Globalization and the Youth Culture of Dakar - Essay Example

? Globalization and the Youth Culture of Dakar as Related in a study by Scheld and Examined againstWriting by Ong and Writing by Inda and Rosaldo The emergence of globalization has created a world in which cultures collide and the youth of the world are experiencing a world that their elders had never imagined. In an examination of economic and social influences of the youth on Dakar, Senegal, Scheld discusses the idea of cultures that have been expanded and changed through the influences of consumerism as they relate to this particular region of the world. In comparing her writing with that of Aihwa Ong, an emerging pattern of the influences of media on the nature of capitalism can be observed. When gauging that against the ideas of globalization as they are discussed by Inda and Rosaldo, the influences of cultures as they collide can be seen for how they are changing existing cultures, and reinventing through filters as they influence life across the world. The emergence of globalization has created a youth driven culture as the ways of the old are being shadowed by the influences of new cultures through media, consumerism, and the emergence of a capitalistic based world economy. According to Scheld, ” In Dakar, youth are increasingly entrepreneurial individuals who base the authenticity of their cosmopolitan identity on an ability to buy and sell (trade) in the urban/global informal economy” (232). This might be seen as a Westernization of thought and identity that has embraced the nature of consumerism and shaped the way in which the youth are supporting their feelings of participation in a world that has grown large through globalization. The creation of clothing lines within the Dakar cosmopolitan has emerged through a sense of community; those involved using social terms of interaction in order to support what they are creating. While there is an undercurrent of dishonest behaviors, they are framed by social rules which include creative and competitive structures of behavior. Sheld states that “youth steer the economic cultural life of the city and keep it hooked in to the global economy” (232). Sheld’s research is based upon a belief that “Dakarois youth use dress to shape the city and urban identity” (232). Sheld’s work examines “how clothing use and exchange shape cosmopolitan identities, the city, and global flows of people and goods in a West African metropolis” (232). The region of Dakar is economically depressed, the city a wash of deterioration and decay, but the young people of the region dress in ways that are both provocative and colorful, injecting into the economy a relationship between cultural expression and economic stimulation. Where most aspects of the economy are failing, the behaviors of the youth culture in creating their own sub-economy for the purpose of fashion creates an underbelly of motion in which the an informal economy is the basis of the emergence of culture within the city landscape. It seems to be a common element within a culture to see its youth as a driving force in creating economic flows based upon fashion and social identity. The ways in which these “marginalized populations make sense of modernity, express their identities and shape their lifeworlds” (Sheld 233) is often through externalized expressions of their emotions, their choices placing them within a framework of social position that makes sense to them and to their peers. In creating “imagined memberships” within a specified world, the individual becomes a part of a world through mimicry and recreation of the world to form and identify with the ways in which they associate themselves in congruence with the ways in which the structure services their need for identity (Sheld 235). Globalization has become a driving force of youth culture, allowing for identification with groups from around the world where something of those social groups becomes an identifiable structure from which looks and behaviors are adapted. According to Ong as Arjun Appadurai is quoted “cultural globalization” becomes involved with a theory “of rupture that takes media and migration as its two major and interconnected diacritics and explores their joint effect on the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity” (10). This theory of globalization is based upon the idea that the media is an active participant in capitalism. Media is a conduit between cultures, a social lubricant that allows for worlds to collide and for social identity to be created through a greater knowledge of culture based upon voyeurisms into other worlds. There are problems with the globalization of the world. While the theories support the idea that cultures are influencing each other, it is more clearly defined as the idea that Western consumerism and popular trends are beginning to dominate the world. Inda and Rosaldo use a great number of ‘snapshot’ scenarios in order to illustrate how a wide variety of cultures are now being influenced and saturated with effects from popular trend businesses that are now an integral part of their lives. Some lives are enhanced, while some are diminished, but all are affected by the introduction o Western production, consumerism, and fashion into their world. When these concepts are examined, they all suggest that something of the native cultures of these regions of the world are infected by Western ideals and aesthetics. Senegal is primarily filled with a population of youth in which over 65% of the people are under the age of thirty. Scheld says of the culture as it relates to youth that ”It is common to hear adults say in Wolof, the lingua franca of Senegal, “xale tey danu nak djoum”—today’s youth are thoughtless and lack self-respect, ambition, vision, and courage. Another common expression is, “xale tey fecc rekk”—all today’s youth do is dance. Also, youth are described as “boule fale,” an individual who is wayward, pays no mind to others, and thinks only of him or herself and not of the family’s struggle to put food on the table” (235). This would seem a familiar claim in Western cultures, each older generation looking upon its young people and seeing only faint resemblances to the time of their own youth, the generations seeming to be increasingly shifted away from the ideals that the generations above held as dear. However, this was not necessarily the way before the influences of consumerism grabbed hold and ‘trend’ and globalization instilled upon the youths a specified separation from older ways, creating widened gaps between the generations that do not seem to exist in more tightly connected cultures. In other words, in worlds that have community and the continuation of survival at their highest level of priority, the honor of having been passed the torch and reaching inclusion into adulthood has supported the continuation of culture. However, in consumer cultures, the next big thing drives wedges between the generations, each incarnation of identity as it is derived from outside of the culture having a stronger influence than generations of tradition. As seen by the way in which the generations of Dakar are framed by their older generations, the separation of generations through consumer behaviors and ideals seems to have reformed culture. Inda and Rosaldo examine a world in which the interconnections of the cultures are crossing people into social structures in which influences are changing individuals towards patterns of thoughts that are more intertwined. In a simplified definition of globalization, Inda and Rosalda write that it is “the intensification of global interconnectedness, suggesting a world of full movement and mixture, contact and linkages and persistent cultural interconnection and exchange” (4). This connectivity is based upon an understanding of the development of ways in which the world now is able to contact other regions through travel, media, and social means that has not been previously available. Inda and Rosaldo work to create a world in which it is not just Western influences that dominate, but the use of other cultural interconnections are premised as being a part of globalization so that the world becomes not overrun by Western ideas, but infused with a mix of all cultures. However, a dominant and submissive dynamic does seem to take shape. In developing countries, work has become labor that is defined by hourly efforts as defined by wage, influences by structures of quota and production. How life has been reframed by the influences of a loss of cultural habits as they have been replaced by capitalist driven frameworks of labor and production. As the world has changed, they dynamics of social interactions have changed. As shown by Sheld in the example of Dakar, “Traditionally, Senegalese youth are raised to defer to adults in exchange for protection and care. With today’s economy, adults are unable to make a living and therefore they are often unable to provide for their children. Many young people fend for themselves, often creating role reversals and serious power struggles between adults and youth” (235). It can be observed that the new globalized world in which survival rituals have changed and been transformed into capitalism and consumerism models of survival, a disconnection has occurred between the generations as the social purposes of relationships have fundamentally changed. The roles of individuals in a globalized world are not clear, their function within societies with long traditions no longer able to be experienced, their new position unclear and shifting. With these tensions between family and community, the identity of the whole is being superseded by a series of identities that often do not include roles within the family. Identity is often not about the family dynamic but about the public social structure. However, not all people are deteriorating and falling into a chaos of disrespect and rebellion. Schell reports that there are ““houselouman,”—someone who works hard to make something from nothing. The term is derived from “hustle” in English and from “hous” in Wolof which means to scratch or peck like a chicken” (236). This signals that it will always be values and morals that prevail, maybe restructured and re-envisioned, but always dominant in any world with the goal of survival at its core. People find new roles in a world in which the economy has become based upon new forms of understandings of how to become a part of the economic interchange as framed within a social environment. Dakar is seen as a stopping point to immigration into Europe. This does not mean that everyone who goes there is intending to immigrate, but in the West African mind, Dakar is a way port towards a new life within the European cultures. They journey from as far away as Pakistan and India in order to gain passage through means that are sometimes primitive, and sometimes modern. The informal economy has emerged because of this international center, thus creating a world with its own unique rules in which economic and social connections become enmeshed. The informal economy has emerged from an indifferent government that has done nothing to create jobs where immigrants are searching for means with which to support themselves and their families back home. Sheld reports that the clothing marked is sensitive to global trends, bringing the world into their fashion editorial. The culture of the city has become centered on youth and clothing markets. Aggressive tactics for sales are the norm, and the world of these youths is centered on opportunity and the exploitation of opportunity as they make their livings through drives for fashion identity and the push of the capitalist aesthetic. The new world that has emerged from globalization is stretching and growing, experiencing fits and spasms as it struggles to find control and discipline. Identity within this new world is a core drive, youths finding the structures of culture changing so that the roles their parents played no longer relevant. Globalization has destroyed cultures and what are left are the remnants of the old with the wash of the new as consumerism and capitalism struggles to stand in environments that were not based upon those belief systems that now create a struggle within the community. The youths of Dakar have found identities through the entrepreneurial spirit, creating an unsanctioned, but thriving economy based upon information of the world outside of the city as it flows in through means of media influences. The transformation of the world into a single larger economy with thousands of micro-economies that survive through the drive to survive has created destruction and creation in its wake. The example of the Dakar youth as they have emerged as an economic power is an example of the new world. Works Cited Ong, Ai-hwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham [u.a.: Duke Univ. Press, 1999. Print. Scheld, Suzanne. Youth Cosmopolitanism: Cloth, the City and Globaliztion in Dakar, Senegal. City and Society. 19.2 (2007): 232-252. Inda, Jonathan X, and Renato Rosaldo. The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden, MA [u.a.: Blackwell, 2008. Print. Read More