IS YOUR LOCAL GLOBAL?

Globalisation as cultural hegemony

Today

An introduction to cultural imperialism

Mediating the imagined community

Critiquing cultural imperialism

Social media and local audiences

Our Progress

We introduced the development of globalisation and the competing conceptions of these processes

We considered the impact of transnational media conglomerates in developing a global communications system

We will now examine how this system impacts upon cultures and people around the world

The Situation

The processes of globalisation mean that the majority of cultures are now heavily exposed to ‘foreign’ cultural influences

These influences are primarily American and are dominated by transnational media conglomerates

But does exposure to foreign cultures result in cultural changes?

Cultural Imperialism

This predominance of Western media has led many to suggest that these forms of media, along with the spread of ‘Western values’, are the latest form of ‘cultural imperialism’

Schiller (1976, p.9, cited in Rantanen, 2005, p.76) defined cultural imperialism as “the sum of processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system”

The Soft Empire

Imperialism is the development and reproduction of an unequal relationship between civilisations

Cultural imperialism involves the shaping of local institutions and social practices by an outside power

This once involved the active takeover of one civilisation for another; now it can often be a voluntary process

Understandings of global cultural homogeneity have struggled to overcome these original conceptions of the active domination of a nation-state over another

Media and imperialism

Concerns over the impact of global communications on developing countries emerged in the 1960s as these nations began to enter global society

As many nations were establishing their independence, global media influences were seen to be stifling this growing cultural expression

Yet Hollywood, and other forms of Western media, found an enthusiastic audience in post-colonial cultures

This process is not the old colonialism of forced cultural assimilation, but occurs through a desire for the media content and an increased homogeneity of its form

Do you consume British

entertainment media?

Does it change your ideas about British people?

Chinese mimicry

This trend of ‘architectural mimicry’ or duplictecture in China (Bosker, 2013), is consider ‘self-colonisation’

These towns are entirely ‘themed’ around Western icons, but are Chinese interpretations or ‘re-mixes’

This pattern of replication is repeated in other industries with China and South-East Asia

Why?

An imagined community

When defining the nation, Benedict Anderson (1983/91) argued that because large communities cannot be cohered through face-to-face interaction, cohesion must occur through an imaginary identification with others

Our communities are ‘imagined’ on the basis of identification with cultural symbols

Media, broadly imagined, provide these points of identification

We can identify with certain shared cultural ideas, practices, images and ‘sayings’ on a global scale

Name these celebrities

What is their cultural status?

Name these movies

What is their cultural status?

Imagine No (local) Communities

If communities are imagined on the basis of shared resources, globalisation provides a much wider range of symbolic points of identification

Culture is no longer ‘naturally’ attached to certain locations, instead global brands and media allow connections beyond the local

Moreover, national boundaries are have little influence on social media, even if local identities remain

This use of media allows for the development of local/plural globalisations outside of the dominant channels

Are we becoming more similar through these shared cultural

understandings?

Well, is this a problem?

Cultural change always involves power relationships as one culture becomes more like another

Who benefits from this similarity?

Does this lead to a more global

consciousness and the spread of morally universal values?

Or does it work in the favour of an

economic and political elite?

Spread of western values

The spread of entertainment and news media has occurred within a wider acculturation by Western civilisations

Not (only) the control of power or land, but of minds, values and cultural practices

English has become the dominant global language and primary means of global communication Whilst English is regarded as the 3rd most common native

language, it is ‘spoken’ by an estimated 1 billion people

American brands are globally ever-present, although their message is not entirely dominant

McDonaldization

Cultural imperialism and the ‘End of History’ are captured by George Ritzer’s (1993) concept of McDonaldization

Comparing global cultural process to those of McDonald’s restaurants, Ritzer argued that global cultures are becoming increasingly standardised and calculable

Similar concepts of ‘Disneyification’ and ‘McWorlds’ portray the homogenisation of culture through commercialisation, mass reproduction and inauthenticity

Spreading Rationality

Perhaps the strongest example of cultural homogenisation has been the spread of Western corporate values of rationality and profit-orientation

Acting rationally and logically is seen as universally correct and supersedes any local cultural traditions

This leads to a standardisation of cultural practices, often in the name of the profit motive

Have you found that customer

services processes very

different in Britain?

