attempts to offer efficient and predictable ways of serving people’s needs.
However, looking behind the façade of repetitive TV commercials that
