Globalisation, Media and Culture

Author(s): S. Ambirajan
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 35, No. 25 (Jun. 17-23, 2000), pp. 2141-2147
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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 Media
Globalisation, and
Market anidmedia act symbiotically to produce culture. Economic globalisation also nmeans
a global culture. Economies of scale apply here too, and the movement is towards uniformity and
regimentation. Cultures of ninorities are lost and the trivial gains at the cost of the serious.
"Manalonehas madea goddess of choice
in place of necessity ... he can explore
possibilitiesand choose between alterna-
tives ... Even when he most despicably
abuseshis freedom,man is still king. For
he canstillchoose,even thoughhe chooses
the worst"
-Johann Gcttfried von Herder
M , edia refersto the most important
means of mass communication
suchas newspapers,radiobroad-
casts and television The content of mass
media - entertainment,news, educational
programmes, advertising and images of
various kinds - have tremendous impact
in both sustaining and weakening if not
destroyingthefabricof social life. The more
efficient the mediais in communicating,the
more effective it is in stabilising or destabi-
lising existing social, political, cultural,
economic,legal,religiousandmoralarrange-
ments. In this article, an attempt will be
made to investigatewhat makes the media
efficient and what circumstances enable
media to have the social impact that it has.
The short answers to these two ques-
tions are technological progress and pro-
cess of globalisation. Although they seem
unrelatedto the superficial observer, they
are symbiotic. They feed on each other,
and while growing individually, together
have far more impact on human existence
than ever before. Both technology and
globalisation share an interesting similar-
ity. Both of them are processes that have
been taking place since man began to live
in social formations. These processes in
the initial period were not only very slow
and small, but they were also impercep-
tible. The fact thatthey took place in small
quantities and over prolonged periods,
does not mean that they were either un-
important or without any impact. Take
technology for example. From the prehis-
toric times - in which as Thomas Hobbes
remarked pithily man's life was "short,
nasty and brutish"- he has come a long
way. Irrespective of whether the present
is better. no one can deny that it is dif-
Economic and Political Weekly June 17, 2000
S AMBIRAJAN
ferent and very few would like to revert to
the life of a Paleolithicman.Technological
innovations from the fire and the wheel
of early humans to today's computers and
antibiotics, have been responsible for this
massive change. It is no doubt true that
there have been places and periods when
technological progress has been slow or
rapid. But overall, the world has been
witnessing a steady growth of technology
with growth accelerating in recent times.
Just as technology has been developing
ever since man became Homo Faber,a sort
of globalisation has been the mark of
human existence. If by using a broad
definition, we consider globalisation to
mean integrationand intermeshing, social
groups living in isolation have been doing
this since ancient times. Isolated tribes
meeting together for periodic palavers,
mercantile communities travelling far and
wide for trade,missionaries moving across
continents for spreading their religious
beliefs or warringtribes making theirway
in search of conquest are all modes of
integrating dissimilar communities. Thus
human groups have been involved with
other human groups in all aspects of
existence - be it economic, social, reli-
gious, political, legal and so on. In the
distantpast when nationalboundarieswere
absent, or if present, extremely porous,
involvement and interpenetration of
human communities was quite common.
Adjacent territories belonging to different
nation states could have greater mutual
involvement than regions situated within
the same country but separated by long
distances. This type of local-to-regional,
and regional-to-national integration has
been taking place subject to constraints
of communication and economic activity.
The same integrating tendency is witnes-
sed in the national-to-global movement
today. The two extremes of social life in
this context are: (a) the small communal-
tribal unit ('gemeinschaft' as the socio-
logist Ferdinand Tonnies would have
said) whereeveryone knows everyone else,
Culture
and which did not need nor aspire to
achieve communion with other such
groups; and (b) an integrated globalised
existence or as it is often labelled living
in a global village.
After the emergence of nation states,
and the perception of the citizens of
these nation states of their collective self-
interest, the process of integration took a
very different turn.Some kinds of involve-
ment with other nation states were thought
to be beneficial and other kinds consid-
ered inimical to existence as a separate
entity. Once the bordersof nations became
difficult to cross, the process of integra-
tion slowed down or assumed different
characteristics. The interpenetrative pro-
cess was no longer allowed to take its own
natural course but sought to be regulated
in terms of what was thought to be
favourable to themselves. But as human
beings are endowed with a propensity to
"truck, barter and exchange" (as Adam
Smith said) national barriers proved a
nuisance though it could not prevent
integration and mutual involvement. Both
the emergence of manmade nation states
and the innate propensity of humans to
integrate have moved in tandem to pro-
duce novel developments. Like most man-
created phenomena that startubiquitously
and eventually take unexpected forms,
both the idea of nation state and man's
urge to integrate with other human beings
have altered the way human beings live
their lives in totally unexpected ways.
