24 Globalization/Glocalization
Ms. Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty
1.Objectives
This chapter has four aims.
- To introduce the concepts of Globalization and Glocalization to the students.
- To engage theoretically with the socio-cultural ramifications of both globalization and glocalization in the field of cultural studies.
- To explain the concepts of cultural globalizion, liberalization, deterritorialization, digital globalization.
- To discuss the threats of westernization and cultural homogenization.
2. Introduction
With the end of the Second World War and the horrifying images of large swelters of dark smoke billowing out in the sky of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan that shook up the global collective conscience, the contours of politics at the international stage was headed for a decisive change. United States of America (henceforth only America) emerged as the single predominant power with the global equilibrium shifting towards its end. As a result of this phenomenal transformation in the power arena, the 1960s, often considered as the first decade of globalization, saw through numerous changes in the global economy with various ramifications in the sphere of culture and other social disciplines. If it was the decade of hope and new aspiration, it also marked new areas of marginalization, exclusion and domination. If globalization brought more technological upgradation that led to faster connectivity and access to the global citizenry, it also ushered in a specific model of economy that was nonchalantly capitalistic and market oriented. It was hence a period of ‘melting’ and ‘flows’ with cultural boundaries being bridged, national borders becoming increasingly porous and the formations of multiple diaspora communities in different clusters within a single city.
Cities like London, New York, Sydney, Paris became new global villages with communities of different national origins residing in a single urban space. From this aspect Globalisation not just appeared as a new mode of life, it was even emancipatory in the sense that it provided empowering technologies and freed the global mass from any particular affiliation or self-enclosing identity that could turn into Fascism or any forms of totalitarianism. However, there is another side to this celebratory account that analyzed the destructive side of globalization, it’s not-so-liberating effects on cultures at the margin and the predatory economic model that threatens the habitats of the weaker section of society. The critical scholarship of Frankfurt School among the various other issues also highlighted this demeaning side of globalization that reduced culture to industry and instrumentalised cultural forms as a subset of the economic paradigm that was out and out capitalist. Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Habbermas who were the main exponents of this school voiced their concern on these negative effects of globalization that was in nature ahistorical and amnesiac. Therefore the much-celebrated ‘melting pot’ thesis that speaks of a global, multicultural society was at the end part of an economic order that Jameson calls as ‘late capitalism’. In the name of global, what is often erased is the variety and vibrancy of the local and indigenous cultures. Rustom Bharucha, a noted cultural theorists and theater activist, raised this issue of how in the guise of ‘cultural mixing’, what is sacrificed is the cultural specificities of diverse ethnic forms, their historicities, and how Orientalism continues in these apparently banal acts of transfusion and ‘cultural mixing’. At the economic front, the question of globalization was debated how market forces impact over the cultural activities and everyday social relations. What was argued is how globalization has invaded almost all segments of social structure and usual interactions. The ‘commodification’ became the catchword to define such manifold ways in which materialist calculations supersede all other emotive and aesthetic considerations. Cultural commodification led to massive debates over questions of ethics, propriety and virtues. Is there any moral yardstick on which to judge such commodification? What about the property rights and questions of copyright? Are these cultural commodification carried out on a level-playing field between different cultures? Can we assume that cultures which are more powerful will not devour out the cultures which have lesser material and economical basis? For example, can there be a cultural mixing where a tribal culture will have the same weightage just as the Christian cultural forms with which it would be mixed? In case it is not, are we not then perpetuating a kind of cultural genocide where marginal ethnic forms are de-rooted/uprooted to then become symbolic and empty signifiers to be used for decorative therefore extremely perverse purposes?
The Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham where Stuart Hall offered a course on cultural studies first dealt with these issues. Many of the British Marxists who became part of this institution looked into these questions while pointing out that cultural questions are no less revolutionary than the political economy issues which a deterministic and reductionist reading of Marxism generally offers. Soon, globalization emerged as a cult word with contradictory implications for cultural studies. For a large section who championed the cause of liberal and plural societies, globalization became an enabling concept, whereas for even a larger section it transpired capitalist ploy to flatten the cultural differences and percolate an uninterrupted singular form of late capitalism. Postcolonial scholarship along with different marginality studies reacted to this lateral version and discerned in globalization a veiled threat of neo-imperial, neo-colonial proclivities. Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin’s acclaimed thesis of “Empire Writes Back” in a changing post- globalization scenario has to adjust with these cultural questions of neo-empire and neo- colonisation. Hence in a recent book on ‘Postcolonial Utopia’, Ashcroft brings in the issue of ‘glocalism’ and ‘glocalisation’ to somewhat revise their earlier thesis. Ali Behdad similarly diversified the notion of globalization to show how such global networks of economy started and continued long before this new avatar of belated globalization in the 1960s.
