Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures.

• Author: Benhamou, Francoise
• Position: Book Review

Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures By Tyler Cowen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, Pp. ix, 179. $45.00.

As the general conference of UNESCO (October 15, 2003) has unanimously adopted a resolution to submit a convention on cultural diversity to the next conference that will be held in 2005, the last book of Tyler Cowen casts a new light on the controversial question of cross-cultural trade and globalization. Every reader of Tyler Cowen's books and papers is seduced by his extensive knowledge of a diverse range of cultures, his ability to engage philosophy and aesthetics as well as economics. This book is based on many examples with a high degree of variety over time and countries. Cowen has a special gift for balancing scientific and high-culture literature on the one side and more trivial examples on the other side. This duality helps the nonspecialist reader to appropriate the analysis.

The book is both provocative and stimulating. The expression "Creative Destruction" (a well-known citation of Joseph Schumpeter) as a title is very appropriate. Decline and creation belong to the same movement linked to globalization (nevertheless, decline occurs more frequently when gains from trade are based on a severe imbalance). Cowen shares with the Hegelian philosophy the belief in a dialectic movement for creativity. Homogenizing and heterogenizing mechanisms "are two sides of the same coin, rather than the opposing processes" (p. 129). Cross-cultural exchange does not lower the quality of customer taste in spite of peripheral negative effects. It is the foundation of the following paradox: "[a] large number of declining genres might be a symptom of cultural wealth and vitality" (p. 59).

Cowen's central thesis speculates about the increasing variety and diversity of culture, at all levels of quality. By reducing fixed costs of culture, cross-cultural exchange renders the "least common denominator effect" less likely in the aggregate (p. 104). Trade especially increases the diversity of choices; in other words, tastes do not become uniform with cultural exchanges.

Cowen considers the different mechanisms that may overturn this gains-from-trade argument. Globalization influences quality through a homogenizing effect: for example, trade encourages the production of action films, which are easier to export than comedies. In the same way, Cowen recognizes that globalization leaves many individuals frustrated because of their strong desire to maintain a local or national culture and particular markers of cultural identity. Particularism and provincialism can sometimes be good for the arts. From this point of view...