From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Globalisation vs Americanisation
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 15:52:16 +0000



>From the Chronicle of Higher Education.....

Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization
By PHILIPPE LEGRAIN

"Listen man, I smoke, I snort ... I've been begging on the street since I 
was just a baby. I've cleaned windshields at stoplights. I've polished 
shoes, I've robbed, I've killed. ... I ain't no kid, no way. I'm a real 
man."

Such searing dialogue has helped make City of God a global hit. A chronicle 
of three decades of gang wars, it has proved compelling viewing for 
audiences worldwide. Critics compare it to Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

If you believe the cultural pessimists, Hollywood pap has driven out films 
like Cidade de Deus, as it is known in its home country. It is a Brazilian 
film, in Portuguese, by a little-known director, with a cast that includes 
no professional actors, let alone Hollywood stars. Its focus is not a person 
at all, but a drug-ridden, dirt-poor favela (slum) on the outskirts of Rio 
de Janeiro that feels as remote from the playground of the rich and famous 
as it does from God.

Yet City of God has not only made millions at the box office, it has also 
sparked a national debate in Brazil. It has raised awareness in the United 
States, Britain, and elsewhere of the terrible poverty and violence of the 
developing world. All that, and it makes you wince, weep, and, yes, laugh. 
Not bad for a film distributed by Miramax, which is owned by Disney, one of 
those big global companies that globaphobes compare to cultural vandals.

A lot of nonsense about the impact of globalization on culture passes for 
conventional wisdom these days. Among the pro-globalizers, Thomas Friedman, 
columnist for The New York Times and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree 
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), believes that globalization is "globalizing 
American culture and American cultural icons." Among the antis, Naomi Klein, 
a Canadian journalist and author of No Logo (Picador, 2000), argues that 
"the buzzword in global marketing isn't selling America to the world, but 
bringing a kind of market masala to everyone in the world. ... Despite the 
embrace of polyethnic imagery, market-driven globalization doesn't want 
diversity; quite the opposite. Its enemies are national habits, local brands 
and distinctive regional tastes."

Fears that globalization is imposing a deadening cultural uniformity are as 
ubiquitous as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Mickey Mouse. Europeans and Latin 
Americans, left-wingers and right, rich and poor -- all of them dread that 
local cultures and national identities are dissolving into a crass 
all-American consumerism. That cultural imperialism is said to impose 
American values as well as products, promote the commercial at the expense 
of the authentic, and substitute shallow gratification for deeper 
satisfaction.

City of God's success suggests otherwise. If critics of globalization were 
less obsessed with "Coca-colonization," they might notice a rich feast of 
cultural mixing that belies fears about Americanized uniformity. Algerians 
in Paris practice Thai boxing; Asian rappers in London snack on Turkish 
pizza; Salman Rushdie delights readers everywhere with his Anglo-Indian 
tales. Although -- as with any change -- there can be downsides to cultural 
globalization, this cross-fertilization is overwhelmingly a force for good.

The beauty of globalization is that it can free people from the tyranny of 
geography. Just because someone was born in France does not mean they can 
only aspire to speak French, eat French food, read French books, visit 
museums in France, and so on. A Frenchman -- or an American, for that matter 
-- can take holidays in Spain or Florida, eat sushi or spaghetti for dinner, 
drink Coke or Chilean wine, watch a Hollywood blockbuster or an Almodóvar, 
listen to bhangra or rap, practice yoga or kickboxing, read Elle or The 
Economist, and have friends from around the world. That we are increasingly 
free to choose our cultural experiences enriches our lives immeasurably. We 
could not always enjoy the best the world has to offer.

Globalization not only increases individual freedom, but also revitalizes 
cultures and cultural artifacts through foreign influences, technologies, 
and markets. Thriving cultures are not set in stone. They are forever 
changing from within and without. Each generation challenges the previous 
one; science and technology alter the way we see ourselves and the world; 
fashions come and go; experience and events influence our beliefs; outsiders 
affect us for good and ill.

Many of the best things come from cultures mixing: V.S. Naipaul's 
Anglo-Indo-Caribbean writing, Paul Gauguin painting in Polynesia, or the 
African rhythms in rock 'n' roll. Behold the great British curry. Admire the 
many-colored faces of France's World Cup-winning soccer team, the ferment of 
ideas that came from Eastern Europe's Jewish diaspora, and the cosmopolitan 
cities of London and New York. Western numbers are actually Arabic; zero 
comes most recently from India; Icelandic, French, and Sanskrit stem from a 
common root.

