Culture and Diversity in the 21st CenturyCulture and Diversity in the 21st Century

How Globalization is Changing Local Life Prof. Eriberto P. Lozada Jr.Dept. of Anthropology, Davidson College (USA)复旦大学社会发展公共政策学院

My Research InterestsMy Research Interests• China specialist, who has lived and worked in Japan, Korea – as a

sociocultural anthropologist, I look at the impact of globalization on a variety of social, political, and cultural levels

• Religion and PoliticsDid fieldwork in a Hakka Catholic (客家天主教) village in Guangdong, Meizhou

(广东省梅州市) between 1993-2001• Food, Popular Culture, and Globalization

Did fieldwork in Beijing (1993-1995) and rural Guangdong on fast food consumption and other elements of popular culture

• Social and Cultural Impact of ScienceDid fieldwork in Shanghai (1999-2007) on popular uses of technology

(computers and the internet, photography) and other issues in science and technology studies; science fiction (科幻) studies

• Sports and Civil SocietyRecent research project, started in 2001; fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai

(soccer, baseball).• Diaspora Ethnicity

Research on Hakka ethnicity, Chinese diaspora; Asian-Americans• Chinese Economic Development in Africa

New project, based in Ghana, looking at the activities of Chinese government-funded projects and Chinese companies

Anthropology and the Study of Cultural Diversity

Anthropology and the Study of Cultural Diversity

• anthropology – the holistic study of human beings, focusing on social structures and cultural practices and symbols;

• sister discipline to sociology, but with focus on participation-observation fieldwork

• cultural relativity: no one culture is “better” than another; not moral relativity, but “critical cultural relativism”

• anthropology as “the comparative study of common sense, both in its cultural forms and in its social effects”; the difficulty is in determining what is “common” and what makes something make sense

Definitions of CultureDefinitions of Culture

• The Classic Definition: Culture...taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society. (E.B. Tylor)

• Culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns - customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters -as has, by and large, been the case up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions -for the governing of behavior. (C. Geertz)

What is globalization?What is globalization?• not globalism: “an essentially

impossible condition that is said to prevail when people the world over share a homogenous, mutually intelligible culture” (Watson 1997:7) -- the global village

• not just transnationalism: “a condition by which people, commodities, and ideas literally cross national boundaries and are not identified with a single place of origin” (Watson 1997:11)

• not just internationalism (between nations) ormultinationalism (located in more than one nation)

Why is it important for our students to understand globalization

Why is it important for our students to understand globalization

• importance of globalization in our everyday life

• post-9/11 political security: Jihad vs. McWorld

• economic impact at the local level, on both production and consumption

• migration – both immigration and emigration

• popular culture• multiculturalism and

American society – melting pot, salad, or stew?

Changing American DemographicsChanging American Demographics

• “melting pot” – assimilation of immigrant population into the culture of the dominant society

• “tossed salad” – recognition of multicultural composition of a society;

• “stew” - where the different ingredients help make the other ingredients what they have become; ethnicity as co-constitutive, in dialogue

• White Americans – the descendants of the older European migrations – are now a declining proportion of the American population.

Majority MinoritiesMajority Minorities• In 1900, 90% of Americans

were non-Hispanic whites, with just over half of that of English ancestry

• By 2042, non-Hispanic whites will become a minority of the US population

• Major reason for demographic shift is not due to immigration, but differential birthrates

• demographers have also estimated that foreign-born Americans (in 2008, 12%) sill surpass the historic high of 15% in 1910, to as much as 20% in 2050

Reality of American Ethnic DiversityReality of American Ethnic Diversity

• “Their zip code area, like the entire state, was 30 percent nonwhite, mostly Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, and African American, and 20 percent foreign-born. … A neighbor on one side of Esetaand Manu’s house was Euro-American, replacing an Iranian immigrant family which had left. El Salvadorans lived on the other side, and their boy was a close friend of Lio Jr’s. Esetabought fruit from the “Chinese ladies”; Maliaworked for an eastern European immigrant; Mexican vendors sold migrants their Tongan food; “friend” mentioned at work included Americans of Europe, Filipino, Central American, and Japanese descent”. (Cathy Small 1997:69)

MulticulturalismMulticulturalism• a form of identity politics that

asserts that cultural diversity is important; movement for change that challenges the cultural hegemony of the dominant ethnic group

• linked closely to “structural assimilation” – minority groups gaining access to various opportunities (such as college admission)

• problem of reifying culture –assumes homogeneity within an ethnic group

• problem of objectifying culture –marks certain practices, clothing, etc. as markers of ethnicity, reinforcing stereotypes

• problem of emphasizing boundaries between ethnic groups and can prevent bridging efforts

“Journey to China 2006” group that I took to Shanghai and Xinyu,Jiangxi in February

So what’s happening in America?So what’s happening in America?• Robert Putnam concludes that Americans are

increasingly isolating themselves from each other; we are still bowling alone, even as our communities become more diverse

• contact hypothesis; as we meet different people and get to know them, we begin to trust them (aka, the Kumbayaapproach)

