The Myth of Cultural Globalisation

Contribution to discussions at Atlantic College. [1]
Kai Arste, February - July 1999.

It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that the cultures of the world have in recent years become more similar, to the point that most of us now share a global, largely Western-dominated culture; and this was the view taken by most of those who spoke at the recent Global Concerns conference at the College. Coke? 23 kB. People may not agree on whether this is a beneficial development or a regrettable one, but that that development has been taking place, and has produced deep changes throughout societies everywhere, seems to be generally assumed. In this essay I want to challenge that assumption, by reflecting on particular arguments and examples; and to explain why -- with what kind of apparent justification -- that assumption continues to be made; and what, in my opinion, the underlying reasons are that it is so widely accepted. In the last section I want to try to apply the same way of thinking on a larger scale.

1.

That there have been influences of cultures on other cultures can hardly be denied. Such relations have always existed: much of ancient Roman culture came from Greece, and much of Japanese thinking, and even the writing system, was 'imported' from China. In terms of the division of the modern world, these influences have largely been one-way, the cultures of the rich Western countries affecting other areas of the world: people in most of the world are now wearing Western dress, for instance, and it is much easier to get pizza in Nairobi than to get Kenyan food in Rome. Perhaps, in so far as these developments are not quite voluntary, a kind of 'cultural colonialism' is continuing. But these influences have also gone in the other direction, for instance in music and art, and they are not always bad.

On the surface, this globalisation -- or in our days largely Westernisation -- has gone quite far, and most people at the conference seemed to feel that we were losing something; to use the image from art: a painting using various bright colours is more pleasing than one with the same colours mixed into a uniform dirty brown. This point, that we should try to promote cultural variety, is surely right. At least it is up to a point: it is not anyone else's business to tell people to wear kimono and loin cloth instead of blue jeans. But I am not sure that what people wear is what is most significant about a culture, and in the more important aspects of culture, globalisation seems to me to have had little effect.

For despite the supposed spread of Western culture to all societies and penetrating all cultures, my own experience, both when travelling and when talking to students at Atlantic College, has always been how different things are in other parts of the world, rather than how similar they have become. On the surface, of course, and in practical terms, there has been a great homogenisation, so that it is often not too difficult for a person from one society to find their way around in another society. But it is quite a different story when one looks at how things actually work, and at how they are experienced, or when one is in a foreign country for more than a short period of time. East African students might say, for instance, that many of the schools in their countries have British names; but talk to them about what their life at school was like, the relations between students, with the teachers, the students' attitude to their studies, their parents' view of schooling, and so on, and things will look very different from the way they do in Britain, even shockingly so. And, personally, I still cannot haggle over a price or bribe someone, as is expected of me, not necessarily in an unfriendly way, in many parts of the world.

It seems to me, therefore, that the cultural globalisation we see is almost completely a matter of appearances. I'll give some more examples. It might seem that Christianity, and especially the Catholic Church, has been a major agency of globalisation, spreading Western values abroad since the early colonial times. But then a Japanese author, a Christian himself, in one of his novels has a European priest in Japan observe that the Japanese will never be proper Christians, because they do not experience guilt like Europeans do. [2] And at the same time that Christianity continues to spread in Africa, it becomes more and more Africanised and starts to play some of the roles of traditional African social organisations -- adapting to local cultures rather than replacing them, although specific traditional beliefs will of course have changed. [3] Similarly, while the Western world is trying very hard to spread democratic values and the democratic system, it is clear that in most areas of the world, democracy is fitted into the local social and political structures rather than replacing them. The English language too, once we give up the idea that a certain dialect of British English ('the Queen's English') is the proper language that all other versions should be, can be seen and heard to have diversified and adapted as it has spread.

Even laughter, supposedly universal across the globe, can have very different functions and communicate very different things in different societies. To Westerners, Africans sometimes come across as hilarious, or not in earnest, when in fact they are quite serious or tense. However, smiling and laughing may mean something different in some cultures in Africa, as shown by the following comment from an article about a 'war lady' in a war-torn region there: ''Like all Somalis she laughs a lot, especially when talking about war or something horrible.'' [4] -- But at least MacDonald's, someone might say, that surely is the same wherever it exists; but again, there is quite a remarkable difference between walking into a MacDonald's in New Mexico and one in Cardiff, not so much in the decor, (if that is the right word,) and the food, but rather in how the customers are attended to, the company's 'employee-culture', and so on.

