glocalisation 2014
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GLOCALISATION
Understanding local appropriations
Today
Introducing cultural pluralism
Social media and cultural diversity
The stubbornness of the local
Active audiences and cultural change
Global forms, local content
Our Progress
The existence of globalisation is predicated on increasingly intensified interactions between geographically distant populations
We have positioned the developed of a corporatised global communications network at the core of this process
This system has propagated the spread of certain hegemonic images, practices and values
The Situation
The idea of globalisation as a singular force suggests that particular localities have the power to change local cultures
Conversely, communication is not a one-way process: local people are attached to their cultural practices and are able to actively interpret and challenge media content
Importantly, the continuing development of the global communications system has produced a much wider capacity for the engagement of these local interpretations
Today’s question
“Does the intensification of virtual contacts between geographically
diverse peoples result in a convergence of cultures?”
Cultures, Unleased
Marshall McLuhan (1964, p.5) in Understanding Media
“As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree. It is this implosive factor that alters the position of the Negro, the teen-ager, and some other groups. They can no longer be contained, in the political sense of limited association. They are now involved in our lives, as we in theirs, thanks to the electric media.”
Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism occurs when local (or minority) cultural identities are able to co-exist within larger cultural forces
Cultural pluralism does not assume an equality of cultures, but an equality of potential expression
This potential equality of expression has been facilitated by plural forms of media
Media pluralism
Media pluralism emphasises both the existence and importance of a plurality of media sources
It positions the centralised, and commercialised, ownership of global media as the cause that results in global homogeneity
A plurality of media sources and forms protects local cultures and freedom of expression
The internet, particularly in its non-commercial aspects, has allowed for the expression of previously unheard voices.
Find as many
explanations for the disappearance of flight
MH370 as possible
The plurality of social media
The internet promotes cultural pluralism because it allows for collective audience participation and interpretation, as opposed to ‘top down’ ideologies and journalism
This participation can be facilitated through forums and chat rooms
The primary mechanism, however, has been the development of social media
Establishing connections
Facebook and other social media appear to embody the potential of McLuhan’s ‘Global Village’
Social media allow for the conglomeration of user interests through user participation
Despite being corporately owned, social media rely encourage the inclusion of marginalised voices into the public sphere
Here the strongest threat to cultural pluralism is state control, rather than the profit motive
The local on a global scale
The rise of the internet and social media is certainly a global phenomena
Nonetheless, it is how local users engage with the technology that matters
Social media networks are often local and diverse voices may not necessarily connect with each other
What proportion of your social media connections are from your local
culture?
Does your social media use expose
you to other cultures?
Does ‘virtual’ friendship have the
same impact as other forms?
Digitalising the news
News media has often focused on bringing global news to local consumers
The move from print to digital media has allowed for a more global reach, and input, from consumers
Satellite television has had a similar reach without the same potential for audience participation
While digital news media has created a more global news, it tends to be consumed by a narrow cultural audience
Commercialising the global
Local newspapers have had limited success in attracting global advertisers, although information or ‘community of interest’ sites have a more global audience
Consumption might be increasingly global, but consumers remain local and so does advertising and thus content
Television is better able to adapt commercial models to local markets, although newspapers are attempting to adapt and conglomerate news sites are able to create more niche markets
It is also worth noting that some messages and modes of globalisation remain hegemonic
Where does the news media
you consume originate from?
Would you select your source depending on the type of
news?
The stubbornness of the local
Despite the availability of global cultural influences, for many people the most meaningful cultural interactions are locally orientated
Cultural identities and practices and not just constructions but are emotional attachments
As a consequence, local culture is not only resistant to change, but is the primary mechanism through which we see the world
Beyond the national
Globalisation has strongly challenged the nation-state and local homogeneity
Groups of people may share cultures beyond national boundaries through alternative attachments
These attachments and global networks have been made possible by digital media, in particular satellite television and social media
Returning to territory
Conversely, there is strong local (often nationalist or religious) resistance to the influence of global cultures
Globalisation is sometimes said to have provoked a ‘crisis of national identity’, resulting in a push to return to local cultural practices
Stronger (fundamentalist) alternative communities are developing in resistance to globalisation
A number of countries are either enforcing a local media quota or encouraging local production
Local content
In 2012 China lifted its limit on foreign films from 20 to 34
Many Western nations, including Australia, New Zealand and the UK have significant funding and quotas for local media
Of course, the success of these programmes is based on local demand
Do you prefer to recognise your local
circumstances in your media consumption?
Making the global local
Local media quotas position local culture as homogenous
It assumes that there is a local culture that can be presented through media
Instead, through interactions with global influences, local cultures are constantly renegotiated
A large part of this process is the reappropriation of the global in terms of the local through audience appropriations
Local audiences
Whilst the global communications system produces structural tendencies, it does not directly control audiences
These audiences are inherently local and remain embedded within cultural traditions
Audiences may view the same media content but interpret and appropriate it in different ways
We are concerned with how people ‘use’ media and what they do with it at a cultural and an individual level
Interpretative audiences
Audience reception theory suggests that the meaning of a text is not inherent to that text
Instead it is produced through audience interpretations, which can be dominant, negotiated or oppositional
Audiences thus have some control over the influence of global media, but this control occurs within a framework that limits these options
Local cultural interpretations construct different varieties of ‘local globalism’
Hybridisation
Hybridisation is, according to Rowe and Schelling (1991, p.231, cited in Rantanen, p.93) ‘the way in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practice’
As noted in the previous seminar, globalisation is not so much a cultural imposition, but provokes cultural reinvention
Consequently, we see ‘hybrid’ cultures that are expressed in the media, such as in reality TV where a global concept is reinvented in local terms
A Postmodern World?