What these diverse engagements try to pin point is how globalization in its present forms is more inimical and predatory in contrast to its emancipatory and liberating rhetoric. To avert such negative possibilities, globalization has to be glocalised to not just bring the global to the local, rather also ensure the local to reach out to the global. It should be hence a two-way traffic where the global/local distinction shall cease to become a monolithic construct. Hence the ‘glocalisation’ gradually acquired a more critical attention in recent works on cultural studies. But what we need to remember is that ‘glocalisation’ is not impervious to any criticism. Rather, glocalisaton allegedly implies an empty word that means a range of possibilities without any specific end.
3. What is Globalization ?
The concept of Globalization cannot be defined in a monolithic way. Since its inception in the late 1970s, it has been discussed through multilayered and often competing discourses, giving birth to multiple definitions of the term. One of the definitions of globalization is,
Academics, in tracing the roots of Globalization, go back to the fifteenth century, when the geographical explorations of the New World initiated the free movements of trade, knowledge, ideas and culture. This study of historical globalization expands the cultural understanding of globalization in a broader spatio-temporal grid.
The present understanding of Globalization as an economic phenomenon arrived in the latter half of the twentieth century which implies free movement of capital, industries, people, properties, cultures and ideas. Economist Theodore Levitt popularized the term ‘globalization’ in his article ‘Globalization of Markets’ in the May-June 1983 issue of Harvard Business Review. In the academic sphere, globalization is discussed from three perspectives- economic globalization, political globalization and cultural globalization. As the term ‘globalization’ came from ‘to globalize’, the process of globalizing trade, investments and subsequent dissemination of knowledge lie at the heart of globalization.
Though the process of international integration has been ensued through globalization, its cultural, socio-political and religious ramification cannot be sidelined. It opens up the world trade which assumes the diverse world as the unified society and the inhabitants of various countries as the global consumer. Globalization initiates more developed means of communication, boosting up the population migration in search of economic affluence and better living in other countries. This mode of massive migration reconceptualises the national borders and through the subsequent deterritorialization, questions the notion of cultural belonging. Under the impact of globalization, the countries become multicultural places where the issue of cultural difference becomes an important socio-political concern. Going beyond one’s native locationality to become the global citizen is obviously connected with the rootlessness of the individual and the formation of the scattered diaspora communities in the foreign land. The continuous processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization produce a cultural hybridity which is one of the predominant aspects of global society. Thus the cultural globalization influences the cultural practices, the performances and cultural institutions.
Globalization brings in the rapid growth of capitalism which devalues the conventional labour-capital equation and thus deregularises the traditional economic structures. Globalization is the primary aspect of the modern technology-driven age where the propagation and promotion of culture of interactivity informs the changing social relations. Hence, the traditional state-society relations are reoriented as globalization reconceptualises the political relations in the global arena, creating alternative power centers.
3.1 Cultural Globalization
Cultural globalization intensifies social relations throughout the world through the transmissions of ideas, values, meanings and knowledge. It incorporates academic scholarship arising from multiple disciplines like anthropology, geography, history, sociology, international relations, communication studies and cultural studies. Cultural globalization implies the consumption of cultural items through the process of cultural diffusion facilitated by international travel and popular media like television, telecommunications and internet.
Cultural globalization dated back to the modes of commodity exchange and cultural hegemony through imperialism during the Western colonial expansion. The extended social relations enhance the interconnectedness among various populations and cultures in the globalised world and thus, cultural globalization develops shared norms and knowledge discourses.
Another aspect of cultural globalization is the global reach of the American Fast Food Chains like McDonalds and Starbucks through which one particular cuisine is diffused in multiple locations.
3.2 Immigration and Diaspora
Cultural globalization not only implies the cultural diffusion of the local cuisines, it also signifies a process of cultural mixing through the interconnectedness of multiple communities and cultures. The process of migration, both voluntary and involuntary, initiates the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Immigrants not only are changed and influenced by the cultural forces of the country where they have migrated, but they also carry their cultural baggage to the new land to change the city’s cultural landscape. They attain a ‘multicultural citizenship’ in the diaspora space. Hybridity is a characteristic of the ‘multicultural citizenship’ in a globalised world as theorized by the political theorist, Will Kymlicka in 1995. This ‘multicultural citizenship’ emerges from the diasporic community, the members of which draw from the other cultural resources to consolidate solidarities beyond oppressive racial prejudices.
