Globalization and American Popular Culture

This past week, we discussed globalization’s role in American popular culture. We talked about the changes that globalization and popular culture have faced over the years, as well as the influence they have had on the American population.

Globalization has changed drastically since the 1900s, and has expanded all across the globe. Eitzen and Zinn (2006) give twelve instances in how globalization has evolved to fit in with popular culture:

1. Production

a.       Transnational corporations have continued building factories and manufacturing products from low-wage countries all across the world. This brought about the “global assembling line.” Since all these factories and production services has increases, many jobs have been supplying labor services.

2. Markets

a.       Goods and services are now marketed to the entire world. Companies will sometimes place markets and products in certain countries where they know the people will buy their product.

3. Technology

a.       New technologies have transformed information storage and retrieval, communication, production, and transportation. It is now easier to locate, buy, and send products and communicate via Internet to other corporations.

4. Corporate Restructuring

a.       Major corporations have internally reorganized to take advantage of the global economy. They merged and developed alliances with other corporations to ensure global success. The result of this is a decentralization of production and a concentration of economic power.

5. Neoimperialism

a.       Brecher et al. states that “globalization has taken from poor countries control of their own economic policies and concentrated their assets in the hands of first world investors.”

6. Changing Structure of Work

a.       Worker security has declined across the world since globalization has made an impact. Labor unions have lost their power, and employees can simply threaten to move the operation to a place where wages and benefits are lower.

7. Movement of People

a.       Immigration has increased under the current conditions of globalization. Women especially have moved from poor to rich countries. This so-called “feminization of migration” shows a worldwide gender revolution. This has caused a reverse flow of money, as immigrants send money back to relatives in their native land.

8. Global Institutions

a.       Many organizations have fostered transnational trade and provided economic development in underdeveloped countries. These new powerful forces quicken the process of globalization.

9. Neoliberal Ideology and Policies

a.       The neoliberalist theory argues that market forces will bring prosperity, liberty, and democracy if left unhindered by government intervention. Neoliberals promote privatization, deregulation, and dismantling of the welfare state, as well as free trade.

10. Governance

a.       Globalization has diminished sovereignty of nation-states. Because the national government accepts neoliberal ideology, they do not hinder corporate decisions regarding outsourcing and the movement of capital.

11. Permeable Borders

a.       Insularity is not possible now as environmental pollution affects everyone. Also, diseases are difficult to contain and criminal networks flourish where borders are permeable.

12. Global Culture

a.       Global culture is de-ethnicized and deterritorialized. It is established and maintained by the media, corporate advertising, and the entertainment industry. Because of this, a single world culture has been formed.

In Giddens’ essay, he depicts the vast expansion of globalization and its varying consequences. He states that globalization is not a single process, but a complex set of processes. Thus, globalization is the reason for the revival of local cultural identities all across the world. A major point that Giddens makes it that globalization “isn’t developing in an even-handed way…it looks uncomfortably like Westernization – or, perhaps, Americanization,” (2006).

                This concept of Americanization is evident in Crothers’ discussion of globalization in American popular culture.

                Soviet leaders and their allies referred to the West as culturally corrupt. They labeled Western (usually American) cultural products as insubstantial and meaningless, even going so far as to say that they promote poor moral values. Soviet leaders argued that Western values erode public morals and social order, and therefore banned any Western cultural products. However, this ban only made things worse. It stimulated interest among their citizens in American popular culture. Also, in denying their citizens access to Western culture, the governments of the Soviet bloc undermined their own legitimacy.

                Crothers states that a combination of economic, political, and cultural factors promote globalization:

• By making it possible to create more ties among people, social networks, and ideas that span traditional nation-state boundaries
• By linking people in new ways which makes it possible for work, travel, shopping, etc., to take place anytime all around the world
• By increasing the speed of communication and the expectation of instantaneous contact
•  By shaping and reshaping individuals’ ideas and identities as they are exposed to this complex world

Analysts of cultural globalization give three negative effects caused by the global spread of American popular culture:

1. Cultural Corruption

a.       Life in other countries soon became dominated by values such as consumerism, the pursuit of luxury and individual interests. People became more isolated and lacked traditional values. As a result, people’s life orientations shifted from dedication to the social good of their communities to the autonomous desire to satisfy the self (Crothers 27).

2. Cultural Imperialism

a.       The interaction of different cultures will inevitably cause conflict. Members of each culture will seek to destroy or get rid of the other. Increased cultural contact is likely to create violence and fragmentation, which is the opposite of what was promised by globalism’s proponents.

3. Cultural Homogenization

a.       Critics concerned with the concept of cultural homogenization agree that American popular culture may dominate the world. They fear that corporate-produced mass entertainment will ultimately move everyone’s values towards those associated with mass consumer capitalism.

4. Cultural Hybridity

a.       Hybridization has been defined as “the ways in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms and new practices.” Hybridization does not always lead to equal cultural exchange, though. Also, Western societies can be as influenced as non-Western communities are influenced by the West. The term glocalization describes a process in which established cultures both shape and are undermined by the emergence of a new cosmopolitan culture whose values and ideals are determined by the demands of globalization.

The economic, political, and social aspects of globalization offer expectations from the promise of a democratic, free market future to the prospect of a global cultural war. Globalization has transformed the world into a interconnected world economy with sharing cultures and expectations.

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Crothers, L. (2010). Globalization and American Popular Culture. Globalization (Third Edition ed., pp. 1-36). Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Eitzen, D. S., & Zinn, M. B. (2006). Globalization: An Introduction. Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds (pp. 1-11). Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

Giddens, A. (2006). Globalisation. Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds (pp. 15-21). Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.