Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?

Michael Amaladoss, SJ, Delhi - India

A quick answer to this question is: In the context of global homogenization, the local cultures not only
can, but should survive. I shall explain this answer.
The experiential context in which the question is asked is the phenomenon of globalization. The
communications revolution, thanks to its rapidity and outreach, has made the world a global village.
The multi-national companies have made the world one global market. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the world has become politically unipolar, with the USA dominating, not only the economic,
but also the political and military scene. The Westerns and Soap Operas of Hollywood are screened
everywhere. Pop musicians attract crowds all over the world. Jeans, Coca Cola and Macdonalds have
become symbols of a global consumeristic culture.
On the other hand, inter-ethnic, inter-cultural and inter-religious conflicts are prevalent everywhere.
Multiculturalism is a hotly debated topic in the academy and elsewhere. Subaltern groups and
indigenous peoples are affirming and defending their cultural and social identities. People are
searching for their roots. Are these rear-guard actions of a dying social order? Can they withstand the
onslaught of the globalizing forces? Many people think that they cannot. They may even welcome
global homogenization as the context for building up global community.
I think that the contemporary situation is quite complex. It will be helpful to look at it analytically. We
must understand more precisely the phenomenon of globalization. We also need to have a clear idea of
culture and cultures. Only then can we understand the impact of globalization on cultures. In the
process it will also become clear to us how we should handle the dynamic of globalization.
UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is a process of something becoming global. It is facilitated by the media of
communications. Through radio and satellite information can reach the whole globe almost
instantaneously. Important events, whether social, political or sportive, have global audiences. Another
aspect of global communication is the rapidity of movement. People can travel and move goods
rapidly anywhere in the world. But, in order to appreciate the impact of globalization we must
understand what is becoming global. Communications is a means that facilitates globalization. What
people are actually worried about are the things that get globalized. People would generally welcome
the globalization of knowledge, for example. But they are wary about globalization in the economic
and cultural spheres, often supported by political forces. What seems problematic is the globalization
of liberal capitalism and of the culture of modernity. Let us briefly look at these two elements. My aim
is not to describe them elaborately, but to raise some relevant points.
Capitalism is an economic system in which a few people own and control the resources of production.
It is oriented to the accumulation of wealth in terms of profits on investment. By contrast, socialism
would be collective ownership of the means of production. Socialism has never been practised except
in some early tribal societies. What we had in the Soviet block some years ago was State capitalism,
where the State owned the resources of production, ostensibly in the name of the people. Capitalism as
an economic system is as good as any other till a better system is evolved. Resources of production
have to be accumulated. A certain self-interest may serve as an incentive. We cannot distribute wealth
if we do not produce it and we cannot produce it without investing capital. If labour is not exploited, if
profit is not the only motive and one does not go after excessive profit margins, if the people’s basic
needs are provided for, if there is a basic social responsibility and sense of solidarity guiding options
and decisions, then capitalism can be an useful economic system. Capitalism, however, can become
socially oppressive and exploitative when profit making becomes its only goal; when the workers are
poorly paid and their labour power is exploited; when, rather than meeting the real needs of the
people, these are ignored and consumer needs are artificially created through advertisements in the
media; when goods are priced not in terms of real costs, but in terms of what the people are ready to
pay for it, especially when their consumer interests have been aroused by the media; and when small
operators are edged out of the market by powerful companies. It becomes even worse, when it claims
to be liberal, that is free of any other control except itself and the market. Competition is supposed to
be a regulating factor. But monopolies and cartels, both of production and of marketing, can
manipulate the market forces. In a competition between the bigger and smaller companies, the latter
do not stand a chance of survival. This leads to a polarization of wealth. The gap between the few rich
and the many poor keeps widening.
In recent years, the economy has become monetized. That is to say, commerce or marketing controls
production. In a further development, given the need of capital for production and commerce, money
itself, from being a medium of exchange, has become a commodity. Money makes more money.
Banks become more important than production units. In a liberal money market, financial speculation
can ruin many small countries and wreck their economies.
Another element that is relevant to our enquiry is modernity. Modernity is characterised by the
insistence on the autonomy of reason. This is affirmed particularly in the area of science and
technology. Modern science is characterized by rationality and immanence. Rationality affirms that
the phenomena of nature can be adequately understood by reason trying to discover their causes. The
principle of immanence suggests that nature can be understood in its own terms, without invoking
extra-natural or super-natural causes. There is no problem in following such an approach to the study
of reality. But science becomes the ideology of scientism when whatever is not accessible to reason is
denied. Scientism then becomes materialistic and secularising, making religion into a private emotion.
Technology develops the machines that function based on the laws of nature discovered by science.
Such machines are used for controlling nature and for the production of goods. Science and
technology can be very beneficial to the humans. Food production can be increased. Diseases can be
controlled. The media of communications have been developed. New energy resources have been
tapped. Various gadgets make the chores of life easier. But materialistic technology has increased the
pride and the sense of power and the feeling of autonomy of the humans. Combined with capitalism
and the forces of the market it leads to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Nature is not merely
used, but exploited and destroyed. Bio-technologies experiment with the lives of the humans
themselves. The humans become machines. Using science and technology they have unleashed forces
of destruction in the form of sophisticated arms that can kill thousands with precision.
The contemporary phenomenon of globalization is precisely the globalization of liberal capitalism and
materialistic modernity. Globalization could have been used for extending the benefits of socially
responsible capitalism and a humanized science and technology to all peoples. Such globalization
would have been welcome. What is happening is that the evil characteristics of capitalism and
modernity seem to be benefiting more from the process of globalization. The rich capitalists have now
a global market-field to play in. The facilities of mass and rapid communications as made use of for
increasing profits by looking for cheap labour in poor countries. The international markets are
weighted in favour of the richer nations who control them. The commercial and service sectors are
favoured while primary goods attract increasingly lower prices. People who wax eloquent about
intellectual property rights ignore natural and human rights. The multi-national companies are more
powerful than many nations. Politicians everywhere are at the service of business interests. The richer
nations use their political and military power, ever across their borders, to favour and protect their own
economic interests. The markets are not as free as one pretends. They are controlled by the G7 and the
international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which they control.
Even when a country shows some social responsibility within its own borders for political reasons, the
same policies are not applied in their relations to other, specially poorer countries. We could speak of
economic colonialism. The richer minority in each country is often hand in gloves with the rich in
other countries to exploit the poor everywhere. The gap between the rich and the poor in each country
and between the rich and poor countries is increasing. The earth is getting exploited and destroyed. A
materialistic and consumeristic culture is spread through the mass media to create and increase needs.
A mechanistic and individualistic way of life replaces a life closer to nature and to community.
Traditional and appropriate technologies are destroyed in favour of modern, mechanistic ones that
eventually destroy nature and decrease the quality of life. The luxuries of the few are given priority
over the needs of the many. International financial and trade institutions, not run democratically but
controlled by the richer nations, impose these destructive policies on poorer nations through structural
adjustment programmes. A market culture that only thinks of the profit and personal comfort of the
few without being ecologically and socially sensitive is spread as the good news for today. The world
may be a global village, but it is not a global community. On the contrary, the division between the
rich and the poor is not only increasing: the injustice is experienced much more because of the
proximity that globalization brings. What we have therefore is not the globalization of well being and
abundance, but globalization of poverty and injustice.
HOMOGENIZATION
What is then being homogenized in this new global world? Consumer goods are becoming
homogenous all over the world. People use the same kind of things: from planes and cars to pins. With
this goes a consumeristic way of life and system of values that concentrate on the material world and
on physical comfort. Modern scientific and technological rationality has become the underlying
ideology, leading to the secularization of public life, the privatization of religion and the exploitation
of nature and of the body. A spirit of egoism/individualism and competition characterise life, which
has itself become a market with many choices and trade offs. The economic system seems to be the
dominant one that controls other social systems.
HOMOGENIZATION AND CULTURE
Does this homogenization at the consumeristic and rational-scientific levels result in cultural
homogenization? It depends on what one understands by culture. A culture is the way of life of a
people through which they humanize and socialize nature. It implies a world-view, a value system, and
a network of social relationships. These find expression in cultural products through a network of
symbols and rituals. Language as a medium of communication and expression and religion as
providing the core meanings have a special role in culture. We can analyse culture in terms of three
dimensions or levels. At a first level, the humans relate to nature and to life. They produce and use
goods and eventually exchange them. The second level relates to the others. Symbols and rituals help
the humans to structure social relationships, build community and celebrate it. Language and art are
particularly relevant here. Quest for ultimate meaning that offers goals and motivations constitutes the
third level. Religions and/or ideologies provide answers to this quest. Taken together these three levels
provide an identity to a social group and distinguishes it from other groups.
Culture is not a static reality. As the adage goes: people make culture, culture makes people. The
children grow into a culture by the time they are three or four. Creative persons can contribute to the
change and development of a culture. Cultures do change in dialogue with changing economic and
socio-political circumstances and with other cultures with which it is brought into contact through
commercial or political relations. At the source of culture there is social agency: a group of people
with freedom and creativity. Cultures are constructed by people. People are not mere objects of
cultural influences, but subjects who can sift various influences and reject or integrate them.
Global homogenization has an impact on cultures at all the three levels I have evoked above, though in
different ways. It affects directly the production and use of consumer goods. People use the same kind
of goods everywhere. But even such use is set in differing social contexts. For example, Coke and
Macdonalds may be very functional in the USA; but in India only the few rich can afford them and
they become status symbols. Anthropologists make a distinction between popular and popularized
culture. Popular culture is the creation of a people. Popularized culture, like the consumer culture, is
artificially thrust on the people through skilful use of the media by marketing managers to maximize
their sales and profits. It keeps changing periodically. It has no roots in the people’s awareness. The
homogenized culture of globalization is not a popular, but a popularized culture.