3.3 Globalization and Hybridisation
Hybridity is a cultural outcome of globalization. Three important thinkers who theorize ‘hybridity’ are Homi k. Bhabha, Abdul JanMohammed and Will Kymlicka. For JanMohammed, ‘hybridity’ means ‘specular border intellectual’, being on the border of two cultures with a critical perspective towards both the cultural spaces. According to Bhabha, ‘hybridity’ signifies multiple identities and multiple locational belongings. Thus it defies the notion of unified identity. Rather it propagates formation of multiple identities in different cultural locations, subsequently bringing in multiculturalism and transnationalism. In this context, Will Kymlicka talks about ‘multicultural citizenship’ in analyzing hybridity. The hybrid identity resists any essential ‘black’ or ‘white’ identity. According to cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, it produces ‘new ethnicities’ in this process.
3.4 Digital Globalization
Globalization has evolved from its initiation phase in the early 1990s to the present times of information revolution. In this digitized world, globalization is not merely based on the tangible flows of physical goods. Rather the intangible flows of data and information now hold the central stage. The earlier economic transactions among developed economies are now reoriented towards a more glocalized economic set-up where emerging economic centers are also participating. Globalization is not now merely capital-intensive, rather the transmission of knowledge and the cultural globalization characterize the present phase of globalization. This digital globalization is very much dependent on the digital infrastructure which is enhanced by the advanced information technology. In its shift towards glocalization, more native individuals and small industries are taking part in the glocalization of the cultural products besides the multinational companies. The cultural quotient of globalization has increased a lot. Globalization is now a phenomenon of cultural interactivity.
3.4 Cultural Homogenisation and Neocolonialism
One critique of cultural globalization highlights the inherent threat of the monopoly of Westernized consumer culture which has attempted to universalize some dominant modes of imperial culture, initiating the process of neocolonialism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have conceptualized neocolonialism as ‘Empire’ which goes beyond the sovereignty of the nation-state to emanate more dicentralised and deterritorialized forms of cultural control by situating the nation into a global context. In this new condition of globalised cultural regime, social and political thinkers mark the emergence of cultural hegemonic homogenization.
3.5 Anti-Globalization and Transnational Solidarities
Globalization is not at all a glorious saga of individualism, empowerment and free movements. The dark sides of globalization draw resistance from the anti-globalization communities who criticized the overwhelming march of capitalism, consumerism and cultural homogenization. These anti-globalization forces have solidified through their globalized communications and through forming transnational solidarity groups. They are strongly active against the forced migration, cultural displacements, poverty and western monopoly.
4. What is Glocalization?
‘Glocalization’ comes from the word ‘glocal’. The popular slogan of glocalization is –‘Think Global, Act Local’. Manfred Lange, the head of The German National Global Change Secretariat, first used the term ‘glocal’ in reference to Heiner Benking’s exhibition, ‘Blackbox Nature: Rubik’s Cube of Ecology’. The term ‘glocalization’ arises from a Japanese term ‘Dochakuku’ which means the global localization in reference to the ‘principle of adapting farming techniques to local conditions’.
4.1. Why Glocalization?
Sociologist Roland Robertson introduces the term ‘glocalization’, as a portmanteau of globalization and localization. Robertson thinks that globalization promotes concept of cultural homogenization which implies absorbing all the differences of the local. Glocalization is thus propagated as the refinement of globalization as the global cannot exclude the local. Going against the binary division between the global and the local, the universal and the particular, Robertson conceptualizes glocalization as a cultural attitude which accommodates the local through interaction of cultures. For Robertson, glocalization is ‘the simultaneity- the co-presence- of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies’ (Robertson, 1997, 4). In this process, the global adapts itself to meet the local considerations. Other influential thinkers on glocalization are Keith Hampton, Berry Wellman, and Zygmunt Bauman. Bruno Latour insists that whether looking at fragmentation or homogenisation processes, one can get the impression that it is always external forces, coming from outside, that determine globalization. He adds “However, as has been stressed before, global processes or networks are not disconnected from the local. In fact, they are local in each of their points”. In the cultural studies, glocalization signifies the process in which the global cultural products such as films, music, food etc. are reinterpreted by local cultures. Glocalization operates in the reverse ways when the elements of local cultures are associated with the global phenomenon to attain a global reach. In the economic understanding of the term, glocalization signifies how some particular international products are adapted to the demands of the local culture in which it is marketed. In this process the local market is integrated with the international market. The central aim of glocalization is to produce standardized product for the global market. One popular term connected with glocalization is McDonaldization which indicates to the popular move by the McDonald Restaurant Chains to customize their food products in the various countries in conforming to the local cuisine. Various other popular multinational companies like KFC, Coca-Cola etc. also refurbish their products to meet the Indian markets. On the other hand, the original glocalization of the Indian foods to cater to the local British culture has shown another dimension of new wave glocalization.
