The Future of Culture in a Global Setting

With the world closing in on itself, and people on opposite sides of the planet having millions of routes of access to information about each other, cultures of the world interact in ways they never have before. The cultures mend together to form a sort of universal culture, a common base of knowledges, informations and even moral codes, that were never shared or known of before. The reasons for the creation of this geoculture vary from that of necessity, to that of desire. Though, I believe Appadurai's theory of culture to be most relevant in the realm of globalization in the world today, I will also look at Marshall Sahlins, and Immanuel Wallerstein to get three different perspectives on culture's role in globalization. Only, we cannot just take these theories and look at them all separately, we must in the fashion of our mending cultures, look at them as a whole and take the most relevant points from each. The topic of culture in the current structure of globalization is too important to be haste when viewing, and also has major implications for the state of culture in the future, and therefor I propose that the future of globalization will be fully dictated by access.

In the writings of Appadurai, culture in globalization can be defined through looking, "at the relationship among five dimensions of global cultural flows that can be termed, ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes," (Appadurai 33). Each -scape represents a ever changing landscape-like imaginary structure made up of the issues relating to their root word. Each landscape works together in order to make what Appadurai calls, "imagined worlds" which are, "constituted by the historically situated imaginations of the persons and groups spread around the globe" (Appadurai 33). According to his theory, "ethnoscape" refers to the social landscape of foreign peoples in to system of the locals and the temporary connections they create. "Mediascape" refers to mass information whether transmitted through television, print or any other form of media. The mediascapes controlled by certain persons with interests of their own in mind formulate the imaginary concepts one culture may have about another culture through the images given to them. Thus creating fantasy worlds of sorts (Appadurai 35). "Technoscapes" and "financescapes" are somewhat similar in that they refer to the easy, unlike ever before, transfer of technologies and moneys. The transfer of resources and commodities like never before and the interactions that it creates between different states with different interests in mind. Lastly, ideoscapes refers to the overall building block of the new world system stemming from the word democracy and now in the modern world being transformed into each individual states twist on the term (Appadurai 34-36).

Moving onto the concepts of Wallerstein we find a different take on the creation of the global cultural system. Wallerstein takes an approach based less on economic change affected from cultural pressures, and rather one determined as cultural change developed from societal change. "Social science was born in the nineteenth century and was immediately inherently an arena both of political confrontation and of a struggle between the scientists and humanists..." (Wallerstein 74). With this new field of study, sciences and humanities were no longer separated but combined like never before and created a new perspective on world functions. So according to Wallerstein the new geoculture was "constructed in the mirror of the three ideologies..." in which the social sciences opened the doors for exchange of ideas and culture which created way for the hybrid cultures of today (Wallerstein 75).

Lastly we take a look at the thoughts of Marshall Sahlins, who seems to draw upon the idea of BC and AC (Before Colonization and After Colonization, respectively). Sahlins feels as if the introduction of Western culture creates a timeshift in other cultures, it creates an event where another culture was introduced to a distant people thus creating a split between modern times and traditional times in the people. The forced introduction of economic and ethical practices of the westerners created the need for adaptation into their culture, hence the introduction of "traditional culture." Sahlins states that, "Ideas of ancient customs developed out of colonial experience," as opposed to those people always viewing their customs as a natural part of life. Sahlins uses the tourism based marketing of Hawaiian culture as an example stating, "At the Honolulu airport, visitors are welcomed by hula dancers in plastic 'grass' skirts, swaying to slack key Spanish guitars in an expression of the uniquely Hawaiian 'aloha spirit'" (Sahlins 4). Even just from that statement alone, we can see the change in Hawaiian culture affected by Spanish culture with the introduction of spanish guitar. Yet, we still view the guitar style as traditionally Hawaiian.

Now that all the information has been presented, I find Appadurai's theory to be most relevant to the world today. While Sahlins and Wallerstein may have good points about the history and transition of non capitalist societies into western society, overall their ideas are ones of the past and do not help to explain today's world. Appadurai's theory of different scapes helps to summarize the main factors that change our world culture. For example, while Sahlins may have examples of modern tourists arriving in Hawaii to so-called, "traditional Hawaiian culture," it does not explain why countries like India or other countries previously not involved in capitalism are now shipping off their citizens to other countries to accumulate wealth. Appadurai's theory of imaginary worlds (Appadurai 33) does help to explain this in the sense that people learn of all the possibilities in these imaginary worlds, desire to leave to these imagined, even disillusioned worlds, and they do. These scapes further seem to make the most relevant argument because they help to explain all the major factors of globalization in today's world. Mediascapes helps to explain to us how people dream up these imaginary worlds through the images they see in print and on TV (Appadurai 34). Prior to global media, there would be no reason for someone in Africa to dream of a home in LA with American movie stars. Technoscapes seems to be a very important part of the shift in global culture, now with the mass availability of computers and new technology, people can get the exposure to all sorts of different cultures in a flash, without any real effort (Appadurai 34). Overall, Appadurai seems to present the most relevant argument in a discussion of globalizations impact on culture.

Now ask yourself, if this is where we stand now, millions upon billions of pieces of information, money, technology and whatever else we can put up, hurling itself around the world and being available to everyone and anyone, where will this all put us in the future? The future of the world culture is most importantly based on access. Access to media, access to capital, access to different peoples and different parts of the world. This global interaction with millions of different images passing through our heads everyday is creating a global identity that is leading us towards being separated into only two categories: those involved in western culture, and isolationists. With access comes want, with want comes false necessity. Once every culture that has desire can finally obtain what it wants, all culture will begin to take on the same desires based off of what is most widely available, and therefor will interact with similar materials, and similar thought. The mass availability of information, technology and anything else will begin to shape the foundation for an overarching global culture which contains many small factions. For example, take Sahlin's mention of Hawaiians, they were a society with their own customs and own culture, now after western interrogation, they too take on the themes of western cultures. No longer is public fornication OK, or rebellious, it's just immoral (Sahlins 10). And why did they shift? Was it because the white man's ideas were just so thrilling they agreed? No, necessity to compete in the global economy gave them access to the white man's things and with the white man's things slowly came the integration of white man's culture. In other words, every culture that participates in the global economy will eventually begin to take on part of the global culture.

With the world in constant interaction, the evidence of the formation of a global culture is more obvious than ever. As we shift towards our global culture, one can only speculate as to how we got here, and how we're getting there. Through looking at the theories presented to us by many well thought out scholars we can hope to maintain identity while also creating a workable cross-cultural system. Not only is this information and debate important, but it is necessary for avoiding the destruction of cultural differences and even worse, cultural war. So with the continuation of our global economy, the continual shift of our global culture is inevitable. And it can only lead us to wonder what will be on TV, and where it will be broadcast from and what it will be telling us, 20, 30 years down the road.