Globalization is characterized by the dual processes of global convergence and global divergence.  Culture is never finalized, complete, nor internally coherent, but is constantly changing and redefining itself.  Globalization has always been associated with increasing differences between peoples and places.  Rather than being a means of increasing Western hegemony through global homogenization, the recent phase of globalization has involved a rapid increase in the intensity of global interconnections and flows in all directions, not only from the West to the rest, but also vice versa.  These complex and disjunctive flows and interconnections have resulted in increasing hybridity of identities and representations.  This is one example of a main feature of globalization- a delinking of social space from physical geography and territory, often referred to as deterritorialization, or the rise of supraterritoriality.  An effect has been the decline of the nation-state as the primary level for social, political and economic organization.  This change in perception, along with the amplified spread of information and knowledge, has contributed to an increased awareness of global issues. The growing prevalence of global consciousness and the associated concepts of world citizenship is one positive result of globalization which may lead to the emergence of new, more equitable, forms of global society. 

Many critics of globalization claim that increased global flows have resulted in the Westernization of the world, whereby local customs and culture are giving way to a single, homogenous, Western (or more specifically, American) culture.  It is certainly true that recent rapid intensification in global interconnections has led to the increased availability of Western tastes, consumption patterns and lifestyles worldwide.  Consumer preferences and habits is one area in which a predominant pattern of global convergence is occurring.  However, to conclude from this that the world is becoming more and more homogenous is a vast oversimplification and completely misguided.  It is realistic to claim that within the West “there has been some degree of homogenization of mass cultural consumption, particularly among the young, and that it is spreading to the more affluent strata of the developing world” (Held and McGrew, 1999, 373).  Nevertheless, the process is highly uneven, especially in terms of social class.  It is the “urban elite and urban upper income groups who are most able to adopt and sustain the ‘goods’ provided by standardized merchandising” (Potter et al, 1999, 92).  Instead of the simple assimilation Western products and habits, these cultural symbols are reinterpreted and adapted locally, and take on different meanings in different places.  Sometimes strong resistance and a revival of traditional customs is shown by local and national cultures in response to homogenizing tendencies.  Along with forms of local resistance there have been “more coordinated attempts to contest the flow of imported images with the aim of reinventing and reconstructing ‘peripheral cultures’ ” (Held and McGrew, 1999, 374).  In this way, globalization can often serve to reinforce, rather than degrade, local cultures. 

The argument that globalization is resulting in Western homogenization and the destruction of local cultures is also inaccurate in that it ignores the flow of cultural items and practices from “the rest to the West”.   Increasingly within the global economy, “cultural products are being assembled from all over the world and are being turned into commodities for an emerging cosmopolitan market-place” (Potter et al, 1999, 102).  Although it is has greatly increased in recent times, this flow from the rest to the West is by no means a new phenomenon.  Throughout history, contact and trade between nations and places has resulted in the adoption of practices and items from “other” places.  This means that many, possibly most, products and traditions associated with a certain local or national identity are in fact complicated and complex combinations from various cultures.  While there are many examples of flows to the West from the rest, one especially pertinent example is that of food.  Many foods which are considered everyday staples of Western consumption, such as coffee, tea, sugar, and many fresh fruits and vegetables, are in fact imported from all around the world.  There has also been an increase over the past few decades in the number of “ethnic” foods being consumed in Western nations.  This is evident in the number of international restaurants and markets in urban centers.  For instance, on one street in Toronto you can find Eazy Eats Jamaican restaurant, Ali Baba’s (Middle Eastern restaurant), Lee Gardens (Cantonese restaurant), and Makaraja Palace (Indian restaurant), as well as many more.

Along with the compression of space and time, globalization has also resulted in the world “shrinking” in other another sense, in that we are all potentially increasingly aware of what is happening in distant places.  Social space, as well as physical, has an increasingly supraterritorial dimension as more and more people “think globally”.  The world is no longer conceived of solely in terms of territorial realms, such as the nation-state, but also as a single place (Scholte, 2000, 54).  Rapid increases in global communications, products, travel, organizations, and especially the increasing awareness and severity of global ecological issues, have made large proportions of humanity more conscious of their shared global citizenship. “The media is also an important international vector of information and knowledge, not only through television, but also through the technical press and international professional events, such as seminars” (Petit and Soete, 1999, 172).   Mainstream media often distorts events to give a government or policy-friendly view of reality.  However, there are an increasing number of independent media sources available through the internet and other forms, which offer a countering viewpoint to people across the globe.  In the words of Arjun Appardurai: “electronic mediation and mass migration create a new force field for social relations globally” (1999, 230).  This invites a “redefinition of our ethical and moral responsibilities in relation to people who live far away from us” (Potter et al, 1999, 76).   Held and McGrew (1999, 445 ) refer to this condition as ‘overlapping communities of fate’, which is “a condition in which the fortunes and prospects of individual communities are increasingly bound together”.

