History of European Ideas, Vol. 20, Nos. 4-6, pp.

891 897, 1995

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HOMOGENISATION AND GLOBALISATION

J O H N TOMLINSON*

1. THE THREAT OF CULTURAL HOMOGENISATION?

Cultural criticism at a global level is underdeveloped. Consider the rich and

nuanced critical vocabulary, fed, for example, by critical theory, semiotic
analysis, psychoanalysis and (post) structuralism, that has developed within
Western capitalist societies over the last 30 years. Nothing to compare with this
has emerged as a conceptual framework to understand specifically global
cultural processes. This is of course unsurprising since the terms of reference of
'globalisation' are only now coming to be properly recognised, t But in the
absence of a broad critical terminology to grasp global culture, a few
concepts--grasping what might seem to be obvious global trends--are routinely
invoked. One such is the idea of cultural homogenisation.
This situation has been nicely described by Ulf Hannerz who speaks of the
perceived threat of cultural homogenisation as a tempting 'master scenario' of
global cultural developmentm'[t]he murderous threat of cultural imperialism...
rhetorically depicted as involving the high-tech culture of the metropolis with
powerful organisational backing, facing a defenceless, small scale folk culture'?
As Hannerz says, this scenario has the attractions of intrinsic plausibility,
simplicity and dramatic appeal. But these attractions might also be dangers,
given the lack of competing critical concepts to challenge, sharpen or qualify the
idea of homogenisation.
One obvious set of questions that could be asked of this scenario are at the
basic empirical level: to what extent are cultures coming under the homogenising
spell of Western consumerism? And here if one looks at, for example, the issue of
the global flow of media products 3 or at the strategies of global marketing 4 the
evidence suggests a much more complex picture of interaction, assimilation and
reflexivity than can be grasped within the simple terms of homogenisation. As
Hannerz suggests, the persistence of the homogenisation thesis probably owes
much to the fact that it is, contradictorily, lodged within a Western discourse
which induces a certain ethnocentric bias: a tendency to focus on the icons of our
own culture and to read more into the ubiquity of these--McDonald's, Coke, the
usual examples--than their mere presence across the globe warrants) Against
these qualifications must be placed the undeniable sense of some sort of cultural
convergence linked with the global spread of capitalist modernity which gives the
idea of homogenisation its immediate plaisibility. Empirical investigation is
unlikely to undermine this sense, what it might do is to clarify the nature and

*Department of English and Media, The Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Main
Site, Nottingham NGI 1 8NS, U.K.
891
892 John Tomlinson

significance of this convergence.

I don't, at any rate, want to address empirical issues here but, rather, to ask
what would count as appropriate criticism of this master scenario of cultural
homogenisation supposing that it is, in some broad sense, occurring. What is
actually wrong with homogenisation? And here I want to hold on to Hannerz's
insight that the discourse of cultural homogenisation is in some degree a Western
ethnocentric one?

2. CULTURAL TOURISM

As a way in to this we can consider the intuitive cultural response of the

Western tourist to the loss of cultural 'difference'. In my own case, as a tourist
with a fondness for Spain, I miss the sense of difference that I saw there 20 years
ago--different food in the restaurants and goods in the shops (no 'haraburguesas'),
a different rhythm to the daily routine ('Spanish hours', less television), the
difference in the survival of traditional cultural practices--the pan-pipe music of
the knife grinder, once ubiquitous, now lost in the drone of traffic noise.
But, though I lament the passing of these differences, I know that they
belonged to a Spain which was in some sense, 'underdeveloped'--a slippery term,
but one which introduces a necessary materialist corrective to cultural
romanticism. For, of course, the practices I found attractive in their exoticism
were often intimately linked to a culture of rural poverty. The survival of the local
night-watchman--the sereno--who could be summoned by a clap of the hands in
the dead of night to unlock the door of your lodgings, was coexistent with the
survival of routine drudgery--women washing clothes in streams. So what right
do we have to bemoan these changes? We are, after all, only tourists. And culture,
as Cornelius Castoriadis has said, is not a menu from which you can chose, even
though tourism might make it seem that way.
So why should we object if everything came to look the same? We might argue
that richness, variety and difference are goods in themselves, but then, under
other considerations, so are order, uniformity and universality. It is difficult, in
fact, to object to cultural homogenisation without falling back on the simple
intuition that it is a good thing that there is variety in cultures. But then we have
to ask, a good thing for whom? Who is to enjoy the range of cultural difference? It
is not difficult to see how this preference for variety might be peculiar to the
Western global-cultural tourist. In such a case there are probably much stronger
arguments for uniformity of cultures in the broad sense, where uniformity
implies, for example, the maximisation of health care, nutritional technology,
housing provision, education and so on across all cultures.
This 'cultural tourist perspective' is difficult to avoid even when the intentions
are seriously critical. Consider for example Cees Hamelink's book, Cultural
Autonomy in Global Communication. In his opening chapter, Hamelink lists a
number of personal 'experiences of the international scene' to illustrate his claim
about the threat to global cultural diversity posed by transnational capitalism.
He instances the incorporation of Coca-Cola advertising material into ritual
dances in Mexico, American cop series on Saudi TV, Fats Domino imitations by
'traditional' Malay musicians in Singapore, and so onfl
History of European Ideas
Homogenisation and Globalisation 893

