Global Culture

Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization

Diana Crane, Nobuko Kawashima, Ken'ichi Kawasaki, Diana Crane, Nobuko Kawashima, Ken'ichi Kawasaki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415932301
• eBook ISBN: 9781134955176
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Culture no longer has borders. With the advent of internet sites like Sothebys.com and the increasing reality of globalization, culture itself has gone global. This collection focuses on questions involving national identity, indigenous culture, economic growth, free trade, cultural policy, and global tourism. Global Culture looks at all aspects of the arts including: film, art, music, theater, television, and museums. Global Culture fleshes out how current cultural policies are working and forecasts what we can expect the future landscape of global culture to look like.

1

Culture and Globalization

Theoretical Models and Emerging Trends

Diana Crane

Globalization has become an immensely popular topic among social scientists despite the fact that it is poorly defined and difficult to research systematically. In this volume, cultural globalization—as opposed to economic, political, or technological globalization—refers to the transmission or diffusion across national borders of various forms of media and the arts.¹ Generally the circulation of cultural products or artifacts occurs among advanced or advancing countries, particularly those that constitute desirable markets for media or that possess sufficient levels of revenue for investment in the arts and in arts institutions. It is important to realize that cultural globalization is no longer conceptualized in terms of the emergence of a homogenized global culture corresponding to Marshall McLuhan’s global village. Instead, cultural globalization is recognized as a complex and diverse phenomenon consisting of global cultures, originating from many different nations and regions.

Assuming that all forms of culture construct and deconstruct social identities and social relations, cultural globalization raises important and controversial issues concerning its effects on national and local cultures and their responses to it. Do global cultures differ in important ways from national or local cultures? Does the existence of global cultures imply homogeneity in the tastes of publics located in different countries? What policies, if any, should national governments undertake in order to adjust, adapt, or resist the effects of global cultures? Understanding cultural globalization requires an examination of economic organizations and political institutions that contribute to it or attempt to respond to it. What are the implications of changes in the character and ownership of international media conglomerates, of the roles of regional and national cultures in relation to global cultures, and in the complexity of the public’s responses to global cultures?

My objectives in this chapter are: (1) to review the principal theoretical models that have been used to explain or interpret cultural globalization; (2) to propose an additional model; and (3) to discuss the status of these models in relation to recent literature on globalization. Cultural globalization is sufficiently complex that no single theory can be expected to explain it adequately. The four models I will discuss are the following: the cultural imperialism thesis, the cultural flows or network model, recep-tion theory, and a model of national and urban strategies toward cultural globalization (see fig. 1.1). The first three models have been undergoing substantial revision as new information becomes available and as factors driving cultural globalization change. As a result, these models are substantially different from what they were when first proposed. In the chapters that follow, the authors have been guided, implicitly or explicitly, by these approaches in developing their arguments or conducting their studies.

Theoretical Models of Cultural Globalization

The best known model of cultural globalization is cultural imperialism theory. This theory emerged in the 1960s as part of a Marxist critique of advanced capitalist cultures, including their emphasis on consumerism and mass communications. Building on ideas from world-systems theory, the theory argues that the global economic system is dominated by a core of advanced countries while Third World countries remain at the periphery of the system with little control over their economic and political development (Tomlinson 1991:37). Multinational or transnational corporations are key actors in this system, producing goods, controlling markets, and disseminating prod-ucts, using similar techniques. The theory is similar to ideas developed by the Frankfurt School in Germany insofar as it presupposes a relatively homogenous mass culture that is accepted passively and uncritically by mass audiences.

Model	Process of Cultural Transmission	Principal Actors, Sites	Possible Consequences
Cultural imperialism Media imperialism	Center-periphery	Global media conglomerates	Homogenization of culture
Cultural flows/ networks	Two-way flows	Regional and national conglomerates and corporations	Hybridization of culture
Reception theory	Center-periphery; multidirectional	Audiences, publics, cultural entrepreneurs, gatekeepers	Negotiation, resistance
Cultural policy strategies e.g., preservation, resistance, reframing, glocalization	Framing of national cultures	Global cities, museums, heritage sites, cultural memory, media, ministries of culture and trade	Competition, negotiation

