1. GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY
Fernando Alcoforado *
1. Introduction
The process of globalization is not a recent phenomenon. He began in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries with the discovery of America and the sea route to the Indies.
Throughout human history, the process of globalization has produced a growing
integration in the whole planet, not just economic, but also political, social and cultural.
This integration between nations and people did not always so idyllic. Many people
worldwide were integrated through the subjugation economic, political, social and
cultural, when they were not decimated by force of arms by the great powers of the
time.
One of the main impacts produced by the process of globalization occurred in cultural
terms, given that the dominant powers have always sought to impose at all times their
ideology on countries and peoples dominated. This ideology, which is, according to
Bobbio (1986), a set of ideas and values relating to public order and having the function
guide collective political behavior, need to express themselves in cultural terms.
Throughout history, the dominant powers sought to impose their culture at the expense
of local cultures. Many of these cultures were annihilated and others who survived,
adjusted to the culture of the dominant powers.
In the contemporary era, the process of globalization is to make the globalization of
capital to take root in all corners of the Earth. Every nation of the world faces today, not
just with the threat of social exclusion of the fruits of economic progress and loss of
national sovereignty of their countries, but also with the possibility of missing their
cultural traditions as a result of the spread of globalized culture. To understand how
contemporary globalization threatens national cultures, we need to know its origins and
its consequences.
*
*Fernando Alcoforado, 73, engenheiro e doutor em Planejamento Territorial e Desenvolvimento
Regional pela Universidade de Barcelona, professor universitário e consultor nas áreas de planejamento
estratégico, planejamento empresarial, planejamento regional e planejamento de sistemas energéticos, é
autor dos livros Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) e
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), entre
outros.
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2. 2. Origins and consequences of contemporary globalization
The process of globalization or global economic integration that is recorded today is the
result of the occurrence of five major events. The first one concerns the end of the Cold
War resulting dismantling of the socialist system in Eastern Europe led by the former
Soviet Union, a fact that led to the end of the bipolar world opened after World War II.
This event led to the expansion of the world capitalist system with the incorporation of
the countries of the former socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. Some remaining socialist
countries such as China and Cuba, have also opened their economies to foreign capital
in order to attract investment.
The second major event that contributed to globalization was the exhaustion of
industrial growth model based on the production of consumer durables, with highly
capital intensive technologies, the demanding high energy consumption and polluting
the environment. The exhaustion of the capitalist model of industrial growth is
demonstrated by the decline in growth rates as well as the productivity of capital and
profit margins of industrialized countries over the past three decades. This situation
made it to become a requirement on the one hand, the changing technological paradigms
and business management aimed at raising levels of capital productivity and profit
margins and on the other, to promote the integration of the economies of developed
countries with the developing countries in order to promote their growth.
The third major event determinant of globalization concerns the rapid expansion of
global financial markets in the late 1970s, stimulated by their deregulation and the
advent of new information technologies. According to Oman (1994), with exchange
transactions exceeding $ 600 billion per day to the end of the 1980s and a trillion dollars
per day in 1993, financial globalization has considerably reduced the power of the
central banks control over the amount of currency, exacerbated financial instability and
fluctuations in exchange rates due to speculation and decreased the autonomy of
monetary and fiscal policy of governments.
The fourth major event that decisively contributed to the process of globalization
concerns the globalization of multinational enterprises both in manufacturing and in
services. The expansion of the financial markets and the "real" economy was stimulated
by deregulation and new information technologies. The globalization of multinational
enterprises has resulted, according assertion Oman (1994), the spectacular growth of
foreign direct investment especially in the second half of the 1980s.
The fifth major event determinant of globalization concerns the ecological threats such
as population growth, thinning of the ozone and global warming due to the greenhouse
effect which now deserve a comprehensive approach to global character especially in
the late 1980s. The prospect that the Earth's population, which will reach 10 billion
people by the year 2050 impact negatively on the resources of the planet and the
unsustainability of the current development model, which is responsible for the
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3. depletion of forests, animal and plant species and soil that sustain life, the pace of
deterioration in drinking water and oceans, the destruction of the ozone layer and the
greenhouse effect, are demanding a comprehensive global treatment in the formulation
and implementation of solutions.