The speed of change has serious con-
sequences for the human psyche. Man
finds it difficult to cope with not only the
frequency of changes but also by the
novelty of them. By the time the institu-
tional support systems of human beings
get adjusted to some change, further
changes occur. This leaves man confused
and helpless. Changes, major or minor,
result in the emergence of many winners
and many losers. Such churning in
society creates enormous tensions that
result in conflict. Both globalisation and
2141
technology usher in changes that - at least
immediately - benefit some and harm
others. The overall impact on the entire
society and in the long run cannot be
assessed with any certainty. At the most,
some informedguesses could be made, but
beyond that only time can tell.
Hardlyhad the idea of nation state taken
root in the psyche of man, and the insti-
tution of nation state face of earth by the
beginning of the last century, there ap-
peared problems and doubts. The aggres-
sive pursuitby nation states of wealth and
military prowess lead to tensions and
conflict. While the ideology of national-
ism gave an impetus to economic and
social progressinternally, it also gave birth
to two other developments: (a) in their
single-minded pursuit of prosperity and
power for themselves, individual nations
attemptedto hegemonise others resulting
in large-scaleexploitation with consequent
struggle by the colonised nations to
become free; and (b) the realisation that
a purely inwardlooking approachhas eco-
nomic costs. Whereas mercantilist eco-
nomic thinkers supported 'Beggar thy
neighbour' policies which sought one
nation's prosperity at the cost of another's
misery, another approach beginning with
mid-18th century thinkers like David
Hume and Adam Smith argued that such
policies benefit none, and they favoured
a greater integration through trade and
capital flows of the different economies to
benefit all the nations. There was also the
further realisation that while hegemonic
colonisation of other nations fetches eco-
nomic advantages only at considerable
political cost, economic globalisation by
the economically strong can be advanta-
geous with only limited adverse political
consequences.
As was seen earlier, globalisation de-
fined in broad terms encompasses every
aspect of human life, in recent times
globalisation has had its maximum impact
on economic integration although that has
consequences for everything else. In nar-
row economic terms, globalisation means
liberalisation and the free movement of
goods, services, capital and finance across
national boundaries. People are buying
moregoods producedoverseas, more firms
are operating in other countries and more
of local savings are being invested across
borders. Internationaltrade has been ris-
ing since the early 19th century. By one
estimate, world trade has grown 600 times
now as compared to the second decade of
the 19th century although during the inter-
2142
war years this expansion was arrestedonly
to pick up with far greater vitality after the
second world war.
According to detaileddataavailablefrom
World Bank and UNCTAD sources, this
globalisation has to be seen in the rise of
world merchandise exports from 11 per
cent to 18 per cent of world GDP during
the 1980s and 1990s. Services have gone
up from 15 per cent of world trade to over
22 per cent during the same period. Every
seventh equity trade worldwide has a
foreigner as a counter party. And world
sales of foreign affiliates of TNCs have
exceeded the world's total exports. The
value of total assets of foreign affiliates
is $ 8,343 billion in 1994 and it grew by
13.1 per cent in 1995 and 17.7 per cent
in 1996. Between 1982 and 1994, the gross
productof foreign affiliates almost tripled.
What is unique is that during the last two
decades the growth of international trade
has outstrippedeconomic growth, growth
of world tradeis much slower than foreign
direct investment, and foreign portfolio
investment outpaces everything else. Glo-
bal financial flows amount to more than
$1 trillionevery day the magnitudeof which
can be understood if we note that the ratio
of foreign exchange dealings to world
trade is 70 to 1.
There can hardlybe any doubtthatglobal
integration offers numerous opportunities
for individual countries to achieve higher
rates of growth and increased living stan-
dards through import of new technology,
efficient utilisationof resources, andcheap
foreign capital not to mention access to
larger markets. Better international divi-
sion of labour is possible and resources
can seek locations where they could
expect maximum returns.Ultimately all of
these coupled with sound social policies
can raise the well-being of all sections of
population. However, having noted these
benign aspects of globalisation, we must
see the historical and sociological circum-
stances of the process of global economic
integration.
First, though a larger number of coun-
tries are part of the globalisation process
now thanwas the case in the pre-firstworld
war period, it is still not universal. Even
though many more countries from the
developing economies of Asia and south
America are part of the world economy,
their participation is much less than that
of the major developed countries. For
example, World Bank datashows thateight
countries comprising 30 per cent of devel-
oping country GDP garnered two-thirds
Economic and Political Weekly
of FDI in 1990-93, and half the countries
received inflows of less than 0.2 per cent
of GDP. For example, despite all the sound
and fury of globalisation, India's share of
FDI is miserable. India received in 1996
$ 2,587 million on FDI which is a sub-
stantial increase from the 1985-90 annual
average of a mere $ 169 million.The com-
parable figures for China are $ 42,300
million in 1996 and the 1985-90 average
is $ 2,654 million. In 1985 India's FDI
as proportionof GDP was 0.5 per cent and
ten years later it was only 1.9 per cent. The
comparable figures for China are 1.2 per
cent (1985) and 18.2 per cent (1995).
