SOC 451Global Culture and Cultural Flows

Asst. Prof. Fatma Altınbaş Sarıgül

GLOBAL CULTURE• Culture exists increasingly in digitized forms.• The internet permits global downloading and

sharing of digitized cultural forms such as movies, videos, music, books, newspapers, photos and so on.

• Those who see themselves as part of the same culture can contact through e-mail, skype, social media.

• Eventhough there is easiness of sharing culture, there are still barriers to its flow, the lack of access to the internet.

CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM

• It emphasizes lasting differences among and between cultures largely unaffected by globalization.

• This is not to say that culture is unaffected by globalization, but it is to say that at their core they are largely unaffected by it; they remain much as they always have been.

• The most famous supporter of this theory is Samuel Huntington.

CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM

CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISMHuntington differentiates world civilizations:

Sinic (Chinese)Japan (Far Easterns)

HinduIslamic

Orthodox (centered in Russia)Western Europe

North America (along with Australia, New Zealand)Latin America

AfricaHuntington argues:

The decline of west, Rise of Asian societiesResurgence of Islam

Huntington foresees:Dangerous clashes between the West, Islam and Sinic.

RELIGION AND GLOBALIZATION

• This relationship is quite ancient since religion globalized before virtually anything else.

• ISLAM- Its universalistic ideas led to the belief that they had to be diffused throughout the world.

• HINDUISM• BUDDHISM• CHRISTIANITY- still growing fast• JUDAISM• MORMONISM

CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION

• It emphasizes the mixing of cultures as a result of globalization and the production, out of the integration of the global and the local, of new and unique hybrid cultures that are not reducible to either local or global culture.

GLOCALIZATION: The interpenetration of the global and the local resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas.

CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION

5 global flows: ethnoscapesmediascapestechnoscapesfinancescapesideoscapes

CULTURAL CONVERGENCE• It is based on the idea that globalization tends to

lead to increasing sameness throughout the world. • Supporters of this perspective see cultures

changing, sometimes radically, as a result of globalization, specifically flows of global culture and the relative weakness of barriers to those flows.

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM: It indicates that one or more cultures are imposing themselves on other cultures thereby destroying local culture.

CULTURAL CONVERGENCE

Deterritorialization: The declining importance of the geographic location in which culture exists.

WORLD CULTURE• A distinctive theoretical approach to convergence

in general, and cultural convergence in particular, is known as world culture theory.

• As a result, there is striking amount of structural isomorphism throughout the world as a result of the spread of these models.

• World culture scholars describe the world in terms of an enactment of culture.

• Culture is seen as shaping the state system, state organizations like schools, firms and individual citizenship and identity throughout the world.

CULTURAL HOMOGENIZATION

• McDonaldization