Brian Edwards Anubhav Gupta

Comp Lit 383 02/06/06

Globalization & Culture

Both proponents and detractors of globalization speak of the phenomenon as a production of the West that is gradually spreading to and encompassing the rest of the world. Immanuel Wallerstein, in his rationalization of globalization, shares this conception of an asymmetrical movement from one region to another. He explains globalization largely through the rise of capitalism and the formation of a single world economy that structures the world into core, periphery, and semi-periphery areas. Ulf Hannerz utilizes a similar center-periphery model to explain how culture functions in a world of globalization - thereby expanding the definition of globalization beyond the economic realm. Similarly, Arjun Appadurai complicates the scope of globalization by highlighting the multiple non-economic flows between individuals, groups and states. He provides a framework of five scapes through which to rationalize and appreciate the disjunctured interaction and impact of these diverse exchanges. Finally, in his analysis of this multitude of exchanges and agents in the economic, political and cultural realms Appadurai rejects the center-periphery relationship that Wallerstein and Hannerz see as an integral characteristic of globalization.

Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory of globalization isprimarily economic, focusing ona world system consisting of myriad cultural systems, but defined by a single division of labor. Capitalism, the defining fact of globalization, designates each region of the world a specific function or position in the world economy. Wallerstein traces the beginning of market trade and capitalism to the emergence of the modern world economy in16th century Europe, where local capitalists began manipulating political power to accumulate wealth. Just as an owner appropriates surplus value from a laborer, colonial powers in Europe began to exploit and extract capital and profits from other parts of the world. By 1640, different regions fit into one of three different defined roles in the global economy: the core, semi-periphery and periphery. Core regions continually exploit peripheral ones by utilizing strong state machineries, and the semi-peripheral areas sustain the system by providing a buffer zone between the two polarities. Globalization can thus be imagined as the world economy that has recently become radically more integrated due tostrides in technology and telecommunications, enriching the core regions of the first world at the expense of much of the developing world. Wallerstein provides a clear model of how a globalized world is structured; however, due to the model’s narrow focus on economicsat a macro level, Wallerstein fails toaddress what it means to live in such a world and how to analyze the processes of globalization with respect to the impact it has on the individual and other micro agents.

Ulf Hannerz uses much of Wallerstein’s framework of core/central and peripheral areas, but expands the definition of globalization beyond just economic processes. Heis concerned with how the new world of globalization organizes and structures cultural interactions. According to Hannerz, culture flows from cultural centers to peripheral areas. This exertion of cultural influence by the center on the periphery may seem to hint at a system of homogenization, but Hannerz is careful to moderate this idea. First, he claims that there are multiple cultural centers exporting culture, resulting in a complex set of cultural influences.Secondly, center-periphery roles “are asymmetrical, but not free from contradictions, and they do not relegate the periphery to [an] entirely passive role in cultural construction” (Hannerz 115). By acknowledging that peripheral areas in interaction with exported cultural symbols and practices are able to transform, hone, adapt and even reject, Hannerz is ascribing agency to the periphery. The process of globalization provides peripheral areas the technology and knowledge that may allow for the re-dreaming and maturation of local art, traditions and practices. Thus, there are locally evolving alternatives to cultural imports as well as a process of indigenization of foreign ideas and practices.

This center to periphery flow of culture also exists within states or regions. Hannerz points to cities as perfect examples of cultural centers that continually disseminate information, images, technology to villages and other peripheral areas. This level of cultural flows brings the concept of globalization closer to the ground and reveals that any individual experiences culture based on where he or she resides. A person living in a village in Iran is open to cultural flows form Tehran, which endures cultural influence from the West. The agency and boundedness of cultures have to be analyzed in degrees because each center or periphery is related to other centers and peripheries. More over, due to the agency of different actors within central or peripheral areas, cultural flows can beextremely diverse. Hannerz sees globalization as a process of creolization orthe organization of cultural diversity, which results from internal machineries of peripheral areas ingesting cultural exports and metabolizing them in unique ways. There is no conclusion as to whether homogenization will occur, whether the world will become creolized, or whether the process of creolization will continue endlessly. Hannerz does however declare that culture will continue to flow from centers to the peripheries.

In contrast to Ulf Hannerz, Arjun Appadurai challenges both of the important premises that Wallerstein establishes in his model of globalization. First, similarly to Hannerz, Appadurai wholly rejects the conception of globalization as singularlyan economic phenomenon and, instead, deems it anintricateweb of political, economic and cultural processes. While, Hannerz describes the complexity of cultural interactions, Appadurai provides specific vocabulary of scapes to classify and rationalize the multiple avenues of transnational exchanges and flows that signify globalization. These five scapes are ethnoscapes: the movement of people, technoscapes: the spread of technology, financescapes: the flow of global capital, mediascapes: distribution of the capability to disseminate information and the subsequent images presented and created, and ideoscapes: the diffusion of ideas. These five scapes highlight the numerous ways in which globalization is taking place and influencing the world. Appadurai stresses that the scapes are not parallel or opposing;each scapefunctions independently, but is also constrained by the others, resulting in a very disjunctured, complex phenomenon.