Second, the process of globalisation has
so farbeenpartial.Forexample,muchgreater
integration has been achieved in product
and capital markets than in other markets
especially labour markets. Indeed during
the pre-1914 period more labour mobility
(labour moving in search of better wages
and prospects) was witnessed than we are
seeing now. Much tighter immigration
laws, xenophobic polity, trade union pres-
sures are serious obstacles to integrating
internationallabour markets. For example
the nation which is at the forefront of
promoting free trade shows the greatest
resistance to let in professionals (computer
scientists andmedical personnel) fromAsia
and immigrants from Latin America.
Third, even within countries, the impact
of globalisation will not necessarily be
uniform. Greater integration into the glo-
bal economy offers substantial rewards no
doubt, but losses from failure to integrate
efficiently can be crippling. Similarly those
sectors and sections of society which are
able to take advantage of the new oppor-
tunities gain while the more unfortunate
and risk-averse lose and lose very badly.
Errorsof some can cause misery to many.
There is also risk of mistakes made in one
country creating problems in other coun-
tries. While globalisation driven by techno-
logy can in principle increase the well-
being of everyone in economic terms,it has
far-reaching consequences in many other
areas of physical existence and our habitat.
By making even 'hazardous waste' a trad-
able commodity, poor countries are in-
duced to accept it with grave consequences
for their well-being. Worse still is the
globalisation of disease that follows eco-
nomic liberalisation. Many of the deadly
diseases which were localised and con-
trolledby local practiceshave spreadacross
the world. Examples range from syphilis
of pre-Christian era to modem scourges
like AIDS.
June 17, 2000
 The otherside of globalisation is techno- can add to their individual capacity to minds of others. Human factor, to use the
logy which has defined the character of make the services available more effi- words of Perez de Cueller (1995: 57) "that
globalisationin a largemeasureandof course ciently, it cannotreplacehumansaltogether complex web of relationships and beliefs,
its own character is influenced by it. The unlike in manufacturing industry. The values and motivations, which lie at the
initial spurt to globalisation in the 19th importance of the services sector in the very heart of culture" is too valuable, and
centurycame because of the first industrial structureof world production can be seen to hegemonise it, man has to be able to
revolution which expanded output enor- from the Table (World Development persuade skilfully. The development of
mously and forced producers to look for Report 1997). As a rule services have communication skills and cultural forms
markets. Again globalisation was driven grown faster than GDP. arose out of this visceral need of human
by the steep and continuous fall of trans- Services encompass a wide variety of beings. Music, poetry, ballads, religious/
portationcosts, especially steamships and things. They can be beneficial to persons ethical ideas, painting, drama, sculptures
railways.Thepresentstage of globalisation as in the case of a hairdresseror a musician; andartifactsareonly some of man's cultural
is also largely drivenby technology. While or to businesses as in the case of retailing, creations to reach and possibly control the
transportationcosts have gone down fur- banking, transportation,etc. We take the minds of fellow human beings. We should
therthanksto air-cargoplanes, large ships, former case which leads to a transforma- add even sciences, linguistics, medical and
and containerisation, it is the revolution tion of the user of the service. The indi- educational knowledge systems to this list.
in computer and telecommunication tech- vidual gets something out of it. The utili- In the earlier period, the media available
nology that has spurred the integration of sation of service does not simply result in to transmit these were few - predomi-
theworldeconomyduringthelasttwodecades. transferring something but involves a nantly oral - and could cover only a lim-
These technologies have not really con- modification of the characteristics of the ited geographical and social area.
tributed to an increase in the productivity individual. As income increases, and once The tremendous cultural diversity that
of the world economy. The major coun- the basic wants supplied by the primary we witness is essentially due to the fact
tries of the western world (US, Canada, and secondary sectors are satisfied, it is that communities remained isolated be-
UK, France,Germany,ItalyandJapan)grew inevitable that people want services which cause of lack of effective communication.
at an average rateof 4.5 per cent per annum means thatincome elasticity of demandfor Man has been trying to reach wider audi-
between 1960 and 1973. The rate dipped services tends to be higher than for other ences throughout history sometimes it is
to one-third (1.5 per cent) of this during goods. Again as one of the indications of a process of peaceful interaction, at other
the 1973-95 period. Yet computer usage higher welfare is the greater number of times, of violent confrontation. For ex-
shot up by 20 to 30 per cent every year; choices available, services tend to expand ample, the way Buddhist missionaries
whereas 7 per cent of total investment was very fast. preached their message in classical China
in computers in 1970, it rose to 40 per cent A largepartof the services sectoris aimed is very different from the manner in which
in 1996. This has left us in a situation at the mind and mental sensations and as the two leading semitic religions - Chris-
where some aspects of the productionpro- such areinvolved with knowledge. Whether tianity and Islam - spread their gospel.
