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Introduction: Communication perspectives on relationships between globalism and localism

2002; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 53; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10510970209388570

1745-1035

David Cratis Williams,

Globalization and Cultural Identity

The dialectical relationship between and is perhaps the defining dialectic of international and intercultural dynamics at the beginning of the new millennium; indeed, the tragic events of September 11,2001, and subsequent events can be linked to (although not reduced to) tensions between desires to preserve cultures, traditions, religious values, etc., and the increasing impositions of global modernism. Lubos Kropacek of the Institute for the Near East and Africa of Charles University in Prague and one of the Czech Republic's leading authorities on Islam suggested in an interview published in The Prague Post (October 10-16, 2001) that these tensions may have played a pivotal role in the motivations underlying the September attacks. After the Soviets left Afghanistan, Kropacek maintains, bin Laden started being active internationally. He targeted as the main object of his hate. These hostile feelings toward [were] usually accompanied by a kind of bitterness against the process of globalization. Sometimes, globalization is just labeled as Americanism, because in the ... cultural sphere-which affects ordinary people most after all-it is perceived as penetration of the American lifestyle ... an arrogant pushing out the traditional ways that are considered very valuable by the community (Scholar Ponders. Ellipses in original). Dennis Ross (2001), envoy to the Middle East in the Clinton administration, succinctly claims that the attacks were upon America and modernity itself. The conflation of and American values with the forces of globalism and modernity is equally evident in reactions of some traditional and/or fundamentalist communities to U.S.-led attacks on the Taliban. After the bombing of Afghanistan began, so too began the backlash, and the immediate targets of the backlash were as frequently symbols of globalization as symbols of the United States of America: Pakistan, crowds vandalized McDonald's outlets in Islamabad and Karachi. In Indonesia, demonstrators burned an American flag outside a McDonald's restaurant in the resort town of Makassar and then stormed it, and across the country in Yogyatarta, other protesters blockaded yet another McDonald's. Elsewhere, throngs vented their displeasure with the policies of the U.S. government by descending on Pizza Hut restaurants, Dunkin' Donuts stands, a Nike store, even defacing billboards for KFC restaurants, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other American corporations (Barboza 1). Similarly, Muslim clerics in Lucknow, India, urged the faithful to boycott all things American and British, including airlines, movies and television programs (Barboza 4). This conflation is not new; it is not an outgrowth of recent bellicosity from any of the principals involved in the current but rather may be better understood as an underlying condition of the bellicosity. For instance, even before Sept. 11, McDonald's was a lightening rod for protest globally, and its restaurants have been vandalized by people angry about many things, from genetically modified foods to globalization to U.S. foreign policy (Barboza 4). The point here is not to reduce the currently raging war on terrorism to the dialectical tensions between globalism and localism but rather simply to suggest that these tensions are an important part of a broader picture of which the itself is but a part. Although the essays in this special issue were all written well prior to the events of September, they are nonetheless centrally concerned with this broader dialectic between the forces of global modernism and local preservation, and as such their relevance to the current world crisis is indirect but nonetheless palpable. If indeed the dialectical relationship between and is a central determinant of international and intercultural dynamics in the world today, then these essays offer important avenues into understanding better the nature of that dialectic. …