Culture and Globalization: Polarization, Homogenization, Hybridization [Part 2]

In recent cultural studies, the foremost inquiry concerns the influence globalization has upon culture. In what follows, the three major paradigms that have surfaced in contemporary scholarship will be surveyed. This section will rely heavily on the thought of Jan Nederveen Pieterse, as presented in his book Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange, and Robert Holton’s article, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”. This section will begin with a survey of the polarization thesis, followed by an overview of the homogenization thesis, and concluding with an outline of the hybridization thesis.

The Polarization Thesis: The Clash of Civilizations
Benjamin Barber argues that cultural forces in the shadow of globalization are experiencing a global cultural polarization and characterizes this cultural phenomenon (and entitled his 1995 monograph) as Jihad vs. McWorld.[1] These dialectical metaphors refer to the cultural polarization of global consumer capitalism, metonymically embodied in McDonald’s, and Jihad, referring to cultural fundamentalism (and tribalism) and the struggle for justice for the downtrodden left maimed in the path of global capitalism. McWorld, then, promises to bind us together through consumption of so-called “cultural” commodities, while Jihad promises liberation from the capitalistic characteristic of consumption and greed through tribal pursuit of justice.
Samuel Huntington, the president of the Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, is another advocate of the polarization thesis. He writes that “a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in coming years…will be the clash of civilizations…. With the end of the Cold War, international politics move out of its Western phase, and its centerpiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations.”[2] Huntington divides the world into “the West and the Rest”. He writes that the “political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War” (i.e. between the USA and USSR) have been replaced by the boundaries of civilizations (i.e. between the West and Islam) and these boundaries between civilizations are “the flash points for crisis and bloodshed”.[3] Huntington considers the West as a “universal civilization” and the “rest” are attempting a “modernization without westernization” and moreover, these “differing modernities” lead to the “breakdown of western civilizational hegemony”.[4] However, according to Nederveen Pieterse, the West has strong ties in “the rest” through arms flows and military technologies trading. In a post-Cold War world, and the United State’s role within it, is less a civilizational conflict and more an “unraveling of geopolitical security games most of which have been initiated by the U.S. in the first place…”.[5] However, as Nederveen Pieterse writes, “[t]he oddity of Huntington’s view” is its “political perspective on culture coined in conventional national security language. Culture is politicized, wrapped in civilizational packages that just happen to coincide with geopolitical entities.”[6] Huntington’s view of cultural conflict emphasizes that which distinguishes one people from another. This is a very specific description of culture, according to Nederveen Pieterse, and furthermore, is a one sided notion of culture. “Diversity is one side of the picture but only one, and interaction, commonality or the possibility of commonality is another.”[7] Nederveen Pieterse goes on to give a common, anthropological definition of culture; “culture refers to behavior and beliefs that are learned and shared: learned so it is not ‘instinctual’ and shared so it is not individual.”[8] This places no boundaries on culture; “and therefore, culture is always open.”[9] Cultural relativism or “cultural differentialism” can serve as a defense for cultural diversity and lead to local empowerment, but it could also lead to a “politics of nostalgia”.[10] However, Nederveen Pieterse writes that “[e]ither way the fallacy is the reification of the local, sidelining the interplay between the local and the global.”[11] Mainly, Nederveen Pieterse believes that Huntington fails to mention the cultural connection between the East and the West and also the cultural difference within the West; between North America and Europe.