cess have become more efficient without it is business/legal services, or health, edu- Quite apart from the inherent human
raising overall productivity. You may get cation or entertainment,service sector (of desire to persuade others for hegemonic
your reservations done at the railway sta- which media is a significant part) is com- purposes, certain historical circumstances
tion counters quickly, but the trains them- municating information and knowledge. may require such communication of novel
selves continue to work as inefficiently as It is possible to observe a connection ideas. Almost half a century ago, the
before. Even cost of production has not between the different features of the emer- distinguished historian E H Carrobserved
gone down in any appreciablemanner. One ging modern economy, i e, globalisation, that modern post-war democracies no
can always counterthis argumentby claim- technical progress especially in informa- longer consists of "a homogeneous closed
ing as Zvi Griliches( i 994) of Harvarddoes, tion technology, growth of individual society of equal and economically secure
that productivity gains through informa- economies and the patternof demand. As individuals mutually recognising one
tion technology is invisible, not easily can easily be demonstrated, all these fea- another's rights, but of ill-coordinated,
measurableand have a long gestation time. tures were present in an incipient form highly stratifiedmasses of people of whom
The "unmeasurableareas"of the economy even in earlier stages of world history. a large majority are primarily occupied
accounts in western economies to almost They are presenting themselves in their with the daily struggle for existence". And
three quarters of the total output. acute form now. added that the leaders of the new demo-
The most interesting finding from these Man has from earliest times wanted to cracy are concerned "no longer primarily
researches is that information technology communicate, and if possible control the with the reflection of opinion, but with the
has been widely used in the 'service' sector,
and this is the fastest growing sector in all Table: Services and GDP
economies once they achieve a certain
Services to GDP GrowthRates
level of maturity.Services represent con- 1990-95
sumer or producergoods which are mainly 1980 1985 GDP Services Services 1980-90
intangible. They are - in most cases - Lowincome countries 32 35 6.8 6.4 6.9
consumed at the time they are produced. India 36 41 4.6 6.1 6.7
Thus the work of a barber or a violinist Middleincomecountries 43 53 2.6 3.4 2.0
or a teachergives satisfaction immediately Highincomecountries 58 66 2.0 2.3 3.4
US 64 72 2.6 2.1 3.1
though the effect lingers on. They tend to World 53 63 2.0 2.6 3.4
be labour intensive, and while technology

Economic and Political Weekly June 17, 2000 2143

moulding and manipulation of opinion"
[Carr 1957:75,76].
With every new invention to reach a
wider audience, is being used to persuade
others to alter their belief and knowledge
systems. It is not necessary to labour the
point that man tries to influence his fellow
humanbeings through interaction because
that is the most effective way. It is a truism
to claim that individual beliefs, opinions,
attitudes do not develop sui generis in a
social vacuum but are shaped through
influence, reinforcement and contradic-
tion by the stated and implied views of
others.IrvingLewis Allen (1982:112) ob-
served "The preponderance of theoretical
knowledge about the social psychology of
small-grouprelations suggests thatrates of
interaction predict social integration. If
people are in interaction, especially face-
to-face interaction, it is likely that they
share or are in the process of coming to
share common meanings, definitions and
values. Interaction entails the discovery
and establishment of extended and new
common interests and the strengtheningof
sentimentalbonds andsocial power. There-
fore an influence that initiates, sustains,
extends or deepens social interaction is
probably more often than not creating
integration among individuals in small
groups". Small groups become bigger and
bigger if the interaction possibilities in-
crease. Mass media enables the audience
to be linked closer to their groups by the
sharing of common experiences. What
people read in the papers or see something
on television or in the cinema, they dis-
cuss, analyse and surely the interaction
leaves an imprint in their minds. Pro-
longed exposure to modern media has far
more influence - desirable and undesirable
- on young impressionable minds. The
Israeli educationist, Gavriel Salomon
(1997:377-78) found that it resulted in
"measurable changes in their mastery of
relevantcapacities" though frequentview-
ing of "busy forms of today's television"
also cultivated a "preference for a quick-
paced, erratic, even chaotic way of
handling information". Children begin to
prefer "jumparound impatiently, emulat-
ing" TV formats rather than persevere in
acquiring knowledge. Police records from
differentregions in Indiaindicate thatthere
have been quite a few instances when acts
of crime have been committed by young
people as a result of what they absorbed
from films and television programmes.
Printingtechnology made it possible for
millions of individuals to get information
2144
which was otherwise not available to them.
Once man discovered wireless telephony
and otheramplification methods, the world
grew small. The television is obviously
playing a greaterpartin moulding opinion
than other media forms. As Morgan and
Shanahan (1997: 33) point out that tele-
vision is "by no means the most powerful
influence on people, it is the most com-
mon, the most persuasive and the most
widely shared". The technological ad-
vances in this area during the last 30 years
have taken a quantum jump with equally
mind-boggling consequences.The UNE-
SCO Report points out: "The first inter-
national satellite system, Intelsatand Inter-
sputnik,were put in place in the mid- 1960s.
