Global Culture

Does Global Culture exist?

When thinking or saying ‘Global Culture’ probably what jumps to the mind is thinking about an homogenized society. With same beliefs, same languages, same style, same way of thinking. Some people, like Sachs (1992) would even argue that the Westernization of the world was indeed what was searched for since 1949 when President Harry Truman coined the term‘Under-developed areas’. Since then, he explains that ‘Development’ was just a vessel for imposing the Western views and perception of the world.

However, just as Smith (1990) expresses, the initial problem with ‘Global Culture’ lies in the meaning of the word in itself. As by the mere definition and nature of the word, Smith argues that we cannot express ‘Culture’ in a singular form. According to him, yes,Culture is a collective mode of living, is a collective common beliefs, styles, values therefore, we can never speak of just one single culture, for a collective mode of life, presupposes different modes in a universe of modes. The differences between segments of humanity in these terms: lifestyles, values, beliefs, are simply too great and to diverse for a generalization. Guided by this logic,the idea of a ‘Global Culture’ is simply not possible.

Then, is there a Global Culture at all? What can we call if not Global Culture to a place such as APU? In order to define this we need to broaden the term of ‘Global Culture’.

Featherstone (1992), just like Smith, agrees that if by global culture we narrow it down to emphasize on homogenization then we are doomed in the search toidentify a Global Culture. He say’s that it would be practically impossible since it would mean the formation of a world state, which is a highly unlikely prospect. However, he states that:

“If we try to employ a broader definition of culture and think more in terms of processes, it might be possible to refer to the globalization of culture. Here we can point to cultural integration and culturaldisintegration process which take place not only on an inter-state level but process which transcend the state-society unit and can therefore be held to occur on a trans-national or tans-societal level.”

With this he argues that it is possible for the cultural processes to take a variety of forms and transcend the state society allowing for the flow of information, goods, people, images, knowledgethat would lead to communication processes with some autonomy on a global level. He speaks about a ‘Third culture’ as a conduit, as vessels for all sorts of cultural flows, which cannot be merely understood as the result of bilateral national exchanges.

Following this logic, we can see ourselves as the ‘Third culture’ defined by Featherstone. We can see this flow of culture simply by browsingthe web. Purchasing from worldwide e-businesses like eBay or Amazon or most .com’s. As Smith stated in 1992:

“We are entering a postmodern era. Telecommunication systems and computerized networks of information have allowed the possibility of constructing much larger institutional units. In this situation, any attempt to limit such networks to national boundaries is doomed to failure; today,‘culture’ can only be continental or global.”

Without a doubt technology changed many things. World became interconnected, communications and life change as a consequence of the rapidly and ever spreading technology. Undoubtedly, society changed as an outcome of this. Values, customs, even languages change in order to adapt a more global spectrum. But is this global spectrum indeed reshaped to the‘Westernization’ of the world?

Media is shaping the world and the new generations, and there is a push of Cultural Media from the ‘Developed nations’. As asserted by Swallow (2009) “Cultural globalization is a result of the economic activities in developed countries of news and entertainment – the media that produce television programs, music and movies and distribute them across the...