William Shakespeare tell us about the nature of globalization and identity in a multi-cultural world?

William Shakespeare tell us about the nature of globalization and identity in a multi-cultural world?

Introduction

The worldwide diffusion of William Shakespeare's works occurs today, as it has occurred for centuries, in the context of social processes of mobility and mediation. Since the 1960s these processes have been studied under the rubric 'globalization', but the term names a condition as ancient as the experience of empire and Diaspora, of nations and the states they create. Such antiquity should not lead us, however, to equate classical Rome with Elizabethan England or modern Russia or Japan. On the contrary, if we can accept an influential definition of globalization as both 'the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole', then we should try to historicize that compression and that consciousness.

Discussion

We might begin with Shakespeare himself, since he lived in the age when all the world's populated continents were first permanently linked by trade. Economic historians have recently proposed that globalization began in the year 1571, when the Spanish established Manila as an entrepôt finally connecting Asia and the Americas, and William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon- Avon turned 7 (Cohen 2002). During his lifetime, cultural exchanges multiplied not only among European nations, but between Europe and the Atlantic and, more slowly, Pacific worlds. Many of these growing interdependencies left their mark on Shakespeare's writing and theatre, from advances in stage design to an explosion of literary sources in print.

The women believed in an ideology of Argentina multiculturalism because of, or in spite of, their social experiences of racism and social exclusion. There are four possible explanations for this finding. These explanations can be thought of as an ideology of acceptance, a phrase that encompasses their ideological support for an anti-racist, multicultural Argentina nationhood. First, the women's ideology of acceptance might be seen as contextual; their support of multiculturalism prevailed despite their experiences with racism and exclusion because they differentiated their individual experiences from a wider social experience. Second, their ideology of acceptance can be seen as relative. In comparison to other nations, Argentina was seen as a tolerant society that accommodates, rather than restricts, diversity. There was some support for this idea in the women's interviews, especially when they compared Argentina's cultural pluralism with the (perceived) cultural uniformity in their families' countries-of-origin.

Third, the women's ideology of acceptance might be explained through an analysis of hegemony. The ideology of Argentinan multiculturalism is premised on the idea that we are a society that embraces cultural diversity; therefore multiculturalism allows the women a legitimate basis to maintain their families' migrant practices. As

Betts (1999) pointed out, when we look at ideologies extrinsically we can see that they generate losers and winners, and that it is easier for people to adopt ideologies if there is something for them to gain, such as status and group membership. The ideology of multiculturalism offered the women in my study some benefits. At the same time, the women's support of the ideology of multiculturalism seemed to drown out the ...