Since then space age telecommunications,
informatics and optical electronics have
converged with conventionally understood
'mass media' to give people an unprec-
edented array of tools - from the simple
cellular phones to the internet - to diver-
sify their perceptions, to express their
options, to interact with others, to under-
stand and react to change, even to amplify
human thought" (p 104). All this means
thatunlike earliermedia, the modernmedia
allows new ideas to reach and influence
a worldwide audience quickly.
This leads us to examine the notion of
'culture' and how the earlier process of
altering/reducingculturaldiversity (includ-
ing diversity of attitudes and opinions)
gets accentuated in an exponential man-
ner. Culture is a complex and vague entity
that defies easy definition. The American
anthropologists A L Kroeber and Clyde
Kluckhohn cited as early as 1952, no less
than 164 definitions. Needless to say that
since then the burgeoning tribe of sociolo-
gists and anthropologists must have added
many more definitions if only to differen-
tiate their product from those of others.
Human culture is all about how man lives
out his life. Some aspects of this may be
inherent to his physical condition (e g,
necessity to breathe, eat and drink to keep
his body and soul together) but by and
large it refersto his "capabilitiesandhabits"
(to use the well worn phrase of E B Tylor
Primitive Culture 1871) acquired as a
member of the society.
In his classic work on deviant behaviour
Suicide Emile Durkheim (1951) has dis-
tinguished between man's physical needs
regulated automatically by the character-
istics of his organic nature, and man's
moral needs which have no such restric-
tions. It is due to man's "capacity for
feelings" which is "an insatiable and bot-
Economic and Political Weekly
tomless abyss" markedby raw selfishness.
If man is to function without friction, the
passions will have to be limited, and in the
absence of self-limitation, it has to be exer-
cised from outside. Collective order or
culture is such an external regulatingforce.
If this is disrupted, it leads to aspirations
exceeding possibilities of achievement.
Thus culture with all its regulatory norms
is a bulwark against chaos and conflict.
Hence one has to include in culture know-
ledge systems, language, ideas, beliefs,
customs, codes, religion, morals, insti-
tutions,family, law, works of artandindeed
anything and everything by which man
lives and regulates his social existence.
No culture can remain static and un-
changing because man has the capacity to
cumulate his knowledge and alter his
external surroundingsand internalthought
processes. He is also highly prone to be
influenced by external forces and ideas.
There is a contagious quality about culture
because direct borrowing of cultural traits
are extremely common. The more oppor-
tunitya society gets to know anothersociety,
the more transformationit undergoes. As
culture is the product of learning, and
opportunities to learn are eagrly grabbed.
Once an individual or institution in the
society accepts something new, it gets
diffused depending upon other conditions
[Murdoch 1960]. It has often been pointed
out that as all elements of culture are
interrelated even a minor change in one
element of one cultural system can have a
profound impact on othercultural systems.
Although every culture is the end product
of millennia of history, one should guard
against the notion that all they see in a
culture had a hoary and unsullied past. As
Ithiel de Sola Pool (1998) has pointed out
truthfully, "Each generation sees its cul-
ture as that with which it grew up. Its
hallowed values and traditions are those
learned in childhood. Many elements val-
ued as native culture were controversial
foreign imports a generation or two ago".
Culturalsystems areforeverstrivingto reach
an equilibrium without ever reaching it.
Any discussion that involves passing
judgment on the desirability or otherwise
of media's influence on culture must take
into account what cultureit is talking about.
There is the value-free approachof anthro-
pologists which sees culture as an all-
purpose word to describe the way of life
as it exists. But there is also another
approach that sees culture in humanistic
terms which makes a distinction between
what is good and what is undesirable.
June 17, 2000
Raymond Williams (1961:16) has pointed
out that modern meanings of culture es-
sentially appeared in the 18th and 19th
centuries because before that it simply
meantas its originalLatinrootword cultura
meantcultivation of soil: "Itcame to mean,
first, 'a general state or habit of the mind'.
Having close relations with the idea of
humanperfection. Second, it came to mean
'the general state of intellectual develop-
ment, in a society as a whole'. Third, it
came to mean 'the general body of the
arts'. Fourth, later in the century, it came
to mean 'a whole way of life, material,
intellectual and spiritual'." The first three
belong to the humanisticapproachwhereas
the last is anthropological.
Culture according to a long line of a
divers group of humanistic thinkers that
includes Diderot, Rousseau, Herder,Kant,
Coleridge, Mathew Arnold, Oswald
Spengler could be either natural,organic,
creative, genuine and moral or artificial,
mechanical, stereotyped, superficial, ser-
vile, mindless, corruptand alienated. This
tradition clearly distinguishes between
culture (as something of a superior kind
of human living) andbarbarism.Anything
that transforms culture to barbarism is to
be despised. In short, culture should be
cultivated to keep barbarism at bay.
Humanists have stressed this aspect by
emphasising both individual virtues (e g,
Aristotle)andsocial virtues(e g, Confucius)
as hallmarksof a culturedsociety. As early
as 1869, Mathew Arold in his Culture
and Anarchy argued that in an age of
democracy, industrialisation, mechani-
sation, and so on, the cultivation of culture
is vital to stop society from destroying
itself. He suggested that society should
be infused with 'Hebraism' (Moral disci-
pline) and 'Hellenism', (intellectual free-
dom and creativity) to make beauty and
truth as key cultural traits.