Rationally reproducing culture

Privately owned media focus on what is profitable, not what is culturally valuable

Re-makes, cross-overs and re-runs are becoming increasingly common to avoid the risks of originality

The 24-hr news cycle also represents this trend - we don’t get more content, just more of the same

The drive for profitability has led to the reproduction of similar forms of entertainment, even if the content is different

National homogeneity

This commodification of culture and ideas through media is not necessarily global

Local (or national) media take on the same form as global media

It is not so much that global media impose content on local populations, but that local populations begin to reproduce it themselves

What reality shows are

popular in your home locality?

But…

Cultural and media imperialism is based on a mass media model in which media have a direct and unmediated impact upon audiences

There are a number of challenges to this understanding of the effect of media on culture

The plurality of social media

The internet promotes cultural pluralism because it allows for collective audience participation and interpretation, as opposed to ‘top down’ ideologies and journalism

This participation can be facilitated through forums and chat rooms

The primary mechanism, however, has been the development of social media

Establishing connections

Facebook and other social media appear to embody the potential of McLuhan’s ‘Global Village’

Social media allow for the conglomeration of user interests through user participation

Despite being corporately owned, social media rely encourage the inclusion of marginalised voices into the public sphere

Here the strongest threat to cultural pluralism is state control, rather than the profit motive

The local on a global scale

The rise of the internet and social media is certainly a global phenomena

Nonetheless, it is how local users engage with the technology that matters

Social media networks are often local and diverse voices may not necessarily connect with each other

What proportion of your social media connections are from your local

culture?

https://synthesio.com/corporate/2011/uncategorized/social-media-and-censorship-in-china/

http://www.searchdecoder.com/social-networks-in-china-sina-weibo/

Does your social media use expose

you to other cultures?

The stubbornness of the local

Despite the availability of global cultural influences, for many people the most meaningful cultural interactions are locally orientated

Cultural identities and practices and not just constructions but are emotional attachments

As a consequence, local culture is not only resistant to change, but is the primary mechanism through which we see the world

Making the global local

Local media quotas position local culture as homogenous

It assumes that there is a local culture that can be presented through media

Instead, through interactions with global influences, local cultures are constantly renegotiated

A large part of this process is the reappropriation of the global in terms of the local through audience appropriations

Local audiences

Whilst the global communications system produces structural tendencies, it does not directly control audiences

These audiences are inherently local and remain embedded within cultural traditions

Audiences may view the same media content but interpret and appropriate it in different ways

We are concerned with how people ‘use’ media and what they do with it at a cultural and an individual level

Interpretative audiences

Audience reception theory suggests that the meaning of a text is not inherent to that text

Instead it is produced through audience interpretations, which can be dominant, negotiated or oppositional

Audiences thus have some control over the influence of global media, but this control occurs within a framework that limits these options

Local cultural interpretations construct different varieties of ‘local globalism’

Hybridisation

Hybridisation is, according to Rowe and Schelling (1991, p.231, cited in Rantanen, p.93) ‘the way in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practice’

As noted in the previous seminar, globalisation is not so much a cultural imposition, but provokes cultural reinvention

Consequently, we see ‘hybrid’ cultures that are expressed in the media, such as in reality TV where a global concept is reinvented in local terms

Do you participate in any cultural practices

that originated elsewhere?

Indigenization

Arjun Appadurai (1998) defines indigenization as the local appropriation of global forces

Global media may appeal to local consumers, but they bring cultural traditions or ‘memories’

These ‘resources’ create differing interpretations and reproductions of culture, either through existing channels or by creating new ones

Conversely, corporate global media also appropriate this process

How has indigenization occurred through media

in your area?

Glocalisation

Glocalisation describes the process of adapting products for local markets

Glocalisation occurred as capitalism sought to be more flexible in its approach to global consumers

This allows for the reproduction of the commodity form through the appropriation of local content

Is this local or global?

Self-Summary

Is global media creating an increasing homogeneous global culture?

Next Week

GLOBAL CRASHES, LOCAL LAUGHS: THE GLOBALISATION OF ENTERTAINMENT

CORE READING

Globalisation Of Popular Culture: From Hollywood To Bollywood. Jonathan Matusitz, Pam Payano. South Asia Research, July 2012

GROUP READING

Luckett, Moya (2003) ‘Postnational Television? Goodness Gracious Me and the Britasian Diaspora’ in Parks, Lisa and Kumar, Shanti (2003)

Planet TV. NYU press, Chapter 22.