Figure 1.1 Models of Cultural Globalization

The strong version of cultural imperialism theory refers to the imposition upon other countries of a particular nation’s beliefs, values, knowledge, behavioral norms, and style of life (Salwen 1991). Cultural imperialism is defined as a kind of cultural domination by powerful nations over weaker nations. It is viewed as purposeful and intentional because it corresponds to the political interests of the United States and other powerful capitalist societies. The effects of this type of cultural domination, reflecting the attitudes and values of Western, particularly American, capitalist societies, are viewed as extremely pervasive and as leading to the homogenization of global culture, as suggested by the following comment by an Australian scholar (White 1983):” The Americanization process becomes far more formidable when the fundamental concepts of a society’s national identity are remodeled in the American image “(pp. 120–21).

The concept of cultural imperialism is inherently vague and implies a negative evaluation of the behavior and intentions of advanced countries, particularly the United States, toward other advanced countries and toward poorer countries. Critics have argued that the term” imperialism, “which can be seen as the imposition of power from rich to poor, from powerful to weak, implies a degree of political control by powerful countries that no longer exists. According to John Tomlinson (1991),” The idea of imperialism contains …the notion of a purposeful project: the intended spread of a social system from one center of power across the globe. “He contrasts imperialism with the concept of” globalization, “which suggests” interconnection and interdepen-dency of all global areas “happening” in a far less purposeful way “(p. 175).

Despite its weaknesses, cultural imperialism, reconceptualized as media imperialism (see below), remains a useful perspective because it can be used to analyze the extent to which some national actors have more impact than others on global culture, and therefore are shaping and reshaping cultural values, identities, and perceptions. Since the scope and influence of global cultures are rapidly expanding, these are important issues.

In contrast to cultural imperialism theory in which the source of cultural influence is Western civilization, with non-Western and less developed countries viewed as being on the periphery—as the receivers of cultural influences—the cultural flows or network model offers an alternative conception of the transmission process, as influences that do not necessarily originate in the same place or flow in the same direction. Receivers may also be originators. In this model, cultural globalization corresponds to a network with no clearly defined center or periphery (see, for example, Appadurai 1990). Globalization as an aggregation of cultural flows or networks is a less coherent and unitary process than cultural imperialism and one in which cultural influences move in many different directions. The effect of these cultural flows, which Arjun Appadurai identifies as consisting of media, technology, ideologies, and ethnicities on recipient nations is likely to be cultural hybridization rather than homogenization.²

A third model, reception theory, has been used to explain responses to cultural globalization by publics in different countries. This theory hypothesizes that audiences respond actively rather than passively to mass-mediated news and entertainment and that different national, ethnic, and racial groups interpret the same materials differently. This model does not view globally disseminated culture as a threat to national or local identities. Multiculturalism rather than cultural imperialism is perceived as the dominant trend. Critics of reception theory argue that audience response has little effect on global media conglomerates or cultural policy. Media conglomerates treat audiences as undifferentiated consumers of their products rather than as citizens with distinct rights and preferences.

A fourth approach, which I propose, focuses on the strategies used by nations, global cities, and cultural organizations to cope with, counter, or promote cultural globalization. Specifically, nations, global cities, and cultural organizations engage in strategies for preserving and protecting inherited cultures, strategies for rejuvenating traditional cultures, strategies for resisting cultural globalization, and strategies for altering or transforming local and national cultures for global consumption. From this perspective, cultural globalization is a process that involves competition and negotiation as organizations and countries attempt to preserve, position, or project their cultures in global space. Countries vary in their emphasis upon preservation as opposed to production of culture for exportation. In this approach, cultural globalization is seen as a disorderly process, fraught with tension, competition, and conflict.

In the following sections, I will review the current status of these models to show how they are being adapted to changes in our understanding of the level and character of cultural globalization.

From Cultural Imperialism to Global Capitalism
and Media Imperialism

Major forces leading to cultural globalization are economic and organizational. Cultural globalization requires an organizational infrastructure. One form of globalization occurs as a result of the activities in advanced countries of news and entertainment media that produce films, television programs, and popular music and distribute them to countries all over the world. Dominance of a particular country in the global media marketplace is more a function of economic than cultural factors. American corporations particularly have benefited from the size of their national market and the availability of funds for investment.

