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CULTURAL GLOBALISATION: THE ROLE OF SOUTH, EAST AND SOUTHEAST ASIA www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 115.248.73.67 on dated 27-Dec-2010 with that acceptance comes the recognition that the principal symbol of national identity—namely sovereignty—must be partially ceded to those entities. Joana Breidenbach and Ina Zukrigl (“The Dynamics of Cultural Globalisation”, The Myths of Cultural Globalisation, available at, http://www.inst.at) have given a breathtaking analysis of multiculturalism in relation to globalisation, identity and nation. An increasing number of individuals stress their multicultural biographies, from writers like Salman Rushdie to the golfer Tiger Woods, who calls himself Cablinasian to point out his ancestry of Black, Indian and Asian cultures. Writers with a multicultural biography were among the first to express changes called “creolisation”. Authors like Hanif Kureishi, Keri Hulme and Emine Sevgi Özdamar mix languages and express in their writings the diversity and richness of their cultural influences as well as the conflicts that form part of the creolisation process. In view of this, “locality” loses its importance as new transnational communities come into being. These are bound together by common interests, professions or social and cultural similarities rather than by Nations are no longer the sole or even main sources of identification of individuals who are increasingly associated with multiple identities extending beyond the framework of countries. Between the local and the supranational, the national level is only one level amongst others. origin or geographical closeness. The more privileged among them are businessmen and scientists, while the majority are exile communities, migrants and refugees, who set up long distance communication and economic links and send self-recorded tapes and commodities back and forth. Both processes, the creolisation of local societies and the formation of transnational communities, demonstrate the inadequacy of the concept that sees cultures as bound and static units. Cultural change is often conceived of as a “loss” but “culture is not an attribute to be gained or lost but a process or struggle by which all peoples of the world attempt to make sense of the world”. The image of the world as a mosaic, consisting of clearly defined and separated single stones (the cultures) has to give way to the idea of culture as a flow. The metaphor of cultural flow allows for acknowledging cultural similarities and differences irrespective of origin and geographical place. VOL 13 NO 4 WINTER 2009 WORLD AFFAIRS 33
K SYAMALAMMA AND P KRISHNA MOHAN REDDY www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 115.248.73.67 on dated 27-Dec-2010 THE EMERGING GLOBAL CULTURE: ORGANISING CULTURAL DIVERSITY WORLDWIDE The emerging global culture consists of universal categories and standards by which cultural differences become mutually intelligible and compatible. Societies all over the world are on the one hand becoming more similar to one another and on the other more disparate. Anthropologist Richard Wilk has termed this new reference system “structures of common difference”. By this, he is referring to a new global hegemony, which is the hegemony of structure and not of content. Global structures organise diversity. While different cultures continue to be distinct and varied—they are becoming different in uniform ways. Most of the global categories and standards circulating today originate in the West but spread because people everywhere appropriate them and use them to express themselves and fight for their own ends. In the process, the hegemonic structures themselves are transformed. Certain ideas, histories and stories (including such diverse ones such as the death of Lady Diana, the demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa or the institutionalisation of human rights) are available to an increasing number of people in most parts of the world. They are distributed mainly through the media and the millions of people on the move, like businessmen, migrants, refugees and tourists. People are thus forced to reflect on their While people of divergent own way of life in the mirror of other origins remain divided by ways of life. Consequently, many people culture, they have realised that develop a “comparative consciousness”. to compete in the global This has the potential of creating a marketplace they must conform common ground, a kind of lingua franca to the culture of that for different people all over the world. marketplace. It is important to keep in mind that global culture does not exist in a power vacuum. Most of the structures and standards circulating today originate in the West, which makes a sustained effort to assure their survival. However not only are people from other countries challenging this dominance (like Southeast Asian intellectuals and politicians) but the diffusion of many Western ideas and institutions, 34 WORLD AFFAIRS WINTER 2009 VOL 13 NO 4
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