Whether it is
the rapid proliferation of Starbucks in Tokyo, changing
realities of the real estate market in Greater Vancouver,
the recent boom in Korean popular music and TV dramas in
Taipei, or the widespread employment of Filipino maids in
Hong Kong, the fabric of everyday life in many cities in
the Asia Pacific region are comprised of increasingly transnational
elements. Intensification of foreign direct investment,
trade, cross-national corporate alliances and mergers, cultural
exchanges, and university tie-ups have fortified world-wide
links between people, organizations, regions, and governments
of various nation-states. Terms such as “global economy,”
“cultural diversity,” and “global environment” have wended
their way into the lexicons of major business schools, while
at the same time, a constellation of demonstrations and
discontents have been stuffed into the category of “the
anti-globalisation movement.”
Observing these
trends and changes is an easy enough task, requiring little
more than a walk along any major commercial street in any
major city, or a casual perusal of university course catalogues.
How one analyses and understands the changes associated
with “globalisation” is another issue, one that presents
a considerably more complex intellectual problem. Does “globalisation”
writ-large promote greater understanding of cultural similarities
and differences, or does it merely diffuse a wider array
of simplistic and essentialist stereotypes? Does globalisation
propagate exploitation and income disparity, or does it
offer the individual freedom of choice and convenience of
standardisation? Do these shifts bring the world closer
together, consuming the same hamburgers in a new global
community, or is this a homogenising cultural imperialism,
obliterating local cultures in McWorld synchronicity? How
does the nexus of global and local inform individual and
collective identities and cultures?
These questions
are particularly relevant for the city of Vancouver on the
West Coast of Canada and its constituents. Frequently hailed
as the paragon of the new “Global City,” thinking residents
of Vancouver deals with quotidian manifestations of globalisation
both in terms of everyday praxis (i.e. navigating the bricolage
of Japanese “sushi” restaurants run by Hong Kong expats,
“Canadian” chain stores originally from eastern parts of
Canada, and outposts of Seattle coffee empires), and as
a set of intellectual and research challenges.
There are no
shortages of books and titles that invoke the buzzword de
jour, “globalisation.” However, tortuously worded tautologies,
over-reliance on anecdotal evidence without sufficient context,
and a glaring paucity of clear definitions of fundamental
concepts plague many of these works. In any attempt to build
more systematic and persuasive answers to these and other
questions, one can point to at least four conceptual cornerstones
as necessary if not sufficient conditions.
First, the historical
context behind globalisation needs to be kept in mind. While
there are some obvious discontinuities as well as continuities,
European expansion, modern colonialism, modernisation, and
globalisation constitute different media for the intensification
of global ties. For example, certain clothing practices
for men in the Asia Pacific (such as wearing ties in suffocatingly
humid midsummer heat) were initially disseminated via Western
European imperialism and colonialism. The use of modern
statistical methods to measure economic output is yet another
example of a “global” standard originally propagated through
the practices of colonial administrations throughout the
region. This is not to suggest that the process of globalisation
can be explained solely by tracing the expansion of European
notions of “civilisation” and “modernity” (both terms which
need to be examined critically before blind invocation)
or that there is a universal teleology that history must
inevitably follow, but to point out that the decoupling
of cultural experience from particular geographic locales
is not an unprecedented phenomenon.
My intention
here is not to merely regurgitate the familiar objection
that global exchanges are nothing new, so that we may have
had “globalisation” in the medieval ages, or that there
was more intensive commodity trade between far-flung regions
of the world prior to 1945 due to colonial trade flows.
Rather, by acknowledging the historical precedents, we may
focus our analysis on what might be different or new about
the term “globalisation” or whether we ought to discard
the term entirely due to the absence of any meaningful conceptual
or descriptive value-added. For example, some scholars have
argued, however vaguely, that the speed, scale, and scope
of these changes and flows have accelerated over the last
fifty years. The oft-cited acceleration in the development
and diffusion of communication technologies has facilitated
the dissemination of information and intensified financial
transactions. Thus, while commodity trade may be less global
than in pre-1945 years, the amount of money traded in foreign
currency exchange dealings or the capital flows through
various investments is more intense now than before.
Second, it is
important to examine the underlying assumptions and operating
definitions undergirding much of the debate. The ways concepts
such as “culture” or “global” or “local” are defined invariably
affect the analytical approach taken. For example, “culture”
is a frequently contested term. Many disciplines such as
anthropology, having devoted considerable efforts to grappling
with the concept, consider it a central analytical issue.