We can see the same at a more personal level. It is an experience of many Atlantic College students -- and this is probably similar at the other UWCs -- that when they go home, it is difficult for them to explain to people there what being at College means to them, what it is like: often their friends and even family quickly lose interest, and don't understand what it is like to be here. But it seems to me that the same thing is happening, in reverse, when students come to the College; it almost seems like they are expected to leave their home 'at home', and they often are not able to share their background, to explain what things are like in their culture, how they experience things, and how some things here are very difficult for them. They are able to conform superficially, of course, and so we have ended up with a fun-, IB- and gossip-oriented College-culture, at least at Atlantic College -- and much of the time miss out on really communicating between cultures. Fortunately that is not always so, but when we do take the risk and get involved, it often turns out to be difficult, with two persons perhaps having very different expectations. Thus, a student may behave freely in the dorm, expecting their dormmate to 'just speak up' if something is bothering them, whereas that dormmate has perhaps been educated all their life not to speak up and expects the other person to show consideration. Or again, to one person, holding hands with someone may mean that one is going out, or almost going out, whereas to the other, if one was going out, or almost going out, one would certainly not be holding hands in public! [5]

2.

So why is this assumption of cultural globalisation so widely accepted? It seems to me that there are a number of different reasons. One is, that in the non-Western parts of the world (except perhaps in a few places like Japan,) there typically are very large differences between a cosmopolitan society, usually based in the capital, and traditional society, in the countryside and smaller towns. So some people in a capital like Accra, especially the children of the rich elite, do indeed lead a life in many ways not so different from that of young people in the suburbs of New York, (although it is still not the same ...) But while this section of society is the most noticeable one, and of course the one from which we generally get to meet people outside their country, they are in fact only a tiny minority, even in their own capitals. So one reason is that our perception of much of the world is very one-sided.

Another reason is that even the 'non-globalised' majority in most of these non-Western countries (including Japan) are very aware of Western culture: many watch Western programmes on their televisions, they drink beer and Coca Cola, and so on. And indeed many people there aspire to a Western life-style, in terms of the standard of living. But is that what we mean by culture? While the Coke one may be offered in a small town like Tarkwa tastes the same, almost, as a Coke in the US, the act of offering it and the role it plays, not least because of the cost, is so different. And with Islamic fundamentalism spreading to more societies, and the majority of girls in large parts of Africa still being subject to circumcision [6] (or, to describe it more accurately, female genital mutilation,) and apparently generally undergoing it willingly -- how can we speak of cultural globalisation?

And not only are those outside the Western world very aware of Western culture, they have become very good at seeing things from a Western point of view when necessary; conforming is almost a matter of survival -- so even in a place like Atlantic College it is difficult for many people to keep up or talk about and defend their traditions. Who would want all their fellow students to know that, when they are at home, they are afraid of witchcraft? Or that they feel uncomfortable discussing sexual matters? Or that they are used to eating with their hands? They thereby, very kindly, protect others from noticing how different cultures really are. Some years ago, for instance, some Japanese students at their National Evening acted out a scene in which two Japanese couples were talking, and one student was 'translating' what the couples were 'really thinking' when they spoke to each other. Now, it is polite in Japan to dismiss anything you give to or do for another as trifling, worthless: ''It is a mere nothing;'' and the student was translating this to his College-audience as: ''It was much too expensive, and they gave us only such a cheap thing.'' When I asked those Japanese students later if that is how Japanese people really feel and think when they are being polite, I was told that of course it wasn't -- but that that was the Western view of their politeness.

But the main reason that the assumption of cultural globalisation is not questioned may be that it is confused with, or deduced from, the apparent economic globalisation. However, the word ''globalisation'' is used with different meanings in these two contexts. When we talk of cultural globalisation we mean that the cultures of the world are becoming more similar; whereas when we talk of economic globalisation we are saying that the countries of the world are becoming part of a global economy -- but one that, as things are now, is on the whole not making them economically more similar.

I used the word ''apparent'', because economic globalisation is in fact very patchy, and depends on the economic sector that one looks at. Globalisation is almost complete as far as the movement of capital and of manufactured goods are concerned -- the rich, Western countries have always insisted on that: these freedoms are, for instance, explicit and stringent conditions of the relief of Third-World debts granted at a recent G-Seven summit. However, there is hardly any globalisation when it comes to the movement of raw materials or labour (people), or to economic rights, or the availability of services -- the rich, Western countries have insisted on that as well: some of them are now even demanding that it be the poor countries themselves that prevent their citizens from emigrating to First-World countries. Moreover, what one might call 'the business culture' also still varies widely between different parts of the world, even within the developed world.

