GEORGE YÚDICE

FREE TRADE
AND CULTURE
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CULTURE: USES OF
CULTURE IN THE GLOBAL ERA
GEORGE
YÚDICE
GLOSSARY
I. GATT : GENERAL AGREEMENT ON
TARIFFS AND TRADE
(ESTABLISHED IN 1947)
II. WTO : WORLD TRADE
ORGANISATION
III. NAFTA : NORTH AMERICAN FREE
TRADE AGREEMENT (CANADA,
MEXICO, US)
IV. IMF : INTERNATIONAL MONETARY
FUND
V. WORLD BANK GROUP
THE ESSAY IS DIVIDED INTO:-
A. WHAT DOES CULTURE HAVE T

WITH FREE TRADE?

B. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AN

REDEFINITION OF CULTURE.
 WHAT DOES CULTURE HAVE TO DO WITH FREE
TRADE?
Free trade and culture do NOT have transparent meanings. Free trade is
anything but unrestricted unlike what it’s name suggests. The last set of
protocols generated by GATT in 1993 consisted of 20000 pages weighing
over 1800 pounds. Participating corporations receive subsidies, bailouts
and tax credits from their home government for their ‘competitiveness’
The very notion of innovation as an engine of capital accumulation is
often identified with culture, the strategies of global trade are
rearticulating all conceptions of culture, even to the point that some of the
most economically profitable products and services, say computer
software and Internet sites are treated as cultural forms of intellectual
property and cultural content, respectively.
- FREE TRADE HAS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE REDEFINITION
In the beginning of 1980’s, free trade was repackaged as a means to manage a
world wide economic crisis. Foreign debt of countries in the southern
hemisphere grew to a point of economic crisis and the rate of profit in the good
and service had fallen due to the glut of commodities produced in Germany and
japan & innovations in new labour saving technologies. — The new president of
world bank reoriented its poverty-reduction policies by putting greater emphasis
on ‘rent seeking’. This change made it easier for the bank to follow the criteria
of IMF, whose approval was needed to make loans. Consequently, both
institutions became missionaries that imposed free trade and structural
adjustment programs on poor countries that had no choice but to assent.
Free trade means DEREGULATION
results in forsaking labour protection, resulting lower wages and benefits, the
reduction of welfare and social services and the rollback of environmental
safeguards
Repercussions of these restructuring at transnational level in trade
agreements and structural adjustment policies — experienced
acutely at the local level
Eg: loss of jobs in the U.S, defunding of schools in Latin America,
Immigrants blamed for the problems faced by the working class
( politicians characterise them as drain of the society, making
parasitic use
Transnational corporations have it both ways under WTO rules;
they can operate more freely across borders at the same time they
are considered local firms in host countries
“The hegemony of ‘corporate diversity’ as the ideological face of
global capitalism, is reproduced by millions of public relations
images in which social hegemony is achieved through relations of
difference
Market values come to prevail as the services that the Keynesian state had been
providing are now privatised.
notion of cultural citizenship , though important for eliminating the obstacles to
inclusion, have not, especially when understood through the medium of consumer
orientation representations, made difficult to understand, the increasing class
difference which can be measured in terms of economic disparity.
2000 census data shows that poverty is deepening in the United States. Rich gets
richer.
In other parts of the world, number of people surviving on less that $2 per day
increased by 100 million from 1990 to 2000.
THE PREVALENCE OF MARKET AND CONSUMPTION VALUES AND
INCREASING POVERTY GO TOGETHER AS INTEGRAL FACTORS IN
REDEFINITION OF THE CULTURAL FIELD.
This disparity is created cause of neoliberalism and globalisation. It’s is not natural
because of neoliberalism, culture is like any other product.
Intellectual property and the redefinition
of culture
The rise of market value is an important factor in redefinition of
culture.
The U.S GATT and WTO negotiators have defined cultural goods
such as films, television programs, video and audio recordings and
books as commodities that are subject to the same kind of trade
conditions as cars and clothing — Europeans say that these trade
arrangements legitimized the colonization of European imagery by
Hollywood images.
In 1992, Europeans exported $250 million to U.S and U.S had sales
of $4.6 Billion in
Europe. Globally sales figures surpass US$12 Billion per Annu in
foreign revenues for audio-visual products and that figure rises to
US$535.1 Billion or 5.24 per cent of GDP for the copyright industry (
theatrical films, TV program, home video, DVDs, business software,
entertainment software, books, music and sound recordings)
 The Clinton administration’s working group intellectual property rights
recommend
decisions that further redefined culture and enhanced benefits for the commercial
interests ̶ rights were put in the domain of corporations, with privacy intervened by
state and business enterprises ̶ even human life is increasingly subject to patenting
and
copyrighting. ̶ rights to the digital reproduction of art and music have largely been
acquired by entertainment conglomerates and telecommunication companies rather
than
the museums or original recording companies that own or owned the works.
Internaltion piracy of US Culture reached $8 Billion in 1993 rising by more that
50% in
1998 ̶ lead US enterprises to seek greater adherence to copyright Ans trademark
protections ̶ Mexico was virtually forced to change its intellectual property laws and
endorse them as of 1994 ̶ china was threatened with a $30 bimmion sanction ti
discourage the piracy of trademarked products
Although there are controversies revolving around the difference between Authors' rights
and copyright, the global knowledge-based economy nevertheless operates on the basis
of copyrights. Mainly because of US dominance in the organisations that oversee
intellectual property rights.
• The US and other postindustrial countries have recourse to international law and to the
sanctions they can bring to bar on transgressors (someone who has broken a law)
countries.
• Developing countries and fourth world indigenous people do not have the same
influence, despite the drafting of international covenants by their own representatives
Ans UNESCO ̶ western intellectual property law ascribes rights only to those who
operate an alteration on a substance from the nature state such that the resulting product
is “non-obvious”
 IPR does not recognize the forms of labour, especially immaterial or
ritualistic forms (such as shamanism) and cultural forms (like rhythms) ̶ this
difference
ensures that the asymmetry in capital accumulation between (developed and
developing
countries) and (native people) will only become greater.
Garnham said, ‘An analysis of culture structured around the concept of the
cultural
industries directs our attention precisely at the dominant private market sector.
As Garcia Canclini argues “It is not that national culture is extinguished but rather
that it is converted into a formula for designating the continuity of an unstable
historical
memory that is now being reconstituted in interaction with transnational cultural
referents”
International popular << Transnational popular