Global Culture: hegemony or plurality

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Global Culturehegemony or plurality?
Yin-wah ChuSociology, HKU
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What is globalization?

• Contemporary social changes
• Revolutions in information and communication
  technology (ICT)
• Decline of socialism/communism
• Resultant impacts on the
• Economy
• Polity
• Culture
• Society

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What is globalization?

• Revolutions in ICT (David Harvey)
• 1500-1840 horse-drawn coaches, 10 mph
• 1850-1930 steam locomotives, 65 mph
• 1950 propeller aircraft, 300-400 mph
• 2000 jet passenger aircraft, 500-700 mph
• Perhaps we may add TV the Internet
• Result time-space compression

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What is globalization?

• Impact on the economy
• Globalize economic production exchange
• IBM computer architecture designed in the US,
  hard disk drive produced in Singapore, keyboard
  in Malaysia, memory chips in Japan/Taiwan/Korea,
  computer assembled in China
• Daily transactions in the global capital market
  more than US1 trillion

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What is globalization?

• Impact on the polity
• Nation-state cannot solve transnational problems,
  e.g. pollution, human trafficking
• Emergence of transnational political
  institutions, e.g. WTO, WHO, UN
• National identification replaced/competed by
  local, regional, or global identification, e.g.
  global citizen

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What is globalization?

• These changes CANNOT be understood from the
  perspective of inter-national system, e.g.
  ???
• Hence the term globalization
• Globalization radicals ? the global exerts
  central dynamics
• Globalization transformationists ? complex
  interactions among global, national, local

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What is culture?

• But, of course, todays focus is culture
• What is culture?
• Art, music, drama, religion
• But also mundane practices and consciousness,
  e.g. voting behavior, views of authority, dine
  and wine, self-adornment
• I.e. ????

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What is culture?

• American Heritage Dictionary
• The totality of socially transmitted behavior
  patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all
  other products of human work and thought
• These patterns, traits, and products considered
  as the expression of a particular period, class,
  community, or population

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What is culture?

• Birmingham School
• Cultural as a totality of meaningful practices
  constituting a way of life
• Ulf Hannerz (1992)
• Culture above all a matter of meaning ideas,
  experiences, feelings, as well as the external
  forms that such internalities take as they are
  made public, available to the senses and thus
  truly social

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Debates on global culture

• One major debate concerns
• The spread of global read American culture,
  e.g. Coke Cola, McDonalds, Disneyland, Levis
  jeans,
• Has globalization enriched or impoverished
  culture around the world?
• Cultural imperialism/hegemony or cultural
  plurality?

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1 Cultural Imperialism

• Late capitalism
• Individuals find no meaning in work, but depend
  on consumption to express and assert ones
  identity
• Capitalisms search for profit ? find new markets
  to conquer, transform culture into commodity
  items of desire to be bought and sold.
  Dominant corporations mostly from the US rely
  upon the global media to achieve the purpose

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Cultural Imperialism

• Global media corporations
• Global media market dominated by 10 transnational
  corporations Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann
  (Germany), Viacom, Telecommunications Inc., News
  Corporation, Sony, Seagram (formerly Universal),
  General Electric (formerly NBC), Dutch Phillips
  (formerly Polygram)
• Flow of media from the West to the Rest

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Cultural Imperialism

• Promotion of global cultural items
• McDonalds, Coke Cola
• Would also incorporate foreign or ethnic culture
  to introduce seasonal variation ? a means to
  satisfy the search for the exotic
• E.g. Mulan (filial piety versus feminism) or
  ethnic tourism (stereotypical practices presented
  to tourists as indigenous take local culture out
  of context so as to satisfy consumption need)

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Cultural Imperialism

• Global culture does not exert superficial impacts
  alone, they also shape peoples consciousness
• in practically everywhere, people watch Dallas
  on TV, wear blue jeans and smoke Marlboro as a
  sign of free, untouched nature (Ulrich Beck
  2000).
• the meaning of good, appropriate, success

