GLOBALIZATION

Globalization: Cultural Imperialism with a Human Face

Globalization: Cultural Imperialism with a Human Face

Introduction

Globalization is a contradictory concept, and definitions of it abound. However, most anthropologists agree that, experientially, globalization refers to a reorganization of time and space in which many movements of peoples, things, and ideas throughout much of the world have become increasingly faster and effortless. Spatially and temporally, cities and towns, individuals and groups, institutions and governments have become linked in ways that are fundamentally new in many regards, especially in terms of the potential speed of interactions among them. Examples of these interactions are myriad. The click of a mouse button on a Wall Street computer can have immediate financial effects thousands of miles away on another continent, and events like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or footage of the 2005 tsunami in southern Asia can be televised internationally, whereby millions of viewers interpret the same images concurrently (Shome, 2003, 39).

Imperialism is the process of forcibly expanding state authority over autonomous overseas territory by means of military conquest. More broadly, imperialism is the complex of practices through which one population establishes and maintains instrumental control over the spaces, resources, and everyday lives of another (Drzewiecka 2001 65). Imperialism is also the ideology through which a population is persuaded to support its domination of another and persuades that other to accept such domination.

Discussion

The term globalization is intended to convey a precise idea and a concept about the workings of modern capitalism, and the nature of international relations that animate this perspective on capitalism and its functioning. At its simplest, the concept of globalization is captured in the metaphor of the global village. Inherent in this concept is the idea that technological innovations, the availability of affordable travel, the flow of global capital, and the ubiquity of the mass media have resulted in a world that is considerably interconnected. It is thought that the result is a “hybridizing” cultural mixture that gives rise to innovative cultural forms and an equalizing of opportunities for trade, travel, and other forms of cultural exchange among all people across the globe (Fanon 2008 226).

This is an optimistic conceptualization of globalization, and many scholars, particularly those who study culture from a critical perspective, is sober and guarded in their evaluation and analysis of globalization and its impact. Postcolonial scholar Bill Ashcroft argues that the discourse of globalization finds its genesis in and is grounded in the much more complex and widely analyzed discourse of modernity. Drawing on Ashcroft's argument, the concept of modernity had its origins in ideas and philosophies arising out of 16th-century Europe (Fanon 2008 226). Building on the cultural and economic energy linked to the discovery of the “New World” by Europeans, the idea of the inevitable forward trajectory of human, social organization and the desirability of economic development became truisms that took on the status of a mantra.

From this perspective, the concept of modernity became linked to the idea of progress as represented by increasing technological ...