While one can understand the human-
ists' concern to achieve the ideal, no clear
unambiguousrule exists to determine what
is the ideal and what is not. One thing is
clear however that all invasive cultures
(including urban based intellectuals' at-
tempts to ameliorate or alter rural or
'adivasi'folk) considerthemselves superior
and the ideal for others to emulate though
they invariably tend to be "artificial,
standardised, simplified" and occasion-
ally "ideal". They try to learn about the
conquered societies only to hegemonise
them. Tzvetan Todorov in his magisterial
The Conquest of America describes the
example of Cortes, the ruthless Spaniard
Economic and Political Weekly June 17, 2000
who laid waste of the great South Ameri-
can civilisations: "Cortes slips into the
other's skin...(giving) himself an under-
standing of the other's language and a
knowledge of the other's political
organisation...But in doing so he has never
abandoned his feeling of superiority...
Then...the second phase, during which he
is not content to reassert his own identity
(which he has never really abandoned),but
proceeds to assimilate the Indians to his
own world." All subsequent colonisers
(including the media-led cultural imperi-
alists) have internalised the lessons of
conquest provided by Cortes.
There is a new trinity that replaces the
old conqueror with the sword which
consists of the "scholar, the priest, and the
merchant". The first collects information
about the field to be conquered, the second
promotes a "spiritualannexation" and the
third collects the profits. [Dallmayr 1996:
5-7]. The modern analogue to this three-
some could be the 'market researcher',
'advertisement man' and the 'capitalist'.
Todorov's 'spiritualannexation' is noth-
ing but a subtle variation on the concept
"culturalimperialism". Whether one calls
it "cross-cultural synthesis" or "towards
modernity", it has become a fact of life.
Long before modern globalisation and
liberalisation,cultural life in the former
colonies and other independent but less
developed societies had been thoroughly
infected with the culturalmodes and ideals
of the rich, advanced western societies.
The UNESCO report on culture and
development says:"As members of the
Commission meet in different cities and
as they travel round the world, they have
an opportunityto observe the young... From
Ladakh to Lisbon, from China to Peru, in
the East, West, North and South, styles in
dress, jeans, hair-dos, T-shirts, jogging,
eating habits, musical tunes, attitudes to
sexuality, divorce and abortion have be-
come global. Even crimes such as those
relating to drugs, the abuse and rape of
women, embezzlement, and corruption
transcend frontiers and have become
similar everywhere in the world" (pp 26-
27). No matter how much we lament the
world we have lost,that vanished world
will never be recovered we do not even
know whether it would be a good thing.
Cultural penetration in the modern
globalised and liberalised world is not
achieved through violent conquest or di-
rect economic domination. Globalisation
and liberalisation are culturally-loaded
policies because the underlying ideologi-
cal bases to be found in ideas such as
'free-market', 'progress' and 'intellectual
freedom' imply a certain kind of cultural
environment. Thus to get the best out of
globalisation and liberalisation, one has
also to become assimilated into a uniform
global culture dominated by a few ad-
vanced nations.While nationalcultureswill
be under great stress as a result of the
onslaught of a globalised culture, it is
necessary to emphasise how regional sub-
cultures can also be hegemonised by the
media controlled by metropolitan centres.
How does modern media serve this
peaceful spiritual annexation? What are
the implications? Before we make an at-
tempt to examine this question, a caveat
has to be entered. Culturalinvasion of the
modern globalised era is very different
from similar penetration in the past. All
earlier forms of cultural invasion followed
other kinds of invasion and on the basis
of a 'Book' or an ideology that was con-
sidered morally or ethically superior and
good for the invaded. In short, it was not
'demand-driven'. But it is somewhat dif-
ferent although it still emanates from one
or two sources. The two core principles
are (a) marketknows best (individualism);
and (b) the satisfaction of the individual
through supplying what he wants (hedo-
nism). Ithiel de Sola Pool clearly points
this out: "The Americanisation of world
culture so often commented on and de-
plored might be better described as the
discovery of what cultural tastes actually
are and adoption of those into American
media. If American pop culture is success-
ful around the world - and it is - it is by
a circular process. American commerce
seeks to reflect world cultural tastes, the
product in turn feeds back into the system
andreinforcesthatwhich was alreadyfound
popular" (op cit). Similarly if Indian or
Chinese food, Japanese martial arts or
other elements of Asian culture penetrate
into the western world, it only shows the
power of the market and the desire for
gratification on the part of individuals.
Markets in their turn could be easily ma-
nipulated to manufacturecultural tastes as
Vance Packard pointed out in his Hidden
Persuaders long ago.
