Holton Cultural Consequences
ANNALS, AAPSS, 570, July 2000
GLOB AL IZA TION’S CUL TURAL CON SE QUENCES THE ANNALS OF THE AMER ICAN AC A DEMY
Globalization’s Cultural Consequences
By ROBERT HOLTON
ABSTRACT: Globalization has been associated with a range of cultural consequences. These can be analyzed in terms of three major theses, namely, homogenization, polarization, and hybridization. The homogenization thesis proclaims that global culture is becoming standardized around a Western or American pattern. While some evidence supports this view, the presence of cultural alternatives and resistance to Western norms suggests that polarization provides a more convincing picture of global cultural development. Global interconnection and interdependence do not necessarily mean cultural conformity. Culture, it seems, is harder to standardize than economic organization and technology. Yet the idea of polarization has its limits, too. The hybridization thesis argues that cultures borrow and incorporate elements from each other, creating hybrid, or syncretic, forms. Evidence to support this view comes mainly from popular music and religious life. The cultural consequences of globalization are therefore diverse and complex.
Robert Holton is professor of sociology at Flinders University of South Australia. He is author of a number of books on social theory, historical sociology, and immigration. His most recent publication is Globalization and the Nation-State (1998). In 1995, he was elected to a fellowship of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
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E clearly live in an epoch of rapid social change, where capital, technology, people, ideas, and information move relentlessly across the inherited map of political borders and cultural boundaries. Cross-border processes such as interregional trade, population migration, technological diffusion, religious conversion, and military conquest are not new (McNeill 1986). Globalization as it
GLOB AL IZA TION’S CUL TURAL CON SE QUENCES THE ANNALS OF THE AMER ICAN AC A DEMY
Globalization’s Cultural Consequences
By ROBERT HOLTON
ABSTRACT: Globalization has been associated with a range of cultural consequences. These can be analyzed in terms of three major theses, namely, homogenization, polarization, and hybridization. The homogenization thesis proclaims that global culture is becoming standardized around a Western or American pattern. While some evidence supports this view, the presence of cultural alternatives and resistance to Western norms suggests that polarization provides a more convincing picture of global cultural development. Global interconnection and interdependence do not necessarily mean cultural conformity. Culture, it seems, is harder to standardize than economic organization and technology. Yet the idea of polarization has its limits, too. The hybridization thesis argues that cultures borrow and incorporate elements from each other, creating hybrid, or syncretic, forms. Evidence to support this view comes mainly from popular music and religious life. The cultural consequences of globalization are therefore diverse and complex.
Robert Holton is professor of sociology at Flinders University of South Australia. He is author of a number of books on social theory, historical sociology, and immigration. His most recent publication is Globalization and the Nation-State (1998). In 1995, he was elected to a fellowship of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
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GLOBALIZATION’S CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES
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E clearly live in an epoch of rapid social change, where capital, technology, people, ideas, and information move relentlessly across the inherited map of political borders and cultural boundaries. Cross-border processes such as interregional trade, population migration, technological diffusion, religious conversion, and military conquest are not new (McNeill 1986). Globalization as it
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