Petrella (1995), professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium, says that the
development of capitalism in the current historical moment as demand puts the need for:
Globalize finance, capital markets, companies and strategies;
Adapt production systems to the scientific and technological revolution underway
in the fields of energy, materials, biotechnology and especially information and
communication;
Make each individual, each social group, each territorial community work from the
perspective of becoming better, stronger, winning. The principle of cooperation
between individuals, social groups and communities is replaced by the competition;
Liberalize domestic markets to build a single world market where goods circulate
freely, capital, services and people. In this context, it should be condemned all
forms of national protection, should not exist nor the interest of society and the
sovereign will of the people;
Deregulate the mechanisms of direction and orientation of the economy. In this
case, cease to be citizens, ie the democratic state, through elected or designated
representative institutions, the power to set standards and principles of operation
and yes of the market. State to settle compete to create the overall environment
more conducive to business and action; and,
Privatize entire sectors of the economy such as urban transport, railways, health,
hospitals, education, banking, insurance, culture, water supply, electricity, gas,
administrative services, etc..
These six points above reflect the fundamentals of the development model that the
process of globalization intends to carry out worldwide. The implementation of this
model will engender, however, the following scenario:
Mass unemployment resulting from the modernization of the productive sectors
required to raise their levels of productivity and competitiveness in world markets.
Loss of control of the national economy by the nation-state in the face of the high
power of international economic groups.
Transfer out of the nation-state's power to decide on investments and production of
broad economic sectors, especially the more modern, denationalized with the
privatization process.
Loss of national sovereignty with the subordination of the nation-state to the WTO
- World Trade Organization, the decisions of industrial companies and
multinational financial and economic blocs.
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4. Social exclusion of much of the world's population will be on the sidelines of the
fruits of economic and social progress.
Commitment of the global environment in the face of overwhelming power of
capital and weakening of the nation-state.
This scenario tends to sharpen the social contradictions in every nation and deepen
international conflicts in an environment characterized by economic war between
companies, nations and economic blocs. Alongside the centripetal forces that contribute
towards global economic integration, the centrifugal forces also work generating
fractures and fragmentations between social classes, races, nations and economic blocs,
many of them excluded from the fruits of economic progress. In this scenario, the
prevailing logic of competition and not the logic of cooperation between nations,
peoples, ethnic groups and social classes.
The Cold War, a product of World War II gave way to the War Economy dominant
today. It seems that in the future, the prevailing logic of competition, may resurface
social revolutions, ethnic strife, regional wars and localized, even a new conflagration
of world of serious consequences for humanity. It is therefore important to search for a
new development model, even within the framework of capitalism, based on the logic
of cooperation, to avoid the catastrophe that unfolds into the future.
3. Cultural globalization and its impacts and consequences
The big change produced around the world in the twentieth century is, without a doubt,
that contemporary globalization, according Defarges (1993), is characterized by the
explosion and acceleration of all order flows: goods, services, information, images,
fashions , ideas, values, everything that man invents and produces, at the moment this
is rooted in a land even if it is taken also by the frenzy of travel (business trips, tourism,
migration, temporary or permanent).
According to Naisbitt and Aburdene (1990), the world is becoming increasingly
cosmopolitan and we're all influencing each other. Trade, travel, film and television
establish the foundations of global lifestyle. It should be noted that cinema and
television broadcast the same images throughout the global village.
This whole process of transformation was due largely to the scientific and
technological revolution in progress, especially in transport and communications,
which enabled an unprecedented thrust of finance and international trade under the
auspices of multinational companies. To Defarges (1993), the movement of everything
that man thinks and does today reaches an intensity, density, unprecedented speed.
Several factors accumulate to impose economic globalization that causes deep
imbalances both international and national.
Defarges (1993) argues that the globalization of trade results from three phenomena: 1)
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5. the power and refinement of technical skills, 2) the ocean and finance, 3) the
globalization of business. In this flow of globalization, the nation-state maintains its
traditional functions. Its borders, fully recognized or foreclosed by old disputes, are
troubled by differences between the right, which claims sovereignty over the state, and
the new reality imposed by the globalization process. In the twentieth century, the
political-juridical concept of sovereignty was in crisis in the theoretical and practical
angles.
For Ianni (1992), capitalism produces both global interdependence as produces and
reproduces located and general contradictions, national and global. Simultaneously
forces operating in the direction of cooperation, division of labor, interdependence,
integration and complicity, divergent forces operate, fragmentary and contradictory.
According Ianni (1992), the forces of fragmentation include nationalism, tribalism,
fundamentalism, Islam, defense of the Third World and other.
According to Huntington (1996), culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest
level, civilizations are identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration
and conflict in the post-Cold War World. He also states that in the post-Cold War
World, culture is both a divisive and unifying force and that societies united by
ideology or historical circumstances, but divided by civilization, or bursts, as happened
in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Bosnia, or are subject to severe stress, such as
Ukraine, Nigeria, Sudan, India, Sri Lanka and many others.
Among the contradictions generated by globalization stands out that among the
globalized culture and local cultures or national. According to Waters (1995), the
globalized culture is more chaotic than well structured. It is integrated and connected so
that the meanings of its components are made relative to each other, but are not unified
or centralized. The globalization of culture involves the creation of a common but
hyper differentiated field values, tastes and style opportunities accessible to every
individual irrespective of whether in self-expression purposes or consumption.
For Waters (1995), a globalized culture admits a continuous flow of ideas, information,
responsibility, values and tastes mediated through mobile individuals, symbols, signs
and electronic simulations. These flows give a particular form of globalized culture.
First, it connects primitive and homogeneous cultural niches closed forcing them to
relate to others. This relationship may take the form of a reflective self-examination in
which the principles are again assumed facing absorbing elements of other cultures.
Second, globalized culture allows the development of genuine transnational cultures
not linked to a nation-state-society which may be new or syncretic.
According to Waters (1995), based on argument of Appadurai, flows mentioned above
include: etnoscapes, the distribution of mobile individuals (tourists, migration,
refugees, etc.), tecnoscapes, distribution technology; finanscapes, the distribution of
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6. capital; mediascapes, information distribution; and, ideoscapes, the distribution of
political ideas and values (freedom, democracy, human rights).
Waters (1995) underscores the argument of Lechner that a direct effect caused by
globalization has independent characteristics of modernity. They include:
The universalization of Western culture;
The globalization of the nation-state-society;
The abstraction and the secularization of law as the basis of social order; and,
The establishing the fact that the world is pluralistic and that there is a unique and
superior culture.
The indirect effect of globalization lies in the fact that it can promote the peripheral
capitalist countries, an imitation of the culture of the great powers or syncretism of a
common set of elements from different traditions, but in fact provoke discontent arising
from the threat that modernization and post-modernization represent against cultural
traditions. It is worth noting that globalization has also contributed both directly and
indirectly, to the broader development of fundamentalism.
Morin (1993) emphasizes that the crisis of modernity, ie the loss of the certainty of
progress and faith in tomorrow elicited two types of responses. The first is that new
fundamentalism constitutes re rooting and will return to the source of the very principle
of Tradition lost and the second, is that postmodernism is the awareness that new is not
necessarily superior to the foregoing. The new fundamentalism adopt forms sometimes
religious, sometimes national, sometimes ethnic, and reach maximum virulence which
are both ethnic, national and religious, while postmodernism is blind judge when all is
said, that everything repeats itself, that anything goes, that there is no history or
becoming.
According to Waters (1995), fundamentalism is not the only possible religious
response against globalization and pressures post-modernizing. One such response was
the emergence of ecumenical movements related to Christianity that sought to build in
the decades of 1960 and 1970, the unification of several Christian religious currents.
However, there is no better example of the impact of globalization than the resurgence
of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970s. Islamic fundamentalists, especially those
linked to the Iranian clergy, mark their rejection of modernization and Western
secularism.
According to Hall (1997), in the modern world, national cultures within which we are
born are a major source of cultural identity. Hall (1997) argues Ernest Gellner's
argument that without a sense of national identity, the modern subjects experience a
deep sense of loss subjective. He reinforces this argument explaining the thought
Schwarcz that a nation is not only a political entity but something which produces
meanings-a system of cultural representation. People are not only legal citizens of a
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7. nation, they are part of the idea of the nation as represented in their national culture. A
nation is a symbolic community and this is what explains its power to generate a sense
of identity and loyalty.
Hall (1997) states that the identification, which was in a pre-modern or traditional
society, was given to the tribe, people, religion and region was gradually transferred, in
Western societies, to the national culture. The ethnic and regional differences were
gradually subsumed under what Gellner calls "ceiling" of the state national policy,
which thus became a powerful source of meaning for modern cultural identities.
However, the full power of the national state is in its twilight. This is due to the
globalization process by the movement gestated by an international collaboration ever
closer in many areas, especially in matters relating to finance, international peace and
security, the environment, the integration of the world market, as well as the formation
of a world public opinion provided by the new means of mass communication.
The independence of the Nation-States, large and small, is now compromised by the
process of globalization. Three of the functions of the state as, for example, to ensure
internal security, legislate and build national solidarity are threatened. The defense of
the national territory is central to the idea of nation. The imperative of the idea of
national defense is associated with a threat from abroad. In the environment of the XXI
century, the threats do not disappear but become multiform.
