MEDIA, CULTURE AND
GLOBALISATION THEORIES
Professors Jan Loisen and Kevin Smets
New Media and Society in Europe
2019-2020
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
,Table of Contents
Media, culture and globalization – Globalization and cultural imperialism .................................... 4
Definition globalization ......................................................................................................... 4
Globalization: controversies and cul de sacs ....................................................................... 4
Timing of globalization ......................................................................................................... 7
What is globalization? Definition .......................................................................................... 7
Globalization -definition: everything ..................................................................................... 8
Globalization debates .......................................................................................................... 8
Summary............................................................................................................................ 11
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 12
Globalization and media studies: origins ........................................................................... 13
Modernization .................................................................................................................... 13
Modernization: the Role of communication ........................................................................ 14
Dependency ....................................................................................................................... 14
Dependency: the Role of communication .......................................................................... 15
Cultural/ media imperialism................................................................................................ 15
Cultural/ media imperialism: one-way flow......................................................................... 16
Critiques on the cultural imperialism thesis........................................................................ 17
Media, culture and globalization – Flows ......................................................................................... 18
Definition globalization Flow studies and telenovelas ........................................................ 18
Media, culture and globalization – Guest lecture: flows in the online environment – the age of
Netflix ................................................................................................................................................... 19
Flows theories .................................................................................................................... 19
Online flows ....................................................................................................................... 24
Netflix ................................................................................................................................. 28
Media, culture and globalization – Cultural globalization theories and scapes ........................... 31
An agenda for cultural globalization theories ..................................................................... 31
Getting started: Cultural globalization’s take on culture ..................................................... 31
The ‘scapes’ model developed by Arjun Appadurai ........................................................... 33
Media, culture and globalization – McDonaldization ....................................................................... 41
McDonaldization: Rationality.............................................................................................. 41
McDonaldization: fast-food model...................................................................................... 41
McDonaldization: characteristics (rather similar to work of Weber) ................................... 41
Irrationality of rationality ..................................................................................................... 44
Discussion.......................................................................................................................... 44
1
,Media, culture and globalization – Eurocentrism and postcolonialism ........................................ 45
Overview ............................................................................................................................ 45
Why eurocentrism .............................................................................................................. 45
Thinking about ‘flows’ in a globalized world requires thinking about (historical) power
relations ............................................................................................................................. 46
Postcolonialism as an interdisciplinary field ....................................................................... 47
Differences between postcolonial and decolonial thinking................................................. 47
Postcolonial studies vs. institutional knowledge ................................................................ 47
Postcolonialism and media and communication studies.................................................... 48
The subaltern ..................................................................................................................... 48
Some key authors .............................................................................................................. 48
Postcolonial theory and communication studies: 4 intersections ....................................... 51
Media, culture and globalization –Diaspora ..................................................................................... 54
Introduction: context of cultural globalization studies......................................................... 54
Origin and emergence of the concept ................................................................................ 54
Descriptive typological approach ....................................................................................... 55
Descriptive typological approach: types of diaspora .......................................................... 55
Social constructionist approach ......................................................................................... 56
Social constructionist approach ......................................................................................... 56
Case 1: Kurdish television in Europe ................................................................................. 57
Case 2: Turkish film audiences .......................................................................................... 58
Media, culture and globalization – Broadcasting beyond the Nation: Making sense of TRT in
light of global paradigm shifts .......................................................................................................... 59
Introduction: idea of transnationalism ................................................................................ 59
Soft power .......................................................................................................................... 62
Shift in foreign policy of Turkey .......................................................................................... 62
Strategic depth ................................................................................................................... 62
Zero problem with neighbors ............................................................................................. 63
Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 65
Media, culture and globalization – Cosmopolitanism ..................................................................... 67
“World citizen” .................................................................................................................... 67
Cosmopolitan: 3 paradigms ............................................................................................... 67
Limits to the cosmopolitanism framework .......................................................................... 69
