The prevailing debate regarding the effect of global popular culture industries (Globalization) on local cultures and local identities are significant today more than ever. The reason for this importance lies in the preservation of the traditional cultures and values that are carefully being sewn into the entanglements of globalization. The spread of capital across foreign lands has given a new importance for the hierarchy of order in a country to succumb to radical changes in technology and infrastructure: country, nation, community, subcultures, and the individual. In this respect, the rapid spread of technology and capital in the late twentieth century has now provided a visual look at the pending clash between tradition and globalization. In a world that is arguably dominated by the mass prospect of capital gain and industrial expansion, the significance of “local culture” and “local identity” have been given a new importance.
The Effect of Globalization
The last decade has shown an escalating interest in “local identity” and “local cultures.” The reason for this interest stems from the “accelerating processes of globalisation” (Smart, 1993: 129). Before, the idea of diversity appeared indisputable; however, in this decade, former ideas regarding the diversity of cultures and identities slowly diminished into the fear of globalization acting as a threat to local identities and cultures. In recent years, studies regarding local identity and cultures have shown a profound increase. Another dimension of this globalization debate is in the cultural realm (Lowe and Lloyd, 1997). Some decry the effects of globalization on local culture or cultural autonomy as an ever-expanding form of cultural imperialism (Dorman 2000, 34), and some see globalization as postmodernization in which Western values have become dominant even if they must operate within a global cultural context (Inglehart 2000; Nash 2000, 71-87).
An example where this idea of global popular culture industries affecting the traditional landscape, local identity, and local cultures is seen through the concept of Americanization (Hoggart, 1957: 250, 247). Hoggart (1957) theorized that, due in part because of American values and popular cultural themes were intersecting with British values and cultural norms, Americanization had served a silent apocalypse triggering the appropriation of American norms within the British local culture. In this manner, the idea of the global popular culture industry becomes a form of cultural imperialism, the inner-workings of an imminent global hegemony in the form of capital influence.
Global popular culture industries, through capital consumption and the major assistance given to the development of corporate giants to provide regulated products for customers, the industry created is one controlled by capitalism. In this notion, agreeably, the idea spread of capital in foreign countries produces a very Frankfurtian notion of global cultural imperialism. The fundamental concern regarding the expansion of global popular culture industries ties in clearly with massified cultural products and homogenized subjectivities (Bottomore: 1984: 13). Global popular culture industries conflict with traditional cultures and local identities because of its sudden intervention. Global popular culture industries marks a quick integration of local identities with that of a global syndicate thereby making local identities and cultures even more significant in their past states.
Global enterprises that administer their influence in foreign countries (i.e. Wal-Mart) have devised another counteractive attack to local identities and cultures. In this way, global popular culture industries merely seep in, if you will, into local cultures and identities. In an unnoticeable way, this can be seen through the effect of what is termed “Glocalization.” “Glocalization” is an historical process whereby localities develop direct economic and cultural relationships to the global system through information technologies, bypassing and subverting traditional power hierarchies like national governments and markets. In contrast, “globalization” is often used as a term to suggest the historical processes leading to a more one-way relationship between the “global” realm inhabited by multinational corporations, the entertainment industry, CNN, the Web, etc. and a subjugated “local” realm where the identity-affirming senses of place, neighborhood, town, locale, ethnicity, etc. survive (if just barely) against the global onslaught of global capitalism, media, and network identities.
Glocalization is a global corporate strategy of tailoring commodities to local markets. This corporate strategy stresses the importance of a product or service specifically adapting to the locality or culture it is marketed in. This fusion of globalization with localization causes a fundamental shift in the way in which commodities from foreign countries inflict their dominant popular cultural norms on a more predominantly traditional atmosphere. Through the unannounced integration of capital in an otherwise traditional atmosphere, the danger, as perceived by the public, lies in the effect it has on local identities and culture.
Through Glocalization, a more modern way of subjecting the local with the global industry, the imminent diffusion of the local with global appears clear. The significance of the terms “local identity” and “local culture” have been given such grave emphasis nowadays because of the driving influence of Glocalization. This slow market influence has caused a self-reflexive awareness for those who are gravely affected by the changes in both culture and identity.
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