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Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:43 am**

chairman_hall wrote:
big_dave wrote:Except that it doesn't. Global interaction serves only to increase diversity in the face of the corporate singularity. Up until the twentieth century greater interaction meant greater diversity for immediate and obvious reasons, there is nothing to say that this has somehow been reversed since aside from our own guilt.

That almost everyone feels this way speaks more about how isolated the Anglophone world is becoming, rather than how homogenous we imagine our lives to make the world. We may be making them poorer and more miserable, but we couldn't rob them of their identities with a million episodes of 24 and a thousand Britney albums.

I think that this is a hard thing to quantify and assess with any deal of phenomenological truth.

I can see how local traditions may become more resistant to the globalised culture but that may only occur due to the psychology of an individual. The hard and possibly trite fact is that you can moreorless go into any city in the world and buy a Coke or a Big Mac. This is the tangible thing we can see in any city in the world and it speaks volumes to me. You would be hard pushed to find a Afghanistan brand in every city in the world.

It's interesting you mention the idea of finding an 'Afghanistan brand in every city in the world'. In a way, we do by reading about the war in Afghanistan in our newspapers and on the television (albeit in a kind of reductive way, through the prism of conflict). In essence, globalisation gives us a new awareness of distant subjectivities. This is probably a historically unique moment.

I was watching a Godard movie yesterday, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and there's a scene in which the main character, who is kind of kind of subject to the regime of totalising capitalism, asks herself why she finds herself in Paris of the 60's thinking of an Asian man...a Vietnamese man. Godard is highlighting the possibilities that globalisation offers. As well as being a system and process of homogenization that benefits capital, there is also an element of cultural and local reflux. Localized struggles can utilise the interconnectivity offered by globalisation to create it's own networks of solidarity, etc. So a new plurality emerges against the homogenizing project of capital.

Even our awareness of exploitation is a consequence of this new opportunity.

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:15 am**

lemur68 wrote:posting to ground floor of hundred-page thread

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:44 am**

Ultimate social homogenisation seems inevitable unless oil/climate change/politics ends the era of cheap travel. While the end significant social/societal differences might be considered unfortunate, their loss is more natural than their artificial preservation.

Economic globalisation is CRAP - enabling further expansion of already dangerously unrepresentative and powerful corporate bodies doesn't seem like A Wise Idea.

CRAP.

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:59 am**

Alberto the Frog wrote:Ultimate social homogenisation seems as inevitable unless oil/climate change/politics ends the era of cheap travel. While the end significant social/societal differences might be considered unfortunate, their loss is more natural than their artificial preservation.

Economic globalisation is CRAP - enabling further expansion of already dangerously unrepresentative and powerful corporate bodies doesn't seem like A Wise Idea.

..but that throws up a further question. What is the alternative, other than a retreat into national sovereignity? Global capitalism subsumes us...that is a reality. There is currently no outside to that. A reversal of this reality seems improbable to me.

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:14 am**

Cranius wrote:A reversal of this reality seems improbable to me.

I suppose that depends on how convinced one is of the unstoppable progression of cultural homogenisation - one might expect tension between a homogeneous global population and an all-expoiting global corporate/capitalist system...

*runs screaming from thread*

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:25 am**

Alberto the Frog wrote:
Cranius wrote:A reversal of this reality seems improbable to me.

I suppose that depends on how convinced one is of the unstoppable progression of cultural homogenisation - one might expect tension between a homogeneous global population and an all-expoiting global corporate/capitalist system...

Well, this homogenising programme could be countered by the creation of localised subjectivities. An example of that would be say, a local music scene that has a distinct regional identity which reaches up, using the new interconnectivity of things, to disseminate that identity worldwide. We see examples of this a lot recently (and I don't mean just with 'world music').

We are taking part in that right now, in fact.

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:46 am**

I don't know much about this stuff, but wouldn't one expect the corporate world to actively foster cultural disparity?

Isn't cultural homogeneity in the long term as dangerous to the survival of exploitative corporate behaviour as the homogeneity of consumption is beneficial to it?

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:17 am**

Cranius wrote:It's interesting you mention the idea of finding an 'Afghanistan brand in every city in the world'. In a way, we do by reading about the war in Afghanistan in our newspapers and on the television (albeit in a kind of reductive way, through the prism of conflict). In essence, globalisation gives us a new awareness of distant subjectivities. This is probably a historically unique moment.

News reports on foreign wars are not signifiers of cultural plurality in the global village. I'm quite sure that the Napoleonic Wars were reported throughout the world, was Globalisation in full effect back then? This is quite different to opening restaurants with a truly global brand, and exporting and acceptance of Western culture throughout the world.

Cranius wrote:As well as being a system and process of homogenization that benefits capital, there is also an element of cultural and local reflux. Localized struggles can utilise the interconnectivity offered by globalisation to create it's own networks of solidarity, etc. So a new plurality emerges against the homogenizing project of capital.

How does this process work and where is the evidence for it?

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:39 am**

Hunting big game this year, Andrew?

chairman_hall wrote:
Cranius wrote:As well as being a system and process of homogenization that benefits capital, there is also an element of cultural and local reflux. Localized struggles can utilise the interconnectivity offered by globalisation to create it's own networks of solidarity, etc. So a new plurality emerges against the homogenizing project of capital.

How does this process work and where is the evidence for it?

I thought that the music scene example above offered this. On a more directly - politically - engaged level, the multiplicity of activist groups that get together for anti-war and anti-globalisation demonstrations and activities. There are all sorts of new and old groups energised by the speed and ease of communication, good and bad.

This isn't entirely new, of course. As you say, international communication and protest has been present for centuries. (At the risk of playing Johnny BigTrousers, a 60+ year old example is framed by my dad: his English Communist father received a letter from Mahatma Gandhi for his society's help.) However, the speed of transmission and reaction has never been as fast, particularly for more marginal or counter-hegemony groups.

If I understand Cranius correctly, he saying something similar to a piece I read somewhere recently. Which is to say, barring massive environmental or biological catastrophe, globalisation seems to be inexorable. However, rather than just bemoan the ubiquitous negative effects of it, we should take advantage of the flipside. Which is massive selective cultural exchange, the garnering of previously unobtainable information (pertaining to causes that we feel aligned to), and reaching out to others for related activism. It is far easier to find people of particular speciality and ideological curiousity than it was even ten years ago. This free exchange of idea, argument and knowledge between people on different sides of the planet could give rise to some truly great events as well as the bad ones.

I'm going to run screaming after Alberto now. Having said all this, I am still afraid of the big ideas.

Cranius wrote:Two or Three Things I Know About Her

Enjoy the coffee?

Posted: **Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:53 am**

Cranius wrote:
Alberto the Frog wrote:Ultimate social homogenisation seems as inevitable unless oil/climate change/politics ends the era of cheap travel. While the end significant social/societal differences might be considered unfortunate, their loss is more natural than their artificial preservation.

Economic globalisation is CRAP - enabling further expansion of already dangerously unrepresentative and powerful corporate bodies doesn't seem like A Wise Idea.

..but that throws up a further question. What is the alternative, other than a retreat into national sovereignity? Global capitalism subsumes us...that is a reality. There is currently no outside to that. A reversal of this reality seems improbable to me.

Greater exertion of inter-governmental control in global working conditions, global minimum wage deals, global trade unions. More nationalisation of essential pastoral industries in the developing world. Better healthcare, social security, education in the developing world.

Greater democracy.

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