John Stuart Mill was right: "The economical benefits of commerce are 
surpassed in importance by those of its effects which are intellectual and 
moral. It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of 
human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons 
dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those 
with which they are familiar. ... It is indispensable to be perpetually 
comparing [one"s] own notions and customs with the experience and example of 
persons in different circumstances. ... There is no nation which does not 
need to borrow from others."

It is a myth that globalization involves the imposition of Americanized 
uniformity, rather than an explosion of cultural exchange. For a start, many 
archetypal "American" products are not as all-American as they seem. Levi 
Strauss, a German immigrant, invented jeans by combining denim cloth (or 
"serge de Nîmes," because it was traditionally woven in the French town) 
with Genes, a style of trousers worn by Genoese sailors. So Levi's jeans are 
in fact an American twist on a European hybrid. Even quintessentially 
American exports are often tailored to local tastes. MTV in Asia promotes 
Thai pop stars and plays rock music sung in Mandarin. CNN en Español offers 
a Latin American take on world news. McDonald's sells beer in France, lamb 
in India, and chili in Mexico.

In some ways, America is an outlier, not a global leader. Most of the world 
has adopted the metric system born from the French Revolution; America 
persists with antiquated measurements inherited from its British-colonial 
past. Most developed countries have become intensely secular, but many 
Americans burn with fundamentalist fervor -- like Muslims in the Middle 
East. Where else in the developed world could there be a serious debate 
about teaching kids Bible-inspired "creationism" instead of Darwinist 
evolution?

America's tastes in sports are often idiosyncratic, too. Baseball and 
American football have not traveled well, although basketball has fared 
rather better. Many of the world's most popular sports, notably soccer, came 
by way of Britain. Asian martial arts -- judo, karate, kickboxing -- and 
pastimes like yoga have also swept the world.

People are not only guzzling hamburgers and Coke. Despite Coke's ambition of 
displacing water as the world's drink of choice, it accounts for less than 2 
of the 64 fluid ounces that the typical person drinks a day. Britain's 
favorite takeaway is a curry, not a burger: Indian restaurants there 
outnumber McDonald's six to one. For all the concerns about American fast 
food trashing France's culinary traditions, France imported a mere 
$620-million in food from the United States in 2000, while exporting to 
America three times that. Nor is plonk from America's Gallo displacing 
Europe's finest: Italy and France together account for three-fifths of 
global wine exports, the United States for only a 20th. Worldwide, pizzas 
are more popular than burgers, Chinese restaurants seem to sprout up 
everywhere, and sushi is spreading fast. By far the biggest purveyor of 
alcoholic drinks is Britain's Diageo, which sells the world's best-selling 
whiskey (Johnnie Walker), gin (Gordon's), vodka (Smirnoff) and liqueur 
(Baileys).

In fashion, the ne plus ultra is Italian or French. Trendy Americans wear 
Gucci, Armani, Versace, Chanel, and Hermès. On the high street and in the 
mall, Sweden's Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) and Spain's Zara vie with America's 
Gap to dress the global masses. Nike shoes are given a run for their money 
by Germany's Adidas, Britain's Reebok, and Italy's Fila.

In pop music, American crooners do not have the stage to themselves. The 
three artists who featured most widely in national Top Ten album charts in 
2000 were America's Britney Spears, closely followed by Mexico's Carlos 
Santana and the British Beatles. Even tiny Iceland has produced a global 
star: Björk. Popular opera's biggest singers are Italy's Luciano Pavarotti, 
Spain's José Carreras, and the Spanish-Mexican Placido Domingo. Latin 
American salsa, Brazilian lambada, and African music have all carved out 
global niches for themselves. In most countries, local artists still top the 
charts. According to the IFPI, the record-industry bible, local acts 
accounted for 68 percent of music sales in 2000, up from 58 percent in 1991.

One of the most famous living writers is a Colombian, Gabriel García 
Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Paulo Coelho, another 
writer who has notched up tens of millions of global sales with The 
Alchemist and other books, is Brazilian. More than 200 million Harlequin 
romance novels, a Canadian export, were sold in 1990; they account for 
two-fifths of mass-market paperback sales in the United States. The biggest 
publisher in the English-speaking world is Germany's Bertelsmann, which 
gobbled up America's largest, Random House, in 1998.

Local fare glues more eyeballs to TV screens than American programs. 
Although nearly three-quarters of television drama exported worldwide comes 
from the United States, most countries' favorite shows are homegrown.

Nor are Americans the only players in the global media industry. Of the 
seven market leaders that have their fingers in nearly every pie, four are 
American (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and News Corporation), one is 
German (Bertelsmann), one is French (Vivendi), and one Japanese (Sony). What 
they distribute comes from all quarters: Bertelsmann publishes books by 
American writers; News Corporation broadcasts Asian news; Sony sells 
Brazilian music.

The evidence is overwhelming. Fears about an Americanized uniformity are 
over-blown: American cultural products are not uniquely dominant; local ones 
are alive and well.

With one big exception: cinema. True, India produces more films (855 in 
2000) than Hollywood does (762), but they are largely for a domestic 
audience. Japan and Hong Kong also make lots of movies, but few are seen 
outside Asia. France and Britain have the occasional global hit, but are 
still basically local players. Not only does Hollywood dominate the global 
movie market, but it also swamps local products in most countries. American 
fare accounts for more than half the market in Japan and nearly two-thirds 
in Europe.

Yet Hollywood's hegemony is not as worrisome as people think. Note first 
that Hollywood is less American than it seems. Ever since Charlie Chaplin 
crossed over from Britain, foreigners have flocked to California to try to 
become global stars: Just look at Penelope Cruz, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and 
Ewan McGregor. Top directors are also often from outside America: Think of 
Ridley Scott or the late Stanley Kubrick. Some studios are foreign-owned: 
Japan's Sony owns Columbia Pictures, Vivendi Universal is French. Two of AOL 
Time Warner's biggest recent hit franchises, Harry Potter and The Lord of 
the Rings, are both based on British books, have largely British casts, and, 
in the case of The Lord of the Rings, a Kiwi director. To some extent, then, 
Hollywood is a global industry that just happens to be in America. Rather 
than exporting Americana, it serves up pap to appeal to a global audience.

Hollywood's dominance is in part due to economics: Movies cost a lot to make 
and so need a big audience to be profitable; Hollywood has used America's 
huge and relatively uniform domestic market as a platform to expand 
overseas. So there could be a case for stuffing subsidies into a rival 
European film industry, just as Airbus was created to challenge Boeing's 
near-monopoly. But France has long pumped money into its domestic industry 
without persuading foreigners to flock to its films. As Tyler Cowen 
perceptively points out in his book Creative Destruction: How Globalization 
Is Changing the World's Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2002), "A 
vicious circle has been created: The more European producers fail in global 
markets, the more they rely on television revenue and subsidies. The more 
they rely on television and subsidies, the more they fail in global 
markets," because they serve domestic demand and the wishes of politicians 
and cinematic bureaucrats.

Another American export is also conquering the globe: English. Around 380 
million people speak it as their first language and another 250 million or 
so as their second. A billion are learning it, about a third of the world's 
population are exposed to it, and by 2050, it is reckoned, half the world 
will be more or less proficient in it. A common global language would 
certainly be a big plus -- for businessmen, scientists, and tourists -- but 
a single one seems far less desirable. Language is often at the heart of 
national culture: The French would scarcely be French if they spoke English 
(although Belgian Walloons are not French even though they speak it). 
English may usurp other languages not because it is what people prefer to 
speak, but because, like Microsoft software, there are compelling advantages 
to using it if everyone else does.

But although many languages are becoming extinct, English is rarely to 
blame. People are learning English as well as -- not instead of -- their 
native tongue, and often many more languages besides. Some languages with 
few speakers, such as Icelandic, are thriving, despite Björk's choosing to 
sing in English. Where local languages are dying, it is typically national 
rivals that are stamping them out. French has all but eliminated Provençal, 
and German Swabian. So although, within the United States, English is 
displacing American Indian tongues, it is not doing away with Swahili or 
Norwegian.

Even though American consumer culture is widespread, its significance is 
often exaggerated. You can choose to drink Coke and eat at McDonald's 
without becoming American in any meaningful sense. One newspaper photo of 
Taliban fighters in Afghanistan showed them toting Kalashnikovs -- as well 
as a sports bag with Nike's trademark swoosh. People's culture -- in the 
sense of their shared ideas, beliefs, knowledge, inherited traditions, and 
art -- may scarcely be eroded by mere commercial artifacts that, despite all 
the furious branding, embody at best flimsy values.

The really profound cultural changes have little to do with Coca-Cola. 
Western ideas about liberalism and science are taking root almost 
everywhere, while Europe and North America are becoming multicultural 
societies through immigration, mainly from developing countries. Technology 
is reshaping culture: Just think of the Internet. Individual choice is 
fragmenting the imposed uniformity of national cultures. New hybrid cultures 
are emerging, and regional ones re-emerging. National identity is not 
disappearing, but the bonds of nationality are loosening.