• conflict hypothesis; as we meet different people, we begin to fragment and trust people who look like us (aka, the Crash approach)

• Putnam concludes instead that as diversity increases, then people are trusting no-one – either people who are like us or are different from us

• The problem is in defining not us-them, but “we” (who we are as Americans)

Kumbaya and Crash are not Putnam, but Gregory Rodriguez (LA Times)

Slides from PutnamSlides from Putnam

From Putnam 2007:147

Slides from PutnamSlides from Putnam

From Putnam 2007:150

Different theoretical models of globalization

Different theoretical models of globalization

• cultural imperialism: a new form of exploitation that results from the export of popular culture from the West to other parts of the world; more current way of talking about this is in the idea of “soft power”(see political scientist Joseph Nye)

• Jihad vs. McWorld – Benjamin Barber: “the future is a busy portrait of onrushing economic, technological, and economic forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize peoples everywhere with fast music, fast computers, and fast food – MTV, Macintosh, McDonald’s – pressing nations into one homogeneous global theme park, one McWorld tied together by communications, information, entertainment, and commerce

• Clash of civilizations – Sam Huntington: “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The class of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Jihad vs. McWorldJihad vs. McWorld• Jihad: “The phenomena to which I

apply the phrase have innocent enough beginnings: identity politics and multicultural diversity can represent strategies of a free society trying to give expression to its diversity. What ends as Jihad may begin as a simple search for a local identity, some set of common personal attributes to hold out against the numbing and neutering uniformities of industrial modernization and the colonizing culture of McWorld.”

• McWorld: “Music, video, theater, books, and theme parks - the new churches of a commercial civilization in which malls are the public squares and suburbs the neighborlessneighborhoods - are all constructed as image exports creating a common world taste around common logos, advertising slogans, stars, songs, brand names, jingles, and trademarks. Hard power yields to soft, while ideology is transmuted into a kind ofvideology that works through sound bites and film clips.”

What’s creating the social and cultural conditions of globalization?

What’s creating the social and cultural conditions of globalization?

• postmodernity: the fragmentation of culture and the loss of the metanarrative

• the Cold War: “the end of history” and theneoliberal victory

• technology: rapid advances in communication, changes in lifestyle, mobility of people

• interdependence: all problems are global, redefinitions of the local

PostmodernityPostmodernity

Modernity Postmodernity

production(engineers are central)

consumption(marketers are central)

Fordism flexible accumulation

unified culture(metanarrative)

fragmented culture(multiple narratives)

substance symbol

End of History?End of History?

• political scientist Francis Fukuyama• “What we may be witnessing is not just the end

of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy” (1989:4).

• evolutionary perspective on history and societies; this has been made more problematic by 9/11 and the issue of Islamic civil society

Soft Power or Cultural Imperialism?Soft Power or Cultural Imperialism?• soft power is power based on

culture, values, and ideology –intangible or indirect influences

• hard power is military and economic force

• “In short, we must win friends through the use of our "soft power" instead of relying solely on "hard power.“ Hard power works through coercion, using military sticks and economic carrots to get others to do our will. Soft power works through attraction. If we can persuade others to want what we want, we save having to spend on expensive carrots and sticks.”(Nye article in LA Times, Feb 17 2003)

Technology and GlobalizationTechnology and Globalization• different cultural attitudes

towards bioethics, global warming

• alienation caused by new forms of communication (i.e., Putnam’s civic disengagement)

• rapidity of dissemination and diversity of news and information

• dangers of new technologies and new diseases (i.e., Avian flu,GMO’s)

Questions for students on globalizationQuestions for students on globalization

• Is globalization resulting in the development of a homogeneous world culture?

• If culture lies at the heart of current and future political conflict, is cultural homogeneity the source of peace?

• Are inequalities being eased or exacerbated by globalization?

Case Studies for StudentsCase Studies for Students• Anti-globalization (i.e.,

France’s Jose Bové, the Battle of Seattle)

• Food: McDonald’s in East Asia, sushi at the American baseball stadium

• Popular Culture: sports(World Cup Soccer, NBA), media (movies, the internet, television), leisure: Pokemon, Yu-gi-yoh, PlayStation

• What’s global in my …(retail store, computer, supermarket, etc.)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2102889,00.asp

ReferencesReferences

Barber, Benjamin 1992. Jihad vs. McWorld. The Atlantic Monthly269(3):53-65.

Fukuyama, Francis 1989. The End of History? The National Interest. 16(Summer 1989):3-18.

Huntington, Samuel 1993. The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs. 72(3):22-48.

Nye, Joseph 1990. Soft Power. Foreign Policy 80(Fall 1990):153-172.Putnam, Robert 2007. E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the

Twenty-First Century. Scandinavian Political Studies. 30(2):137-174._____ 1995. Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. Journal

of Democracy. 6(1):65-78.Watson, James L. 2000. China’s Big Mac Attack. Foreign Affairs.

79(3):120-134._____ ed. 1997. Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia.

Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Questions/Comments?Questions/Comments?

• email: erlozada@davidson.edu• web: http://www.davidson.edu/personal/erlozada