Glocalisation 2014

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?