Culture, Culture Everywhere

The Swell of Globalization Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID4827156
AuthorsGregory Jusdanis (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume5
Issue1
Pages141-161
Publication date1996-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiaspora A Journal of Transnational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1044-2057 • E-ISSN: 1911-1568
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/dsp.1996.0005
OpenAlexW2169155327
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited26

Diaspora 5:1 1996 Culture, Culture Everywhere: The Swell of Globalization Theory Gregory Jusdanis Ohio State University Bandied about in the media with the ease of fax messages, “globalization ” is poised to become a slogan. There hardly exists a public topic, ranging from Patrick Buchanan’s campaign in the 1996 primaries to Al Gore’s arterial metaphor of information as highway, from debates in education to the furor about immigration, from the mass strikes in France in 1995 to the conflicts over NAFTA, that cannot somehow or other be related to globalization. In a certain respect, the concept was already a cliché before it entered discussions in the humanities. In the name of globalization, people are enjoined to pull up their socks or tighten their belts; to open up their borders or close them; to celebrate the equivocality of the hybrid or the predictability of the Heimat. A protean term if there was ever one, globalization expresses our fears and hopes as we draw nearer to the grim shadow of the third millennium. Although its meaning is hard to pin down, globalization signifies the transnationalization of capitalism, the breakdown of national economies, and the creation of a more interconnected world economic system. It also describes the emergence of new technologies of communication such as satellite, fax, and e-mail, which, along with the possibility of rapid intercontinental travel, alter the relationship between time and space. This spatial compression and temporal acceleration allow people, ideas, and goods to move with great speed, while also making it possible for individuals, however far apart, to witness events simultaneously, such as the bombing of Baghdad by western forces in 1991. The term globalization suggests a borderless world, the hope of some but the bane of others, that is becoming the reality of the next century. Common to much writing on globalization, by either journalists or scholars, is the emphasis on the utter newness of it all. In certain obvious ways, such as the dizzying changes in information technologies and the seemingly irrevocable integration of markets, globalization is new. Yet, in the excitement of the moment, we forget that it is not the borderless world itself that is unique in human history, but the erection of the—now crumbling—national system with its grid of rigidly defined boundaries. xxxxxxxxxx 141 Diaspora 5:1 1996 In National Culture and the New Global System, his investigation of the relationship between globalization of cultural production in the global world, Frederick Buell makes this very point. Yet, although he reminds readers that current changes continue a process inaugurated by modernity itself, he too is caught up by the seeming novelty of the global system, seeing it “as a profound break with the recent past” (305, 312). For Buell, the most central development in globalization is the dissolution of the edges of selfenclosed national cultures as well as the neat divisions of the world between north and south, between first and third worlds, and between metropolis and colony. In the place of the three worlds theory, he notes, comes “a startlingly different model, the notion that the world is somehow interconnected in a single system ... expressing the perception that global relationships constitute, not three separate worlds, but a single network” (10). Buell draws attention to a number of theorists, notably among them Immanuel Wallerstein, whose works shows that the “territorialization of culture,” usually understood as the principal aim of nationalism, has been “undercut” in the last few decades (127). In this comprehensive book, ranging in reference from nationalism in Japan to ethnicity in the United States, from world-system theory to diaspora, from interpretation of novels to readings in contemporary cultural theory, Buell patiently reflects on the ways culture has been conceived since World War II and is being reconceived today. As a literary critic and cultural theorist, Buell tries to show that we can see in culture, as much as in economics, “globalization processes at work” (13). The value of the study is its perspective; it scans theories of territorialization and de-territorialization from the lighthouse of culture. His book is divided into three parts. In the first he examines the construction of the “three worlds” paradigm in the

Capitalism · Cultural globalization · Economics · Economy · Globalism · Globalization · Media studies · Metaphor · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Slogan · Sociology · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Globalization, Economics, and Policies · Law · Philippine History and Culture

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub