by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1991

This project began, as many do, with a simple question. After having studied anthropology and mass communications, and looking at the rapid changes happening around the world, I began to wonder if the mass media are in the process of creating a single "global culture," one that is overwhelmingly "Western" and tends to marginalize "indigenous" cultures. This is a claim heard with increasing frequency, and I wanted to evaluate it. I soon learned the enormity of the task. The subject has been approached by many people with a variety of theoretical perspectives and goals. With such a broad topic, a large number of sources, and limited space, I felt forced to either pick one or two aspects, or to skim over the surface. After reviewing some of the diverse approaches to the subject, I decided instead to look at the subject from several different angles. This methodology follows John Tomlinson's excellent study, in which he assembles the concept of cultural imperialism "out of its discourse" (1991:3); it also relates to Todd Gitlin's idea of "cubist sociology" or Laura Nader's "post-interpretive anthropology" (1988). For the sake of coherence, I will go from general to specific, or from a global to an individual level. On the general level, I will rely heavily on Marxist critical theory, and on the specific level, I will turn to post-structuralist theories, for I believe these two perspectives combine to elucidate the phenomena in question most clearly. I have tried to use the most current data available.

This type of discourse cannot possibly account for all views. For one thing, I must rely only on studies written in, or translated into, English; the preponderance of English-language texts could be considered a type of "cultural imperialism" itself. Even when consulting the work of scholars of other nations, the question must be asked, how "representative" of their cultures are these representatives? Also, I rely mainly on academic research, and in the discourse of scholarly debate, "who speaks" is often based on the commercial concerns of private, capitalist publishing houses (which are themselves increasingly global), except for a comparatively small number of university presses that consider "merit" along with profit. So this is necessarily a "priviledged discourse" which is potentially a kind of global conversation, but is by no means universal in character. All discourse, Michel Foucault said, is "a violence we do to things" by re-presenting events and ideas in a particular way; it is a culturally specific "master discourse". I hope to minimize this by presenting a wide range of information. But as Nader says, we simply cannot "think with three or four different brains" (1988:157). In order to maintain a certain level of specificity in this discussion, such "meta-levels" of representation must be "bracketed" and the author and reader must instead share the same attitude (Tomlinson 1991:18).

To answer the initial question simply, I believe there is a type of globalization underway, and the communications media play an important role. This is the assumption from which I proceed. But there are a myriad of complex, interrelated forces at work in the globalization process. They can be separated into two categories: those related to the technological infrastructure of the media ("hardware," to use the jargon of the electronics industry); and those related to the content carried by the media, the "cultural products" or "software". When looking at these two categories, two divergent forces become apparent: fragmentation and homogenization. These two forces occur on both levels of analysis, and indeed, both work in symbiosis, as will be seen.

A process of globalization, a "global-local nexus," as Roland Robertson (1990) calls it, has been noticed for at least 2,000 years. Polybius wrote, in the second century B.C., "Formerly the things which happened in the world had no connection among themselves... but since [the rise of the Roman Empire], all events are united in a common bundle" (Kohn 1971:121). The process must be viewed as temporal as much as geographical. And it is ideological as well, a spread of "modernity," or what Norbert Elias broadly refers to as the "civilizing process" (1978). The topic is infused with politics. Therefore this study is partly historical, partly geographical and partly ideological.

First, it is necessary to fine tune the original question, and define a few terms. There are actually several questions to be asked, such as: Are "native cultures" really threatened, and if so, how? If there is a threat, is it in the technology or the cultural products? How are "alien texts" read anyway? And is it "imperialism" if people freely choose to "read the texts"?

Let us first define just what we mean by "culture". I will use it two ways. Broadly, I use Clifford Geertz's definition as a "context of meaning" (1973:14). More specific is Immanuel Wallerstein's view that "culture" can refer to a group of people (such as a nation or region), or a sub-group whose "culture" is more specialized (such as the culture of scientists or the "high culture" of elites) (1990:33). The concept of "globalization" may be regarded as synonymous to "modernity"; this is ambiguous enough to skirt the issue of intent. Tomlinson sees modernity as the "main direction of cultural development" and includes

This process is alternately referred to as "development" or "progress" in other contexts. The concepts of cultural "imperialism" and "hegemony," on the other hand, explicitly refer to one culture "dominating" another in some way. Critics of modernity, however, often take its material benefits for granted. So, too, do many of the "recipients" of modernity.

Just what are "indigenous" cultures? They don't "naturally" belong to a geographical area the way that flora and fauna do. Are "authentic" cultures somehow "natural"? Don't they constantly change? Culture must be seen as a process, not a fixed set of values and customs. Also, when talking about "local" cultures, it must be made clear how "local" we mean. In the literature on globalization, cultures are mostly discussed in national terms.

The "Third World" is often seen as the target of Western cultural imperialism. This term has no meaning except from the view of the "First World". To speak of "developing" nations presupposes that they will "develop" or "modernize". These are examples of the narrative domination that is central to cultural imperialism.

The debate is related to that of "neocolonialism" which flowered in the mid-1970s. For example, in UNESCO, a purportedly global forum, "Third World" nations called for a new "world communications and informational order" in response to what they saw as cultural domination by the "First World". The United States responded by withdrawing from the organization in 1985; the U.K. followed the next year. Both took with them their financing, and this shows that access to discourse is related to material power.

It is true that English is the dominant language in the world, and its use is continually increasing. But in the media (especially television), a visual "language" is even more "universal". People raised without knowing a written language can become highly visually "literate" and not perceive things in the linear, language-based ways that underlie "modern" cultures. Many critics fail to take this into account, and assume that others think in ways similar to themselves.

Closely related to this visual literacy is a "symbolic" language, a language of "signs" that takes place on what Foucault calls the "arch¾ological level" of discourse. Fashion, for example, is seen as such a linguistic structure. Roland Barthes believes that fashion restricts meaning by limiting variations of style. Once limited to an elite class, fashion styles have -- with the help of the media -- become widespread. A fashion code operates, he says, which turns objects into signs with fixed meanings, recognizable to most everyone (1983:234).

This view holds that there are certain universal signs that can be communicated cross-culturally. Michael Tracey says that the "real genius of American popular culture is to bind together, better than anything else, common humanity" with such universal elements such as the wholesome innocence of Disney characters or the tragic dramatic structure of Dallas (1985:40) [examples that we will return to later].

Ithiel de Sola Pool, similarly, speaks of "world cultural tastes" which may, theoretically, come from any national culture (1979:145). But one must ask, if this is the case, why do such global cultural products come overwhelmingly from America and, to a lesser extent, Europe?

The representing of the particular as universal is nothing new: it can be seen in religions, for instance, which speak of a "united human race" (and deny the existence of other religions); or in the way that the interests of a bourgeois capitalist class are rendered universal. Such claims are often made by a dominant group, and often relate to some project of domination. Any discourse about "nature," it can be argued, suppresses a very real history of domination and inequality.

On the other hand, there can be no denying facts of human biology, and since humans the world over share so many characteristics, it is a fair assumption (and only that) that some universal "signs" or mental structures exist. Any conception of a unitary global culture must not, however, compare it to national cultures. It must be considered as much a temporal process as a spatial one, since all phenomena are situated in both space and time.

The main force behind globalization -- the "infrastructure" -- is that of global capitalism. Cultural imperialism, as Tomlinson notes, is most often discussed in a discourse of nationality. This is ambiguous, hence accomodating (1991:68). The process may be regarded as the "global, historical advance of capitalist modernity," as in Elias's conception (see Mennell 1990).

It remains to be seen whether countries such as China and the former Soviet states will be fully integrated into the global capitalist structure, but it appears inevitable. (The U.S. presently continues to limit the modernization of the Soviet communications structure for "national security" reasons but other nations are challenging this policy; see Markoff 1991.) The Cold War, Robertson believes, set back the worldwide debate over modernity, with its rigidly simplistic dichotomy (1990:17). This accords with a belief that the prosperity enjoyed by the U.S., which peaked in the 1960s, was a historical anomaly due to the fact that the U.S. was the only "modern" nation whose industrial infrastructure wasn't devastated by World War II (Elliot 1991). Nations such as Germany and Japan have more modern infrastructures because theirs were completely rebuilt after the war.

Robertson views the "crucial take-off point" of global capitalism as between 1880 and 1925 (1990:19). Anthony Giddens adds that after World War I, "a reflexively monitored system of nation-states came to exist globally" (1987:256). The period from the 1920s to '60s was a "struggle-for-hegemony phase" in which such things as the atom bomb and the United Nations focused global concerns.

The period from the '60s to the present are termed by Robertson as an "uncertainty phase" marked by the inclusion of the Third World, "post-materialist values," and the end of the Cold War. This uncertainty is "displaying crisis tendencies in the 1990's," he says (1990:27). Indeed,

I believe that a point has been reached where it is inadequate to view globalization within a discourse of nation-states. This is a convenient starting point, but other levels of analysis must be considered, such as the increasingly integrated world economy, the related global information infrastructure, (used mostly by an elite few), and individuals, who are both recipients and participants in the globalization process. The globalization of modernity is linked to the localization of globality, and is related to Weber's notion of the division of life into separate spheres.

The global economy is a reality, and it is increasingly capitalist. It functions in a pattern of cyclical rhythms of expansion and contraction. Wallerstein's (1990) "world-system theory" is useful here. He views a "core" of modern nations that spread capitalism to "peripheries". But the multinational corporation is as much a central unit as the nation, for the corporation exports cultural products in exchange for exploitation of markets, labor power and resources. National governments aid corporations in the process of globalization by deregulating industries (including the communications industry).

As capitalism spreads, Wallerstein says, it naturally encounters political resistances of various sorts. But the system is flexible and allows for self-critiques, (including Marxist critique); it is able to adapt to a range of cultural "climates". When a nation or region becomes integrated into the system, a key question becomes, is this "modernization" or "Westernization"?

The "culture of capitalism," Wallerstein explains, is made up of "collective historical attempts to come to terms with the contradictions, the ambiguities, the complexities of the socio-political realities of this particular system" (1990:38). This includes the creation of the concept of "culture" itself, which denotes unchanging realities of certain groups of people amidst ceaseless change; within groups, it attempts to explain the inherent inequalities of the system.

Since creating culture is not neutral, its creation is an ideological battleground. The debate, Wallerstein says, has centered on a certain "master dichotomy" that underlies the oppositions of unity versus diversity, universal versus particular, humanity versus race, world versus nation, person versus men/women, and so on. But universalism and both racism and sexism, he says, are symbiotic; they strike a necessary balance, and each ideology tries to account for the contradictions of capitalism.

This concurs with Antonio Gramsci's belief that culture and ideology are alternatives to state violence. He goes further to say that such ideology is a creation of bourgeois society to defuse the radicalism of workers, a form of capitalist domination (1971). This critique, however, fails to account for the fact that there are a variety of different national cultures which are capitalist. We must go beyond such econmic-based theories to explore how (or if) capitalism homogenizes culturally.

This is where we reach the communications media, which serve, most often, as the informational infrastructure for multinational corporations. Because they are owned by corporations, the media promote, protect and extend corporate capitalism. Successive communications practices (such as production, advertising, market research and public relations) and technologies (such as computing, data analysis, satellites, etc.) advance these goals. Cheap, reliable communication has become a necessity for the modern corporation. Herbert Schiller adds that agencies like the CIA "stabilize" the spread of the capitalist system, with such enterprises as the Voice of America, and more covert means (1976:19-23).

Anthony Smith notes that there is a shift underway from ownership of means of communication to ownership of information, or, we may say, from "hardware" to "software". But before discussing "software" we must look at how the communications structure itself affects the communication process. The focus is on the electronic media, and especially television, because of its omnipresence and its perceived role as the main "agent" of cultural transmission.

Here the work of Marshall McLuhan serves as a good starting point. His notion that the "medium is the message" is well-known. But Mark Poster (1990) goes further, arguing that McLuhan's theory views subjects as passive, perceiving beings, not as active, interpreting ones. Poster defines "media" as communications systems that have an unknown group receivers, an abstract audience. As centers of information that distribute "discourses and images to a broad public," they are similar to Foucault's notion of the "universal intellectual" (Poster 1990:44).

The history of communications, he says, can be viewed "as a totalizing, continuous, progressive evolution" of successive "modes of information" stretching from oral, to written, to electronically mediated forms (1990:83). This conception is drawn from Marx's modes of production. Each successive mode marginalizes the previous ones, or forces them to adapt by specializing.

Because written texts, with their linear arrangement of words, encourage critical thinking, they have been fundamental to "modern" values of rationality, freedom, equality, and so on. With electronically mediated communication, spatial and temporal distances lose their organizing power over information (1990:85). Carolyn Marvin argues, however, that the history of the media

She gives an excellent example of how the telephone extended the boundaries of who could speak to whom, and changed modes of courtship. Joshua Meyrowitz adds that the media mix audiences normally kept separate by institutional structures (1985:314). Thus electronic communications constitute new language experiences simply by virtue of electrification.

New technologies that are, as Marvin says, "intended to streamline, simplify, or otherwise enhance the conduct of familiar social routines may so reorganize them that they become new events" (1988:190). These new "wrappings of language" impose new relations between science and power, the state and individual, the individual and community, consumers and retailers, laws and norms, and so on. The subject becomes destabilized, his or her vantage point multiplied, dispersed, decontextualized and re-identified (Poster 1990:14-15). We have become nomads who wander across the globe without moving (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and the body is no longer a limit. Communications systems extend our range of experience.

But we must ask, are media the most important elements in the spread of cultural products, and what kind of products do they carry? The centrality of the media is often assumed, and often exaggerated. This is because they are the most visible of communications structures, and so are obvious targets of criticism. An ongoing debate centers around whether they reflect or shape culture. Also, this model assumes the existence of the modern American media structure, with, for instance, thirty-plus TV channels. This may be seen as an "ideal type," always progressing, fragmenting and homogenizing simultaneously.

The cultural imperialism critique often views the mere availability of Western cultural products as a type of domination. A useful perspective in this regard is Richard Dawkins's (1976) "meme theory". Dawkins uses genetic evolution as a metaphor for the spread of cultural items, which he calls "memes" (from the Greek root for "memory"). A meme can be any idea, bit of music, invention, or anything human-created. "Cultural variation begins when new memes arise as ideas, actions, or perceptions of outside events. Selection among variant memes, and retention of the selected ones, also involves a more or less conscious evaluation and investment of attention. And so does the transmission of the retained meme" (Csikszentmihalyi 1988:115).

A "good" meme, Dawkins says, has some kind of psychological appeal; it helps one cope with the world (physical or social). Such memes become internalized, and may in fact change the brain's physical structure. To be successful, they must not only survive in a book or object, but affect people's consciousness. Successful memes survive for generations, especially when the intellectual "climate" facillitates them.

But memes can, according to the theory, go against human biological "nature" and multiply on their own. For example, people create new technologies (including communications technologies) simply for their own sake, without realizing the potential effects. The effects are what Adam Ferguson called "the results of human action but not human design." (in Hayek 1967:96)

From this perspective, an act by an individual in one part of the world can, with the aid of electronic communications, have all sorts of unintended effects in other areas. And when individuals choose certain memes, if a particular variety (like American cultural ideas on TV) is more numerous, than the individual will be more likely to choose from that type. So charges of "dumping" American TV shows cheaply in other countries presuppose that viewers will watch them and adopt certain American "memes" or ideas.

Let us now look at just what information is carried on the media. "Information" in general has become a priviledged term in modern society, as Poster observes. It is presented as essential to survival, and the "informed" individual is a new social ideal (1990:7).

The type of information carried on a medium depends on its politico-economic infrastructure. To put it simplistically, content can be "dictated" by a state-run media organization, or it can be "chosen" by audiences. In the vernacular of advertising, information is given that either is "good for you" or "tastes good". The British Broadcasting Company (BBC), funded by taxes, selects programming that it feels viewers ought to pay attention to. This system exists in many countries, but has, in many (including the U.K.), been supplemented with the second, audience-driven system, the commercial model. In the latter system, audience considerations are said to determine a large part of the content. The rest, such as news, are required by the government as part of a station's "community service" obligation, although this, too is weakening as more stations are added via new technologies. The American system is supported by advertising, and as global media take shape, so too is global advertising, as we will see shortly.

The function of the TV ad is to influence viewers' behavior by employing words, images and symbols in the unique form of the language of the media. The effectiveness of an ad's message depends on repetition; this is what marketers call "impressions," and the more the better. The TV ad is so successful at manipulating disjointed symbols and words that it is now used for political campaigns, military recruitment, religious donations and "public service" messages. It serves as the main feature of the means of life regulation known as consumerism. Ads are so important that nearly all commercial television programming except news is chosen only in order to attract viewers to them.

The shift, in the West, to the "consumer society" early in this century has been well-documented. Lears and Fox attribute the shift to a desire for "self-fulfillment and immediate gratification" (1983:xii). The shift is viewed in a Marxist framework as a spread of consumerist activities from the bourgeois elite down to "the masses" as a means of political control. Whether or not this is the case, it is true that "consumers" constantly survey and discipline themselves, and even define themselves by and through a discourse of goods.

Media audiences, in turn, are commodified. "And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend" (Lippmann 1922:324). The science of demographics which arose in the 19th century is comparable to that of criminology, a facet of Foucault's notion of "bio-power" (1984: 257-290). In prisons, the ideal of the "Panopticon" would allow authorities to dissect the criminal's mind, and the criminal would come to accept the authority of the norm while under constant surveillance. But in consumer society, Poster argues, the omnipresent media make possible a "Superpanopticon," a system of innumerable mirrors from which the indivudual cannot escape.

The science of "market research" quantifies and categorizes every individual into a "market segment" or "lifestyle group" that corporations "target". The multiplying circuits of communication allow for "an accumulation and centralization of knowledge" (Poster 1990:93). Unlike the Panopticon, the Superpanopticon is a success, and without the need for walls or guards. Foucault claimed that authority operates on powers that already exist in a population, and marketers echo this with the claim that they don't create new needs, only appeal to ones that are already present or latent.

The fragmentation of consumers into market segments was followed by the fragmentation of the media, with the aid of new technologies. (There are now all-commercial TV channels from which viewers can order directly). Now underway is the fragmentation of cultures, which have become intimately linked to communications structures. I believe it is accurate to say that capitalism promotes such fragmentation.

But this parallels a process of homogenization, and this, too, can be traced to the profit motive of corporations. In the quest for profit or "market share," multinational corporations are becoming global corporations. In advertising, they address demographic groups which are deemed similar the world over, and to keep costs as low as possible, the ads ideally should be the same everywhere. Therefore, such corporations have an interest in promoting the concept of a unitary global culture: it is more profitable.

The most visible corporate proponent of globalism is Coca-Cola. With a long-standing goal to make its products within "an arm's reach of desire," Coke gets some 80% of its profits from abroad (Cohen 1991). Its products have become symbols of America. According to Dorfmann and Mattelart, "Behind the Coca Cola [name] stands a whole superstructure of expectations and models of behaviour, and with it, a particular kind of present and future society and an interpretation of the past" (1975:97).

Coke's primary audience is the "global teenager." In the words of Coke's director of global marketing, "The same kid you see at the Ginza in Tokyo is in Piccadilly Square in London, in Pushkin Square, at Notre Dame" (in Lev 1991). This assumption becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophesy: if such a global teen doesn't yet exist, such global advertising is likely to create it. The company is just launching a single ad campaign to run simultaneously in 100 countries.

