Tiffany Tsang
IS Seminar RP #7
Part III: The Fate of National Culture - Is Global Culture Inevitable?
Negativity of Globalization stems in part from a fear that a demise of national identities is inevitable, as they will be subsumed or incorporated into a rising global culture, that is created via media images, and with the ease of commodity flow. On an aggregate, the authors in this section are not dismal in discussing the fates of national culture. They are positive in their arguments. While I agree with authors like Robins and Thompson--that national cultures are more resilient than given credit for, and that imported resources do not necessarily hold the same destructive symbolism as projected--I believe that the impact of globalization on historically disadvantaged cultures are more negative than positive, because of the "context of reception" as Thompson puts it. Meaning, a young girl in urban France will receive an imported sitcom from the US differently than a young girl from urban Taiwan. In turn, a drastic difference in perception is even greater between a child from France, and a child from Kenya.
All of the authors note a lack of evidence to prove an encroachment upon national cultures by globalization. Thompson offers the examples in which the Chinese watch foreign tv programs to gain a better understanding of the rest of the world. Appadurai in particular is skeptical about the interchange of the idea of Americanization and Globalization. However, I don't believe that this framework of analysis is appropriate. Rather than questioning, is a global culture going to kill off national cultures?, I believe it is more effective to look at a more fundamental question: is globalization causing people to prioritize objects and values differently, and if so, does this new prioritization undermine their own cultures?
The answer to the latter question lies in the context of reception. In historically disadvantaged groups, individuals will watch tv sitcoms, walk past McDonalds, and wonder why they can't have such lovely, wonderful things. They'll watch rap artists on MTV, dancing with other beautiful people, flashing expensive money and cars, and they'll wonder why the rest of the world can have that, and they can't. Because of the context of their reception, they have no other means to compare their lives to. They watch what's on tv, and they do not necessarily realize the absurdity of what they are watching--that in fact, their exposure to "other cultures" is an exaggeration, a fabrication of life. It causes a discrepancy between what is, and what they imagine there life should be.
This discrepancy is more prelevent in a community in South Africa, than in a community in Belgium, for instance, because of the context of reception. This causes a resentment of their surroundings, including their national culture. This is problematic, since individuals are then prioritizing another culture over their own, which, is a subtle form of cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism is dangerous because it leads to a involuntary submissive attitude to nationals from the exporting country, continuing a cycle of political, and social inequality.
Personal experience of such phenomenon was seen in visits to South Africa and Hong Kong. Children and adults in South Africa were obsessed with American soap operas. Many of them truly believed that that was how the average American lived their lives--wearing expensive clothing and lounging around all day. They expressed their frustration that their way of life, the culture that they knew, couldn't give them those things they saw on American soaps. In Hong Kong, one is looked down upon unless you are wearing American or European designer wear. Anything foreign (American or European) is good. Anything domestic, or coming from previously colonial states, were considered dirty or cheap.
In conclusion, while the points the authors make are valid, they do not consider the idea of prioritization as undermining national culture, which, in the long term, is just as negative as the subsuming of national cultures by a global one.