The overriding fear of a monoculture occurring as a result of the global economic forces is not a view shared by all. Other globalists perceive a cultural impact of a different order. While they may agree that English may well be the dominant language factor in the globalization process today, they do not necessarily believe that Americanization is the globe's future. Indeed, some o them believe that globalization will result in even greater cultural diversity because of increased contact that the Internet, for example, will bring.

Frances Cairncross, author of The Death of distance and editor of The Economist, does not see it as simply an American takeover. She clearly envisions a different world, but one that has room for the continuation (for the foreseeable future) of individual cultures ... albeit in a variety of different relationships with each other. Cairncross talks of "communities"; communities that meld and reform depending on the subject or focus. In a recent interview, Cairncross very succinctly describes these new social/cultural alignments. Question: What will happen to our concepts of borders, citizens, communities and even cultures?"

Communities will take new forms in future. Up to now, we have tended to think of communities mainly as geographical concepts. In future, we will see the growth of a new kind of social life-one that crosses borders, but does not necessarily transcend cultures or interests. People will find it easier to locate others around the world who share their passion-whether it he Irish history; commemorating Elvis Presley; or Arab cookery. These communities of interest will often be driven by the extraordinary movement of humanity we have seen in the final years of this century.- international migration, business travel and tourism all increase the numbers of people separated from their friends by distance. More telephone calls 90 from Germany to Turkey for example, than from "Germany to the United States. The reason for this is that even though the US is a much more important trading partner for Germany, Turkey has been a far bigger source of immigrants. People will build friendships with strangers across the world-sometimes more readily than with the family next door."

Source: <http://www.deathofdistance.com/ ht...view_with_frances_Cairncross.html> 31 Oct 99

In her provocative book, The Death of Distance (1997), Cairncross asserts that geography, borders, time-zones have become almost irrelevant to the way in which life is now conducted. This has been brought about by the revolutionary changes in communications: in the development of the Internet, but also of the telephone. Cairncross identifies six major trends that will have profound effects on the way in which the people of the world interact with one another. These six trends (paraphrased here) are:

1. The elimination of barriers to human movement, which will encourage countries to "bid down tax rates to attract high-income earners and profitable countries."
2. The strengthening, reinforcing, of communities of culture through electronic communications.
3. The continuing rise of the English language.
4. Time zones will matter more than distance in determining where companies (and people) locate.
5. The delineation of where the "work place" and the "home place" differ will be blurred.
6. The new irrelevance of size: Offering services and products will no longer be controlled by the size of the company.

Clearly, Cairncross is describing a global economy that is rapidly becoming a reality. The important fact is that the monoculture (except for perhaps the dominance of English) described in the Opening segments does not seem to be a part of her conceptualization-at least not right away.

But the notion of American impact on mega culture is in the thinking of Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History. In an interview, which was a part of a Merrill Lynch Forum, Fukuyama agreed that globalization was really a euphemism for Americanization" but it is not present day Americanization that he finds desirable as a lobalization 9 export. Fukuyama does believe, however, that some deeper cultural values and universals exist that will prevent Americanized cultural homogeneity to occur in the near future. The following quotes were given in response to several questions at the Merrill Lynch Forum concerning "Economic Globalization and Culture."

"I think that in many respects, globalization is still superficial. Although there is a p great deal of talk about it currently, the underlying truth is that the global economy is still limited. It seems to me that the real layer of globalization is restricted to the capital markets. In most other areas, institutions remain intensely local."

"It could be that culture will ultimately become homogenized just like political institutions, but I believe that it's going to be a much slower process. Many people think that because we have advanced communications technology, and are able to project global television culture worldwide, this will lead to homogenization on a deeper cultural level. I think that, in away, it's done just the oppositeÖFor example, there is probably less mutual liking, more distrust and greater emphasis on the difference between the cultures Of the United States and Asia today than there was 40 years ago. In the 1950s and '60s, Asia looked up to the United States as a model of modernization. Now, Asians look at American urban decay and the decline of the family and they feel that America is not a very attractive model. Communications technology has allowed both Asians and Americans to see each other more clearly, and it turns out they have very different value systems. "

"I think that there is a global consumer culture that is spread by companies like McDonald's and Coca Cola. However, if you look beneath the surface and ask people in different countries where their loyalties lie, how they regard their families, and bow they regard authority, there will be enormous differences. When people examine a culture, they pay too much attention to aspects like the kinds of consumer goods that people buy. That's the most superficial aspect of culture. A culture really consists of deeper moral norms that affect how people link together." "What bothers me about the recent discussions of globalization is that people seem to think globalization is going to be much more homogenizing than it really is. In fact, I think that it will have the opposite effect. In a certain sense, the de facto free trade regime and economic interdependence actually allows people to stress cultural differences in ways that they couldn't have before ... Quebec is an example of this phenomenon. There is a great deal of division in Quebec on the issue of separation. I think that there's no way that anyone would have even thought of separation without the North American Free Trade Agreement and the silent revolution in the '60s, when Quebec really modernized economically. In some ways, Quebec is actually more integrated with the American economy today than with the rest of Canada. If they separate, it's not goi ng to cost them economically. In a sense, free trade creates an economic floor. The prosperity brought about by globalization then permits cultures to really assert uniqueness. "[Is globalization Americanization?] I think that it is, and That's why some people do not like it. I think it has to be Americanization because, in some respects, America is the most advanced capitalist society in the world today, and so its institutions represent the logical development of market forces. Therefore, if market forces. are what drives globalization, it is inevitable that Americanization will accompany globalization ... However, I think that the American model that people in other cultures are adopting is from the America of two or three generations ago. When they think of globalization and modernization, many people think of America in the 1950s and '60s; "They put a man on she moon, "John Wayne, and Father Knows Best. They're not thinking of the America of the Los Angeles riots and O.J. Simpson. The culture that we exported in the '50s and '60s was idealized. It really presented quite an attractive package. The culture we export now is cynical, and a much less attractive model for other singular domesticated space, a place where nations to follow.

Source: <http://www.ml.com/woml/forum/global_s.htm> 27 Nov 99

Still further, Mike Featherstone, a British sociologist at the University of Tesside in England, and a major contributor to globalization studies, suggests that our views of globalization may well be exaggerated at this point in time. He believes that we are still in a "shaking out" period when it is not truly clear what direction the economic and technological revolutions will take this world. But Featherstone clearly asserts that global systems already exist in the economy, in communications, in media; but he does not see the demise of nation-states at any time soon.

"The process of globalization suggests simultaneously two images of culture. The first image entails the extension outwards of a particular culture to its limit, the globe. Heterogeneous cultures become incorporated and integrated into a dominant culture which eventually covers the whole world. The second image points to the compression of cultures. Things formerly held apart are now brought into contact and juxtaposition. Cultures pile on top of each other in heaps without obvious organizing principles. There is too much culture to handle and organize into coherent belief systems, means of orientation and practical knowledge. The first image suggests a process of conquest and unification of the global space. The world becomes a singular domesticated space, a place where everyone becomes assimilated into a common culture. In one version this dream [is seen as] the endpoint of historical development, represents the global culture as the culture of the nation-state writ large. Few today would adhere to this faith in the unfolding of an historical logic to deliver us into a world state with an integrated culture. While there are processes of cultural integration, homogenization and unification at work, it is clear that they are by no means uncontested. Globalization would he seen as entailing a social integration process which runs from tribal groups to nation-state societies, superstate blocs and eventually a world state-society ... we already find references to a "global society" Suggesting that various modes of global integration and forms of organization are well under way. . . [We should not] misunderstand the nature of the process of globalization. It should not be taken to imply that there is, or will be, a unified world society or culture-something akin to the social structure of a nation-state and its national culture, only writ large. Such an outcome may have been the ambition of particular nation-states at various Points of their history, and the possibility of a renewed world state formation process cannot be discounted in the future. In the present phase it is possible to refer to the development of a global culture in a less totalistic sense by referring to two aspects of the process of globalization.

... we can point to the existence of a global culture in the restricted sense of 'third cultures- sets of Practices, bodies of knowledge, conventions and lifestyles that have developed in ways which have become increasingly independent of nation-states. In effect there are a number of trans-societal institutions, cultures and cultural producers who cannot be understood as merely agents and representatives of their nationstates. Second, we can talk about a global culture in the ... sense of a cultural form: the sense that the globe is a finite, knowable bounded space, a field into which all nation-states and collectivities will i . nevi . tably be drawn. Here the globe, the planet earth, acts both as a limit and as the common bounded space on which our encounters and practices are inevitably grounded. In this second sense the result of the growing intensity of contact and communication between nation-states and other agencies is to produce a clashing of cultures, which can lead to heightened attempts to draw the boundaries between the self and others. From this perspective the changes which are taking place as a result of the current phase of intensified globalization can be understood as provoking reactions that seek to rediscover particularity, localism and difference which generate a sense of the limits of the culturally unifying, ordering and integrating projects associated with Western [modern life]..."

Source. Featherstone, Mike. 1995.
Undoing Culture, Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity.
London: Sage Publications. P 6-7

The boundary lines of what constitutes culture today are becoming very fuzzy; do people live in many different cultures simultaneously? "

ÖGeertz [Clifford Geertz, a prominent anthropologist] underscored how contemporary people who live in close proximity often do not share a common culture, but instead interact with people who are dispersed, resulting in an increasingly interconnected world.- 'We are trying,' said Geertz, 'to find our field [anthropology] in a seriously scrambled world that does not divide itself cleanly at the joints into societies or traditions... That makes the analysis of culture afar more awkward enterprise.'"

Source. Kearney, M. 1995. "The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism." Annual Review of Anthropology. (24:547-65)