Sociology of european culture

Master: Intercultural Management, 1st year Course: Sociology of European Culture Student: Andreea Podeanu

Three paradigms of the globalization

The most common interpretations of globalization are the idea that the world is becoming a more uniform and standardized, through a technological, commercial and cultural synchronization emanating from the West and that globalization is tied up with modernity. Globalization, according to Albrow, refers to all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single society, global society.
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In social sciences there are as many

conceptualizations of globalization as there are disciplines. In economics, globalization refers to economic internationalization and the spread of capitalist market relations. The global economy is the system generated by globalizing production and global finance .2 In international relations the focus is on the increasing density of interstate relations and the development of global politics. In sociology the concern is with increasing worldwide social densities and the emergence of world society. In cultural studies, the focus is on global communications and worldwide cultural standardization, as in CocaColonization and Mc Donaldization, and on postcolonial culture. 3 Globalization or the trend of growing worldwide interconnectedness is presently accompanied by several coinciding and clashing notions of cultural change. A growing sensitivity to cultural difference coincides with an awareness of the world becoming smaller and the idea of cultural difference forms part of a general cultural turn which involves a wider self-reflexivity of modernity. Modernization has been advancing like a steamroller denying and erasing cultural differences in its way and now not only the gains (the rationalization, standardization, control) but also the losses (alienation, displacement, disenchantment) are becoming apparent.
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The globalization in sociology`s history stages

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Pieterse, Jan N., Globalization as hybridization, Working paper series No 152 Ibidem 3 Ibidem 4 Pieterse, Jan N., Globalisation and culture, Economic and Political Weekly, June 8, 1996
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In his Tratat de geopolitica , Ilie Badescu mention the periodization of the sociology`s history in relation with the globalization phenomenon in Albrow`s view : he identified five stages : the universalist one, the stage of the national sociologies, the internationalist one, the stage of the indigenous and the stage of globalization. 5 The Universalist phase is based on the interest of the early sociology to offer a science for the mankind, based on timeless principles and verified laws . 6 The second stage, the one of national sociologies, suppose: the fundament of the sociology on a professional base, the professional contacts are limited by the national frontiers and the assertion of intellectual hegemony. The third stage, the internationalist one, is recognized begging with the after Second World War, and has some significant characteristics: the Cold War and the division Parsonsianism-Marxism, a transitional phase, the one of the relativism of `20th -`30th, the apparition of the relativist anthropology in opposition with the evolutionist and the historicist ones, the assertion of some ideologies : the fascism, the Japanese neofascism, the communism which are developing in relation with the acceleration of globalization`s process. The fourth stage, suppose the crystallization of the third world, the presence of the local sociology on the global scene, the opposition at the external, occidental methodology and terminology. The last phase is the globalization, which has the following aspects: the liberty that a sociologist has to collaborate with another sociologist anywhere on the Globe, the birth of an universal speech with multiple interlocutors from different cultures and different regions, the assertion of the global society, which represent a new model of the reality (which does not suspend either the diversity or the differentiation). 7

A worldwide system
As A. Dughin thinks, for realizing the unique worldwide system, a parallel structure was created by journalists, politicians, intellectuals, financials, analysts, whom had to prepare everything

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Badescu, Ilie, Tratat de geopolitica, 2004, p.41 Ibidem 7 Badescu, Ilie, Tratat de geopolitica, 2004, p.43

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to prevent the psychological resistance of the people and states, which not desire to dissolve in this global melting pot . In Immanuel Wallerstein`s view, the actual world is created by the expansion of the capitalist system. Otherwise said, the power gathered in a big metropolis initiate expansion processes which lead to the gradual absorption of all planet`s areas in the system, which become this way a worldwide system. We are always reminded that the Globe we live in become smaller and more integrated. Everywhere, states and nations that used to be independents are now connected between a complex network of organizations and inter-governmental regulations in a real international community. All over the world the ethnical past is updated and the old cultures are scrapped and recast. Mankind is connected to the network of the automated technologies and circled by a mass media forest. Shortly, this world has become a unique place. This time and space compression changed fundamentally the way that human being relation each other and with their social networks .8 This extract leads us to the question : What will happen with the cultural identity of each state or people?

Globalization and cultural identity

Before the era of globalization, there existed local, autonomous, distinct and well defined, robust and cultural sustaining connections between geographical place and cultural experience. These connections one`s - and one`s community`s cultural identity.
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This identity was something

that people had, not gained, an existential possession, an inheritance. Identity, like language, was not just a description of cultural belonging, it was a sort of collective treasure of local communities. The impact of globalization in the cultural sphere has, most generally, been viewed in a pessimistic light and it has been associated with the destruction of cultural identities, victims, of the accelerating encroachment of a homogenized, westernized, consumer culture. Globalization has been judged as involving a general process of loss of cultural diversity, destroying stable localities, displacing peoples, bringing a market-driven, branded homogenization of cultural experience . 10 But, the cultural identity, properly understood, is much more the product of globalization than it`s victim. Globalization, far from destroying it, has been perhaps the most significant force in creating the cultural identity.
Smith, A.D. Nations and nationalisam in a global era , 2000, p.1 Tomlinson, John, Globalization and culture, 1999, p. 269 10 Ibidem
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As Manuel Castells says, Our world and our lives are being shaped by the conflicting trends of globalization and identity. For Castells, the primary opposition in the power of globalization lies in the widespread surge of powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalization behalf of cultural singularity and people`s control over their lives and environment.
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on

Identity is seen

as the upsurging power of local culture that offers resistance to the centrifugal force of capitalist globalization. Castells says also that Identity is people`s source of meaning and experience .12 But whiles is true that the construction of meaning via cultural practices it a human universal, it does not follow that this invariably takes the form of identity construction as we currently understand it in the global modern West.

Globalization and Modernity

Globalization is operation simultaneously and interrelatedly in the economic, technologicalcommunicational, political and cultural spheres of human life and involves not the simple enforced distribution of a particular western lifestyle, but a more complicated dissemination of the entire range of institutional features of cultural modernity. Modernity is a complex idea, the abstraction of social and cultural practices from context of local particularity, and their institutionalization and regulation across time and space.
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So far as globalization distributes the institutional features of modernity across all cultures, globalization produces identity where none existed where before there were more perhaps more particular, less socially policed belongings. This, rather than the sheer obliteration of identities, is the most significant cultural impact of globalization, an impact felt at the formal level of cultural experience.

Cultural differentiation or lasting difference cultural convergence or growing sameness, cultural hybridization or ongoing mixing each of these positions represents a particular politics of difference : as lasting and immutable, as erasable and being erased and as mixing and in the process generating new, translocal forms of difference. Each involves different subjectivities and larger perspectives. The futures evoked by the three paradigms are also dramatically different.
Ibidem, p. 270 Tomlinson, John, Globalization and culture, 1999, p. 271 13 Ibidem, p. 272
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Jan Nederveen Pieterse extracts three important paradigms from the process of globalization. He sustain that we are presently experiencing a clash of civilizations and in these thesis the cultural difference is regarded as immutable and generating rivalry and conflict. At the same time there is a widespread understanding that growing global interdependence and interconnectedness may lead toward increasing cultural standardization, as in the global sweep of consumerism. A shorthand version of this is McDonalisation. In his opinion, a third position, different from both these models of intercultural relations, is that what is taking place is a process of translocal cultural mixing or hybridization. 14 Also, he affirms that cultural differentialism or lasting difference, cultural convergence or growing sameness, cultural hybridization or ongoing mixing there aren t the only perspectives on intercultural relations, but the mains ones. Each represents a particular politics or difference as lasting and immutable; as erasable and being erased and as mixing and in the process generating new, translocal forms of difference.15 Each of them involves different subjectivities and larger perspectives. Pieterse also affirms that the first two, civilizational clash and the McDonaldization, may be consider forms of modernism, while hybridization refers to a postmodern sensibility of traveling culture.

Clash of civilizations by Samuel Huntington

Samuel Huntington`s clash of civilizations thesis suggests that states belonging to different civilizations are more likely to become involved in conflict with one other, while those belonging to the same civilization are less likely to fight each other. According to Huntington, the clash of civilizations emerged in the post-Cold War era as a result of several factors, including: the increased interaction among people of different civilizations, the de-Westernization and indigenization of elites in non-Western states, increased economic regionalization, which heightens civilization consciousness and a global resurgence of religious identity, which is replacing diminishing local and state-based identities. 16 The result is that cultural factors have replaced ideological ones as the major source of conflict in world politics.

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Pieterse, Jan N., Globalisation and culture, Economic and Political Weekly, June 8, 1996

Ibidem Errol A. Henderson and Richard Tucker, Clear and present strangers: The clash of civilizations and international conflict, International Studies Quarterly, 2001, p. 318
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Since the religion is the single most important indicator of civilization, Huntington maintains that intercivilizational clashes are usually conflicts between peoples of different religions. He divides the world into eight major civilizations: sinic (the common culture of China and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia), Japanese (Japanese culture as distinctively different from the rest if Asia), Hindu (the core Indian civilization), Islamic (originating on the Arabian Peninsula, spread across North Africa, Iberian Peninsula and Central Asia), Orthodox (centered in Russia, separate from Western Christendom), Western (centered in Europe and North America), Latin American (Central and South American countries with a past of corporatist, authoritarian culture), Africa (while the continent lacks a sense of a pan-African identity, Huntington claims that Africans are also increasingly developing a sense of African Identity).

