When village boys in Sri Lanka choose to name their riding elephant after the world’s most famous intern, the idea of the Americanization of world culture takes on an unexpectedly humorous touch. More often, however, American culture is utilized to give a name to the anger over political and social upheavals in the world
Even more than a decade of discussion, research and chitchat about “globalization”, the subject still remains in the dark. Symptoms will be enumerated, alternative terms piled up, historical explanations started and immediately rejected, there is reasoning over financial streams, culture and the Internet – but just what makes the essence of globalization remains unclear. Experts dispute whether it is a new phenomenon only a few decades old, whether it began centuries ago or has indeed existed since the dawn of time.
Globalization offers a screen to project our own political fears and hopes on: at times recommended as a path to redemption of almost all evil, of underdevelopment, mass unemployment and poverty, at other times blamed as the main problem of world politics, creating or reinforcing almost all evil. Globalization has come down to an article of faith, a positive or negative formula of confession, a statement in the political debate, under which assemble the true believers. The term globalization has become charged with emotion in a way that obstructs analyses of the real phenomenon. One of the reasons why we cannot deal with it is that the difference between form and content is obscured. While the essence of globalization probably consists in reaching a new phase of capitalism, where national economies finally depend irreversibly on global markets (with obvious political and cultural consequences), this does not prejudge how these global markets will be structured: just as in previous times, when national economies could be organized as social welfare systems as well as according to the patterns of Manchester Capitalism, globalization can also be regulated in different ways resulting in different social consequences. Quite often, the neo-liberal reality of worldwide deregulation is confused with “the” globalization; even thought globalization might well be cushioned socially or organized as a global welfare state.
CULTURE IN THE WORLD MARKET
The picture looks pretty much the same when it comes to cultural globalization. Apparently, the conditions of globalization reinforce the actual trend to a uniform world culture. Consumer patterns, pop music, movies and television have less and less of a local character, but are part of the global cultural market. With this comes an extensive change of values which is not new either, but develops at a faster pace and in a more profound way. The weakening or extinguishing of local patterns of values and norms, the ongoing process of eradicating local languages and ethnicities run parallel to the reinforcement of new and global elements of value. When in the middle of Sri Lanka, riding on the back of a female elephant, the village boys reveal that they have called their elephant “Monica Lewinski”, one realizes the obvious difference between their taste and form of expression and that of their parents and their grand-parents, but also the wide spread of knowledge about the centers of world politics.
This cultural change appears to many spectators as an “Americanization” of world culture. The term “McDonaldization”, resumes at once cultural dominance of the United States and its “lack of culture”. This suspicion of Americanization is mainly due to the fact that many cultural symbols of globalization are originally from the US or are considered as quasi-American symbols: i.e. Coca Cola, McDonalds, CNN, the Internet, Hollywood and even English as the world language. This situation coincides with the hegemonic role of the US in the world, characterized not only by its economic power, but also by its political and military superiority. The US, thanks to its enormous political clout, has also played an important role in organizing the process of globalization, and was particularly active in pushing through politics of deregulation. The combination of political superiority with symbols of cultural dominance of the US has lead in many countries to the suspicion that globalization is, at the end of the day, a project of American hegemony.
In fact, what cultural globalization truly means is not Americanization of the world, but a reinforcement of the hegemony of market-related values. Efficiency, rationality, consumerism, calculations of cost-efficiency, ideas of mobility and progress, and other values are eclipsing many traditional values, and undermine the stability of social links and old certainties. But all these new values are not “American”, but market-related. The values of globalization are to a large extent the values of capitalism and not just those of one country, however powerful. It is only because the US takes such an important place in the international system that gives room to this confusion. And what may look like Americanization is more complicated and has different aspects: even the female elephant Monica shows not simply admiration for American culture, but is also an ironic comment to a bizarre chain of intrigue in the White House.
Frequently, the rejection of US American hegemony assumes a form of cultural anti-Americanism: dissatisfaction with economic and social changes in the world economy, frustration concerning regional crisis of highly symbolic character – such as Palestine –, anger about corruption and incompetence of local elites, alienation and hopelessness in many countries of the Third World, and the mentioned change of traditional norms and value systems, finally the experience with the political and cultural power of the US combine in the minds of many people to an explosive mixture: reflexes of anti-globalization, criticism of social and political upheavals, and a defensive attitude towards culture can react to form an anti-American opinion. This is as much an obstacle to a positive, creative response to globalization as it is to an appropriate reaction towards its cultural aspects: mixing different levels of disparate problems renders their solution plainly impossible.
The answer is to separate the urgent and real problems of economic, political and cultural globalization from their ideological distortions. The real problem of US foreign policy in the world is intricate and difficult enough – to make it even bigger through theories of cultural and political conspiracy or fantasies of omnipotence, makes it even more difficult to deal with. While cultural globalization offers opportunities, it is also full of risks and dangers. One has to develop with a clear head concepts and answers to both aspects – the mystification of the process of globalization is clearly an obstacle to such a project.
