Globalization and Cultural Change

El estudio sobre cambio cultural más antiguo del mundo, patrocinado este año para Colombia por Comfama, muestra que la colombiana es una sociedad en tránsito, definida por la tensión entre tradición y progreso. Un especial sobre sus implicaciones para el desarrollo y la democracia.

In this article, I discuss compulsory genital examinations in Swedish African, mainly Somali, girls. The discussion is based on data from 122 police files, including criminal investigations regarding suspected "female genital mutilation" (FGM). A growing body of research in European countries indicates that processes of cultural change are occurring among immigrant communities from areas where traditionally girls are subjected to what is construed as "circumcision". Many studies show growing opposition to these practices among people who have migrated to Europe, and there is little evidence to support the assertion that large-scale illegal activities are prevalent. Yet there is a dominant discourse stating that FGM is secretively practised on a large scale among some immigrant groups in Europe, and policies encourage the detection of cases to charge in criminal court. I describe the current situation in Sweden and highlight some of the drawbacks of a very harsh, although well-intended, policy to check for FGM in Europe. While the ultimate aim is to protect girls at risk for FGM, current policies have ramifications that are invasive and sometimes even traumatising for the girls involved. This paper offers an empirical example of how politics in western multicultural societies may negatively influence the sexual health and rights of a target group, in this case, girls and young women whose families originate from countries where circumcision of girls is practiced.

“Throughout human history, perhaps even pre-human, there has been a tension between the need for order and the forces that cause change. That tension is greater now than ever, because, in our increasingly globalized world, the rate of change is also increasing. This book finally explains how we can cope: we have stories. We live our narratives.” Brian Spooner, University of Pennsylvania, is editor of Globalization: The Crucial Phase and Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order

"The idea that Axial Ages occurred, and that they provide warnings/opportunities for us today, seems both new and useful. But the value of this book is additional to this stance, in that it looks at cultural change - civilizations - from a complexity viewpoint. These changes are certainly complicated, but the pressures are interwoven and therefore need to be understood as complex. The book does a good job of explaining our present cultural difficulties - our prospective emergencies social, ecological and physical - in a wholly new way. Perhaps we'll get new answers..." Jack Cohen, evolutionary biologist, is co-author of The Collapse of Chaos, with Ian Steward.

"This is a challenging and creative tour de force on comparative, global, world history and cross-cultural, complex societal dynamics. Without doubt one of the most stimulating works in the tradition of big history and macro analysis.” Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, George Mason University, is author of Power Laws in the Social Sciences: Discovering Non-equilibrium Dynamics in the Social Universe.

“In this book, Dmitri Bondarenko (Russia) and Ken Baskin (USA) compare Modernity with the period historians know as the Axial Age (800-200 BCE) as times of transformation, responding to rapidly increasing social complexity. In doing so, they try to apply the experience of the earlier period, and the time of cultural achievement that followed it, to our time of ideological tension among civilizations. The great achievement of this relatively small book is the lucid way in which the co-authors present a picture of complex worldwide developments, based upon their mastery of recent and older literature, and their efforts to point to a way out of the hopelessly divided socio-political situation of today.” Henri J.M. Claessen, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Leiden University, is author of Structural Change; Evolution and Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology.

“With a lens of great magnification, the authors search through the intricacies of history, selecting its most important threads to weave together. What emerges is a rich tapestry in which the underlying trajectory of history, not clearly visible to the untutored eye, is brought boldly to the surface. And far from being couched in academic jargon—as one might have supposed—the book is a rare combination of brilliant analysis and beautifully crafted prose. Moreover, it ends on a hopeful note with the authors prescribing what they think societies must do if they are to confront and surmount the challenges that lie ahead.” Robert L. Carneiro, Curator Emeritus of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, is author of Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History.

"I find this a very insightful book, that will help readers to place current cultural developments within the framework of our common past, while contemplating what the future may bring." Fred Spier, University of Amsterdam, is President, International Big History Association, and author of Big History and the Future of Humanity.

Various scholars have described an array of social and cultural changes in Western societies that have contributed to the erosion of traditional cultural hierarchies. Some fear that the once-vaunted positions of the performing and visual arts, for example, are being undermined by commercialization—whereby crucial choices about the production and dissemination of works are increasingly informed by the economic bottom-line rather than by aesthetic concerns. Alongside the declining hierarchy and growing commercialization of the arts, some scholars point to the rapid expansion in the volume and variety of cultural goods in the global marketplace and the weakening of national boundaries and cultures, which, to an unprecedented extent, has destabilized and “deterritorialized” global cultural flows to an unprecedented extent. Of course, the impact of the heightened pace and reach of globalization on cultural fields remains a topic of debate in the literature. Certain scholars take a more positive view when arguing that globalization serves to “relativize” national boundaries and strengthen a sense of belonging to a world society, while others take a more negative view when arguing this international flow is better described as an asymmetrical imposition of cultural goods from the United States and other affluent countries on the non-Western world.

