Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 12:12:27 -0400
From: Malini Schueller <mschuell-AT-english.ufl.edu>
Subject: Call Centers


Does anyone happen to have a citation for the Arundhati Roy article in 
which she criticized US companies with call center operators from India? 
Any articles dealing with the issue would be helpful.
Thanks a lot,
Malini




At 03:52 PM 5/6/03 +0000, you wrote:

> 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 Almodvar, 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 Nmes," 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 Espaol 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 Herms. 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: Bjrk. Popular opera's biggest singers are Italy's Luciano Pavarotti, 
>Spain's Jos 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 Garca 
>Mrquez, 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 Bjrk'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 Provenal, 
>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. Jos 
>Bov 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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