Four faces of global culture.

• Author: Berger, Peter L.

The term "globalization" has become somewhat of a cliche. It serves to explain everything from the woes of the German coal industry to the sexual habits of Japanese teenagers. Most cliches have a degree of factual validity; so does this one. There can be no doubt about the fact of an ever more interconnected global economy, with vast social and political implications, and there is no shortage of thoughtful, if inconclusive, reflection about this great transformation. It has also been noted that there is a cultural dimension, the obvious result of an immense increase in worldwide communication. If there is economic globalization, there is also cultural globalization. To say this, however, is only to raise the question of what such a phenomenon amounts to.

Again, there can be no doubt about some of the facts. One can watch CNN in an African safari lodge. German investors converse in English with Chinese apparatchiks. Peruvian social workers spout the rhetoric of American feminism. Protestant preachers are active in India, while missionaries of the Hare Krishna movement return the compliment in Middle America. Both hope and fear attach to these facts.

The hope is that a putative global culture will help to create a more peaceful world. If a global culture is in the making, then perhaps a global civil society might come into being. Ever since John Locke re-emerged from Eastern Europe speaking with a Polish accent, a great amount of hope has been invested in the notion of civil society, that agglomerate of intermediate institutions that Tocqueville saw as the foundation of a vital democracy. Civil society depends on a consensus on civic virtues, and that, after all, is what a culture is supposed to supply. The French sociologist Daniele Hervieu-Leger (in her contribution to the forthcoming volume The Limits of Social Cohesion, edited by me) speaks of an "ecumenism of human rights." The same idea is conveyed in a much cruder form by the advertisements of the Benetton company. Whether the idea is couched in sophisticated or crude terms, it too has an evident factual basis. It is also reasonable to hope that a world in which there would be a greater consensus on human rights would also be a more peaceful world.

But there is also fear attached to the prospect of cultural globalization, fear of a worldwide "airport culture" in which the rich diversity of human civilizations will be homogenized and vulgarized. This fear has been vocalized in the rhetoric of "Asian values" that has attained a certain political significance in recent years, as well as in the rhetoric of the various movements of Islamic resurgence. Similar fear, in less virulent form, can be observed elsewhere, for example in the worries about cultural homogenization among Euroskeptics. One of the arguments made by those who opposed Austria's joining the European Union was that Austrians would no longer be able to refer to potatoes as Erdapfel, a homey word that was suddenly imbued with the genius of Austrian identity, but would have to use the High German word Kartoffeln. Of course this was silly. But the desire to preserve distinct cultural traditions and a distinct cultural identity in the intense economic and political pressure cooker of the new Europe is not silly at all. The fear, like the hope, is not without foundation.

A more nuanced understanding of cultural globalization will have to take account of both the homogenizing forces and the resistances to them. Benjamin Barber made a move toward such an understanding in his book Jihad vs. McWorld (1995). Most recently, and in a more subtle way, Samuel Huntington has discussed the same issues in his Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), a book to which the present observations are greatly indebted. Huntington, whose view of the contemporary world cannot be accused of being overly optimistic, ends his book with a call to search for commonalities between the contending civilizations, a dialogue of cultures. One need not agree with every aspect of his analysis to agree with his conclusion. A dialogue between cultures, however, presupposes a clearer understanding of all the processes at work, both those of cultural globalization and of resistance to it. It is proposed here that there are at least four distinct processes of cultural globalization going on simultaneously, relating in complex ways both to each other and to the many indigenous cultures on which they impinge.

Davos: From Boardroom to Bedroom

First is what Huntington nicely calls the "Davos culture" (after the annual World Economic Summit that meets in that Swiss luxury resort). This culture is globalized as a direct accompaniment of global economic processes. Its carrier is international business. It has obvious behavioral aspects that are directly functional in economic terms, behavior dictated by the accoutrements of contemporary business. Participants in this culture know how to deal with computers, cellular phones, airline schedules, currency exchange, and the like. But they also dress alike, exhibit the same amicable informality, relieve tensions by similar attempts at humor, and of course most of them interact in English. Since most of these cultural traits are of Western (and mostly American) provenance, individuals coming from different backgrounds must go through a process of socialization that will allow them to engage in this behavior with seemingly...