The most interesting issues here are how
the market and media have acted sym-
biotically to produce the current global
culture. First, the target audience is not
known for message giver to be able to
tailor the message to suit the audience. The
concerned information tends to be general,
devoid of diversity. Suppose there is a
2145
 media presentation of some folk art. The
emphasisinvariablyis on the general struc-
ture without any reference to the delicate
nuancesthatcould prevail in differentparts
of the region. Those who think they have
learnt about that art form will obviously
be mistaken. Over a period of time, this
generalised model will become the stan-
dard to be adopted by every practitioner.
The same thing spills over into the use of
the language. Language use is essentially
regional and local specific. In order to
caterto a wide variety of audience a neutral
type of language is fostered in the media.
Alternatively one particular usage be-
comes the universal model.
Second, with a vast heterogeneous au-
dience, the message giver is compelled to
bring down the level of discourse to the
lowest common denominator. The mass
media cannot distinguish between differ-
ent levels of comprehension and under-
standing available in the audience. Hence
there is a tendency to pitch all messages
to the lowest level of mental capacity. The
result is what the eminent journalist Carl
Bernstein (1994) calls creation of a "true
idiot culture". As he says, for the "first
time in history the weird and the stupid
and the vulgar are becoming our cultural
norm, even our cultural ideal". In order to
attract audience, media presents knowl-
edge-in slick, pre-digested, easy-to-under-
stand capsules. According to the social
critic, Jean Baudrillard (1993), the close-
up universe of the television screens, tab-
loid newspapers and glossy magazines has
destroyed the possibilities of critical ex-
amination and reflection, as phenomena
are brought down to terminals of a bland,
freneticallymoving culture. Over a period,
the public craves only this kind of pre-
sentation of information about phenom-
ena. It induces people to want simple
answers to difficult problems, and so
interest in truth which could be hard,
complex and subtle, recedes fast. This
could have a profoundly anti-democratic
consequence for the spread of knowledge.
The mass media approachlessens people's
interest in what has been called "reading
in the old, archaic, private, silent sense".
This is a "specialised skill and avocation"
as George Steiner puts it, "as it was in the
scriptoria and libraries of the monasteries
during the so-called Dark Ages. The wish
to attend to a demanding text, to master
the grammar,the artsof memory, the tactics
of repose and concentration, may once
again become the practice of an elite, of
a mandarinateof silences" (cited by Steve
2146
Wasserman in NPQ symposium, op cit)
Generally, interestin studies requiringhard
analytical effort declines in favour of soft
disciplines among the new generation.
Third, as the necessity of persuading a
far larger group of people in a variety of
social and geographical spaces arises, a
certain standardisation of knowledge be-
comes inevitable. This standardisationis
invariably path dependent because estab-
lished forms already developed in leading
western countries tend to be accepted.
Weights and measures, national income
computation systems and even the very
currency system to name a few become
standardised, and invariably their origins
are in the west. They also in general tend
to favour the western countries. An ex-
ample is the Mercator's Projection used
in cartography which "distorts the com-
parative size of continental landmasses, as
well as evoking a Eurocentricvision of the
Mediterraneanas the centre of the world"
[Sreberny-Muhammadi 1997:52].
Fourth, being a ruthlessly competing
world, some knowledge systems which do
not have adequate support tend to lose out
with fewer systems thriving. Size and cost
effectiveness become crucial in the mass
mediated context. This shows up in the
flow of knowledge and culture communi-
cation from the developed to the less
developed world. For example local ma-
terial (e g, television programmes or tra-
ditional street drama) cannot effectively
compete with foreign (e g, American tele-
vision) sources. Even within national
boundaries, size and scale determined
media can ignore the tastes and interests
of minorities and marginal groups. The
economics of globalised media can hurt
local economies. Even European media
interests feel the pinch of the far cheaper
American imports.But of course we should
not think that it is an irreversible process.
Between 1975 and 1991, the flow of
cultural goods from the developed to the
less developed countries has gone down
and the flow from LDC to DCs has in-
creased even though in absolute termsDCs
still hold the advantage. The share of LDC
with 77 per cent of population in world
export of cultural goods is only 31.8 per
cent whereas the share of DCs with 23
per cent of populationremainedat 68.2 per
cent in 1991.
Fifth, while the enormous advances in
telecommunications have spawned a
mammoth entertainmentindustry to cater
to a worldwide population, its possibilities
of expanding the knowledge frontier are
Economic and Political Weekly
limited to a few affluent countries. In coun-
tries like the US and the UK, vast quan-
tities of data and information are available
that could be accessed easily through
educational/researchcentres.These arenot
available in less developed countries and
as technologies improve, this informational
gap can only widen beyond comprehen-
sion. Ithiel de Sola Pool points out that "In
20 years, systems such as MEDLARS
(Medical LiteratureAnalysis andRetrieval
System) or the New York Times online
information system will be widely used in
this country. Given the sophisticated
technology required for time-shared data
networks with remote access, the devel-
oping countries will fall increasingly
behind" (op cit). The provision of such
educational facilities will require enor-
mous investment, but private capital (local
or foreign) will not be forthcoming as
these are not market driven.