A small number of media conglomerates, based in a few Western countries, dominate the production and global distribution of film, television, popular music, and book publishing. Robert W. McChesney (1999) has documented the existence of a global media market that has developed as a result of new technologies and the deregulation of national media industries. This market is oligopolistic. Because of high production and distribution costs, the level of investment required to enter this market is very high. These vertically integrated corporations make huge profits by selling the same product in different media. For example, a film may be shown in movie theaters and on pay cable television and sold in the form of a CD-ROM, a book, or as comics. A spin-off may be used for a television series. Merchandise based on the film generates additional profits. According to McChesney, corporations without access to this type of” synergy “are incapable of competing in the global marketplace.

Though some of the global media conglomerates are European, American media products continue to dominate in global markets. Foreign conglomerate owners invest heavily in American media companies. Several major American film studios have recently been bought by foreign companies, but this has had little effect on the nature of the Hollywood film product. Australian-American media magnate Rupert Murdoch owns more American television stations than anyone else. He has also created a successful television network (Fox) that competes with the three major American television networks. A German conglomerate (Bertelsmann) purchased the largest American book publishing company.

Because of the huge audience for films in the United States, American companies producing and distributing films earn enormous profits in their own country. As a result, American producers can afford to make more expensive films than their competitors in other countries, and this in turn increases profits. The more expensive a film is to produce, the more money it is likely to make. Blockbusters attract the largest international audiences (Phillips 1982). These expensive films represent a type of homogenous, uniform culture permeated by Western capitalistic values. They are full of elaborate technical effects and concentrate on stunts, action, and violence rather than character and emotion. Action films are more easily understood in diverse, non-English-speaking cultures than other types of films. Given the enormous cultural diversity among the potential audiences for globally marketed films, filmmakers have to find common denominators that are universal in a weak sense and will attract audiences in different countries.

Hollywood has dominated the international market for films for several decades because American film companies have been more successful in creating film distribution networks in other countries than local film companies have been. Film industries in many other countries have declined. Two exceptions are India, with its huge internal market, and France, which has heavily subsidized this form of popular culture. India is the leading producer of fiction films in the world, but, with few exceptions, they circulate entirely within Indian Asia and Indian Africa (Straubhaar 1997:289).

The United States also predominates in the production and sale of television programs (Barker 1997:50) for reasons that have more to do with economic factors than with cultural attitudes and values. Hoskins and Mirus (1990) argue that the success of American television programs in the international market is largely a result of the conditions under which they are produced. Again, the size and wealth of the country means that successful programs are extremely lucrative. Consequently, the high costs of television production (more than $1 million per episode) can be recouped locally. Programs can be sold for export at substantially lower prices than indigenous producers can offer. In Latin America, for example, American companies have been accused of flooding the media scene by” dumping “old movies and television shows (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991:128). In some countries, U.S. television represents about 50 percent of the programs, although in many European countries the figure is less than one-third (Curran 1998). Many other countries are unable to invest at the American level in television programming because they cannot meet the costs of production through distribution in their own countries, and they cannot afford distributing and marketing costs in other countries. The cost of an imported television drama can be less than one-tenth of the cost of creating an original production (Curran 1998). Nevertheless, Mexico’s Televisa is the largest single exporter of television programming in the world (Hallin 1998).

Changes in the availability of technology in developing countries have led to an increase in transnational dissemination of television programs and in expansion of world demand for programming (Straubhaar 1991:47). International satellite delivery systems have been very important in disseminating television programs from advanced countries to less advanced countries (Sinclair 1996:52–53). In Latin America, increases in the availability of VCRs, cable TV, and direct satellite reception have expanded audiences for U.S. and European television. In countries where the availability of media has been severely limited ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Culture and Globalization Theoretical Models and Emerging Trends
• Part I. Cultural Policy and National Cultures: Preserving Tradition and Resisting Media Imperialism
• Part II. Regenerating Cultural Resources: Urban and Organizational Strategies
• Part III. Reframing Urban Cultures For Local and Global Consumption
• Part IV. Reframing Media Cultures for Global Consumption
• Contributors
• Index