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Cultural Imperialism

• Destroy indigenous culture
• Decline of tradition e.g. sexual liberation
  propagated by Hollywood movies and decline of the
  family
• Distortion of local culture, e.g. the case of
  ethnic tourism

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Cultural Imperialism

• The idea of cultural imperialism (Herbert
  Schiller)
• Culture becomes more homogeneous
• Not in the sense that all cultures are
  incorporated equally, but biased towards American
  culture and those presented in English
• The complete opposite of diversity

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Cultural Imperialism

• Cultural Imperialism
• A new form of exploitation that results from the
  export of popular culture from the U. S., Japan,
  and Europe. Popular culture portrays images of a
  good life ? consumption
• More important than political or military control
  in the postmodern, post-socialist, postindustrial
  world.

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(2) Cultural Diversity

• Globalization
• Unprecedented increase in awareness of lives in
  other cultures social and political ideas, forms
  of entertainment, cultural products
• Availability of greater choices and exciting
  combination of the global and local

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Cultural Diversity

• Against cultural imperialism
• An indigenous past?
• Domination of global media?
• Which TV channel do most people watch in HK?
• Global products sold without regard to local
  culture?
• Disneyland in Tokyo ?
• Newsweek in Asia and the US

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Cultural Diversity

• Consumers passively consume products given to
  them? Or bring their own cultural resources to
  make sense of the culture?
• i. Cultural hybridization foreign cultural
  imports are assigned fresh meanings within the
  receiving culture

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Cultural Diversity

• E.g. In pre-revolution Iran, Dallas was
  considered corrupt in post-revolution Iran,
  Western pop music circulates underground and used
  by people to distance themselves from the regime
• E.g. Women from Trinidad talked about a US TV
  program, The Young and the Restless, to
  reinforce their beliefs in what marriage means
• E.g.??? ?????????? MingPao April 3, 2005

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Cultural Diversity

• Globalization of HK-Chinese food is another topic
  that we cannot explore in depth today

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Cultural Diversity

• ii. Cultural synchronization people can belong
  to a number of cultures simultaneously.
• E.g. watch TV as a means to distance from our
  everyday life.
• E.g. Korean women politicians developed a dual
  system of dress hanbok to signify nationalism
  and Western dress to symbolize material success
  and careerism

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Food/McDonalds

• The case of the McDonalds has been studied quite
  extensively and can be used to illustrate the
  case for and against cultural imperialism

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McDonalds

• McDonalds (G. Ritzers McDonaldization)
• (1) efficiency fast, method of production
  scientifically proven
• (2) predictability a world of no surprise
  standard menu, taste, décor, service
• (3) quantity rather than quality
• (4) non-human technology

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McDonalds /Hong Kong

• Global
• (1) Standardization food, interior design,
  layout etc.
• (2) Initially presented itself as uncompromising
  American food
• - no Chinese name at first
• - transliteration later
• - no Chinese food

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McDonalds /Hong Kong

• (3) Standard of cleanliness clean washrooms in
  restaurants
• (4) Customer discipline line up for food
• (5) Idea of a regular meal (a) exotic to
  ordinary (b) snacks versus meals customers
  middle-class, like exotic American culture ? all
  ages, all social classes, look for a simple meal

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McDonalds /Hong Kong

• Local?
• (1) Resistance of McDonalds? Involve in
  community activities hard to attack
• (2) Local choice of food fish burger and plain
  hamburgers rather than Big Mac as favorite, other
  local favorites e.g. shogan burger, chicken wings
  

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McDonalds /Hong Kong

• (3) Consumer discipline service w/ a smile,
  busing own tables, hovering, napkin wars
• (4) Fast food restaurant? US customers stay no
  more than 20 minutes on average HK study room
  for high school students, gathering place for
  senior people ??????

