Global Media and Global Culture - Case Study Example

Global Media and Global Culture. The phenomenon that is called “globalisation” has been approached from so many different angles that it is difficult to obtain a clear view of its main features and its implications for human society. This paper approaches the topic by analysing a short text by Jean Baudrillard entitled “The Violence of the Global” (Baudrillard 2003) and reflecting upon it in the light of contributions from Zigmunt Baumann and Manuel Castells. The key argument in Baudrillard’s text is, as the title suggests, the connection which exists between globalisation and violence, and in particular with the kind of violence that is becoming increasingly common in the modern world: international terrorism. Baudrillard brings to the topic a penetrating philosophical analysis which concentrates on the fundamental meaning of terrorism. He draws a clear line of cause and effect between globalisation and terrorism, but first he must clarify some of the terminology that he uses. The predominant use of the word “globalisation” is economic, and it suggests an increased inter-connectedness in the business world. In a typically polemical fashion, Baudrillard calls this “the triumph of single track thinking … the perpetual flow of money.” (Baudrillard 2003: 89) These are, of course, negative labels in Baudrillard’s thinking, which stress the superficial, materialistic and self-seeking nature of global capitalism. He steps back from this superficial perspective, however, and examines the philosophical underpinnings of globalisation, rejecting the view that globalisation brings people together, and “universalizes” human experience, and arguing instead that it creates a harmful divide between those who are discriminated and excluded from globalisation’s large scale commercial exchanges. One of the main strengths of Baudrillard’s text is that it creates vivid and memorable imagery to capture and explain very complex philosophical concepts. The effect of globalisation on other cultures is described as that of creating (by implication through violent means) a heap of mirror fragments which have been shattered, and which twinkle still, even though they are not connected up with each other in the way that they used to be. (Baudrillard 2003: 90) In the next paragraph the shards of the mirror have become “singularities that are now returned to the wild and left to themselves” (Baudrillard 2003: 91). Civilisation, it seems, is not exactly an admirable condition, and Baudrillard suggest that returning to the wild is perhaps a better, or at least more authentic, option. The metaphor in the next section of the chapter switches to one of the human body, as the replacement of a true universal of humanity with the false impostor of globalisation results in “inhuman metastases.” (Baudrillard 2003: 93) This cancer that is eating away at modern humanity expresses itself in violence, and it is to be understood as operating within human nature in a destructive way. It is like a locally spreading cancer, but at the same time it is “viral” (Baudrillard 2003: 94) and that is why it represents the greatest imaginable danger to human beings. This representation of modern trends is deliberately exaggerated, in order to press home the seriousness of the threat to truly human values that globalisation represents. Baudrillard is not entirely pessimistic about the situation, however, because he suggests that there are increasing signs of resistance emerging across the globe. Structured political resistance, in the form of the anti-globalization movement is, in his opinion, superficially effective but ultimately futile because it seeks only to curb the effects and does not address the causes. (Baudrillard 2003: 95-96). Baudrillard looks to the singularities, or in other words the broken fragments of the mirror of humanity, which will rise up and fight back against the domination of globalisation. This may take the form of terrorism, which resorts to violence, or to other means. What they have in common is that they are fragmented, disparate, and entirely unpredictable in nature. They are oppositional forces, which are part of the whole dynamic of globalisation on the one hand, which seeks to dominate and ultimately extinguish everything else, and that hotch-potch of “everything else” which refuses to be written off and removed. The aim of modern war led by the dominant military power (which implies the United States and its allies) is described as “to quell any refractory zone, to colonize and tame all the wild spaces, whether in geographical space or in the realm of the mind” (Baudrillard, 2003: 98). It is hardly surprising, given this definition, that violence is the inevitable response. At the end of the chapter Baudrillard draws in natural disasters as potential allies in the fight against domination, claiming in a footnote that “ it may even be argued that natural catastrophes are a form of terrorism.” (Baudrillad: 98, n. 1). This is perhaps going too far, but nevertheless it highlights the way that human beings and that the physical condition of the planet are symbiotically linked. Perhaps the most important insight of the whole paper lies in the interpretation of the September 11 atrocity (one of the very few concrete examples he cites) as an intention to humiliate overweening Western power, using just nineteen brave warriors rising up symbolically against the might of a global empire. The damage done to the West was devastating on the sites of the attack, but beyond that it had incalculable effects due to the West’s own media networks, showing waves and waves of television pictures, and instigating further waves of security enhancement. The humiliation of the tyrant and the injection of fear into the population were the aims, and these were fully realised in the terrorism of Al Qaeda. Baudrillard’s text is written in a deceptively simple and accessible style. He crystallises the psychological effects of globalisation on those who are fully signed up members of the global network, and those who are for ever excluded and derided by that “in-group.” By analysing the forms that globalisation takes, he illuminates its inner nature, and the tensions that inevitably follow from its natural course through the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. This is a masterful analysis which gives other scholars a large amount of food for thought, and of course prompts others to examine globalisation more deeply, and question trite or reductive assumptions such as the simple equation of universalism, which is about fundamental human values and globalisation which is about the imposition of an empty materialism without any commitment to values other than profit for some at the expense of others. Zigmunt Bauman, writing three years later on more or less the same topic of “Terrors of the Global” (Bauman: 2006), picks up on the main idea of an inherent link between globalisation and terror but approaches it less from a philosophical angle, and more from a political and ethical one. Instead of concentrating on how people feel about globalisation, he analyses how they act, and what kind of motivation for action derives from the newly arrived planetary interdependence of globalisation. Frequent use of the term “negative globalization” betrays Bauman’s fundamental pessimism. Where Baudrillard sees a creative tension between the stultifying uniformity of globalisation and the dynamic creativity of excluded and fragmented entities, Bauman sees “aporia” (Bauman 2006: 101), which implies an impasse or contradiction which can never be resolved. For Bauman the problem lies in the disconnect which now exists between the actions of individual human beings and their consequences. If everything is inter-connected in the modern world, then it follows that actions and reactions cannot with certainty be predicted. The analogy of the butterfly’s wing that sets of a chain reaction across the world springs to mind. A further implication of this disconnect is that some people can commit terrible acts with impunity, while others will devote themselves to virtuous acts which have only negative consequences. In other words, the new world order undermines the most basic components of human moral behaviour: the link between the intent to do good or harm, with the effect and the predictable consequences. Bauman’s argument shows how until now it was possible to untangle these messy ethical connections, and give citizens some kind of certainty that in the main, evil would be punished, or at the very least reviled, while good would bring positive rewards. Bauman argues that instead of this dynamic there is now an attempt by global powers such as the United States to impose a Manichean framework in which the United States represents all that is good and its enemies represent all that is evil, citing the rhetoric of Presidents Reagan and Bush as symptomatic of this move. There is a clear description of a fundamental loss of sovereignty across the globe, and explanation why military action against diffuse and fleeting terrorist entities can only exacerbate tensions, and how global media magnify these tensions still further, which is entirely in agreement with Baudrillard’s argument. Bauman suggests half- heartedly that a potential solution could lie in the exercise of greater control, along the lines of some global governance entity: “The future of democracy and freedom has to be made secure on a planetary scale” but then cancels the optimism with a rider “or not at all.” (Bauman 2006: 128). This is anathema to Baudrillard’s thinking – as if the pieces of the mirror could somehow magically reassemble and function as a unified whole, and Bauman’s pessimism suggests that actually, such a theory is unrealistic. Some way between the views of Baudrillard and Bauman lies an intriguing paper by Castells on the space of flows (Castells 2000). The approach taken in this analysis is that of cultural sociology. By looking more closely at how humans within social groups are reacting to globalisation, Castells illuminates some interesting areas for reflection. The significance of instantaneous communication is highlighted, and without the distraction of doom and gloom scenarios about terrorism, there is an unemotional exploration of what this means for human beings. It may be that Castells has the advantage of writing about these phenomena before the earth-shattering event that 9/11 represents. In the two extracts outlined above, both Baudrillard and Bauman were writing after 2001, and this may explain some of their preoccupation with international terrorism and its aftermath. Such a momentous shock to the world system has undoubtedly left its mark on communication and media studies. Castells makes a highly original observation about the change which has occurred in human understanding of space and time, now that the internet and other media allow instantaneous connections across vast geographical areas. Everyone knows that virtual communication takes place in some no-person’s land of cyberspace, but Castells makes the valid point that this does not mean it is completely separate from physical location. Decision making in the twenty first century takes place in locations, which Castells categorises in a hierarchical relationship of information technology input locations, nodes and hubs where particular interest groups congregate and at the highest level, managerial elites who hop from one privileged space to another, such as luxury hotels, airports and high status offices. The elite is cosmopolitan, and operates in urban spaces, or luxury compounds within poorer and usually rural regions, while the lowest branches of this hierarchy can be found anywhere and almost everywhere around the globe. What this means is that for human beings place is still important, but the higher up this hierarchy a person is, the less limiting actual position has become. Social interaction is no longer limited to co-extensive presence in the same room, but can take place in non-linear ways across huge distances. This analysis is interesting because it takes Baudrillard’s ideas about signs, symbols and communication as and looks at some of the nuts and bolts of how they operate in the modern world. In some ways, Castells makes Baudrillard’s theories more concrete, and in the process he produces new avenues for further theoretic thought, such as the concept of flows between spaces. Bauman, on the other hand, brings a certain gravity and seriousness to Baudrillard’s idealistic and somewhat emotional depiction of the modern world. Together, however, all three authors add to our understanding of global media and culture(s) and it is entirely appropriate that they should at times overlap, and at times disagree, much like a pile of shattered mirror pieces. References Baudrillard, J. (2003) The Violence of the Gobal, from The Spirit of Terrorism. London: Verso, pp. 86-105. Bauman, Z. (2006) Terrors of the Global, from Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 96-128. Castells, M. (2000) The Information Society, Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 440-459. Read More