Whether or not globalization is a form of colonialization will of course depend on specific locations. It's been fashionable for some time now to bemoan the way Western capitalist culture has infiltrated and tainted "pure" non-Western cultures, but one thing that is often overlooked is that some geographical areas--Tibet comes to mind--openly embrace the importation of Western culture, which they see (rightly or wrongly) as a sign of affluence and betterment.
I work in close proximity to anthropologists, and it's almost comical (but still lamentable) how much they fit the streotype of academic ethnology: predominately well-to-do, white Americans protecting non-Western "native" cultures without ever questioning whether these cultures want their help. It is considered self-evident that globalization is something that is imposed upon, never embraced by, an "endangered" culture. The paradox of this kind of reasoning is that it comes out of a desire to protect the rights of an endangered culture but amounts to the anthropologist claiming that he or she knows better than they do what is best for that culture.
The RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce) ran an interesting article a few years ago (which I've posted before) entitled
The Case for Contamination. It's partly about the cultural practices of a town in Ghana, but is broadly about the politics of globalization in general. Here are some excerpts:
Quote:On Kumasi's Wednesday festival day, I've seen visitors from England and the United States wince at what they regarded as the intrusion of modernity on timeless, traditional rituals - more evidence, they think, of a pressure in the modern world towards uniformity. They react like the assistant on the film set who's supposed to check that the extras in a sword-and-sandals movie aren't wearing wrist watches. And such pursuits are not alone. In the past couple of years, UNESCO's members have spent a great deal of time trying to hammer out a convention on the ?'protection and promotion' of cultural diversity. (It was finally approved at the UNESCO General Conference in October 2005.) The drafters worried that "the processes of globalisationÂ… represent a challenge for cultural diversity, namely in view of risks of imbalances between rich and poor countries." The fear is that the values and images of western mass culture, like some invasive weed, are threatening to choke out the world's native flora.
Quote:When people talk of the homogeneity produced by globalisation, what they are talking about is this: even here, the villagers will have radios (though the language will be local); you will be able to find a bottle of Guinness or Coca-Cola (as well as of Star or Club, Ghana's own fine lagers). But has access to these things made the place more homogeneous or less? And what can you tell about people's souls from the fact that they drink Coca-Cola?
It's true that the enclaves of homogeneity you find these days - in Asante as in Pennsylvania - are less distinctive that they were a century ago, but mostly in good ways. More of them have access to effective medicines. More of them have access to clean drinking water, and more of them have schools. Where, as is still too common, they don't have these things, it's something not to celebrate but to deplore. And whatever loss of difference there has been, they are constantly inventing new forms of difference: new hairstyles, new slang, even, from time to time, new religions. No one could say that the world's villagers are becoming anything like the same.
Quote:It's one thing to help people sustain arts they want to sustain. I am all for festivals of Welsh bards in Llandudno financed by the Welsh arts council. Long live the Ghana National Cultural Centre in Kumasi, where you can go and learn traditional Akan dancing and drumming, especially since its classes are overflowing. Restore the deteriorating film stock of early Hollywood movies; continue the preservation of Old Norse and early Chinese and Ethiopian manuscripts; record, transcribe and analyse the oral narratives of Malay and Masai and Maori. All these are undeniably valuable.
But preserving culture - in the sense of such cultural artefacts - is different from preserving cultures. And the cultural preservationists often pursue the latter, trying to ensure that the Huli of Papua New Guinea (or even Sikhs in Toronto) maintain their ?'authentic' ways. What makes a cultural expression authentic, though? Are we to stop the importation of baseball caps into Vietnam so that the Zao will continue to wear their colourful red headdresses? Why not ask the Zao? Shouldn't the choice be theirs?
"They have no real choice," the cultural preservationists say. "We've dumped cheap Western clothes into their markets, and they can no longer afford the silk they used to wear. If they had what they really wanted, they'd still be dressed traditionally." But this is no longer an argument about authenticity. The claim is that they can't afford to do something that they'd really like to do, something that is expressive of an identity they care about and want to sustain. This is a genuine problem, one that afflicts people in many communities: they're too poor to live the life they want to lead. But if they do get richer, and they still run around in T-shirts, that's their choice. Talk of authenticity now is just telling other people what they ought to value in their own traditions.
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