3. Social theories of globalization: from culture to consciousness.

McAnany, Emile G.

The discussion of the global economy and its consequences does not touch on the concerns of people's personal lives in this age of globalization. This is a task for social theory and one that many in the past decade have taken on. Featherstone edited an early seminal discussion of a number of theories touching on globalization's influence on the culture and consciousness of people, Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (1990). The variety of approaches by contributing authors indicates both the richness and complexity of the globalization process.

Of the numerous contributions in the book, the most relevant for this review are four. First, Wallerstein (1990), creator of the neo-Marxist world systems theory, regards the economic policies of globalization as fitting into what he sees as a capitalist system to exploit weaker nations and keep them in a subordinated position. The focus of this volume, however, asks him to fit culture into his theory, which deals more with the political economy of capitalism. He argues that culture is the ideological battleground between globalization and non-capitalist alternatives. Boyne (1990) attacks his response. Boyne claims that Wallerstein has a limited and one-dimensional view of culture, a view that reveals how deterministic his thinking is. Boyne argues that the culture discussed in the book is far richer and more important than Wallerstein's one-dimensional view. This critique raises the important issue that will emerge below in the next section: Emphasis on structure by political economists of the media seems to undercut the notion of personal agency by people whose cultural values face a challenge by the contents of those media.

Two other chapters should be noted. First, Smith (1990) argues strongly against the idea that there will be a global culture created by the globalization process. He does not believe that culture appropriated from the media, for example, can substitute for the cultural experience that people derive from their belonging to groups, whether these be local, ethnic, or national. The European Union, for example, has tried to create a European identity that goes beyond the French, German, or other national identities that people have and experience as their own. Smith does not believe this kind of transnational experience can work because it goes beyond the everyday lives of people in their building a sense of identity.

Appadurai (1990), in a chapter much cited by others subsequently, talked about the reality of globalization in the flows of people, finance, technology, media, and ideas. His thesis is that these flows all go to make up the very real process called globalization but that they work independently and without guidance so that there is more "disjuncture" and contradiction than seamless coordination by some superpower. He argues that media "... whether produced by private or state interests tend to be image-centered, narrative-based accounts ... and what they offer to those who experience them is a series of imagined lives ... and proto-narratives of possible lives, fantasies which could become prolegomena to the desire of acquisition and movement" (p. 299). In short, he is a post-modernist who sees the chaos of the modern world that individuals have to make sense out of as they create their identities based on both media fantasies and the realities of their everyday worlds. Although he critiques advertisement in media as a consequence of the capitalism that often drives the media markets, he argues strongly for agency of individuals over ideas promoted by media. Again this argument raises the question of whether the profit- or political-driven media are more powerful than the person on the receiving end, or what that balance of power between audience and message may be.

The strongest argument for globalization as both a historical reality before the modern period and yet an important phenomenon for our times comes from Robertson (1992) whose book, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, brings the discipline of sociology into the discourse. The author makes his thesis clear from the beginning: The emergence of material structures that make the globe more interconnected (spread of capitalism, western imperialism, and media systems) are related to but not the causes of the emergence of a consciousness of the oneness or unicity of the globe. The material components of globalization have grown historically over centuries, and Robertson periodizes these from 1400 to the present, with 1968 to the present being the latest period he identifies. The author, however, does not want to dwell on the historical antecedents but the significance of recent occurrences: "... it should be emphasized that I am particularly interested, given my continuing insistence upon the fairly recent emergence of globality as an aspect of contemporary consciousness, in explicitly globe-oriented ideologies, doctrines, and other bodies of knowledge" (p. 79, my emphasis).

He makes reference to McLuhan's thinking in the 1960 book, Explorations in Communication, and its "global village" phrase as an early proponent of a growing global consciousness. Thus Robertson makes clear the important role for global media in raising the awareness of an increasingly interconnected world. He also takes a position on the permanency of globalization: "Nevertheless, in spite of my acknowledgment of certain denials of global wholeness, I maintain that the trends toward unicity of the world are ... inexorable" (p. 75). This is a very elaborate and broad-ranging analysis to which many have referred for its historical perspective as well as the depth of its erudition.

Another social theorist of globalization and the emergence of a "modern consciousness" is Giddens who summarizes his thinking in the recent small book called Runaway World (2000). Giddens talks about a number of ways that the series of forces that he calls globalization has changed modern life, but he points out that the process will not be easy:

 The battleground of the 21st century will pit
 fundamentalism against cosmopolitan tolerance.
 In a globalising world, where information and
 images are routinely transmitted across the
 globe, we are all regularly in contact with others
 who think differently, and live differently, from
 ourselves. Cosmopolitans welcome and embrace
 this cultural complexity. Fundamentalists find it
 disturbing and dangerous ... We can legitimately
 hope that a cosmopolitan outlook will win out.
 (p. 23)

He places great emphasis on the media as agents of change that affect everyone, but it needs to be noted that he speaks only from a Western, middle class perspective. What he does not speak to is the majority of the world that is being modernized in the direction of the West and how that process will turn out.

A colleague of Giddens, Tomlinson, has written two important books trying to theorize globalization. His first, Cultural Imperialism (1991) was a sharp critique of the cultural imperialism thesis with particular emphasis on the work of Herbert Schiller. Later in the book, he tries to delineate his own position vis-a-vis the impact of Western media on people's consciousness, but he focuses on the modern world of the West and does not comment on what happens elsewhere.

In his more recent book, Globalization and Culture (1999), he begins with a definition of the culture he discusses: "Culture for my purposes refers to all these mundane practices that directly contribute to people's ongoing 'life-narratives': the stores by which we, chronologically, interpret our existence in what Heidegger calls the 'throwness' of the human situation" (p. 20). This means that although the media are important, they are not the only influence in people's lives. Here and in his previous book it becomes clear that there can not be a clear definition of media influence and that therefore no empirical outcome can, in some sense, be observed. In the latter chapters of this book, Tomlinson pursues the notion of global modernity, a concept that he seems to have largely appropriated from Giddens.

The problem is that although he criticizes the cultural imperialism proponents for their lack of empirical data to show ideological effects, he proposes no evidence from the real world to bolster his own claims about how a modern consciousness is created in a globalizing world. In this second book, he admits that Schiller and others have provided some important empirical data regarding the spread of Western media in other regions of the world, but the influence of those media on audiences is left to abstract reasoning alone and a scepticism about being able to find evidence about the process.

We should recognize two important issues in Tomlinson's treatment of globalization and culture: He pits the agency of the individual as superior to power of media; he also disagrees with Robertson that there is necessarily an emerging consciousness among people of the oneness or unicity of the world. Communication scholars widely cite these two books as arguments for a better understanding of globalization, but by his own admission, the author has nothing to say about this process beyond the Western experience of modernity. This unfortunately leaves out an important sector of the globe.

Emile G. McAnany

Santa Clara University

Email: emcanany@scu.edu