Let us now turn to the content of the commercial media, which is intended to attract audiences to ads, and which is often charged with being infused with consumerism as well. As previously noted, this content doesn't simply flow to passive audiences; the audiences in turn decide what programming reaches them.

For the television networks, this is a very unscientific process where only one rule seems to hold: "Nothing succeeds like success." That is to say, when a popular concept is hit upon, it is imitated until all possible profit can be milked from it; or elements of several popular concepts are recombined in a different context. Audience testing and research determines which program concepts will make it on "the schedule". So the line between audience and source is blurred (Gitlin 1985:19-56).

This recalls Foucault's belief that the concept of an "author" as the center of meaning is a limiting function of discourse. It is true that subjects must construct meaning from the available alternatives, but as the sheer number of decontextualized images and symbols grows, it becomes more and more difficult to refer to a single "author".

Kroker and Cook (1988) have an interesting take on this theme. They follow Baudrillard in saying that society mirrors television, not vice versa. Reality has become a "hyperreality" in which the medium and the real are nebulous, and truth is undecipherable. The effect appears to increase with advances in technology.

This would seem to concur with Dawkins's meme theory, since any idea, from "reality" or "hyperreality," could be chosen by an individual to retain in memory. Walter Freeman's recent (1991) neurobiological research appears to establish a biological basis for this. He has found that individuals' brains transform sensory images into conscious perceptions differentially, based on each individual's lived experience. Memories are altered not only when they are formed, but also when they are recalled. So an "unreal" image or idea -- even a lie -- can easily become transformed into a believable "truth" to an individual.

Television shows a vast array of disjointed images, events and symbols, many which might never otherwise be seen by many people; this includes scenes of private grief and vice. The medium breaks down the distinction between public and private, between real and unreal, and has the effect of altering cultural bounds. To Baudrillard, visibility is obscenity:

I will now address some specific content examples: the news, Disney cartoons, and the dramatic series Dallas. These are chosen merely because they have been previously researched; I will supplement them with other, more contemporary examples.

Newspapers, Richard Terdiman notes, were the first medium to switch from linear, contextualized analysis to a grouping of decontextualized information, organized under the convention of "objectivity". Broadcast news multiplies this effect, combining a mishmash of disjointed facts, figures, faces and other images in an "objective" simulation of truth. Despite claims of objectivity, the process is inherently political, as for example with images of the Vietnam war, and the effect they had in the U.S. (They were probably not the cause of discontent, but exacerbated it; see Hallin 1986.)

In the globalization process, there would presumably be more -- and more diverse -- news organizations available. But on the contrary, there are fewer and fewer, with Western ones coming to dominate. This lends ammunition to the cultural imperialism argument, especially when the Cable News Network (CNN) is considered. Because of its increasing global reach, CNN has come to be an instrument of governments (especially that of the U.S.) to set foreign policy.

This was evident during the recent Persian Gulf conflict. But do Western news organizations necessarily transmit Western values to viewers? The probable answer is yes, but not consciously. Herbert Gans (1980), in his study of American national news organizations, found that American journalists tend to share the same "enduring values," which include ethnocentrism; the ideals of "altruistic democracy" and "responsible capitalism"; a preference for "small-town pastoralism"; individualism; and moderatism. These themes come through in the selection and presentation of stories, in the way events are "framed," and in the language of reporters and anchors.

It can immediately be seen that these are central values of American democratic capitalism in general. Therefore, we may tentatively conclude that they are not necessarily transmitted deliberately by Western news programs, but are attatched to the spread of global capitalism.

Similar values have been identified in Disney cartoons by Dorfman and Mattelart (1975). The authors contend that the innocent, wholesome facade of Disney characters hides their underlying "purpose" as tools of American imperialism, and the themes of Disney cartoons serve to naturalize and normalize the social relations of capitalism. The themes include: