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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 because as technology creates its own metaphors and transforms the world, people are exposed to a wide range of cultural stimuli. It would thus be incorrect to say that only the US influence is dominating international culture. Much water has flown since 1997 and the globalisation now taking shape, sends and receives influences from both the East and West. It is interesting to note American reaction to this issue. When it comes to globalisation bringing greater cultural influences into the US, Americans express a positive attitude. When asked in a January 2004 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll, to think about “how globalisation has resulted in new ideas and cultural influences coming into the US from other countries”, 68 per cent regarded this as a positive development and only 25 per cent felt the influences were negative. In May 1999, a Pew poll found that 71 per cent of Americans agreed that cultural diversity was a main reason for America’s success. In a 1998 Yankelovich poll, a near unanimous majority (91 per cent) agreed, “the global economy makes it more important than ever for all of us to understand people who are different than ourselves” (available at, http:// www.americans-world.<strong>org</strong>). There are strong indications that American values The drivers of today’s rapid globalisation are improving methods and systems of international transportation, revolutionary and innovative information technologies and services and dominating international commerce in services and ideas. Their impacts affect language, lifestyles, religion and almost every other component of culture. operate in a global context and that the sphere of concern extends beyond national boundaries. In a PIPA October 1999 poll, 73 per cent agreed (44 per cent strongly) with the statement, “I regard myself as a citizen of the world as well as a citizen of the United States” (available at, ibid). Central to many of the sociological interpretations of globalisation is the notion of culture and indeed much of the original theorising about globalisation developed in this quarter (Ian Clark, <strong>Globalisation</strong> and Fragmentation, International Relations in the Twentieth Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Robertson (ibid, p 135) states that globalisation involves “the development of something like VOL 13 NO 4 WINTER 2009 WORLD AFFAIRS 19
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 a global culture”. His perspective emphasises a newfound consciousness as well as physical compression of the world (ibid, p 8). This of course does not necessarily mean a uniform and homogenous culture worldwide, as any such claim would be impossible to sustain (Clark, ibid, p 23). In a more modest version, it implies that cultures become “relativised” to each other but are not “unified or centralised” (Waters, ibid, pp 125–6). Thus, cultural globalisation may be regarded as “unity in The expansion of Europe brought about the economic and technological unification of the globe and European-dominated international society of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries first expressed its political unification. During the world wars however, a deeper and more widespread process of cultural Americanization was accelerated. diversity”. Clark also points to the diversity of views and perceptions of globalisation, differentiates five interpretations of globalisation (Waters, ibid, p 24) and his first school partly focuses on cultural globalisation. According to him, globalisation has been shaped by the major international trend of the past several centuries namely Westernisation. That is, Europe’s economic and military incorporation of the world created the precondition of an integrated global system. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Eds, The Expansion of International Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) opine that “it was the expansion of Europe that first brought about the economic and technological unification of the globe (and) it was the European dominated international society of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that first expressed its political unification”. Historically, this had been true since the era of industrialisation and colonisation, as the rest of the world was influenced by European culture. During the world wars however, a deeper and more widespread process of cultural Americanization was accelerated. As Akira Iriye (“The Globalizing of America 1913– 1945”, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p 113) points out, “America … was more than ever before the symbol of the new material and popular culture”. The automobile, the motion picture and the radio were the instruments of this process. As a result 20 WORLD AFFAIRS WINTER 2009 VOL 13 NO 4
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