Sixth, Cultural forms that developed
organicallyduringthe long course of human
history have been altered to suit very
different purposes thanks to novel means
of communication made possible by mass
media. Thus religion which developed
initially as a mode of communion of the
individual with the infinite has become an
instrumentof political mobilisation. Simi-
larly art forms which originated to give
expression to the creative urges of indi-
viduals andsocieties have been transformed
to serve very different - some would say
philistine - ends. For example the art of
dramathatdeveloped since classical Greek
times and nurtured in many civilisations
through the works of Kalidasa, Shake-
speare, Henrik Ibsen, and Bertold Brecht
and which is one of the highest achieve-
ments of human civilisation is now trans-
formed to be a tool to sell toothpaste or
washing detergents. Martin Esslin who
was head of the BBC radio drama points
out thattelevision commercials and indeed
"all the other forms of dramatic mass
entertainment and mass manipulation"
have become part of modem culture and
cannot be wished away. In his view they
have adaptedwell the old dramaticarts for
new uses. The television commercial after
all is drama that is an "omnipresent, all-
pervasive, continuously available, and
unending stream of entertainment for the
vast majority of individuals". By looking
at myths at the base of our modern culture,
they are "no less than Greek tragedy".
Though the average television commercial
may not use plot, character and spoken
dialogue as seriously as the great drama-
June 17, 2000
tists of the past, they "are essentially
dramatic, because basically they use mi-
metic action to produce a semblance of real
life, and the basic ingredients of drama -
character and a story line - are present in
the great majority of them, either mani-
festly or by implication" [Esslin 1979: 96-
108]. Similar analysis of other art forms
- music, painting, sculpture, etc, - could
easily be made along these lines.
Finally, all traditional cultures had set
great store by ethical behaviour with all
its complications in theory and practice.
Pedro Gilberto Gomes (1997:211) has
pointed out that human beings "are im-
bued with a moral conscience that deter-
mines their daily actions" which arose out
of a "complex, social, familial, political,
cultural, and religious" context. Because
media professionals are also human, he
assumes that they would also abide by
certainself-imposed ethical principles.The
way media functions in a dog-eat-dog
competitive world where anything goes to
increase coverage and profits, this hope is
naive. Informationthat comes through the
media is invariably slanted. Sometimes it
is just to boost circulation by highlighting
certain bizarreand titillating aspects of an
event. News is presentedto suit one's own
ideological position with the intention of
converting the audience. John Fiske gives
the classic example of American newspa-
per reporting on the Los Angeles rioting
as a result of the Rodney King affair: "the
discourse of mobs and masses or sense-
lessness and lawlessness absolves white
society from any responsibility for the
uprisings. By using this as their dominant
discourse, the mainstreammedia were able
to submerge both the broader social situ-
ation in which their role is so formative
and the history of dominations of which
they are themselves a product. The main-
stream media's refusal to see anything
from a point of view other than their own,
repressed any alternative knowledge that
there was an order, a purpose and a sense
to the uprisings" [Fiske 1994:180]. Worse
still are the journalists who present slanted
news to favour the diktats - overt and
covert - of the proprietors of the media
with their own particular axes to grind.
Then there are the journalists who could
easily be bribed. Hamish McDonald in
his biography of Dhirubhai Ambani
says: "Reliance was a pioneer of envelope
journalism. A senior commercial jour-
nalist in Bombay recalls that journalists
would get vouchers worth up to Rs 2,000
for goods at a Vimal retail outlet. Some
Economic and Political Weekly June 17, 2000
in senior positions would get regular Durkheim,Emile (1951): Suicide, (trans by J A
monthly payments, or issues of Reliance Spaulding and George Simpson, Free Press,
shares and debentures at par" [McDonald Glencoe).
Esslin, Martin(1979): 'Aristotle and Advertisers:
1998:75]. The Television CommercialConsideredas a
To sum up, culture as a way of human Form of Drama', The Kenyon Review, new
life is constantly undergoing change. series, Vol I, No 4, Fall.
Fiske, John (1994): Media Matters,Universityof
Certaindevelopments in modem times have
Minnesota Press.
helped to accelerate this process of change Gomes, PedroGilberto(1997): 'Communications,
in an exponential manner involving two Hope, and Ethics' in Clifford Christiansand
major consequences: (a) reduction in Michael Traber(eds), CommunicationEthics
cultural diversity; and (b) increasing he- and Universal Values, Sage.
Griliches,Zvi (1994): 'Productivity,R and D and
gemonic control in the name of free trade Data Constraint',AmericanEconomicReview,
and freedom of communication, at all March.
levels. The implications of this change are McDonald,Hamish(1998): ThePolyester Prince,
varied and thereareno indicationsthatthey Allen and Unwin.
arein any way increasingthe social, material Morgan, Michael and James Shanahan (1997):
or spiritual well-being of humanity. [1 'Two Decades of Cultivation Research' in
BrantBurleson(ed), CommunicationYearbook
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