5. Impact of Globalization and Glocalization
5.1. Sharing of Multiple Resources
The most important contribution of globalization has been the sharing of the multiple resources among various communities belonging to different culture. Rapid technological growth has ensured more secure and convenient life. The worldwide transmission of economic, social, political, religious and cultural resources, mores and customs and knowledge has been conducive to the globalised condition of contemporary existence.
5.2. Deterritorialisation
The deepening of the interconnectivity between the local and the global has rendered the condition of the global society which implies the dissolution of territorial boundaries, producing cultural diffusion.
5.3. Globalization and Media
Media as a super-power emerges in the contemporary globalized world. In the realm of high speed information transmission, multiple media houses arise to control the political and economic power centers. Thus it becomes a major mover of world economy, politics and culture.
5.4. Globalization and Popular Culture
Globalization has erased the gap between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures as both Rushdie and Coetzee are popular among the critics, intellectuals and also the common mass. The books are now marketed and promoted worldwide and thus they become bestsellers. The global market propagates the book as a successful product of public consumption, thus redefining the notion of popular culture. Globalization contributes in the proliferation of books- both canonical and local. Local language books are getting translated in various languages to cater to the multicultural reading public. Thus globalization works as a catalyst in the translation studies. The canonical works are also glocalised in different cultural spaces. They are reinterpreted and re-presented in the globalised world, thus gaining new meanings, new readers and new life.
5.5.Disadvantages of Globalization
Though a very fashionable phenomenon, globalization and its consequent economic aspirations have created the space of hegemonic universalism and ‘politics of polarization’ (Johnston et al.,2002, 451). Commenting on the disadvantage of globalization, Johnston, Taylor and Watts write,
5.6. The Unemployment Factor
Globalization, in its journey towards rapid economic expansion, has fuelled high competition and ruthless focus on efficiency and low-cost set-up which propelled the unemployment factor among the relatively less efficient workers, bringing in the politics of polarization.
5.7. Impact on Weaker Economies
Capitalism, being the biggest ally of globalization, wreaks havoc on the small-industries, institutions and rural economies which failed to compete with the prowess of the multinational companies. Globalization is an essentially urban and industrialized set-up which sidelined the traditional economic institutions to form a globalised market system.
5.6 Impact on Family Life
Behind the concept of the ‘Global Family’ of the ‘Global Village’ lies the dark reality of the disintegrated family life. Speed is the keyword of contemporary globalized life-style where each individual is engrossed in the mad run of becoming the successful global citizen. The family-bonds are loosening as the Gen-Y family members are immigrating to the foreign lands in search of work and affluence, subsequently creating a multicultural existence. The enhanced communication due to technological revolution has indeed succeeded to create a ‘hyperspace’ where the virtual bonds are maintained; but the physical attachment is neglected in this globalized virtual world.
5.7 Lack of Individual Privacy
The negation of distance is one of the dominant conditions of globalization which has its dual impact on the individual lifestyle. The idea of the ‘personal’ and the notion of the privacy are highly influenced by the networked existence where the rapid social and cultural change and the availability of the global products demand the internalization of hyperspace reality beyond the world of physical attachments. The enhanced communication on the other hand curtails the individual space where the individual choice is constantly determined by the global forces. This networked existence not only propels social mobilization but it also has led to human trafficking, illicit business of drugs, fast transmission of diseases, forceful immigration, terrorism and cultural uprooting.
5.8. Impact of Glocalization
Glocalization has a deep impact in the fields of education, media and culture. The global resources for the local educators make education more available and accommodative to the varied needs of the students. The use of the global media and information technology empowers the students to go beyond their local limitations. Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat is an important study of glocalization in the arena of media and culture. He shows how internet and the rapid growth of virtual media contribute in glocalization as the consumers use global resources in their native cultural setup. Glocalization works more on the cultural level as the multinational firms intend to catch up the cultural habitus of the local consumer.
In its extreme level, glocalization implies a threat of cultural imperialism through the integration of the local in the global, thus having a lasting effect on the cultural understanding of the local.
6. Let’s Sum Up
Globalization necessitates unhindered movement of people, commodities, cultures and ideas across the borders. These transnational movements enhance the cosmopolitanism, imagining the whole world as a global society where multiple identities are formed in a multicultural setting. The rapid movement of people from one place to another is facilitated by the growth of a technology-driven world in which ‘speed’ is the buzz word. These multilayered movements have a strong cultural quotient as it promotes cultural diffusion, resulting in cultural globalization. But cultural globalization has an inherent possibility of cultural homogenization through the hegemonic control of Westernisation. On the other hand, glocalization tries to involve both the global and the local in a way so that the global techniques can be incorporated in the local setting. Glocalization is a kind of response to the overwhelming possibility of universalism to preserve the simultaneity of both the global and the local.
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References
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