Globalization and Culture - Tom G. Palmer

allowed to sell the shirts and pants they make to German auto workers? Should
Taiwanese investors be allowed to purchase assets from Kenyans? Should Mexican
mechanics be allowed repair cars in Ottawa or Chicago? Obviously, lists of
that sort could go on indefinitely, but I think that it’s clear enough what I’m
getting at. If an exchange would be allowed if both parties were on one side of a
border, should they be stopped if instead one party were on one side of that border,
and the other party were on the other side?
Now let’s turn to culture. The term is used in a multitude of ways, often in the
course of the same essay or consideration. They include: the cultivation of certain
human capabilities; art (typically the term is reserved for „high“ art; reaction against
that reservation of the term has fueled much academic study of „popular culture“);
and the concrete forms of life that people lead in common. In general the
critics of globalization refer to the second and third uses of „culture“ when making
their critiques. My primary focus will be on the third use of the term, on what
Peter Berger calls „its conventional social scientific sense: as the beliefs, values,
and lifestyles of ordinary people in their everyday existence.“ 2
Should we welcome and embrace, or fear and reject, the interaction and mixture
of cultures, peoples, races, communities, and worldviews that global trade,
commerce, and interconnectedness bring in their wake? In particular, is it true that
globalization is leading to a homogenized global culture, one in which life in Brazil
approaches being indistinguishable from life in Bavaria, or - more to the point - is it
leading to a world in which every country looks like southern California?
II.
Contrasting Approaches to Globalization
Globalization is hardly a new phenomenon. It’s nearly as old as recorded history
itself and its advocacy is among the first coherently articulated political philosophies
of the western world (at least). About the year 420 BCE the philosopher
Democritus of Abdera wrote, „To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the
native land of a good soul is the whole earth.“ 3
2 Peter Berger, „Introduction: The Cultural Dynamics of Globalization,“ in Many Globalizations:
Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, ed. By Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 2. We could also distinguish between discrete
forms of globalization, including the emergence of global business, professional, and academic
cultures, the diffusion of pop culture, and the effects of globalization on the ways in
which the majority of people live their lives.
3 In Kathleen Freeman, ed., Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1971), fragment 247, p. 113.
4 Globalisation and Culture