Globalization in Sociocultural Anthropology: Understanding the Impact on Local Communities | Study notes Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

ANT 101: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

Spring 2004, M,W,F 8:30 — 9:20, Chambers 2084

Prof. Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. Office Hours: M, W, F 10:30 – 11:30 am

Office: Carnegie 01 T, Th 10:00 – 11:15 am or by appointment

Telephone: 704-894-2035 Email: erlozada@davidson.edu

Web: http://www.davidson.edu/personal/erlozada

Lecture Notes, 14 April 2004

Globalization

Why globalization?

• globalization is at the heart of issues in society and cultural processes today, more than

ever; the issues in development that we discussed are grounded in how different local

communities are connected to other local communities throughout the world

• Arjun Appadurai: (we will be reading more of his work later): the main issue in today’s

cultural life is the “work of the imagination”; to understand society today means

examining the “production of locality”; locality is a property of social life - a cultural

conception, not a territorial marker, of social groups

• people strive to bridge the various levels of disjunction and difference in the creation of

“neighborhoods” that are essential to social life. Neighborhoods are “lifeworlds

constituted by relatively stable associations, by relatively known and shared histories”

(1995:215) - in other words, the social forms that structure life in a community.

• Benjamin Barber’s take on globalization: “Jihad vs. McWorld” Jihad: “The phenomena

to which I apply the phrase have innocent enough beginnings: identity politics and

multicultural diversity can represent strategies of a free society trying to give expression

to its diversity. What ends as Jihad may begin as a simple search for a local identity,

some set of common personal attributes to hold out against the numbing and neutering

uniformities of industrial modernization and the colonizing culture of McWorld.” (Barber

1995) McWorld: “Music, video, theater, books, and theme parks - the new churches of a

commercial civilization in which malls are the public squares and suburbs the

neighborless neighborhoods - are all constructed as image exports creating a common

world taste around common logos, advertising slogans, stars, songs, brand names, jingles,

and trademarks. Hard power yields to soft, while ideology is transmuted into a kind of

videology that works through sound bites and film clips.” (Barber 1995)

• The outcome of globalization is not simply a struggle between gemeinschaft and

gesselschaft;

Gemeinschaft: communal society; personal relationships are defined and regulated on

the basis of traditional social rules. People have simple and direct face-to-face relations

with each other that are determined the natural and spontaneously arising emotions and

expressions of sentiment.

Gesselschaft: associational society; modern, cosmopolitan societies with their

government bureaucracies and large industrial organizations. rational self- interest and

calculating conduct act to weaken the traditional bonds of family, kinship, and religion

that permeate communal society's structure. human relations are more impersonal and

indirect, being rationally constructed to serve efficiency or other economic and political

considerations.

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ANT 101: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

Spring 2004, M,W,F 8:30 — 9:20, Chambers 2084 Prof. Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. Office Hours: M, W, F 10:30 – 11:30 am Office: Carnegie 01 T, Th 10:00 – 11:15 am or by appointment Telephone: 704-894-2035 Email: erlozada@davidson.edu Web: http://www.davidson.edu/personal/erlozada

Lecture Notes, 14 April 2004

Globalization Why globalization?

globalization is at the heart of issues in society and cultural processes today, more than ever; the issues in development that we discussed are grounded in how different local communities are connected to other local communities throughout the world
Arjun Appadurai : (we will be reading more of his work later): the main issue in today’s cultural life is the “work of the imagination”; to understand society today means examining the “production of locality”; locality is a property of social life - a cultural conception, not a territorial marker, of social groups
people strive to bridge the various levels of disjunction and difference in the creation of “neighborhoods” that are essential to social life. Neighborhoods are “lifeworlds constituted by relatively stable associations, by relatively known and shared histories” (1995:215) - in other words, the social forms that structure life in a community.
Benjamin Barber’s take on globalization: “Jihad vs. McWorld” Jihad: “The phenomena to which I apply the phrase have innocent enough beginnings: identity politics and multicultural diversity can represent strategies of a free society trying to give expression to its diversity. What ends as Jihad may begin as a simple search for a local identity, some set of common personal attributes to hold out against the numbing and neutering uniformities of industrial modernization and the colonizing culture of McWorld.” (Barber
1. McWorld: “Music, video, theater, books, and theme parks - the new churches of a commercial civilization in which malls are the public squares and suburbs the neighborless neighborhoods - are all constructed as image exports creating a common world taste around common logos, advertising slogans, stars, songs, brand names, jingles, and trademarks. Hard power yields to soft, while ideology is transmuted into a kind of videology that works through sound bites and film clips.” (Barber 1995)
The outcome of globalization is not simply a struggle between gemeinschaft and gesselschaft ; Gemeinschaft : communal society; personal relationships are defined and regulated on the basis of traditional social rules. People have simple and direct face-to-face relations with each other that are determined the natural and spontaneously arising emotions and expressions of sentiment. Gesselschaft : associational society; modern, cosmopolitan societies with their government bureaucracies and large industrial organizations. rational self- interest and calculating conduct act to weaken the traditional bonds of family, kinship, and religion that permeate communal society's structure. human relations are more impersonal and indirect, being rationally constructed to serve efficiency or other economic and political considerations.

What does globalization look like?

Global village idea, from modernization theory (Coca-Cola’s early understanding of globalization); this is “globalism” ( international , between nations; transnational means crossing national boundaries, multinational means located in more than one nation, globalization emphasizes the interconnectedness of local societies throughout the world;)
Is there one homogenous global culture? Or are there increasingly heterogenous local cultures?
Increasing interconnectedness of local cultures through transnational flows of media, people, commodities, and practices is causing social shifts and cultural dislocation

Ulf Hannerz

what does culture look like with globalization? “Yet as collective phenomena cultures are by definition linked to interactions and social relationships, and only indirectly and without logical necessity to particular areas in physical space. The less social relationships are confined within territorial boundaries, the less so is also culture; and in our time especially, we can contrast in gross terms those cultures which are territorially defined (in terms of nations, regions, or localities) with those which are carried as collective structures of meaning by networks more extended in space, transnational or even global.” (Hannerz, p. 239)
culture is deterritorialized – disconnected to particular physical locations; Hannerz refers to a special subset of these as creole cultures unique non-territorially defined cultural systems; the result of the encounter between local and global cultures
people also become deterritorialized: different categories of people who play major parts in globalization: 1. transnational business highly educated, professionally skilled, highly mobile 2. immigrants: Third World populations in First World Cities 3. culture producers 4. tourists 5. exiles
for Hannerz,there are two strata of people, cosmopolitans and locals; cosmopolitans are mediators who straddle the global and the local; they are the medium for transnational cultural flows; locals are people who are rooted in the “more circumscribed territorial culture” (remember World Systems Theory – Hannerz takes that center-periphery argument and focuses it on people)
cosmopolitans through their interaction with global cultural centers serve as the primary mediators in the creation of creole cultures
cosmopolitans are dependent upon locals for economic, political, and social reasons, but there are inequalities in terms of access to resources and power (remember our discussion of Bourdieu); globalization as stratifying society
what we will be trying to figure out about globalization:
1. is there a single global culture or many varieties of global culture?
2. how does localization take place?
3. what is the impact to local communities of globalization?

Globalization in Sociocultural Anthropology: Understanding the Impact on Local Communities, Study notes of Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

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ANT 101: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology