Despite
the development of a global telecommunication infrastructure
such as the Internet and communication satellites that
have, needless to say, increased the flow of information
between geographically remote locations and done away
with the politics of boundaries in order to disseminate
a universal version of knowledge and reality, one looks
askance at scholars and observers who underscore the
global homogenization of culture or those who see globalization
as paving the way for a set of universal values. These
scholars who adumbrate that the essence of globalization
is its homogenizing dimension, imply that globalization
is motivated by its overarching universal program to
legitimize certain cultures and knowledges and suppress
oppositional knowledges for the sake of augmenting power.
But then, the culture that we perceive around us is
more of a celebration of plurality or heterogeneity,
rather than of specificities. It is then that we begin
to realize that globalization, far from involving a
loss of cultural diversity, has the potential to lead
to pluralist notions of culture and identity. Hence,
this paper is a modest attempt to establish how globalization
contributes to the development and evolution of a national/local
cultural identity, and how this cultural purity, in
turn, emerges as an oppositional force to the unitary
process of globalization, especially against the backdrop
of postmodern and postcolonial perspectives, which are
the artistic analogues and expressions of fragmentation
and discontinuity with any universal or totalizing theory.
The
Encyclopedia Britannica defines globalization as
"the process by which the experience of everyday
life is becoming standardized around the world".
(Wadia and Anand, 2005, p. 169). This definition, as
one understands it, suggests that globalization helps
to shape our relationship with the world, and hence,
ties it up, i.e., ties up globalization with modernity.
Anthony Giddens stresses the deterritorialization of
globalization when he defines it as "the intensification
of worldwide social relations which link distant local
ties in such a way that local happenings are shaped
by events occurring many miles away" (Giddens,
1990, p. 64). Mostly scholars and observers corroborate
Giddens' definition when they too see it as a process
of homogenization, since it thrives, as they say, on
an increasing connectivity and interdependence in the
economic, technological and cultural spheres. To substantiate
this unitary process of globalization, they refer to
the variety of cross-border transactions and the widespread
diffusion of technology. |