Conversely, some approaches in other disciplines might exclude
it from analysis, feeling that “culture” is too vague a
black box to constitute a meaningful independent variable.
If one takes the former view, cultural industries and exchanges
are central to any understanding of any economic, political,
social, and technological change. If one adheres to the
latter approach, then it makes sense to distinguish between
“globalisation,” confined to economic activities, and “internationalisation,”
applied to ‘cultural’ interactions.
In another example,
some scholars invoke Manichean contrasts between an idealised
“local” or “traditional” culture and a menacing “global”
or “modern” culture. If one associates “local” with sites
of national purity and resistance to rising tide of global
capitalists, “local” culture should presumably be protected
and maintained. If one defines “local” culture as reactionary,
ignorant, and parochial, than one would presumably wish
that “global” culture ‘enlightens’ “local” culture. Such
latent normative values need to be foregrounded for any
meaningful discussion to occur.
Further complicating
the issue is the fact that there are increasingly fewer
pockets of isolated, undiluted fonts of “local” identity
left, at least in the major urban centres. For example,
some commentators in Korea assert that McDonald’s is undermining
traditional Korean culinary culture, and promoting obesity
in young Korean children. However, the employees and managers
of McDonald’s in Korea are Korean, as are its customers
(i.e. local identity may already be composed in part of
an absorption of ‘foreign’ practices). For better or for
worse, the reality is that essentialising visions of ‘good’
“local” and “traditional” cultures elide the fact that cultures
-- at the global, national, regional, local, and individual
levels -- change over time, and are often retroactively
reconstituted to serve political interests of a particular
moment, place, or institution.
In yet another
example of category semantics cauterising productive avenues
of inquiry, many observers equate “globalisation” with “Americanisation,”
a semantic manoeuvre that generates questions that invariably
gravitate around America and anti-Americanism. Given the
controversy in Korea over the easing of import restrictions
on Japanese cultural products, or the political reverberations
of Thai popular culture in Cambodia, a broader yet more
nuanced definition of the “global” that accounts for the
reality that power inequalities and capital flows do not
invariably emanate from America would seem to provide a
more useful basis for discussion.
Third, an interdisciplinary
approach is essential to understanding the complexities
of globalisation. Like its historical predecessors, globalisation
is a multivalent process that cannot be merely celebrated
or demonised. While some conceptual constructs may in fact
apply across many cultures and subcultures, clearly, monocausal,
reductionist, and universalist approaches are not sufficient
to explain the rapid shifts in the local and global landscapes,
or the whole chain of production, dissemination, and reception
of any given idea or product. Informed sampling of works
on reception and entropy from media and communications studies,
emics and etics from cultural materialism in anthropology
(and discussions of the attendant criticisms), finding parallels
between the debates concerning the relative power and autonomy
of local and global cultures and discussions of consumer-producer
relations, are just some of the possible approaches that
may inform more sophisticated analyses of globalisation.
Fourth, the
pros and cons of theoretical and empirical approaches and
their interrelations must be taken into account. More specifically,
the plethora of “globalisation theories” has in general
been marked by a heavy reliance on anecdotal evidence, analytical
vagueness, circular logic, and few clear answers, all camouflaged
by rhetorical bravuras. Another problem has been a redundancy
in concepts and methods, leading to a galaxy of often alliterative
terms (“multiple modernity,” “complex connectivity,” etc.)
that essentially say the same thing. Finding common denominators
in the works of various authors, critically engaging with
the evidence, and comparing globalisation theories with
existing approaches, will be essential in assessing the
future utility of the entire field of globalisation studies.
At the same time, it may be that the torrent of books and
articles on globalisation have a heuristic value in that
they have helped to generate some interesting questions
-- if not provide much in the way of edifying answers.
Nonetheless,
as the key questions remain the whats, whos, whys, and hows
of specific sites and flows of globalisation, critical engagement
with "theory" informed by and wedded to thorough
empirical research and "local" knowledge should
provide more concretely grounded conclusions that at the
same time provide alternatives to the simplistic travelogue
epistemology of “been there, seen that” in exploring the
relevant issues. Ultimately, rather than provide definitive
answers, an awareness of the potentials and limits of all
approaches may help move our epistemological base from cocksure
conviction to thoughtful uncertainty in the attempt to understand
the impact of globalisation in our increasingly peripatetic
lives.