The Homogenization Thesis: The McDonaldization of Culture
In the dark shadow of globalization, the most widely held description of culture is that of homogenization; the “convergence toward a common set of cultural traits and practices.”[12] Those who consider culture to be continually directed toward homogenization, hold the belief that the so-called global culture follows the global economy and this has lead to such phrases as “Coca-colonization” and “McDonaldization”. The notion of “McDonaldization” refers to the “worldwide homogenization of societies through the impact of multinational corporations.”[13] McDonaldization is viewed as cultural Westernization, and more particularly Americanization, of the entire globe.
In this view, the mechanisms for change are closely linked with the globalization of the market economy and multinational corporations. As Robert Holton notes, “[c]onsumer capitalism of this type has been built upon a standardized brand image, mass advertising, and the high status given by many Third World populations to Western products and services.”[14] The birth of the global consumer has not simply been founded upon “the utilitarian convenience of global products” but “on the sale of dreams of affluence, personal success, and erotic gratification evoked through advertising and culture industry of Hollywood.”[15]
Furthermore, this view of cultural homogenization and the global economy has been strengthened by the rise of the Internet and other information technologies. Companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Motorola have perhaps surpassed McDonalds and Coca-Cola as cultural icons at least among the world’s affluent populations. This reveals that, if there is any warrant to the homogenization thesis, it is not a static homogenization.
Another dimension of cultural homogenization is that of the assimilation of “elites” into the political, educational, and economic life of Western society. The experience of a Western education not only globally disseminates Western knowledge but also creates similar values which then influence international organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and multinational/global corporations. This gives rise to the emergence of similar interests of global “elites”.[16]
There is much to be said of the homogenization thesis provided that it is viewed in a dynamic and ever-changing way. However, viewing the interrelationship of globalization and culture as ever-evolving toward a monolithic global culture has its limitations and is open to critique. First, as Holton notes, “the strong association of cultural globalization with Americanization is overstated.”[17] In this post-colonial age, there remains a strong cultural relationship between the former colonizing nations (for example; the United Kingdom and France) and their former colonies (such as India and the former French Congo). Evidence of this includes the predominance of cricket over baseball in India, or the Coca-Cola consumed in the former French Congo, which is bottled in Europe where the French-speaking Congolese look for cultural status.[18] “Paris is the cultural magnet”, writes Holton, “not New York or California.”[19]
A second critique against the homogenization thesis is leveled by Shannon Peters Talbott in her examination of the homogenization thesis, and particularly McDonaldization, through ethnography of McDonald’s in Moscow. She concludes that it is not so much cultural homogenization, but a global localization. The Moscow McDonald’s varies from its American, Western counterparts by catering to the consumers in Moscow.[20] As Nederveen Pieterse writes, “Firms may be multinational but ‘all business is local’.”[21] McDonald’s then may be an increasing global corporation; it only survives by catering to local tastes and needs. Therefore, for Nederveen Pieterse, “it would make more sense to consider McDonaldization as a form of intercultural hybridization, partly in its origins and certainly in its present globally localizing variety of forms.”[22] Multinational corporations, such as McDonald’s have abandoned product standardization and have developed marketing, design, and product strategies that are as numerous as the variations of consumer demands in differing markets. This is “glocalization”, a notion that “has been used to suggest that the global and the local may be mutually reinforcing rather than necessarily in conflict.”[23] Markets, customers, and products may be global in many contexts, but are local in design and content.
The above critiques are focused on the homogenization thesis in general and Americanization in particular, this third and final critique is centered specifically on cultural homogenization as Westernization. In his essay “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, Arjun Appadurai writes of regional homogenization, where the cultural “periphery” is threatened by cultural homogenization from the cultural “core”. He writes, “for the people of Irian Jaya, Indonesianization may be more worrisome than Americanization, as Japanization may be for the Koreans, Indianization for Sri Lankans, Vietnamization for Cambodians”.[24] There are then, according to Appadurai’s analysis, multiple “cores” that hold cultural power, rather than a relationship of core-periphery centered on the United States or the West, to which all others are homogenized.
Cultural homogenization, if there is such a thing, is not as simple as some would take it to be. First, if it is to be considered at all, it is imperative that it is viewed as a dynamic process. Second, there is much evidence that if cultural homogenization is occurring, it is not simply an Americanization of the cultural world. In the second critique above, we see that other Western cultures have arisen as cultural powers from the remains of colonialism. However, this is still focused, perhaps too greatly, on the Western world as containing the cultural powers that are shaping the rest of the world. Therefore, third, if the world is experiencing cultural homogenization, we must view this homogenization as being a multi-centered phenomenon, a homogenization of peripheral cultures to “core” regional cultural powers.

The Hybridization Thesis:
The third and final paradigm to be surveyed views the interconnection between globalization and culture as a hybridization of cultures in the world. Holton writes that the hybridization thesis focuses “on the intercultural exchange and the incorporation of cultural elements from a variety of sources within particular cultural practices.”[25] There is an over-abundance of evidence strengthening this thesis. For example, the McDonald’s in Moscow that mixes an American fast-food restaurant into a Russian market. Or the use of ATM’s in Japan used by women in kimonos. Or the young American students who eat at a Vietnamese restaurant after class in Toronto. Hybridization is not only urban, for example, agricultural techniques (such as plowing techniques and crop rotation). The evidence that strengthens the hybridization is difficult to exhaust.
For Nederveen Pieterse, hybridization is the “solvent between the polar perspectives”, it derives its “existence” from the paradigm of polarization and the paradigm of homogenization, and derives meaning only in relation to them.[26] “It resolves the tension between purity and emanation, between the local and the global, in the dialectic according to which the local is in the global and the global is in the local.”[27] Hybridization, according to Nederveen Pieterse, views globalization as an open-ended process of interconnection of cultural influences (eastern as well as western). “The growing awareness of cultural difference” and globalization are interdependent.[28] There is both cultural difference and a “striving for recognition” on the global scale. This “striving for recognition” for Nederveen Pieterse, “implies a claim to equality, equal rights, same treatment: in other words a common universe of difference”.[29]
Furthermore, Holton writes that hybridization refers to “cultural forms that are somehow transcontextual but less than cosmopolitan in scope.”[30] In this sense, we can still speak of different “cultures”, as they are not cosmopolitan culture, but we must recognize that they are some of the cultural forms are transcontextual, therefore “cultures have become so intermixed that there is no longer any pure or authentic culture distinct from others.”[31] For Nederveen Pieterse, hybridization privileges border crossing and begins in the “fuzziness of boundaries” and therefore subverts both nationalism and identity politics.[32] The importance of the hybridization of cultures, for Nederveen Pieterse, “is that it problematizes boundaries.”[33]
[1] Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, Ballantine Books, 1995.
[2] Quoted in Nederveen Pieterse’s Globalization and Culture, 42-43.
[3] Quoted in Nederveen Pieterse’s Globalization and Culture, 44.
[4] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 44.
[5] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 44-45.
[6] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 45.
[7] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 46.
[8] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 46.
[9] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 46.
[10] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 47.
[11] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 47.
[12] Robert Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 570, July 2000, 142.
[13] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 49.
[14] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 142.
[15] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 142.
[16] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 143.
[17] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 143.
[18] Jonathon Friedman, Cultural Identity and Global Process, Sage, 1994.
[19] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 143.
[20] Shannon Peters Talbott, “Analysis of Corporate Culture in the Global Market-place: Case Study of McDonald’s in Moscow”, Paper Presented at International Institute of Sociology Conference, Trieste, 1995 cited in Nederveen Pieterse’s Globalization and Culture, 50.
[21] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 50.
[22] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 51.
[23] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 144.
[24] Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, Global Culture, M. Featherstone, ed., Sage, 1990, 170.
[25] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 148.
[26] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 57.
[27] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 57.
[28] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 57.
[29] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 58.
[30] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 150.
[31] Holton, “Globalization’s Cultural Consequences”, 150.
[32] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 53.
[33] Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture, 86.