It’s a new year – and a time to step back and reflect on some of the broader changes going on. My writing has increasingly focused on the implications of globalization from an economic and business perspective, but globalization also has profound social and cultural implications. We should all be worried about the risk of economic protectionism halting the process of globalization, but there is also a risk of cultural protectionism.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor at Princeton University, wrote an interesting article for the New York Times Magazine last Sunday on “The Case for Contamination.” (registration required) No, the article is not about environmental pollution, but instead it is a thoughtful defense of globalization from a social and cultural perspective.
Appiah makes the case that we must develop a new cosmopolitanism. He rejects efforts of cultural preservationists to block cultural change shaped by the process of globalization:
If we want to preserve a wide range of human conditions because it allows free people the best chance to make their own lives, we can’t enforce diversity by trapping people within differences they long to escape. . . Cultures are made of continuities and changes, and the identity of a society can survive through these changes. Societies without change aren’t authentic; they’re just dead.
He is particularly scathing in his critique of efforts to preserve an “authentic” culture:
Talk of authenticity now just amounts to telling other people what they ought to value in their own traditions . . . Trying to find some primordially authentic culture can be like peeling an onion. Traditional West African cloths arrived in the 19th century with the Javanese batiks sold, and often milled, by the Dutch.
Appiah recognizes that living cultures evolve:
Living cultures do not, in any case, evolve from purity into contamination; change is more a gradual transformation from one mixture to a new mixture, a process that usually takes place at some distance from rules and rulers, in the conversation that occur across cultural boundaries. Such conversations are not so much about arguments and values as about the exchange of perspectives.
Appiah’s article reminded me of the perspectives of two friends of mine who have a lot to say about globalization and cultural diversity. Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University has written Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures. It is a great book focusing on the impact of trade on cultures. Tyler discusses an interesting paradox: as trade spreads, diversity tends to increase within a society, even as cultures become more like each other. Tyler observes that:
The observed increases in homogeneity and heterogeneity are two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing processes. Trade, even when it supports choice and diverse achievement, homogenizes culture in the following sense: it gives individuals, regardless of their country, a similarly rich set of consumption opportunities. It makes countries or societies “commonly diverse” as opposed to making them different from each other. . . . Cross-cultural trade does not eliminate difference altogether, but, rather, it liberates difference from the constraints of place. . . . Ironically, individuals become more diverse only when their societies become more alike.
Tyler embraces the value of cosmopolitanism and, in particular, the value judgment that “poorer societies should not be required to serve as diversity slaves” (italics his). Citing Appiah among others, Tyler notes that “Third World writers have been some of the strongest proponents of a cosmopolitan multiculturalism.” Appiah also zeros in on the elitist assumptions of cultural protectionism:
Talk of cultural imperialism 'structuring the consciousness' of those in the periphery treats people . . . as blank slates on which global capitalism’s moving finger writes its message, leaving behind another cultural automaton as it moves on. It is deeply condescending. And it isn’t true.
Chandran Kukathas, a professor at the University of Utah, has written The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom. Chandran’s insightful book on political philosophy is not explicitly about the processes of globalization, but it offers a creative approach to governing societies marked by significant diversity. If we accept Tyler’s observation that cross-cultural trade increases individual diversity within societies, then Chandran’s perspectives take on added importance. If we cannot effectively govern across this diversity, we risk violent conflict. Chandran wrestles with the challenges of creating appropriate principles for a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties:
Liberalism is a doctrine about human freedom responding to a world of diversity and disagreement. The solution it presents to the problems posed by diversity is not a theory of how the many can be made one, but of how the many can coexist – since many of the many do not wish to be a part of the one. It advocates mutual toleration and thus peaceful coexistence. A liberal regime is a regime of toleration. It upholds norms of toleration not because it values autonomy but because it recognizes the importance of the fact that people think differently, see the world differently, and are inclined to live – or even think they must live – differently from the way others believe they should. It upholds toleration because it respects liberty of conscience. It upholds toleration by protecting freedom of association so people can live as they think they should – as conscience dictates.
Appiah, Cowen and Kukathas certainly have their own differences, but they all focus on understanding social and cultural diversity and its implications for how we conduct our economic and political affairs. Business executives ignore these issues at their own peril.
To continue to benefit from the processes of globalization, we must resist both economic and cultural protectionism. The most potent resistance to globalization will ultimately come from the convergence of these two forces. Rather than recognizing the value of flows of trade and ideas, these forces seek to preserve the status quo. In the process, they foster a zero-sum view of the world - the gains of one party inevitably come at the expense of the losses of another party.
In contrast, we must strive to understand how the economic forces of globalization re-shape and strengthen diversity. By adopting a more dynamic view of these forces, we can begin to see the potential for positive sum outcomes, where all benefit from enhanced access to resources and markets. Static views of diversity inevitably build walls. Dynamic views of diversity help us to see the pathways towards growth and expanding options, not only as firms, but as individuals.
Note the following articles about The Dark Side of Energy Saving Light Bulbs. They tell a story behind the story of Globalization and Free Trade.
Click on http://www.phillyfuture.org/node/5298 and http://www.phillyfuture.org/node/5297
Posted by: Ray Tapajna | October 02, 2007 at 02:01 PM
Good post. Dynamic is exactly right.
Culture is never a static thing. In can be in slow-changing normal controversy, or fast-changing revolutionary remodeling, things are always changing.
Culture isn't a "thing" so much as a "process." We just call it a thing because it is like the magic clouds in powerpoint presentations http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/21/globalization-is-water-the-magic-cloud.html , where we see its effects but not how it works.
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | January 03, 2006 at 10:40 AM