Hybridisation is an example of postmodern culture whereby meanings are detached from original forms The’ death of authenticity’
Through global media, cultures and individuals have the opportunity to take from traditions beyond their own
In this case, global cultures may become as ‘authentic’ as local traditions
In particular, traditional forms of attachment no longer have the same hold The end of grand narratives
Do you participate in any cultural practices
that originated elsewhere?
Indigenization
Arjun Appadurai (1998) defines indigenization as the local appropriation of global forces
Global media may appeal to local consumers, but they bring cultural traditions or ‘memories’
These ‘resources’ create differing interpretations and reproductions of culture, either through existing channels or by creating new ones
Conversely, corporate global media also appropriate this process
Concentration of Film Production
Source: UNESCO, INTERNATIONAL BLOCKBUSTERS TO NATIONAL HITS ANALYSIS OF THE 2010 UIS SURVEY ON FEATURE FILM STATISTICS
How has indigenization occurred through media
in your area?
Glocalisation
Glocalisation describes the process of adapting products for local markets
Glocalisation occurred as capitalism sought to be more flexible in its approach to global consumers
This allows for the reproduction of the commodity form through the appropriation of local content
Is this local or global?
Local culture, global commodities
Herman and McChesney (1997, p.8-9 in Rantanen, p.95) argue that globalisation does not mean more cultural sameness, just an extension of the ‘commercial model of communication’
This means that global media will adapt to local culture in order to generate profits
But this adaption is based on a profitable interpretation of the local
Commodifying relationships
Globalisation, particularly through media, has lead to much greater exposure to distant cultures
Conversely, that exposure occurs within a dominant political and economic paradigm
Working within this paradigm, global media tends to reduce ‘foreign’ cultures to their marketable and tangible qualities
Here the form of media influences the capacity of the audience to negotiate or oppose that text
Remembering local audiences
Audience demand, facilitated by media forms, drives the commercial production of media and culture
Audiences have the capacity to reject, reinterpret and reproduce media and culture itself
For this reason globalisation is reliant upon its response by the people it effects that is itself affected by larger cultural, economic and political changes
Yet, just as audience interpretations are limited by commercial structures, they are limited by the economic and political form in which they occur
Self-Summary
Has global media created an increasingly homogeneous global
culture?
Next Week
GLOBAL CRASHES, LOCAL LAUGHS: THE GLOBALISATION OF ENTERTAINMENT
CORE READING
Globalisation Of Popular Culture: From Hollywood To Bollywood. Jonathan Matusitz, Pam Payano. South Asia Research, July 2012
GROUP READING
Luckett, Moya (2003) ‘Postnational Television? Goodness Gracious Me and the Britasian Diaspora’ in Parks, Lisa and Kumar, Shanti (2003)
Planet TV. NYU press, Chapter 22.
BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS
Seminar: Beyond globalisation
Globalizations
Globalisation(s)
So far we have largely spoken of globalisation as a single process
Globalisation affects different peoples in different ways, and it is reproduced in different forms
That is, some forms of globalisation are more local than others, and some forms of localism are more global
Whilst this process has a strong economic and political dimension, it is also reliant upon the ability to produce and use media
p.395
“…globalization is a spontaneous, automatic, unavoidable and irreversible process which intensifies and advances according to an inner logic and dynamism strong enough to impose themselves on any external interferences. The fallacy consists in transforming the causes of globalization into its effects…”
From cause to effect
de Sousa Santos is arguing that we often confuse the process (its cause) with the results or effects
In the first two lectures we outlined the main causes of globalisations
But, does the creation of a global media system mean that the world is more likely to become increasingly culturally similar?
p.395
“In the light of these disjunctions and confrontations, it becomes clear that what we term globalization is, in fact, a set of different processes of globalization and, in the last instance, of different and sometimes contradictory globalizations. In these terms there is not, strictly speaking, one sole entity called globalization, instead there are globalizations; to be precise, this term should only be used in the plural .
As they are sets of social relationships, globalizations involve conflicts and, therefore, winners and losers. The dominant discourse on globalization is the history of the winners, told by the winners”
p.396
“Firstly, there is no originally global condition; what we call globalization is always the successful globalisation of a particular localism. In other words, there are no global conditions for which we cannot find local roots. The second implication is that globalisation presupposes localisation. The process that creates the global as the dominant position in unequal exchanges is the same one that produces the local as the dominated, and therefore hierarchically inferior, position. In fact, we live as much in a world of globalisations we live in a world of localisations”
Beyond globalisation
The author is arguing that different cultures experience globalisation differently
Our discussion of globalisation and media has focused more on the ‘winners’ of globalisation
Does social media have the potential to produce a more ‘even’ globalisation in which the voices of the ‘losers’ are more prominent?
What is the difference between ‘globalised localisms’ and ‘localised globalisms’?
Which term best describes your cultural experiences?