Stephan
Dahl
Communications and Culture Transformation
Cultural Diversity, Globalization and Cultural Convergence
Preface and Acknowledgments
Encounters between people of different cultural background have existed forever, and equally forever, people were thinking about phenomena that were unusual in other cultures. However, those encounters were relatively seldom in early times, today, they are almost part of everyday life: the facilitated communication and movement of people has made it possible. At the same time, the facilitated interchange between cultures has jeopardized their very existence, and facilitated the emergence of a cosmopolitan culture, a phenomena often referred to as globalization.
This project aims to provide an overview of the three main areas that the intercultural encounter and the globalization encompass. Primarily, what makes cultures different from each other. Secondly it aims to provide an overview of trends that have had a deep impact on cultures and intercultural encounters, and facilitated the globalization and emergence of a cosmopolitan culture. Thirdly it looks at the process the individual goes through in an intercultural encounter, and how it adapts to culture shifts in its environment.
Many people have contributed to this project directly, or indirectly. In particular I would like to thank the European University Barcelona for providing the space and environment that made this project possible.
A major contributor, not only as the promoter of this project, but for the overall studies, has been Mercè Cano Gómez. She has been available at all times with a helpful advice and a helping hand and has provided a major support for this project and the studies in general.
Equally Pilar Colom has provided through her classes and further discussions invaluable input into this project. She has also been a great support for the studies in general, and beyond the scope of the class.
Also Germán Aragón provided, through his cross-cultural communications classes, an interesting and practical background to this project.
Finally I would like to thank those people outside the university, who have been helpful and supportive during my stay here in Barcelona and have had to endure sometimes tiring conversations about the scope and approach of this project. In particular, I would like to thank my parents, who made the studies financially possible and who have provided me with invaluable support, Guido Verweij who provided critical support and Carlos Baez for providing insights into the Spanish society and critical comments on my views. I would also like all my co-students from the MA, who have at all times provided critical support for this project.
Introduction
"The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption (sic), and as in material so in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. (sic) From the numerous national and local literature, there arises a world literature." Karl Marx
At the end of the twentieth century the post-modern geographic order, and the neoliberal economic order have given rise, in the Western European states in particular, to a new form of identity. The global identity.
Particularly the Northern European states celebrate the transnational feeling, and the globalization of their citizens. 93% of German students speak English well enough to have a conversation, 45% can do that with French. Sweden tops the list of foreign exchange programs: 32% of it's students have studied abroad, 17% of the Germans have, 16% of British, 11% of French, 6% of Spanish students (Spiegel, 1998; 78). Via Internet and satellite TV the world, at least the developed one, has moved closer together. Danone yogurt, Ariel washing powder, Gillette razors and Mars snack bars have entered even the remotest of all local supermarkets, giving the world the best a man can get, the whitest whites and fun, work and play. No, the globalization has not stopped with the Big Mac, the globalization is in all our fridges and storage boards.
Stephen King, John le Carré, Jean-Dominique Bauby, John Grisham, Elizabeth George top the best-seller lists around the globe, while the split of boy-group Take That broke the hearts of the lost teenagers even in the smallest of the villages around Europe. Titanic was not only the luxury grandeur of the cruise ships, it also proved to be the luxury grandeur of Cinema audiences around the globe, breathlessly awaiting the tragic climax. The question 'do you know Ophra?' is just no longer asked, the grandmother of the banal, cliché talkshow has long made her way around the globe, and flimmers daily on millions of screens, either in person or impersonated by some equally tragically looking female, solving the problems of every housewife, mother, professional woman, daughter or whatever else might glue the audiences to the small screen. And once the problems have been discussed, then the Wheel of Fortune or the Price is Right bring the illusion of the big win, the great luck. And for those that are even more aspiring, there is always the new game of foreign students that do not speak the language: "name that show on foreign TV", because after all, Fijf tegen Fijf or Familienduell, it's still the same.
Indeed, we are connected, interchanged, exchanged and, most importantly, denationalized. Europe is growing together, or Der Euro kommt (The Euro is coming), and that not only monetary wise. A trip through Marks & Spencer in the UK reveals: The British diet has said good-bye to unsalted, overcooked and unspiced food, lovingly accompanied by one of Europe's worst wines. Chicken Tikka, Gnocchi and Calabacines al horno make up the new British diet, and who ever accused the British of horrific bread that can be squeezed to the size of a very small potato, should just the see the latest selection at Sainsbury's: French Bread de la Campagne, made in France, baked in Britain. And after Tesco's is the Wine Merchant of the Year, and an Englishman the Maitre Des Vins, the scandal on the table has reached truly European (or shall we say continental?) format. And even across the Atlantic, long time known for their worse than brown water coffee, the zeitgeist has moved in, and the old out. In fact to much, that the US Americans are now ready to attack the European coffee market with Expresso à la American.
But even with all of this, we are not the same. Somehow some people still refuse to become the world citizen that is so often proclaimed. Somehow the British are still British, and the Germans still Germans. Certainly, the globalization is taking place. That can not be denied. And with the globalization comes an unprecedented influence on the national cultures. The world is interconnected, the flow of information has only very limited borders, so has the flow of people and influences. What was before the colonization, and the influence on the local culture, that is taking place now on a larger, faster and more efficient scale. It reaches not only a certain class, it reaches far into the society, every society.
This project aims to consolidate the phenomena of globalization, of intercultural encounters and of cultural differences. In a post-modern society, the groups that make a society are no longer clearly defined, the borders are open. The national and local cultures have come in a suction of global forces, and have to adopt.
In the first part of the project, we will be looking at what cultural differences are as such. This is done in the tradition of the humanist/positivist tradition of inquiry, resulting in a variable set of culture determinants and their impact on the local culture under examination.
During the second part, we take a look at the development of the most influential impact factors that lead to culture transformation: The extension of the neoliberal economic world order, and the globalization of consumption; the extension of the political ethos of the West; the Media culture and the shifts in the subjective reality it represents and finally the rise of the Internet (as the most dominant example of CMC), that emerges as a potentially new form of facilitated information flow around the globe.
In the last part, we examine the theory of intercultural encounters. The argument for this is that this theory is not only valid in the view of direct and personal intercultural encounters, but also in indirect encounters. The project ends with the conclusion, and review of some of the issues that have been discussed during the entity of the project.