Globalisation unchecked

Gurus like to celebrate globalisation, but what about its destruction of culture, asks Ramzy Baroud*

---

A Muslim family sits across from me in a café in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman hunches over, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV blazing MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her top song. Beyonce, dressed in less, reiterates that she is "a single lady". The old woman's son is mesmerised. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the cafe. The man's t-shirt reads: "What the fxxx are you looking at?"

I try to keep to myself, but it is difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even. The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and the provocative t- shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It's a side effect of globalisation that few wish to talk about. Trade, foreign investment, capital flow and all the rest, yes. But what about culture, identity, traditions and ways of life; do these things amount to anything?

True, globalisation has various manifestations. If viewed strictly in economic terms, its about trade barriers, protectionism and tariffs. Powerful countries demand others disassemble all trade barriers while maintaining protectionism at home. Smaller countries, knowing that they cannot do much, form their own economic clubs, hoping to negotiate fairer deals. The economic tug-of-war continues, between diplomacy and threats, dialogue and arm-twisting. With this side of globalisation most of us are familiar.

But there is another side of globalisation: cultural globalisation -- not necessarily the domination of a specific culture, in this case Western culture, over all the rest, but rather the unbridgeable disadvantage of poorer countries who lack the means to withstand the unmitigated takeover of their traditional ways of life by the dazzling, well-packaged and branded "culture" imparted upon them around the clock.

What audiences watch, read and listen to in most countries outside the Western hemisphere is not truly Western culture. It's a selective brand of a culture, a reductionst presentation of art, entertainment, news, and so on, as platforms to promote ideas that would ultimately sell products. It's all about things, tangible material values that can be obtained by that simple and final act of pulling out one's credit card. To sell a product, however, media also sell ideas, often one-sided, and create unjustifiable fascinations with ways of life that hardly represent natural progression for many vanishing cultures and communities around the world.

Recently in some Gulf country a few Turkish teenagers turned an Internet café into a shouting match as they engaged one another in a violent computer game. I desperately tried to mind my own business, but their shrieks of victory and defeat were deafening. "Kill the terrorist!" one of them yelled in English, with a thick Turkish accent. For a moment, he was an American, killing "terrorists" who bizarrely looked more Turkish than American. As I walked out, I glanced at the screen. Amongst the rubble, there was a mosque, or what was left of it.

There is nothing wrong with exchanges of ideas. Cultural interactions are historically responsible for many of the great advancements in art, science, language, even food and much more. But prior to globalisation, cultural influences were introduced at much slower speeds. Globalization of the media gives no chance for mulling anything over, for determining benefits or harms, or any sort of value analysis. News, music and even pornography are beamed directly to all sorts of screens and gadgets.

It makes little sense that Asian audiences are consumers of Fox News and Sky News while both are regarded as rightwing media platforms in their original markets. And what can Nepali television, for example, do to control media moguls and morphing media empires all around? Young people grow defining themselves according to someone else's standards, thus the Turkish teenager, temporarily adopting the role of the "American", blows up his own mosque.

Globalisation is not a fair game. Those with giant economies get the lion's share of collective decision-making. Those with money and global outlook tend to have influential media. In both scenarios, small countries are lost, desperately trying to negotiate a better economic standing for themselves while hopelessly trying to maintain their cultural identity.

The Muslim family eventually left the coffee shop. The husband watched MTV throughout his stay; the young wife, clicked endlessly on her iPhone, and the older woman glanced at the TV from time to time, then quickly looked the other way. A few years ago that family would have enjoyed an entirely different experience. Alas, a few years from today, they might not even sit at the same table.

* The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com.