Moving Global Cultures - Essay Example

Moving Global Cultures Introduction According to Fuchs(2002:2)globalization means “various quantitative and qualitative developments ranging froma dramatic increase in international transactions, especially in finance, to the international and spatial reorganization of production, the global harmonization of tastes and standards, liberalization, deregulation, privatization, the arrival of new information technologies, the global diffusion of information, values, and ideas, massive population transfers, trends towards a universal world culture, the spread of a worldwide preference for democracy, and the erosion of the nation state”. Different aspects of globalization according to various definitions can be classified as economic, political and cultural and thus can be considered as very complicated (Appadurai, 2002:50). According to the cultural version of globalization, there are two arguments. One is the homogeneity argument, which states that a single global culture governs the world. This dimension focuses on the importance of media in undermining the importance of national culture and spreads global consumption patterns and popular culture through consumerism (Mc Cheseny, 2000:6 ). Based on this dimension, globalization is mainly related to capitalism. According to this version, globalization erodes the autonomy of the nation state and not its sovereignty. Another set of argument called the heterogeneity argument states that global culture is heterogeneous and this heterogeneity undermines the power of nation states (Koopman and Statham,1999:660).An associated concept is the multicultural citizenship that leads to the loss of monopoly of the state. This viewpoint reports global culture as fragmented, fluid, hybrid and syncretic. A third set of argument views globalization as both homogenous and heterogeneous at the same time (Appadurai, 2002:50). This is because the images, symbols and products will be highly homogenous across the globe and at the same time, the contextualization; hybridization and the reshaping of these images by the particularities of different places make them highly heterogeneous also. This third set of argument ie global culture today is the politics of the mutual effort of sameness and difference to cannibalize one another is examined critically in this essay. 2. Global Media and Global Culture The argument that global media has eroded the national culture is based on the concept that global culture is homogenous and there is a single global culture. Based on this concept, global media is the main agent that has eroded the national culture. The media globalization, which is linked with capitalism, according to this concept, has spreaded global consumption patterns and global culture through consumerism according to this argument (McChesney, 2000:9). Jan (2009:68) has shown that the global media is dominated by one single country the USA. The media industries like Hollywood industries and some studios are also dominated by the same country. These have resulted in the spread of global culture and the erosion of national culture. This is based on the cultural imperialism theory which states that advanced nations dominate the global economic system while the third world nations remain at the periphery with little or no control over the economic and political development (Jan,2009:64). Thus, this theory states that there is a type of cultural domination of the powerful nations over the weak nations. This theory is mainly intended at USA and other powerful capitalist societies. Based on this theory, it can be argued that some actors will be more powerful than others in global culture .This will in turn reshape the global identities, cultures and images. This viewpoint focuses on media as an international circulator of power, which weakens the nation state. In addition, the global media has resulted in spreading of policy, which has implications for the nation state also (Jan 2009:70). Studies have shown that due to the dominance of the American culture and other western culture in global media, the erosion of national cultures happened. A mixture of various national cultures to work effectively in the global media needs to be developed yet. Other major factors that have led to the erosion of national cultures by the global media are trans border data flow, cultural imperialism, media and information flows, and the flow of information, media trade, and effects of national development(Jan,2009:70). At the same time there are counterarguments to this stating that media protects the nation state. These arguments called the constructive approaches are the following. The media is used to create the nations propagandistically; more than the message, media’s centralized communication and language are important and finally the convergence of print technology and capitalism led to the concept of nation (Deutsch, 1966:76). Another set of arguments include protection of national culture by the media based on media dissemination and everyday experiences, banal nationalism, everyday events and the promotion of common national culture by television(Hobsbawm,1992:65). 3. Social Movements and Web Based Media Cross-cultural communication through global media, internet, mobile phones, seminars, training workshops etc are intended to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings based on cultural differences through information and knowledge sharing. According to the reinforcing hypothesis, the main users of the media technologies are already active political participants like powerful individuals and organizations. Hence, their interests will be reinforced by the media technologies instead of mobilizing new active political participation according to this hypothesis (Norris, 2000: 34). According to the reinforcement hypothesis, new media technologies not only do not have an impact on political participation and engagement but also raise the inequalities between haves and have-nots(Milner,2009:23). According to the mobilization hypothesis, the costs of communication will be reduced through new media technologies like internet, cell phones etc and creation of new information will be possible through these media(Samson,2008: 13). Garett (2006:) refutes this argument by another argument. According to his argument, even if this is so, media technologies have the capacity to increase the absorptive power of an individual like creating links on a website to a related material etc. Thus, this will again lead to increased political participation. Stanley and Christopher (2004:505) obtained evidence for enhanced political participation through internet, which challenges the previous findings. In this study, the political participation through online discussion and traditional channels in US are compared and obtained evidence favouring enhanced political participation though the se of internet. However, the effects obtained are not very large. As pointed out by the authors themselves, the previous level of political activities of the participants are not known. Hence separating the participation level through internet of already active and inactive participants was not possible to obtain, which is a limitation of the study. Another major link through which new media technology can enhance participation is through creating a perception of collective identity among widely dispersed individuals. This perception of collective identity can be turned into collective action. This in turn can enhance the participation in political activities for the inactive persons (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001:13). Another important channel for the new technologies enhancing political participation is through facilitating creation of community. These media technologies play a major role in creating social networking communities and thereby creating opportunities to get connected with people having different opinions (Norris, 2000:34). Several studies have shown that social networking sites like face book and orkut provide opportunities for the present generation to get connected for ever in spite of their cultural, territorial and temporal boundaries (Samson, 2008:45). The study by Hampton (2003:11) has shown that social networking sites facilitate collective action. Another school of thought emphasizes the role of nature of social movement organization in affecting the capacity of new media technologies to change community (Myers, 2000:200).The social movement organizations, which mobilize professional resources, can result in the creation of interactive communities. If these organizations mobilize participatory resources, then media technologies will play a reinforcing role of the already existing social ties. In addition, the media technologies play a very important role in the effective existence of transnational organizations. However, according to Keck and Sikkink(1998:43), the media technologies are not essential for transnational organizations though they are helpful for their existence. Rather than increasing political participation, the media technologies can help in increasing conflict also as shown in many studies like Myers (2000:21).This can be obtained by spreading the news of protest activities in one place to other places. The problem will be further intensified if the information spreaded is not accurate. False information can lead to an intensification of conflict. Thus, the new media technologies can do harm rather than good. The role of regional and cultural differences in influencing the impact of media technologies on the political participation and activism is clearly demonstrated in the study by Luengo (2006 :13).In this study, a comparison of the influence of media on political participation and activism is done for 20 European nations. The results are different for different nations mainly due to the differences in their democratic traditions and journalistic cultures. While the nations in Western/Northern democracies show high levels of participation other nations do not show that much participation .In the case of different forms of media technologies also, the results were obtained to be different. While television watching was not obtained to be significantly affecting activism, internet was obtained to be significantly and positively affecting activism. Newspapers were found to be positively and significantly supporting activism in some nations, while this was not so in the other nations. Categorizing the globalization into different types, some authors have fond that exchange in people is very much developed than exchange in goods (Sassen, 1996:43). At the same time, some other authors have argued that there are high regional disparities in getting the benefits of globalization. Many developing countries still do not have access to the benefits of globalization while most benefits are concentrated in developed nations. The third source of debate is related to the concepts like internationalization, liberalization, universalization, westernization/ modernization, and deterritorialization (Scholte 2002:3). 8. Conclusion Based on the argument of Appadurai (2002:50), it can be argued that globalization leads to both homogeneity and heterogeneity of cultures. This means that globalization leads to the dominance of western cultures and at the same time it maintains the relevance of nation state by retaining the peculiarities of the local contexts. Thus, it can be recommended that globalization need not erode the significance of nation state always. The results cannot be generalized always and it depends on different contexts and regions. The above general discussion shows that two hypotheses reinforcing and mobilization hypothesis have been put forward for explaining the impact of media technologies on political participation and engagement. Though in many empirical cases, reinforcing hypothesis was proved to be successful, mobilization hypothesis also has been proved successful in the recent years. The discussion suggests that the impact of media technologies on political participation and engagement varies in different places depending on their cultures and traditions. Further, the impact of different forms of media technologies will also be different. The positive impact of media technologies in enhancing the political participation and engagement depends on the effective use of these technologies. If used effectively, they can be a reliable source of information that can mobilize political participation. Otherwise, they can intensify conflicts. References Appadurai, A. (2002) “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” In David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds.), The Global Transformations Reader, Malden, MA: Polity Press. Arquilla, J. and Ronfeldt, D. (2001) “The advent of netwar (revisited)”. in J. Arquilla and D. Ronfeldt (eds) Networks and netwars: the future of terror, crime, and militancy, Santa Monica: Rand, pp. 1-25. On-line. 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