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McDonalds /China

• McDonalds opened its first store in Beijing in
  1992
• McDonalds enjoyed tremendous success
• Chinese attempts to imitate McDonalds, but failed

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McDonalds /China

• Who go to McDonalds and why?
• (1) Young professionals a mark of middle-class
  status (in 1992), feeling of connection to the
  world
• (2) Single women morally suspect in
  traditional restaurants. Greater equality in
  McDonalds order own food, no fear of being
  dominated in conversations

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McDonalds /China

• (3) Young couples clean, soft music, romantic, a
  place for courtship
• (4) Parents with young children childrens
  choice of restaurants

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McDonalds /China

• Fast food a cultural construct - includes the
  food and nonfood elements, e.g. eating manners,
  environment, patterns of social interaction
• McDonalds in Beijing food, décor embody
  global standards
• consumers expropriate the global elements for
  their own purposes

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Global/Local

• Cultural imperialism?
• McDonalds changed the Asian cuisine and consumer
  behaviors, yet
• HK people embraced American fast food w/out
  losing cultural traditions
• HK and Mainland Chinese consumers also
  transformed their neighborhood McDonalds into
  local institutions

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Global/Local

• James Watson younger people in Hong Kong are
  fully conversant in transnational idioms, which
  include language, music, sports, clothing,
  satellite televisions, cyber communications,
  global travel not possible to distinguish b/n
  global and local the transnational is the local

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Debates on global culture

• We have so far focused on the globalization of
  popular culture.
• The approach that emphasizes cultural
  plurality, especially its questioning of pure
  indigenous culture and its attention to human
  agency in the consumption process, is appropriate
  and should be taken adopted in any study of
  culture

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Debates on global culture

• However, the globalization of culture extends to
  other dimensions, esp. to its political
  ramifications
• Cannot overlook the inextricable relationship
  between culture and the nation-state
• Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilization
• Francis Fukuyamas The End of History

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Debates on global culture

• The argument of human agency pales against the
  fact that African languages are disappearing
  daily
• In the next century, about 90 of the worlds
  6,000 languages would disappear and with them
  their knowledge, customs, and culture
• Of this 6,000 plus languages, 1/3 are spoken on
  Africa

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Lung Ying-tai

• On Taiwan governments proposal to adopt English
  as an official language
• She writes beautifully concerning her experiences
  in Europe.
• Modernization and globalization have not led to
  the destruction of tradition.
• Indeed, modern technology has been used to
  preserve tradition.
• Tradition is not nostalgia, but a necessity in
  life

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Lung Ying-tai

• The more developed a country, the more are its
  people confident of its tradition
• Asian countries tend to borrow other countries
  culture without knowing its meanings
• e.g. thanksgiving w/out knowing who/what to
  thank Valentines day w/out knowing who St.
  Valentine is

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Lung Ying-tai

• For her, internationalization or
  globalization means an understanding of self
  and the other
• Self-understanding so that one knows what values
  one should hold on to
• Understand the other so that one can use the
  language and logic understandable to the other
  and express the uniqueness of the self
  language, culture, viewpoints

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Lung Ying-tai

• Knowledge is the foundation to attain such an
  understanding
• A total conversion to foreign culture is not
  useful. An indulgence in ones own culture is
  also counterproductive

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Lung Ying-tai

• Hong Kongs cultural policy
• Domination of central value
• Economy, wealth generation, efficiency,
  development, globalization as indicators of
  social progress
• Result
• A monolithic face tidy, orderly
• A government that does not respect history
• A West Kowloon Cultural District that has
  little to do w/ local people, local culture

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Conclusion

• Criticisms of cultural imperialism true enough
• Human agency
• Absence of an indigenous past cultural
  cross-fertilization is the essence of art static
  art is dead art
• Tyranny of the nation nations have tried to
  eliminate other culture/languages in their rise
  male domination in most traditional societies

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Conclusion

• Cultural enrichment
• Material non-material culture coke,
  McDonalds, Titanic
• Ideas of egalitarianism through books published
  in foreign languages and as they are embodied in
  the consumption of McDonalds

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Conclusion

• Globalization occurs w/in particular
  political/economic/cultural structures
• But each country can protect those elements of
  its culture it most prizes If only people can
  generate enough local concern and political will,
  free societies will always device ways to
  guarantee cultural plurality and deny hegemony to
  any single over-mighty cultural threat

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Conclusion

• Hegemony or plurality?