The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer

In his book entitled The McDonaldization of the Society , George Ritzer encompasses concepts from sociology, management and economics, in order to provide a more profound understanding of our modern society. According to G. Ritzer, McDonaldization is defined as the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.
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In his view, this fast-food restaurant

has become more than just a company, it has become part of our culture. Ritzer argues that the success of McDonaldization can be explained through four dimensions. The first dimension is the efficiency. For consumers, the restaurant offers an efficient way to go from hungry to full. Workers at McDonalds also operate efficiently by following predesigned steps of a process. The second dimension is the calculability, which focuses on the quantitative aspects of McDonalds products. Examples include portion size, cost, and the amount of time it takes for the customer to get the product. Predictability is the third dimension. When a person goes to McDonalds he or she can be sure that the product is going to be the same every time they go. The fourth dimension is control. This is exerted over the customers with the use of lines, limited menus, and uncomfortable seats. These methods of control cause people to eat quickly and leave.
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Ritzer, George, The McDonaldization Thesis, 1998

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In his book, Ritzer refers to Weber`s theory: Weber maintained that the modern West is marked by rationality and consequently is dominated by efficiency, calculability, predictability, and non-human technologies that control people.18 Ritzer considers the McDonaldization process as an amplification of this theory. Formal rationalization means that people`s search for the optimum means to an end is shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures. The bureaucracy ultimately leads to fewer options because virtually everyone can make the same optimal choice. 19 There are three important factors which contribute to the increasing prevalence of McDonaldization: material interests, the culture of the U.S., which values McDonaldization as an end itself, and the degree to which McDonaldization is attuned to important changes taking place in society. Through McDonaldization economic goals and aspirations become more easily attainable. Although the fast-food industry did not create the desire for efficiency in society, it has helped efficiency turn into a universal reality in everyday life. Some other areas of society has been affected by McDonaldization, include shopping, higher education, healthcare, and entertainment. More specific, the department stores, shopping malls, and even gas stations have all become streamlined stores which allow consumers to buy products quickly and efficiently. Ritzer uses the term calculability to describe how a McDonaldized society like the United States of America emphasizes quantity over quality. The emphasis on quantity in fast-food leads to decreased quality for customers, but customers are not the only people that suffers from the restaurants striving for quantity instead of quality. 20 Using the same repetitive tasks not only increase efficiency, but also enable companies to consistently produce the products each time, thus making the employees duties predictable. According to Ritzer, the non-human technology is controlling not only workers, but also consumers as well. While the bureaucracy offers many advantages, it suffers from what Ritzer describes at the irrationality of rationality. 21 Bureaucracy can create a dehumanizing place for a person to work or to be served in. Aside from the dehumanization effect, there are several other irrationalities. Bureaucracies can become inefficient when there are too many regulations. Also, bureaucracies can become unpredictable as employees grow unclear about what they are supposed to do and clients do not receive the service that they expect.
Ritzer, George, The McDonalization of the Society Thesis, 1998, Preface, vii Ibidem, p.54 20 Ibidem, p. 38 21 Ibidem, p. 42
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The idea of glocalization is that globalization institutions are brought into the local community. McDonalds is trying to standardize and homogenize other parts of the world; as such it is a globalizing force. The outcomes of glocalization and globalization are also discussed as being something or nothing . Something can be described as being indigenously created from the local culture. It is also important for something to be substantial and have deep meaning. Nothing on the other hand, is often centrally conceived and is devoid of any real content or meaning to anyone. Thus, something has more meaning, flavor, character or history. Nothing is empty, forgettable, and made to please everyone by making it boring and similar to everything else. 22 Globalization of nothing is the easiest way for companies to expand because they make everything the same, in every location, and market it the same. George Ritzer states that people generally fall into one of three cages that summarize their view. In the velvet cage
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are people who are not threatened by McDonaldization, but instead

enjoy and are comforted by the rationalization and the predictability it bring to the society. The rubber cage
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is for the people who dislike some aspects of the McDonaldization, but at the same

time like other aspects of it. They are usually the one who recognize the cost of becoming too McDonaldized and try to find ways to temporarily escape the process. The third type is the iron cage
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, and these people are more pessimistic and try to fight back against the McDonaldization

process. Indeed, more and more people fall into the velvet cage group because they are increasingly dependent on fast, quick, convenient and predictable products and services.

The Globalization as Hybirdization by Jan Nederveen Pieterse

Looking at the most commonly held assumptions about the consequences of cultural globalization, Holton distinguishes three hypothesis : homogenization, polarization and hybridization .26 Hybridization has become a widely used term in the social sciencies. In late 19th century biology, the term was used to describe events of cross-breeding several species.27 The term has a

The McDonaldization of the Society, by George Ritzer, reviewer Hamid Yaganeh, Pine Forges Press, August 31, 2007 23 Ritzer, George, The McDonaldization of the Society Thesis, 1998, p. 164 24 Ibidem 25 Ibidem 26 Robert Frank and Gunnar Stollberg, Conceptualizing Hybridization, International Sociology, December 2003, Vol 18, p. 727 27 Ibidem

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much more positive connotation in postcolonial studies, where it refers to a playful combination of various cultural elements in art and literature, and particularly to the forming of an identity in the context of migration. In other fields, hybridization denotes a specific mode of deterritorialization: the previously close connection between cultural and geographical space become looser when combinations of diverse elements replace an earlier convergence of cultural signs and localities. Societies without processes of transfer, exchange and transformation are rare. When Elwert described culture as the social organization of syncretism
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he strengthened the idea of culture as

open and dynamic structures instead of static and isolated formations. Nederveen Pieterse taslked of the hybridization of the hybrid cultures significance. In one of his articles, Hybrid modernities: mlange modernities in Asia , Jan Nederveen Pieterse argued that globalization can best be viewed as a process of hybridization as against homogenization, standardization, cultural imperialism, westernization, Americanization, McDonaldization, etc., and as against the clash of civilizations view.
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. If every culture is hybridized, the term loses its

He also argued that

hybridization is a tautology in that which is being hybridized was hybrid already because the historical process of intercultural mingling has been so profound and wide-ranging that, in historical time, there are no pure, authentic origins underneath. In cultural, literary and postcolonial studies hybridity, syncretism, creolization, metissage have become increasingly imminent tropes. The patterns of hybridity, explored in relation to modernity, can be considered across various dimensions, such as power and equality, spatial hierarchies, and modes of production. The cohabitation of traditional and modern in societies outside the past has given rise to concepts such as dual society and plural society.31 Modernity`s past is usually referred to as tradition and in many cases this refers to feudalism. But feudalism can be remembered in many different ways: the memories of serfs are different that those of nobles. Memories of Catholic clergy are different from those of Protestants. Where history broke off for one is where it started for another. Modernities then, are plural and hybrid also within cultures and societies, shaped by contestation and politics of memory, and politics of class and consumption.

Ibidem, p. 731 Ibidem 30 Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, Sociological Analysis, Volume 1, Number 3, p.76 31 Ibidem, p. 79
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Modernity is feudalism plus-strong state, bureaucracy, commerce, industrialization, commodification .32 Differentiation, considered as characteristic of modernity, builds on earlier forms of social division of labour including the feudal estates. Different feudalisms yield different modernities .33 The modernities generated by what Hobsbawm called the feudal capitalism Catholic Europe, in Spain and Italy, contrast markedly with the modernities in the Northern Protestant countries. North America is the exception- modernity without feudalism, a modernity founded on the social basis of migration. Pure modernity does not exist. All modernities are particularist and all modernities are mlange ones, composites of divers elements, improvisations, hybrids of place and space. Most societies are mixture of traditional and modern elements. Globalization is far too complex process to ask whether its cultural consequences are either homogenization or hybridization. It rather seems that a certain degree of hybridization is the normal course of the events, which doesn`t prevent other aspects from being homogenized. In the debate of the globalization, it often appears that there are no limits to hybridization anything goes. This would mean that all possible permutation of elements are actually realized. 35
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Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, Sociological Analysis, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 80 Ibidem 34 Ibidem 35 Robert Frank and Gunnar Stollberg, Conceptualizing Hybridization, International Sociology, December 2003, Vol 18, p. 741
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REFERNCES :

Badescu, Ilie, Tratat de geopolitica, 2004 Ritzer, George, The McDonaldization of the Society Thesis, 1998 Smith, A.D. Nations and nationalisam in a global era , 2000 Tomlinson, John, Globalization and culture, 1999 Baltasiu, Radu, Antropologia globalizarii. Transformari si curiozitati decodificate, 2009 Robert Frank and Gunnar Stollberg, Conceptualizing Hybridization, International Sociology, December 2003, Vol 18, Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, Sociological Analysis, Volume 1, Number 3 The McDonaldization of the Society, by George Ritzer, reviewer Hamid Yaganeh, Pine Forges Press, August 31, 2007 Errol A. Henderson and Richard Tucker, Clear and present strangers: The clash of civilizations and international conflict, International Studies Quarterly, 2001 Pieterse, Jan N., Globalization as hybridization, Working paper series No 152 Pieterse, Jan N., Globalisation and culture, Economic and Political Weekly, June 8

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