This deterritorialization of social affiliation is evidenced by the proliferation of global community groupings and solidarities such as labor movements, women’s movements, gay and lesbian groups, as well as racial and religious movements (Scholte, 2000, 172-176).   The increasing tendency to identify with various different communities and groupings has led to increased hybridization at the level of individual identity.  This degradation of the link between culture and territory is “accompanied by an intermingling of these disembedded cultural practices producing new complex hybrid forms of culture” (Tomlinson, 1999, 141).  It is through these “identity politics” that the recent phase of globalization has “eroded the position of the state-nation as the preeminent structure of community and promoted the rise of multiple alternative frameworks of solidarity” (Scholte, 2000, 182).  In this way, globalization has challenged the primacy of the nation-state as the dominant level of territorial affiliation and identity association.

“Looked at from the point of view of the nation-state we stand on the edge of a global order characterized by the emergence of a large number of forces which constrain, erode, or otherwise violate the workings of national sovereignty in the domains of politics, law, and political allegiance.  The epoch of the nation-state may not yet be at an end, but the era in which the system of nation-states was the only game in town, as far as international governance and transnational political traffic are concerned, is surely over” (Appardurai, 1999, 230).

It is this weakening of the sovereignty of the nation-state as the principal communal grouping that has allowed for the growth of cosmopolitanism, or global citizenship.  As Anthony Giddens explains, with globalization “humankind in some respects becomes a ‘we’, facing problems and opportunities where there are no ‘others’ ” (1991, 27).  

The aim of this paper is not to suggest that globalization has no negative impacts. There are many challenges created by the increasingly complex and intense global interconnections, not the least of which is the challenge to local cultures.  However, it is incredulous to suggest that globalization will result in the destruction of the local and the homogenization of the world due to Western hegemonic forces.  Potter (et al, 1999, 80) explains this perfectly: “rather than uniformity, globalization is resulting in “greater flexibility, permeability, openness, hybridity, plurality and difference, both between places and between cultures”.   It is essential to recognize that the concept of cultural destruction or homogenization of cultures is based on a false assumption of cultures as pure and static.  In fact, no culture can be defined in such simple terms.  The reality is that “hybridity can be understood as the ongoing condition of all cultures, which contains no zones of purity because they undergo continuous processes of transculturation” (Rosaldo, 1995, xv).  It is therefore incorrect to suppose that cultural mixing and hybridization are new phenomena.  Although the intensity and rate of global interconnections and cultural intermingling has greatly increased throughout the past half century, it is impossible to draw from this a conclusion of future homogeneity.  Flows between cultures have been occurring throughout history, and while there have obviously been many changes in the shape and prevalence of local cultures, a multitude of local and regional variations and adaptations have survived and flourished. 

Undoubtedly, there are immense inequalities embedded in the current world system, along with powerful forces opposing the resistance to their hegemonic assumptions.  Despite these obstacles, people all over the world are undeniably becoming increasingly aware of their place in a global society, and of the means by which they may be able to define and shape their own destinies.  In the words of Stuart Hall (1991, 34), the emergence of new subjects, communities and identities has necessitated the acquisition “through struggle, sometimes in very marginalized ways, [of] the means to speak for themselves for the first time. And the discourses of power in our society, the discourses of the dominant regimes, have been certainly threatened by this de-centered cultural empowerment of the marginal and the local”.  While there are a plethora of so-called negative effects of globalization, these harms have resulted “not from supraterritoriality as such, but from the policies that we have adopted towards it” (Scholte, 2000, 206).  There are innumerable forces and processes at work which are causing a reshaping of these structures, institutions and the policies implicit within.  These developments give hope for the emergence of new forms of globalization, for an increase in global consciousness and the awareness of responsibility within a transnational civil society.

References

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Giddens, Anthony. (1991).  Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.  Quoted in Scholte, Jan Aart. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

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Held, David and Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton. Globalization , Culture and the Fate of Nations. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 327-375.

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Petit, Pascal and Soete, L. Globalization in Search of a Future. International Social Studies Journal, 160. UNESCO, Oxford:Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Potter, Robert and Tony Binns,  Jennifer Elliot and David Smith. Geographies of Development. London: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1999.

Rosaldo, Renato. (1995). pp. xv.   ????  quoted in Tomlinson, John. Deterritorialization: The Cultural Condition of Globalization. Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 106-49.

Scholte, Jan Aart. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

Tomlinson, John. Deterritorialization: The Cultural Condition of Globalization. Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 106-49.