Discussion questions ‘Cosmopolitanism’ ........................................................................... 70
2
,Media, culture and globalization – The global city .......................................................................... 71
The city – historically.......................................................................................................... 71
Two perspectives on the global city ................................................................................... 72
‘The global city’ .................................................................................................................. 74
The global city and migration (they are mutually enforcing one another leading to lots of
contradictions and conflicts in these cities) ........................................................................ 75
The global city as a political platform ................................................................................. 75
2. Socio-cultural perspective .......................................................................................... 75
Discussion.......................................................................................................................... 76
Media, culture and globalization – The importance of space and place in a globalized world ... 77
‘The placelessness thesis’ ................................................................................................. 77
Critiques in the ‘placelessness thesis’ ............................................................................... 77
Alternative to placeless thesis: the pluralization of place ................................................... 77
More nuanced understanding space and place: Yi-Fu Tuan (makes very clear and helpful
distinction between the both) ............................................................................................. 78
Turning space into place (process done by actual people)................................................ 78
Place and mobility .............................................................................................................. 79
Doreen Massey: a global sense of place ........................................................................... 79
Doreen Massey: the power geometry of globalization ....................................................... 80
Doreen Massey: re-conceptualizing place in a progressive way ....................................... 80
Progressive sense of place: key questions ........................................................................ 81
The study: Sanliurfa (Turkey) and Brussels ....................................................................... 81
Media use of refugees and the power geometry of globalization....................................... 82
Media, culture and globalization – Clash of civilizations ................................................................ 83
Clash of civilizations........................................................................................................... 83
A new phase (we are experiencing this in global politics).................................................. 84
Major civilizations ............................................................................................................... 85
Why civilizations will clash ................................................................................................. 85
Criticisms ........................................................................................................................... 88
3
,Media, culture and globalization – Globalization and cultural imperialism
Definition globalization
- Globalization is a deeper version of integration where people from all over the globe
can communicate, work and do business with each other (economic domain)
- New aspects about globalization compared to other times: technology (being able to
spread information through technology) (we see that we gave definitions of this concept
that are related to the technologies we know today and the rise of the Internet; not so
much about what happened in the past
- Globalization is fusion of different cultures
- Disappearing boundaries: development towards one world society
- Decrease in the role of state actors/ nation state
ð “There are few terms that we use so frequently but which are in fact as poorly
conceptualized as globalization” (A. Giddens) (they are open to different angles, there
are different ideas of ideologies at the back of a definition of globalization)
Globalization: controversies and cul de sacs
- Controversies:
• What is globalization? -> rather difficult to define and open to very different
interpretations
• Economic or multidimensional?
• Recent or long-term historical process? -> Globalization is for some more related
to the rise of the Internet, whereas others claim that it is much older
• Does globalization exist? -> ‘globalization towards a world society, but that world
society is not here just yet and probably will not be here in the next 100 years
• Is globalization neoliberal capitalism?
• Is globalization manageable? -> Who should do it? The state? But what if the state
is on retreat, who should then take over?
- Cul de sacs/ redundant concepts (Scholte): when talking about globalization, in fact we talk
about earlier concepts: (when you define globalization as something, but it is in fact
Internationalization of Westernization, it does not bring new knowledge or indicates what is
fundamentally new about contemporary times -> that why he calls them redundant concepts or
cul de sacs (dead ends)
A. Internationalization
B. Liberalization
C. Universalization
D. Westernization
4
,A. Internationalization
§ Whenever you are investigating literature of globalization and you see
definition referring to the ‘Growth of transactions and interdependence between
countries’
§ Quantitative approach and measuring (e.g. The global top 20, Global cities,
The countries that are most involved in globalization, …)
§ Minimum of intellectual and political adjustments is necessary
§ Familiar
§ Replay of historical scenarios
§ Why bother then? -> because it is just a new form of globalization, so why call
it internationalization
B. Liberalization
§ Globalization understood as ‘Process of removing officially imposed
restrictions on movements of resources between countries towards a
borderless world economy -> approach does not indicate what is fundamentally
new about globalization
§ Debate about contemporary neoliberal macroeconomic policies
§ Evaluated with positive (borderless world; end of history) and negative
assessments (e.g. deglobalization; anti/alter-globalization)
§ Why bother then? -> around 1900, time of increased liberalization (breaking
down tariffs and restrictions)
Trump: Liberalization can
also go in flows (sometimes
it appears to increase and
other times to decrease)
Now: Trump closing borders
of nation state or the
increasing nationalization in
Hungary
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,C. Universalization
§ Globalization seen as the ‘process of dispersing various objects and
experiences to people all over the world’: more related to culture, conscience,
relations amongst people, for identity
§ Homogenization processes, heterogenization processes and convergence
§ Why bother then? -> in ancient times with the Silk Road there was process of
dispersing various objects and experiences to various people all over the world
(maybe on smaller scale) (increasing interconnectedness)
D. Westernization
§ Globalization is seen as ‘A particular type of universalization, in which the
structures of modernity are spread all over the world’ (structures of modernity=
the Enlightenment, rationalism, processes of urbanization and secularization,
individualism and capitalism, etc.)
§ Colonization and Americanization, imperialism
§ Hegemonic discourse, ideological discourse
§ Why bother then?
6
,Timing of globalization
- Several periodization’s
• 5000 b.C./ prehistoric (e.g. global dispersion of species)
• 3500 – 1500/ premodern (e.g. empires, Silk Road)
• 1500 – 1750 / early modern (e.g. metropolitan systems; foundation of capitalist
world system, discoveries, etc.)
