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Network Power
Indeed, while this convergence in ways of thinking and living may extend to influence cultural forms like music or food, it need not necessarily do so. It is striking that in this moment of global integration producing massive convergence in economic, linguistic, and institutional standards, we should be so worried about restaurant chains and pop music, neglecting much more significant issues. Famously, Sigmund Freud argued that nationalist rivalries between neighboring countries reflected the "narcissism of minor differences," a pathological focus on relatively trivial distinctions driven by the desire to keep at bay an anxiety-provoking recognition of fundamental sameness.
That is from David Singh Grewal's Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization, one of the most interesting books on cultural globalization in recent years. He uses the ideas of social networks and peer effects to argue that widespread cultural convergence is occurring, most of all in ways of life. Here is the book's home page.
There is much wrong in the central thesis. "Ways of thinking" may be less diverse across countries (France is more like Germany than it used to be) but ways of thinking are now much more diverse within countries and in fact within the world as a whole. What's so special about having diversity distributed according to geographic or political criteria? Once you get over the geography fetish, many of the author's main mechanisms don't hold up as accounts of growing sameness of ways of life and thinking. Has the author spent much time poking around Second Life?
Nor is he capable of simply coming out and saying that lots of countries in the world *ought* to be doing more to emulate Anglo-American ways of thinking.
The following claim is also questionable:
To reshape or reduce the power that the social structures we create have over us, we can only summon the organized power of politics. The large-scale voluntarism of sociability, by contrast, has always delivered the most varied and elaborate forms of individual subjugation.
Cranky Tyler is about to come out of his shell, so maybe it is time to end this post. It's still a book worth reading and thinking about.
On a not totally unrelated topic, here is a good post on babies and globalization.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 18, 2008 at 05:28 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
This is only tangentially related, but I thought I'd share it... Here in Sana'a, Yemen, there are only a few American restaurants and they are clustered together. There is a KFC, a Pizza Hut, and a Baskin Robbins in this group. If you go there, you'll notice something, the customers all almost all locals. Foreigners don't go there very often. I assume that the foreigners already know about the quality of the food... Anyway, one day some friends and I were walking near them and an Australian friend said, "You Americans, you ruin everything..." She was only partly joking. I responded, "Yes we do. But curiously, we ruin things by bringing things that are really popular to places..."
I've never understood the angst that people feel about "cultural imperialism." If people like like it, that's their business, and companies should be rewarded for offering services that people like.
Isaac Crawford
Blogging in Yemen
www.isaharr.com
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at May 18, 2008 5:46:24 AM
but ways of thinking are now much more diverse within countries and in fact within the world as a whole.
What is this based on? For all I know it could be true. Or not. It is definitely not obvious.
Isaac on cultural imperialism: Try writing a job application in a language that is not your own.
Posted by: GreatZamfir at May 18, 2008 8:05:57 AM
it is time for Cranky Tyler to come out of his shell.
Posted by: chug at May 18, 2008 8:08:20 AM
The future is far more likely to bring cultural fragmentation than cultural convergence. It's already happening. Long tails, cheap telecom, satellite TV and the Internet mean that subcultures that would quickly die out in the past from solitude can now readily have access to kindred spirits across the globe and relevant cultural goods. In the past, diasporas took deep commitment to sustain; already today, however, scattered global communities of fans or enthusiasts or practictioners are becoming the norm. Many people are in a sense cultural expatriates, physically living in one community but culturally participating in other, perhaps virtual, communities.
The rise of English as a global lingua franca actually accelerates this cultural fragmentation rather than reversing it, by enabling people to reach out to and participate in global virtual communities and subcultures rather than restricting their search for community to their physical neighbors and local cultural practices.
When people gather together around the proverbial "water cooler" (these days, it's more likely coffee or a designated outdoor smoking area), they find they have fewer and fewer common reference points to talk about: the weekend's hit movies and perhaps major sports events, and precious little else. They are far more likely to participate in cultural conversations in Internet chat rooms or message boards tailored to their interests.
A major side effect of the decline in TV newcasts and newspapers and the rise of blogging is that soon we will no longer even agree on what's news: one person's headline story will be something another person has never even heard of.
This will only accelerate if telecommuting and the "death of distance" eventually break the link between where you live and where you work. Automobiles already did that to some extent by creating suburban bedroom communities, but taken to a logical extreme, we might see self-segregation of physical communities: cities or even countries might become patchworks of subcultural neighborhoods (similar to today's Chinatowns, gay villages, Hasidic communities, etc. only far more varied).
This seems likely, becasue modern-day mistrust of immigrants and de facto self-segregation of neighborhoods along ethnic or racial lines suggest that people have a limited willingness to accept within their midst other people they can't relate to. Unless there is some sort of backlash to enforce greater cultural conformity (similar to the World War I suppression of German-language schooling in English-speaking countries), a certain physical self-segregation seems a likely long-term outcome. There may be some bumps along the way.
Posted by: at May 18, 2008 8:24:29 AM
however, scattered global communities of fans or enthusiasts or practictioners are becoming the norm. Many people are in a sense cultural expatriates, physically living in one community but culturally participating in other, perhaps virtual, communities.
You seem to claim that Star Trek fans are a separate cultural group in a weaker but similar way as local Chinese communities, or the Jewish diaspora. I find that dubious. Or am I picking a particularly bad example for your thesis?
Posted by: Great Zamfir at May 18, 2008 9:18:21 AM
ways of thinking are now much more diverse within countries
Are they? I grant you that skin colour is now more diverse within countries. That gives increased cognative diversity only if brown people really do think differently to white ones.
Posted by: ad at May 18, 2008 9:19:40 AM
But Cranky Tyler is so funny!
Posted by: Jacqueline at May 18, 2008 9:48:24 AM
You seem to claim that Star Trek fans are a separate cultural group in a weaker but similar way as local Chinese communities, or the Jewish diaspora.
For a small minority of them, they may well be. There was the case a few years ago of a woman who insisted on showing up for jury duty in a Star Trek uniform. And at least a few of the folks who listed their religion as "Jedi" in recent census forms probably weren't kidding.
The point is simply that the pressures to assimilate are much less, and the barriers to entry for the creation and thriving of subcultures are much lower. Many of these subcultures may seem trivial or prove ephemeral, but the end result is large numbers of people spending the better part of their time and mental energy participating in something other than a recognizable and cohesive mainstream culture. This is the opposite of convergence.
Posted by: at May 18, 2008 10:22:33 AM
at, I think you have an interesting view, but I do not share it. My main problem is that self-selected subcultures are qualtitatively different from cultures. The people within a subculture share characteristics, because they chose a group they resembled, and because they conciously adopt manners from the group.
Cultural differences go much deeper, they have a lot to do with a shared childhood, with upbringing, with the resulting assumptions you make about people, about their values, their knowledge.
If I were to meet a Dutch Trekkie wearing a uniform, I would immediately be able to guess, quite accurately, whether it's a joke or serious, how weird it exactly is, if it is costing him friends, how his parents think about wearing that uniform, and probably what he thinks of the A-Team. For an American Trekkie, it would be harder, and might require some questions. If I were to meet a Korean Trekkie, I would have no idea. For all I know, wearing a fan uniform could be an old tradition on holidays, going back to ancient Korean theater.
If Star Trek fans start homeschooling their children in Trekkie style, then I can see it turning into somthing resembling a distinct culture.
Posted by: Great zamfir at May 18, 2008 1:44:50 PM
"ways of thinking are now much more diverse within countries and in fact within the world as a whole"
I find it odd that you think this, because ever since rereading Jane Austen as adult, I have been under the impression that we have lost diversity of thought, not gained it. It seems to me that there was a time when every village and town had a unique "way of thinking", whereas in our world of common information sources this is much less true.
Don't know how we'll ever establish which view is correct -- one way or the other.
Posted by: cs at May 24, 2008 6:07:47 PM
globalaiztion is only the progressive realization of interconnectedness ... the first model? nature
Posted by: gregory at May 27, 2008 12:39:54 AM