Appadurai also argues that a center-periphery model of cultural flows is no longer relevant. “The global relationship among ethnoscapes, technoscapes, and financescapes is deeply disjunctive and profoundly unpredictable because each of these landscapes is subject to its own constraints and incentives…at the same time as each acts as a constraint and a parameter for movement in the others” (Appadurai, 104). Technological and knowledge flows have made it possible for peripheral regions to generate and spread culture. For this reason, globalization itself ensures that cultural flows do not give in to traditional center-periphery relationships. The increased agency of a periphery in just one scape affects the direction of cultural flows in the other scapes. Ethnoscapes more than anything else have changed the center-peripheral relationship. Deterritorialization, a slowly spreading phenomenon is transporting populations from the periphery to cultural centers. Being in a new place creates a desire to hold onto all remnants of the home culture. This demand for cultural ties with a peripheral home catalyzes a process in which culture begins to flow from the periphery to the center. This can be seen in the presence of Bollywood Cinema halls in most American cities. The central-periphery flow does not stand up to even Hannerz’s example of colonial empires like England and France. No doubt, these colonial empires had immense cultural impact on many of their colonies, but the flows were reciprocal. The abundance of curry restaurants in Great Britain today clearly shows that India also had a lasting impact on the cultural center.

Appadurai also attempts to explain what space agency and subjectivityhave in the world of globalization. As discussed above, he disagrees with the traditional concept of agency lying in the cultural center. Peripheries, even when they are importing culture, are actively shaping culture through the process of indigenization. As a new cultural idea is absorbed, it is quickly transformed and adapted to local taste and practices. Thus, even if one can argue that culture generally flows in one direction, Appadurai establishes that agency lies in all agents, because a peripheral group always has the ability to reject, adapt, embrace or transform an external cultural idea or practice. Secondly, Appadurai challenges the construction of the periphery and the center as a unit. Agents within the same region may interact completely differently with a cultural flow. Thus, while a populace might embrace an outside cultural influence, the state might repel it. Appadurai here is building on the idea that globalization weakens the nation-state by eroding sovereignty. Because the nation and the state may have competing interests, cultural flows can often work to create rifts between the people that constitute the nation and the bureaucratic government body in power. The agency and subjectivity of actors in a peripheral region conflict with actors in the cultural center,as well as, with each other.

Appadurai argues that the central characteristic of globalization today is the struggle between homogenizing and differentiating forces. He rejects the idea that globalization is standardization, arguing that homogenizing factors are often repatriated by local mechanisms. Homogenization thus leads to repatriation, which often relies on homogenization of internal local politics. “The central feature of global culture today is the politics of the mutual effort of sameness and difference to cannibalize one another and thereby proclaim their successful hijacking of the twin Enlightenment ideas of the triumphantly universal and the resiliently particular.” Appadurai explains that in a globalized world where one’s identity is no longer easy to grasp, external homogenizing cultural influences are often violently rejected, and societies or localities strive to homogenize and create an identity to confront external forces. This has two repercussions. First, globalization does not cause a global homogenization of cultures. Secondly, agency and subjectivity are lost on the level of the individual. In order to counteract outside influences, there is a production of local identitythatis often just as artificial. Hence, societies unwilling to fall prey to cultural imposition do everything they can to homogenize at the local level. The phenomenon of globalization is thus deteriorating individual subjectivity in two ways - as the global world distances the individual from the processes of change, and as local worlds seeks to homogenize as much as possible in response to the external threat. “Indeed, the individual actor is the last locus of this perspectival set of landscapes” (Appadurai 103).

Arjun Appadurai challenges Immanuel Wallerstein and Ulf Hannerz’s assertion that culture flows in a center-periphery relationship.He is also the only one to provide a framework of how to talk about and rationalize the world of globalization by providing a distinct way of classifying movements and exchanges under globalization. Furthermore, he points to the five scapes and their unique behavior to argue that culture does not flow in one way or another because of the disjuncture between the five scapes and the varied interests of nations, states, regions, localities or corporations. Finally, Appadurai is the only one who even begins to question and answer what it means to be an individual in a globalized world by engaging questions of subjectivity and agency. For him, agency lies in several different places, but in the end,the individual is left out because larger groups and bodiesplay a more significant role in cultural formations.