As Tyler Cowen points out in his excellent book, cross-border cultural 
exchange increases diversity within societies -- but at the expense of 
making them more alike. People everywhere have more choice, but they often 
choose similar things. That worries cultural pessimists, even though the 
right to choose to be the same is an essential part of freedom.

Cross-cultural exchange can spread greater diversity as well as greater 
similarity: more gourmet restaurants as well as more McDonald's. And just as 
a big city can support a wider spread of restaurants than a small town, so a 
global market for cultural products allows a wider range of artists to 
thrive. For sure, if all the new customers are ignorant, a wider market may 
drive down the quality of cultural products: Think of tourist souvenirs. But 
as long as some customers are well informed (or have "good taste"), a 
general "dumbing down" is unlikely. Hobbyists, fans, artistic pride, and 
professional critics also help maintain (and raise) standards. Cowen 
concludes that the "basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at 
all levels of quality, high and low."

A bigger worry is that greater individual freedom may come at the expense of 
national identity. The French fret that if they all individually choose to 
watch Hollywood films they might unwittingly lose their collective 
Frenchness. Yet such fears are overdone. Natural cultures are much stronger 
than people seem to think. They can embrace some foreign influences and 
resist others. Foreign influences can rapidly become domesticated, changing 
national culture, but not destroying it. Germans once objected to soccer 
because it was deemed English; now their soccer team is emblematic of 
national pride. Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, is quite 
right when he says that "the culturally fearful often take a very fragile 
view of each culture and tend to underestimate our ability to learn from 
elsewhere without being overwhelmed by that experience."

Clearly, though, there is a limit to how many foreign influences a culture 
can absorb before being swamped. Even when a foreign influence is largely 
welcomed, it can be overwhelming. Traditional cultures in the developing 
world that have until now evolved (or failed to evolve) in isolation may be 
particularly vulnerable.

In The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (Free 
Press, 2001), Noreena Hertz describes the supposed spiritual Eden that was 
the isolated kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas as being defiled by such 
awful imports as basketball and Spice Girls T-shirts. Anthony Giddens, the 
director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has told 
how an anthropologist who visited a remote part of Cambodia was shocked and 
disappointed to find that her first night's entertainment was not 
traditional local pastimes but watching Basic Instinct on video.

Is that such a bad thing? It is odd, to put it mildly, that many on the left 
support multiculturalism in the

West but advocate cultural purity in the developing world -- an attitude 
they would be quick to tar as fascist if proposed for the United States or 
Britain. Hertz and the anthropologist in Cambodia appear to want people 
outside the industrialized West preserved in unchanging but supposedly pure 
poverty. Yet the Westerners who want this supposed paradise preserved in 
aspic rarely feel like settling there. Nor do most people in developing 
countries want to lead an "authentic" unspoiled life of isolated poverty.

In truth, cultural pessimists are typically not attached to diversity per se 
but to designated manifestations of diversity, determined by their 
preferences. "They often use diversity as a code word for a more 
particularist agenda, often of an anti-commercial or anti-American nature," 
Cowen argues. "They care more about the particular form that diversity takes 
in their favored culture, rather than about diversity more generally, 
freedom of choice, or a broad menu of quality options."

Cultural pessimists want to freeze things as they were. But if diversity at 
any point in time is desirable, why isn't diversity across time? Certainly, 
it is often a shame if ancient cultural traditions are lost. We should do 
our best to preserve them and keep them alive where possible. As Cowen 
points out, foreigners can often help, by providing the new customers and 
technologies that have enabled reggae music, Haitian art, and Persian carpet 
making, for instance, to thrive and reach new markets. But people cannot be 
made to live in a museum. We in the West are forever casting off old customs 
when we feel they are no longer relevant. Nobody argues that Americans 
should ban nightclubs to force people back to line dancing. People in poor 
countries have a right to change, too.

Moreover, some losses of diversity are a good thing. In 1850, some countries 
banned slavery, while others maintained it in various forms. Who laments 
that the world is now almost universally rid of it? More generally, Western 
ideas are reshaping the way people everywhere view themselves and the world. 
Like nationalism and socialism before it, liberalism -- political ideas 
about individual liberty, the rule of law, democracy, and universal human 
rights, as well as economic ones about the importance of private property 
rights, markets, and consumer choice -- is a European philosophy that has 
swept the world. Even people who resist liberal ideas, in the name of 
religion (Islamic and Christian fundamentalists), group identity 
(communitarians), authoritarianism (advocates of "Asian values") or 
tradition (cultural conservatives), now define themselves partly by their 
opposition to them.