At the level of social relationships, there is a certain homogenization regarding how a business is run
and how people relate to each other in situations of production and marketing. But the relationships of
people are not limited to production and marketing. There are other natural (family), traditional
(cultural) and associative groups that build community which are more crucial to human and social
living. These are sometimes created or revived as counterfoils to the mechanical nature of economic
and commercial relationships.
Modernity as scientific rationality promotes a materialistic, secular view of life and the world. People
can however profit from the benefits of science and technology without ‘buying’ its secular ideology.
Science and technology are not the property of any culture. In the course of history many peoples have
contributed to the development of science. Every culture has to come to terms with such development
and integrate it in its own context. Most cultures are capable are doing that. Sociologists have
frequently pointed out that while modernity has lead to a differentiation of social institutions so that
religion as an institution no longer has the dominant position it once had, it has not managed to
become a substitute for religions for most people. Ultimate questions of meaning are still being asked
and answered in various ways. Religions are even undergoing a revival in many areas.
Considering these factors we can say that the homogenization brought about by globalization is
superficial and is limited to the material level of the consumer goods used by people and a certain
consumer culture that is artificially promoted by the media. It does not radically affect how people
relate to each other and how they find meaning and purpose in life. It leaves largely untouched the
freedom and agency of the subjects in creating and changing culture, both as individuals and as
groups.
HOMOGENIZATION OPPOSED
Homogenization is not a neutral phenomenon. Because of the dynamics of globalization it veils only
very thinly a built-in relationship of inequality and domination between the rich and the poor countries
and the rich and the poor in the poorer countries. Such a situation will provoke resistence from the
oppressed and dominated peoples and consequent social conflict. People will demand equality.
Homogenization is basically something imposed on people by market forces. It treats people as
objects. Even while they use those goods, people can and do assert themselves as subjects, integrating
them in their own way of life. One notices everywhere new kinds associative groups around new
alternative technologies that have to do with food, health, quest for meaning and personal integration.
People do not wish to lose their cultural and religious identities and become ciphers in the market
place looked upon only as consumers. Without rejecting the use of consumer goods, people also
reassert their cultural identities in terms of language, ethnicity, religion, etc. Some of these
movements, if suppressed, become fundamentalist and violent. Even the USA and Canada are no
longer regarded as melting pots, but as salad bowls characterized by a multiculturalism that refuses to
be homogenized.
Post-modern reflection has become critical of the homogenization of scientific rationality with its
claims of being objective. Such claims to objectivity have been questioned by people who suggest
various ways in which the process of knowing is conditioned: by economic structures (Marx), by
desire (Freud), by language (Lacan), by relations of power (Foucault), by paradigms (Kuhn), by
emotional intelligence (Goldmann), etc. Even if we do not subscribe to an anarchy of subjective
meanings, they do point to the relativity and cultural conditioning of all human processes of knowing,
including science.
CONCLUSION
After this rapid analysis, let me come back to the original question. Can the local cultures survive in
the face of globalization? My answer is: "YES". Globalization is not as homogenizing as one pretends,
unless one refuses to look beyond the material and superficial aspects of life. Even these few elements
of homogenization will be integrated differently by different peoples. Since people construct their
identities through their cultures, they will defend them, even violently if necessary. This does not
mean that they will be static entities. There will be an ongoing, dynamic transformation through
dialogue and encounter.
I shall go further and say that the local cultures should survive. They are the antidotes to the attempt to
set up money as the new idol in the global marketplace with cultureless consumers as its worshippers.
Many cultures also have alternative resources for promoting a better human life-in-community. This is
particularly true of Oriental and Primal cultures. Since cultures are peoples, homogenization can only
mean the mechanization of the human. Cultural diversities, as expressions of divine and human
freedom and creativity, will have to be protected and defended. Pluralism is a value. Homogenization
can only be pathological. If we can humanize capitalism and science and technology and make them
socially responsible on the one hand and respect the diversity of peoples and their cultures on the
other, then globalization can lead to global community marked by unity in pluralism. It will be built up
through dialogue in mutual respect leading to mutual enrichment.
In the modern global world cultural pluralism may however be less and less geographical, though a
certain geographical rootedness of major cultures will remain. It will be more personal/social. We live
in a multicultural world in which people live an experience of multiple-belongingness, characterized
by a variety of associative groups. Every one may go to the same supermarket for his/her consumer
goods, but also frequent different health clubs, literary and artistic groups, religious associations,
meditation centres, activist movements, etc. In such a context, individual and group identities will
have to be negotiated through a process of dialogue, rejection and selective appropriation through
adaptation of various elements. Therefore cultures may no longer be local in the traditional sense, but
still different and plural, linked together in a complex network. This will lead to a new kind of
globalization that will not be homogenizing. But this is a topic for another discussion.