Without wishing to criticise Hamelink's specific position, I think we need to

acknowledge that this globe-trotting instancing of cultural imperialism shapes
the discourse in a particular way: to say 'here is the sameness that multinational
capitalism bringsmand here~and here...' is to assume, however liberal, radical
or critical the intention, the role of the 'cultural tourist'. What I mean by this is
that the problem of homogenisation is likely to present itself to the Western
intellectual who has a sense of (and a cultivated taste for) the diversity and
'richness' of global culture as a particular threat. For the people involved in each
discrete instance Hamelink presents, the experience of Western capitalist culture
will probably have quite different significance. Only if they can adopt the
(privileged) role of the cultural tourist will the sense of the homogenisation of
global culture have the same threatening aspect. And we cannot, without irony,
argue that the Western intellectual's (informed?) concern is more valid: in this as
in the whole issue of cultural imperialism, much hangs on the question, 'who
speaks?'? To be a cultural tourist in theorising then does not mean anything so
crass as regarding the world as a giant theme park for the enjoyment of the
wealthy Westerner. It means to be placed--like it or not--in a certain privileged
discursive position which produces the constant temptation to 'speak for' other
cultures. We have two choices: either we keep silent about other cultures and
leave the critique to those speaking from within--a nice Western liberal
solution--or we find a way to speak about homogenisation which does not fall
back to the position of the cultural tourist. In the space available here, I want to
consider two typical criticisms of cultural homogenisation to see how far they
achieve this and finally to suggest how the problem of homogenisation might be
usefully reformulated.

3. HOMOGENISATION AS A THREAT TO
CULTURAL AUTHENTICITY

This is the most commonly encountered argument and in many ways the
weakest. There is not space here to step through all the problems with the notion
of 'cultural authenticity' itselfmits connotations of folksy romanticism, the
associated myth of origins, the a-historic nature of the idea and the way it casts
cultural practices as static. Suffice it to say that the notion of 'authenticity' suffers
from similar problems of reification to the notion of 'national heritage' which
underpins the growing 'heritage industry' in the West. Though with clearly
different ideological intentions, both notions misrepresent the essentially dynamic
nature of culture itself (always changing, always on the move), in their attempts
to conjure up a stable and coherent past stretching back to time immemorial and
in some sense 'belonging' to the cultural present. 9
But, apart from this, what is interesting about the authenticity argument is
how little it departs from the cultural tourist perspective. Cultures need to
preserve their unique features, it is argued. But why? Apart from some
unconvincing attempts to assign some social-functionality to uniqueness, 1° it is
hard to see any other reason than that it would be nice to have people behaving in
traditional ways dotted around the worldmso long as it's not us. Jeremy Tunstall
long ago pointed to the irony in:

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894 John Tomlinson

the Western intellectual who switches off the baseball game, turns down the hi-fi or
pushes aside the Sunday magazine and pens a terse instruction to the developing
world to get back to its tribal harvest ceremonials or funeral music. H

And, just as tourists want their 'home comforts' when abroad--decent plumbing
and a nice wine list in the hotel--so the cultural tourist who defends authenticity
would generally like to temper this with some friendly Western liberal values.
Nice to keep ceremonial dancing--but we're not so sure about female
circumcision, or foot binding, or mutilation as punishment under Shariah
law . . . .
Indeed, it is not difficult to think of examples of cultural practices which would
attract a consensus amongst liberal or radical critics in the West in favour of their
universal application: the material benefits of modernity (as distinguished from
the system of capitalist production and distribution) that I have already
mentioned but also, perhaps, various 'liberal' cultural attitudes towards
emancipation, toleration, compassion, democratic political participation, and so
on. This is not, of course, to say that all of these are indisputable 'goods' under
any description whatever, nor that they are all the 'free gifts' of an expanding
capitalist modernity. But it is to say that there are plenty of aspects of 'culture',
broadly defined, that the severest critic of cultural homogenisation might wish to
find the same in any area of the globe. The implication is that critics of cultural
homogenisation are selective in the things they object to and there is nothing
wrong in this so long as we realise that it undermines the notion that
homogenisation is a bad thing in itself. But then we enter a quite separate set of
arguments--not about the uniformity of capitalist culture, but about the spread
of its pernicious features which require quite different criteria of judgement.

4. H O M O G E N I S A T I O N AND AUTONOMY

A more promising argument, on the surface, connects the critique of

homogenization with arguments over cultural autonomy. The principle of
cultural autonomy holds, roughly, that a culture has the right to 'self-legislation'
and freedom from heteronomous control. According to this argument, the
processes involved in homogenisation amount to manipulation or control of a
culture from outside, and it's the threat to these quasi-political rights and
freedoms, rather than the threat to cultural uniqueness that is at stake. This shift
in focus is an improvement. It certainly moves away from the tourist perspective
in that it tries to address, in more abstract terms, issues of cultural 'sovereignty'
rather than speaking from the privileged discursive position of the affluent West.
(Whether it can succeed in this depends on your view of the 'eurocentric' nature
of the political discourse involved: rights, sovereignty, autonomy itself are all,
arguably, part of a certain Western post-Enlightenment 'logos'.)
But just how is homogenisation related to the principle of cultural autonomy?
The answer is, unfortunately, only rather tangentially. To appreciate this we need
to look, quickly, at the concept of autonomy. Autonomy is used as a description
of a certain condition of action and as a moral-political principle both at the level
of individuals and of collectivities. It is used in the analysis of individual actions

History of European Ideas

Homogenisation and Globalisation 895

to describe the exercise of free moral agency. As Richard Lindley puts it:

an a u t o n o m o u s person is not someone who is manipulated by others, or forced to

d o their will. A n a u t o n o m o u s person has a will o f her or his own, and is able to act in
pursuit o f self-chosen goals? ~

The concept of autonomy is also used widely in political analysis in relation to the
'actions' of institutions, notably nation-states. One notion of cultural autonomy
is based on an analogy--misconceived, as I believe--with this institutional
usage. However I don't want to pursue these complications here. 13
The more interesting point about the autonomy principle, for our purposes, is
that it is quite indifferent to the outcomes of cultural practices and processes: so
long as these take place free from heteronomous control, the autonomy principle
is entirely satisfied. The implication of this is that autonomy would not
necessarily be at issue if all cultures came to resemble one another. If all
restaurants looked like McDonalds, or Pizza Hut, all music became variants of
Western electronic Rock, all cities concrete and glass clones of Los Angeles, all
television programmes blandly 'international', if identical parades of shops were
to be found in every shopping centre in the world--if all this were to
occur---defenders of autonomy would not be able to grumble, so long as this
homogeneity was the outcome of autonomous choices. For autonomy is only
concerned with freedom of action, not with the outcome of actions. The
relationship of homogenisation to cultural autonomy turns out to be only a
contingent one--it might suggest that autonomy has been infringed or it might
not. At any rate, the mere fact of cultural practices becoming the same is not in
itself any threat to cultural autonomy.

5. AUTONOMY AND GLOBALISATION

However I do think autonomy is important in all this and to finish I will try to
say briefly how it might figure in a critique of these issues. In the first place, I
think we need to take a different view of the significance of homogenisationmto
get right away from the ideas of sameness and difference. To return to my starting
point, we need to expand the conceptual vocabulary with which we approach
global cultural phenomena. Perhaps it's best to see homogenisation as merely
symptomatic of a more profound process of 'globalisation'. Globalisation has
been variously described but it is most commonly understood primarily in terms
of an expanding global capitalist production system and market. This is not only
the case with obviously political-economic accounts (for example, Wallerstein's
world system theory) but with accounts at the level of the cultural. 14 Now
although I would not want to deny the centrality of capitalism to global culture, I
think we might usefully avoid the obvious critical strategy in response to
thismthe route through the critique of commodification which often fetches up
in the critique of homogenisation.
Global capitalism clearly has cultural consequences. Certainly it tends to
spread around a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coke and Madonna videos. But
I don't think this is its most significant consequence. More significant, I think, is