Yet, amid this vibrant debate, a growing body of comparative research shows significant cross-national variation in both the degree of change in cultural hierarchies as well as in the extent and impact of cultural globalization.  However, most studies focus on a single country or on a single point in time, thereby making it difficult to examine the territorial and temporal aspects that lie at the core of the globalization debate. By focusing on changes in the musical field in four countries from 1955 to 2005, our aim is to build on upon cross-national comparative research that addresses how cultural hierarchies change over time and, in particular, to explore what relationship such changes have to the degree of international orientation to musical actors.

Music provides an interesting case by which to explore such changes because it has experienced considerable “de-hierarchization,” as indicated by the waning status of classical music relative to popular music. Using media coverage in elite newspapers in the four countries from 1955 to 2005 as an indicator, this chapter considers whether there is an increasingly global orientation towards musical “actors” (e.g., soloists, ensembles, composers) over time in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. If so, to what extent has this occurred and how is such attention distributed temporally? Is there a greater attention towards “non-Western” countries in newspaper coverage of music, as suggested by de-territorialization? By exploring such questions, we aim to address the relationship between cultural classification systems and cultural globalization from the vantage of these nations, while taking into account their respective relationships with music from other nations around the globe. 

Much of the debate about the impact of globalization on cultural fields focuses solely on popular cultural forms (e.g., hit songs; Achterberg et al. 2011). We diverge by focusing simultaneously on forms of both high culture (e.g., classical music) and popular culture (e.g., rock music). This makes sense because the emergence of Western high culture and popular culture as salient distinctions went hand in hand (DiMaggio 1982, 1991). Hence, the creation of a field devoted solely to “transcendent” music of the past occurred alongside the creation of a large-scale field devoted to “faddish” music of the present, with the former emphasizing a “logic of consecration” and the latter a “logic of commodification” (Dowd 2011). Their connected trajectories continue in the present, including a “blurring” of their boundaries. For example, scholars have noted a shift towards consecration occurring in popular music—as when some (but not all) rock is celebrated as art (Schmutz 2005; Schmutz & Faupel 2010; Van Venrooij & Schmutz 2010)—and a shift towards commodification in classical music—as when orchestras perform music from Hollywood soundtracks (e.g., Star Wars) in an effort to offset shrinking audiences and declining funding (DiMaggio 1991; Dowd & Kelly 2012). Indeed, the “de-hierarchicalization” mentioned above deals squarely with the relative positioning of classical and popular musics. Hence, we shall see below how both fare in the face of globalization.

Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen  talks about his recent book Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change and the collaborative research project from which it originated; intertwining crises of economy, environment and culture in the context of the mind-boggling acceleration of social change over the past 25 years.

This paper uses the concepts of ethnosphere and ethnodiversity to frame the stakes of cultural genocide in the context of the emerging global society. We are in an era of rapid global ethnodiversity loss. Global ethnodiversity is important because different cultures produce different solutions to the subjective and objective problems of human society, and because cultures have an intrinsic value. Rapid ethnodiversity loss is a byproduct of the expansion of the modern world-system, and Lemkin's invention of the concept of genocide can be understood as a dialectical reaction to this tendency. The current phase of globalization creates pressures towards global monoculture, but movements towards polyculture can be observed. Genocide scholars have an interest in three underdeveloped lines of inquiry: measuring ethnodiversity loss; constructing valid measures of the vitality and life or death of cultures; and developing techniques for resolving social differences without the need for cultural consensus. Abstract: This paper uses the concepts of ethnosphere and ethnodiversity to frame the stakes of cultural genocide in the context of the emerging global society. We are in an era of rapid global ethnodiversity loss. Global ethnodiversity is important because different cultures produce different solutions to the subjective and objective problems of human society, and because cultures have an intrinsic value. Rapid ethnodiversity loss is a byproduct of the expansion of the modern world-system, and Lemkin's invention of the concept of genocide can be understood as a dialectical reaction to this tendency. The current phase of globalization creates pressures towards global monoculture, but movements towards polyculture can be observed. Genocide scholars have an interest in three underdeveloped lines of inquiry: measuring ethnodiversity loss; constructing valid measures of the vitality and life or death of cultures; and developing techniques for resolving social differences without the need for cultural consensus.