So economic globalisation certainly has not gone as far as it might appear, despite the availability of the same products all over the world and the presence of some multinationals in most countries. But even it had gone much further than it has, close economic association, even between equals, does not necessarily lead to cultural convergence: given their close, even intimate economic interaction for decades, or even centuries, and their shared history and largely parallel development, the European countries still 'feel' remarkably different from one another; their cultures, both in the sense of the arts and of how people interact and experience the world around them, are still quite distinct. Why else would a large lorry have to drive from the Netherlands to the Pyrenees every day during the summer to provide the Dutch holiday-makers there with the essentials from home?

3.

So cultural globalisation, although it may describe how things appear, at least in parts of the world, is an assumption in the sense that it has generally remained unchallenged. But in the title of this essay I called it a myth. A myth is more than an unchallenged assumption or an untrue story; a myth is a story, (which may even be partly true,) which is used to legitimise certain attitudes, or power structures, or ways of acting. Thus, some myth about a country's history may be used to justify present-day political or military actions; or the myth of the supposed inferiority of some race may be used to justify discrimination. But the persistence of a myth is in turn explained by what it serves to justify: there will be people in society who have an interest in the myth remaining unchallenged, and who will generally be able to ensure its continuation.

It seems to me that cultural globalisation is such a myth; and that to understand how widely it is believed in -- despite all the contrary evidence, of which I tried to give some examples above -- we must find out what position it serves to justify, and who may have an interest in that belief continuing. To make my point I have to digress slightly.

UWC logo. 19kB. There are still many societies in which prejudice and discrimination are wide-spread, and even though young children generally are open-minded, they usually learn from their elders quickly enough. So those who are 'not from here' are different and to be treated with suspicion. In such a situation progress is surely being made when people come to realise that 'deep down' people are all the same, whatever the colour of their skin or their religious beliefs; and that therefore we should respect others. One might say that the purpose for coming to a place like Atlantic College is to not only understand this theoretically, as most students already did before they came of course, but to experience this in practice. [Try moving the mouse pointer over the logo ...]

However, this idealistic view seems to me not only naive but immoral. For as one gets more than superficially involved with people from a wide variety of different backgrounds -- and what better place to do that than at a UWC? --, one will begin to realise that, contrary to the idealistic view, we are in fact all very different, not only individually but because of our backgrounds, because of the different cultures we have grown up in, which, as I have argued, often are more dissimilar than may appear. That is why the idealistic view is naive.

But why do I consider that idealistic view immoral? Because I believe that there is something deeply suspect about respecting another person because they are like us: it implies that perhaps there is no need to respect a person who is not like us; whereas we should be willing to not only accept others, but value them for their very differentness. And that, to my mind, is the purpose of being at a UWC: not to educate us into a world community of homogenised values, into a new globalised culture, even if it appears to many that that is where the world is heading, but to enable us to understand other people better and to take seriously the differences between us.

After this digression, we can return to the question why the assumption of cultural globalisation continues to be made. It is because we (writing from the culturally dominant Western view) want to make this assumption, we want to believe the myth; for if we believe the myth, then we can expect of others that they are -- or should be, or at least will come to be, as they become `more developed' -- basically like us. And we don't have to face their otherness, we don't have to question our own outlook, our own ways of doing things: if it is the same for everyone, then we don't have to think of it as the outcome of our particular history, it must be 'natural'. That I think is the underlying reason that we -- we who have grown up in the dominant Western culture, including those from the metropolitan elites all over the world -- have an interest in maintaining that myth of cultural globalisation.

4.

If the last section required a digression, then this one may be an appendix; but then again, perhaps the issue under discussion, though in different forms, is the same after all. For I now want to follow the same kind of argument as above, but in a different context, that of development theory, and of the relations between the First World and the Third World. Development theory is the branch of the social sciences, involving in particular economics of course, that studies how societies develop. In what follows I shall have to write from the position of the dominant Western position, shared by the metropolitan elites of other parts of the world: development theory is part of our discourse, not that of indigenous farmers.

When different societies first made contact across the world, rather than just with their neighbours, there was no need for development theory. Each society was accepted as it was, even though the technically less advanced ones were considered inferior by the more advanced ones, and were liable to be colonised and exploited by them. This stage in history corresponds to the first situation above, where those 'not from here' are considered different and with hostility.