Volume 20, Nos 4-6, February 1995

896 John Tomlinson

the shift in the locus of control of cultural patterns from a local to a 'decentred'
global space. It is in this process--a function of'capitalist modernity' rather than
simply of the capitalist market--that the threat to cultural autonomy lies and it is
here, I think, that a broader cultural critique of globalisation might be
established.
Anthony Giddens has provided some suggestive concepts here in his analysis
of the globalising tendencies of modernity. In particular, he speaks of the process
of 'displacement' or 'disembedding': 'the lifting out of social relations from local
contexts and their rearticulation across indefinite tracts of time/space'. This
process derives from the impact of the major institutions of modernity--global
capitalism, certainly, but also mass communications, and what Giddens refers to
as the 'abstract systems' of modernity. 15
The main cultural implications I take from the process of 'disembedding' is
that global capitalist modernity shrinks the space for, and the significance of,
local decision making and therefore inhibits cultural autonomy. There is scarcely
space to develop this argument here but I will sketch it out in relation to an
example Giddens provides:

The local shopping mall is a milieu in which a sense of ease and security is cultivated
by the layout of the buildings and the careful planning of public places. Yet
everyone who shops there is aware that most of the shops are chain stores, which
one might find in any city, and indeed that innumerable shopping malls of similar
design exist elsewhere? 6

Giddens does not make the obvious move of focussing on the homogenisation
of experience implied in this example, rather he uses it to illustrate how the
planning of these public spaces represent 'an expression of distant events and was
'placed into' the local environment rather than forming an organic development
within it'. What is at stake is thus the issue of the heteronomous control of
cultural environments rather than that of the uniformity of experience within
these environments. Cultural autonomy would, I think, have to involve local
users of such environments in their conception and planning massively more
than is the case in present conditions.
But in addressing this we confront a puzzle, for no one actually 'lives' in the
global space which defines our local experience: even the directors of
multinational companies necessarily live in a locality, shop (or send their wives or
servants to shop) in the local mall. So in what sense is local cultural autonomy to
be expressed in the conditions of global modernity? Here we must accept the
impossibility of returning to some pre-modern 'gemeinschaftliche' world of
presence availability. There is clearly no retreat from modernity and the idea of
'locality' must be expressed somewhat differently in this context; detached from
the sense of physical proximity and small-scale community which tie it to images
of'traditional' society. Perhaps, as Giddens suggests, we might see disembedding
as a process of 'integration within globalised 'communities' of shared
experience'. 17 But however the local is reconceptualised, it seems to me that the
effort must be to define a meaningful public space for the expression of
autonomous cultural choice and the generation of narratives of collective
meaning. It is the articulation and the establishment of such a space, rather than

History of European Ideas

Homogenisation and Globalisation 897

the defence of 'authentic' differentiated cultural practices which should be the

aim of a radical global-cultural politics.

John Tomlinson
The Nottingham Trent University

NOTES

I. See, for example, the contributions to M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture:

Nationalism. Globalization and Modernity (London: Sage, 1990); and to A.D. King
(ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World System (London: Macmillan, 1991).
2. U. Hannerz, 'Scenarios for Peripheral Cultures' in King, op. cit., pp. 107-128,
(p. 108).
3. For example, M. Tracey, 'The Poisoned Chalice?: International Television and the
Idea of Dominance', Daedalus, 114 (1985), pp. 17-56.
4. J. Sinclair, Images Incorporated: Advertising as Industry and Ideology (London:
Croom Helm, 1987).
5. Hannerz, p. 109.
6. See the discussion of the discourse of cultural imperialism in my Cultural lmperialism:
A Critical Introduction (London: Pinter Publishers/Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990).
7. G.J. Hamelink, Cultural Autonomy in Global Communications (New York:
Longmans, 1983), pp. 2-3.
8. See Tomlinson, op. cit.mespecially chapter I.
9. On the ideological work involved in the construction of national traditions see
E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition. On the critique of the
'heritage industry' see J. Corner and S. Harvey, Enterprise and Heritage (London:
Routledge, 1991).
10. See for example Hamelink, op. cit., chapter 1.
11. J. Tunstall, The Media are American (Constable, 1977), p. 59.
12. R. Lindley, Autonomy (London: Macmillan Education, 1986), p. 6.
13. See Tomlinson, op. cit., pp. 94-99.
14. Notable exceptions to this are the work of Anthony Giddens, of Ulf Hannerz and of
Roland Robertson, all of whom offer broader conceptions of cultural modernity.
15. A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 18.
16. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 141.
17. Ibid. This suggestion relates to Giddens's insistence that we conceive of the cultural
experience of modernity in terms of a 'dialectic of the global and the local' rather than
as engulfment in a monolithic global culture, (1991, pp. 21-23).

Volume 20, Nos 4-6, February 1995