• 1750 – 1970/ modern (industrial revolution, world trade, multinationals, money,
colonialism, technological and communications innovations, population, …)
• 1970 - …/ contemporary
§ Acceleration of trends (ICT, the Internet)
§ And ‘something new’?
- Dependent on definition
- Different periodization’s exist alongside one another
- Periodization is artificially neat
- Globalization is not necessarily linear (often something that is assumed, so be open to
idea that it can decrease)
- Measuring globalizations is difficult: absence of global statistics – national and
international data
- Dependent on quantitative and qualitative assessments (e.g. the integration of culture:
not easy to put in statistics)
- Dependent on the argument one aims to make
What is globalization? Definition
- … can be defined as the intensification of world-wide social relations, which link distant
localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles
away and vice versa (Giddens, 1990)
- … refers to the growing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, a process which
gives rise to complex forms of interaction and interdependency (Thompson, 1995)
- … refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of
the world as a whole (Robertson, 1992) (on entirely different level as, e.g. economic or
trade relations)
- … to all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single
world society, global society (Albrow, 1990)
- Is accelerated movement across national and regional barriers of economic ‘goods’, i.e.
people, products, capital, especially intangible forms of capital (Oman, 1993)
- ...reflects the sense of an immense enlargement of world communication, as well as of the
horizon of a world market, both of which seem far more tangible and immediate than in
earlier stages of modernity (Jameson, 1998)
7
, - … compresses the time and space aspects of social relations (Mittelman, 1996)
- … as the spread of transplanetary connections between people…a respatialization of social
life (Scholte, 2005)
1. The creation of new and the multiplication of existing social networks and activities that
increasingly overcome traditional political, economic, cultural and geographical boundaries
2. The expansion and the stretching of social relations, activities and interdependencies
3. The intensification and acceleration of social exchanges and activities
4. The creation, expansion and intensification of social interconnections and
interdependences do not occur merely on an objective, material level… globalization
processes also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness … (which gradually
change(s) people’s individual and collective identities, and this dramatically impact the way
they act in the world
ð Globalization refers to a multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply,
stretch and intensify worldwide social interdependence and exchanges while at the same
time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening connections between the local
and the distant (Steger, 2003)
Globalization -definition: everything (related to increasing complexity, relations between
people, role of technology, etc.) / nothing?
- Different perspectives and focal points
• Economic, political, cultural, social, ecological, geographical, spatial, communications,
…
• Quantitative and qualitative assessments
• Quantitative analysist say it is an objective, empirical process, whereas other say that
we should look into what it does with people and look into the subjective process in
consciousness and awareness
• General and open-ended or specific
• Too broad/ too narrow?
Globalization debates
- Three broad schools of thought (no traditional ideological position related to one or the
other of the broad schools of thought)
• Distinctive accounts of globalization
• Yet, no traditional ideological position or worldview
• Ambivalent: optimistic and pessimistic
- Debates on
• Conceptualization
• Causal dynamics
• Structural consequences
• State power and governance
• Historical trajectory
8
, 1. The hyperglobalist thesis -> globalization as fact/ as a given/ it has happened, and
you have to deal with it now (will bring lot of opportunities and possibilities)
• Conceptualization
§ Globalization brings us a borderless world (borders are no longer here);
fundamental reconfiguration of human action
• Causal dynamics (behind globalization processes)
§ Economic logic, globalization primarily economic phenomenon
• Socio-economic consequences
§ New forms of social organization unfolding because of globalization – beyond
class?
§ New sense of identity (idea of having mostly Belgian, Dutch, French identity
is also something from the past)
§ New pattern of winners and losers of the world economy (because of
increasing fluidity; especially in times of the Internet where knowledge
becomes fundamental)
§ Demise of welfare state policies (especially in European countries that are
well-developed)
§ Normative divergences
Optimistic: celebration of global market and individual autonomy (a
world of all kind of new opportunities that ICT and so on are bringing
you)
Pessimistic: triumph of capitalism (and there is almost nothing to do
about it), reinforces structural inequality
• State and governance
§ Wither the nation-state, erosion of sovereignty and autonomy (no longer
dominant force)
§ Decline of state authority and legitimacy
§ Diffusion of authority (corporations, individuals, etc., not anymore clearly
linked to the state that has authority over the army and so on)
§ Power of markets (economic laws and laws of market that become driving
forces in societal developments; states lose control)
§ Global civilization -> global governance
• Historical trajectory
§ Radically new epoch (we are entering something entirely new that is not
comparable to society 50 years ago or so)
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