Some progress has been made in the 20th century, though, and in particular since the middle of the century the view has generally taken hold that 'deep down' societies are all the same, we all want the same things in life, and we are all on the same road of development. Some of us, the rich Western countries, have had a head-start of course, and so it is part of our responsibility to help the less fortunate, those still held back by tradition, to follow the United States as quickly as possible into the happy future. (This view is so widely held, is still so seldom questioned, that it has become almost synonymous with development theory; to make the distinction it would be safer to call it modernisation theory.)

This stage in history corresponds to the idealistic outlook above, that 'deep down' we are all the same -- and like that outlook it is, I think, not only naive but immoral. Unfortunately I can only make my point in summary form here. The approach of modernisation theory is naive, because it has not worked: despite major efforts having been made -- in the form of a UN Development Decade; plenty of attempts at foreign aid and investment, led by the World Bank and IMF; rigorous restructuring, incidentally wreaking havoc at the local level; replacing indigenous structures by an imposed democracy; and so on -- many societies, notably in Africa, do not seem to be making the expected progress along the road of development. The differences, according to most economic and social measures, between the richest and the poorest countries have even been increasing. It is also naive, because it would simply not be possible for the whole world to become as 'developed', in the sense of having the same living standard, as the US, say. [7]

And the approach of modernisation theory is immoral, in my view, because it treats the 'less developed' societies as objects, denying them their separate worth, imposing our notion of progress and our knowledge, recreating their culture in the image of ours. In this, the metropolitan, post-colonial elites in those societies are our willing representatives, part of our world rather than of their own. That approach is also immoral, because it has benefited us while we have been able to claim that we have helped them (or have tried to): even with the debt relief agreed, Third World countries apparently still pay more interest to service their debts to the First World than they receive in aid from abroad. And it has enabled us not to question our own position, to deny that it is the outcome of a particular historical development and is not necessarily 'natural'.

However, there are signs that the thinking has started to change, and that development theory is moving to the third position above, that of accepting our differentness and valuing the differences. Critical development theory both questions the kind of development we in the West have gone through and where it has got us, and searches for ways of involving the others in a joint discourse, rather than just generalising from how things happen to have worked for us. There are attempts to give the idea of development new meaning, so that it is more than a measure along a simple line from less to more developed. In practical terms, too, even many Western governments and international agencies have realised that to be effective, aid needs to be channelled in unconventional ways: locally, to women perhaps rather than to the heads of families, through NGOs rather than to governments, respecting local traditions rather than just dismissing them as obstacles, and in discussion with the recipients. [8]

Concluding paragraph, version one: The issues addressed in this essay have ranged from personal experiences, at the beginning, to things that I cannot claim to know much about at the end; but the underlying point has been the same. Perhaps I can put it as follows: there are areas in which there is, or there may be, 'one truth' or one 'right way', and there are areas in which there are perhaps just different perspectives, different ways of doing things. But in both kinds of areas there is a danger of taking one's own way for granted, of just assuming that one's own way is right, or that it is the only way of looking at or doing things; and so we must in both kinds of areas learn to have our outlook, our position challenged. For even though, as I have tried to argue, cultural globalisation has not happened to any great extent, we do all have to live together. Moreover, while the loss of certainty may be uncomfortable at times, there is so much we can gain.

Concluding paragraph, version two: The issues addressed in this essay have ranged from personal experiences, at the beginning, to things that I cannot claim to know much about at the end; but the points are prompted by the same underlying unease. While I cannot help writing from a Western perspective -- even the writing of essays may be typical of this culture --, some of my experiences suggest that there are other perspectives, and that 'we' may not have got certain things right, (in so far as there are things to get right.) For instance, we may not be right in thinking of human activity, notably technological and economic activity, as having to be in opposition to nature; or in assuming that confrontational democracy is the best way of giving everyone a fair hearing; or in making material possessions so central to our lives that the ownership of goods has become the model for our personal relationships as well. So it is also for our own sake that we should learn to allow ourselves being challenged, even if the loss of certainty may be uncomfortable.

Notes:

(For apm. This essay, btw, is just about the length of an EE ...)
Shusaku Endo, Volcano, 1959.
Ngonidzashe Munemo, IB Extended Essay, 1994.
The Economist, August 28th 1999..
Cf. Pat Caplan (ed.), The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, 1987.
The Economist, February 13th 1999.
Further sources: P.W. Preston, Development Theory, 1996. The Economist, May 29th 1999.
Cf. Ronaldo Munch, Denis O'Hearn (eds.), Critical Development Theory, 1999, especially the first contribution by Vincent Tucker.

'Aspects.' -- Home-page.