SOC 451 Globalization of Culture and Communication

Asst. Prof. Fatma Altınbaş Sarıgül

Globalization and Related Processes

• Imperialism• Colonialism• Development• Westernization• Easternization• Americanization

IMPERIALISM

• It is a broad concept that describes various methods employed by one country to gain control of another country or geographic area and then to exercise control, especially political, economic and territorial over that country. (Ritzer, 64)

• It was dominant reality of 18th century.• It is rooted from the idea of nation-state.

IMPERIALISM

• The term became widespread in the late 19th century while Germany, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain, France and United States were competing for control over undeveloped geographic areas, especially in Africa.

• Mutual Culture flow- Cultural Imperialism• Imperial nations exercised political, economic

and cultural control over huge portions of the world.

IMPERIALISM

• Political power: Great Britain was the most effective.

United States became independent in 1783India became independent in 1947• United States also became the most important

imperialistic nation but its political control was less direct than Great Britain.

• Soviet Union was a great political empire on Soviet bloc nations.

• Political imperialism declined after WWII.

IMPERIALISM

• Vladimir Lenin the first leader of the Soviet Union- an important early theorist of imperialism.

Lenin’s book: ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism’Lenin sees economic factors – capitalism - as the essence of imperialism.Although it was not capitalist, Lenin’s Soviet

Union became an important imperial power.

IMPERIALISM

• While political imperialism disappeared, economic imperialism remains quiet powerful.

• More than being an economic phenomenon, it was also important for European nations to expand culturally, in terms of their language, cuisine etc..

• The United States has engaged in cultural imperialism through its movie, tv and book publishing- Media Imperialism.

COLONIALISM

• Creation by the colonial power of an administration in the area that has been colonized to run its internal affairs. (Ritzer,69)

• While imperialism involves a control without the creation of the colonies, colonialism involves settlers and formal mechanisms of control.

• Thus, colonialism entails the creation by the colonial power in the country that has been colonized of and administrative apparatus to run its internal affairs.

COLONIALISM

• Two great and more recent ages of colonialism.

1. 14th-17th century: European powers- mostly Spain and Portugal. Involved creating colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

2. 1820-1925: European powers- mostly Great Britain, France and Germany, then US and Japan

• Cultural colonialism: the extension of colonial power through cultural activities and institutions.

COLONIALISM

• Decolonization: Dismantling colonial powers in all its forms. After WWI.

• Neocolonialism : Efforts at control over the former colonies and other nation-states became indirect, through cultural and educational institutions and focused on economic control.

• Postcolonialism: The era in once colonized areas after the colonizing power has departed.

DEVELOPMENT• A project primarily concerned with the

economic development of specific nation-states regarded as underdeveloped.

• When colonies became independent nation-states, they joined the international relations of the development project.

• The national economic strategies of the new nation-states, depended on the new international economic arrangements.

DEVELOPMENT• Newly independent states:

– Had colonial division of labor’s legacy of “resource bondage” embedded in their social structures

– Purchased First World technology with loans or primary export earnings– Integrated into universal political-economic relations within the international

financial, normative and legal framework of United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions

• Marshall Plan ; After World War II, U.S. transferred billions to Europe and Japan to facilitate international trade and encourage U.S. direct investment in Europe

• Bilateral financial aid – To stabilize discontented populations– To rekindle economic growth and production– To restore trade and price stability– To contain socialist movements and communism– To allow purchase of U.S. goods– To rearm

DEVELOPMENT• Post-WWII meeting in Bretton Woods, NH, July 1944• Financial ministers created international banking

system to restore trade via credit to devastated regions

• The World Bank – Borrowed money in international capital markets to raise

money for development– Loaned funds to states for national infrastructure projects

(dams, highways, power plants) – Invested in cash crop agriculture, which deepened legacy

of colonial division of labor• International Monetary Fund (IMF)– Disbursed credit to stabilize national currency exchanges

and revitalize international trade

DEVELOPMENT

• Dependency Theory: It emphasizes the fact that development projects did not create necessary development of the nation-states of the South, but more to a decline in their independence and to an increase in their dependence on the countries of the North.

• World System Theory: Sees the world divided mainly between the core and the periphery with the latter dependent on, and expolited by, the core nation-states.

WESTERNIZATION

• Economic, political and cultural influence of the West on the rest of the World.

• It goes beyond politics and economics to include a wide variety of other exports to the rest of the world including its technologies, languages, law, lifestyle, food and etc.

EASTERNIZATION

• Economic and cultural influences of the East on the West.

• Various ethnic restaurants, yoga, various beliefs, vegetarianism, eastern music, technological innovations, etc.

• Given the rise of China as a global power, Easternization, like globalization, is likely to show dramatic growth in the coming years.

AMERICANIZATION

• The global triumph of the United States and its way of life. (Hobsbawm, 1998)

• It is in decline in the early 21st century.• It has changed its shape from big industries

such as US steel and GM, into the realm consumption such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Visa, etc.

• In discussing Americanization, one should specify the aspects.

AMERICANIZATION

• Capacious Americanization: Heyday of American influence in Europe between 1945-1971.

• Resonant Americanization: Period after 1971 when Americanization lost its hegemony in Europe.

• Americanization without America• Beyond Americanization• Expressing America• Indigenous Americanization

ANTI-AMERICANISM

• What to dislike? Its militarism Its obsession with guns Its continuing use of the death penalty Its seemingly extraordinary religiosity Its role in global warming Its cultureThe imperialism associated with it Its role in globalizationThe power of the organizations largely controlled by it-

IMF and World Bank

ANTI-AMERICANISM• It is a predisposition to hostility toward the United

States and American society, a relentless critical impulse toward American social, political and economic institutions, traditions, and values; it entails an aversion to American culture in particular and its influence abroad, often also contempt for the American national character and dislike of American people, manners, behavior, dress and so on; rejection of American foreign policy and a firm belief in the malignity of American influence and presence anywhere in the world. (Hollander 1992: 339).

POST-AMERICANIZATION

• A idea that we are in post-American age.• The key issue is not the decline of the US, but

rather ‘the rise of everyone else’.• Is American hegemony coming to an end in

the 21st century?..