Faith in science and technology is even more widespread. Even those who hate 
the West make use of its technologies. Osama bin Laden plots terrorism on a 
cellphone and crashes planes into skyscrapers. Antiglobalization protesters 
organize by e-mail and over the Internet. José Bové manipulates 21st-century 
media in his bid to return French farming to the Middle Ages. China no 
longer turns its nose up at Western technology: It tries to beat the West at 
its own game.

True, many people reject Western culture. (Or, more accurately, "cultures": 
Europeans and Americans disagree bitterly over the death penalty, for 
instance; they hardly see eye to eye over the role of the state, either.) 
Samuel Huntington, a professor of international politics at Harvard 
University, even predicts a "clash of civilizations" that will divide the 
21st-century world. Yet Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international 
political economy at the Johns Hopkins University, is nearer the mark when 
he talks about the "end of history." Some cultures have local appeal, but 
only liberalism appeals everywhere (if not to all) -- although radical 
environmentalism may one day challenge its hegemony. Islamic fundamentalism 
poses a threat to our lives but not to our beliefs. Unlike communism, it is 
not an alternative to liberal capitalism for Westerners or other 
non-Muslims.

Yet for all the spread of Western ideas to the developing world, 
globalization is not a one-way street. Although Europe's former colonial 
powers have left their stamp on much of the world, the recent flow of 
migration has been in the opposite direction. There are Algerian suburbs in 
Paris, but not French ones in Algiers; Pakistani parts of London, but not 
British ones of Lahore. Whereas Muslims are a growing minority in Europe, 
Christians are a disappearing one in the Middle East.

Foreigners are changing America even as they adopt its ways. A million or so 
immigrants arrive each year (700,000 legally, 300,000 illegally), most of 
them Latino or Asian. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born American 
residents has risen by 6 million to just over 25 million, the biggest 
immigration wave since the turn of the 20th century. English may be 
all-conquering outside America, but in some parts of the United States, it 
is now second to Spanish. Half of the 50 million new inhabitants expected in 
America in the next 25 years will be immigrants or the children of 
immigrants.

The upshot of all this change is that national cultures are fragmenting into 
a kaleidoscope of different ones. New hybrid cultures are emerging. In 
"Amexica" people speak Spanglish. Regional cultures are reviving. Repressed 
under Franco, Catalans, Basques, Gallegos, and others assert their identity 
in Spain. The Scots and Welsh break with British monoculture. Estonia is 
reborn from the Soviet Union. Voices that were silent dare to speak again.

Individuals are forming new communities, linked by shared interests and 
passions, that cut across national borders. Friendships with foreigners met 
on holiday. Scientists sharing ideas over the Internet. Environmentalists 
campaigning together using e-mail. House-music lovers swapping tracks 
online. Greater individualism does not spell the end of community. The new 
communities are simply chosen rather than coerced, unlike the older ones 
that communitarians hark back to.

Does that mean national identity is dead? Hardly. People who speak the same 
language, were born and live near each other, face similar problems, have a 
common experience, and vote in the same elections still have plenty of 
things in common. For all our awareness of the world as a single place, we 
are not citizens of the world but citizens of a state. But if people now 
wear the bonds of nationality more loosely, is that such a bad thing? People 
may lament the passing of old ways. Indeed, many of the worries about 
globalization echo age-old fears about decline, a lost golden age, and so 
on. But by and large, people choose the new ways because they are more 
relevant to their current needs and offer new opportunities that the old 
ones did not.

The truth is that we increasingly define ourselves rather than let others 
define us. Being British or American does not define who you are: It is part 
of who you are. You can like foreign things and still have strong bonds to 
your fellow citizens. As Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian author, has 
written: "Seeking to impose a cultural identity on a people is equivalent to 
locking them in a prison and denying them the most precious of liberties -- 
that of choosing what, how, and who they want to be."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Philippe Legrain is chief economist of Britain in Europe, the campaign for 
Britain to adopt the euro. He has been special adviser to the head of the 
World Trade Organization, and trade and economics correspondent for The 
Economist. He is the author of Open World: The Truth About Globalisation 
(Abacus, 2002, with an American edition expected early next year from Ivan 
R. Dee).




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