The state lies between two contradictory concerns in the vision of Defarges (1993):
save, preserve their territory which is responsible without distorting all movements of
goods, money, tourists, images, ideas, essential sources of prosperity and vitality whose
development demands its connection to global networks. Globalization undermines, in
turn, the ability of states to legislate independently because the laws tend to be tailored
to the requirements not only domestic but also overseas. Likewise, globalization waves
to the prospect of building pacts supranational rather than focusing on exclusive pacts
national interest.
According Defarges (1993), the flow of integration - trade, investment, technology,
money and also people - does not eliminate the substance of the States, their rootedness
in a territory, a people, but make the borders porous, and static decoupling limits
economic realities, social, cultural. Despite its weakness in the current context, the
national state continues to function as a basic reference. This is the true center. When
an institution or a person reproduces, it does so in reference to an unconscious logic,
logic nationwide.
According to Hess (1983), the national state functions as a center through which each
of us, either as an individual or as a member belonging to social groups, organizations
or institutions should be located. Just as every individual unconscious is structured
around the father or mother, every citizen is structured in relation to the state. Whatever
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8. the place where it is located, its relationship with the state and, more generally, the
node of the state institutions that structure (currency, police, laws, etc.) works as
fundamental structuring of their institutional self. Hess (1993) argues that this political
unconscious presides not only the structuring of private persons (individuals, citizens),
but also the creation and organization of all institutions.
For Hess (1983), the political unconscious would be the engine at a given historical
moment, the phenomenon of production of the state as we know it. The state, which is
in the center that represents the elements of the political unconscious, takes an
increasingly strong autonomy and dissociates from its periphery which also functions
as another element in this dialectic.
Other authors prefer to speak of a collective and not historical consciousness and
social, rather than a political unconscious. They defend the thesis that the mechanisms
of acquisition of knowledge and social practice at the individual level are developed in
a given social context. Thus, there exists a constant interaction between the individual
subject and collective subject that is all over the national plan. The integration of
ideologies, values, modes of behavior that are common to a given society and are often
structured by the state is not conscious. She does not take place only by contact with
other societies. According to Hall (1992), modern nations are cultural hybrids.
One aspect that may be considered also as a consequence of globalization is the
prospect of rising ethnic conflict and its political expression, nationalism. Hall (1992)
identifies two possible adaptive responses on the part of ethnic groups to the
globalizing tendencies: translation and tradition. Translation is a response based on
syncretism in which groups living with more than one culture looking to develop new
forms of expression that are entirely divorced from its origins. Tradition ethnic
fundamentalism is facing the rediscovery of the origins of an ethnic group in history.
The tradition involves the search of the certainties of the past in a postmodern world in
which identity is associated with lifestyle and is constantly changing and being
challenged.
People who are minority in one country, as is the case of Kosovo in Yugoslavia, the
Basques in Spain and France, the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, among others, seek to
conquer their independence by building their nation, whether to assert itself as
ethnicity, is to break free from the oppression they perhaps are. Nationalism must
assume large proportions, not only among ethnic minorities seeking to build their
nation-state, but also among people who, despite being possessed of their nation-state,
feel threatened in their interests by international capital and by the big capitalist
powers.
In the contemporary world, ethnic conflicts are often domestic objects of treatment in
an international environment, as well proves the issue of Kosovo in Yugoslavia. There
is a marked trend of internationalization of ethnic conflict. Four aspects of the
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9. contemporary global system are significant in this process. The first concerns the trends
of the global economy affect the economic situation of each country and due to this,
contribute to the exclusion of various social groups as a result of changes in national
policies. The second concerns the ability of states and groups of states seek to shape
policy and institutional arena and even countries intervene in their domestic conflicts.
Third, as a result of high growth of global migration, there is now a trend of expanding
ethnic conflicts on neighboring states. Finally, the fourth is the globalization of
communities. Each of these questions has major implications for international politics.
Analyzing the issue of cultural identity of Yugoslavia, Škvorc (1999) states that, first of
all, what we to understand the contextual factors are that form a minimum specific
cultural identity. These factors are: 1) the existence or not of a common cultural center,
2) the consensus of the people who belong to a culture in a minimum set of
communicative elements which constitute the common basis for dialogue, and 3) the
existence a significant number of factors that contribute to the establishment of a
common cultural identity and historically conditioned such as literature, art, folklore
and other experiences, a common tradition or an interaction between different cultural
elements to produce a new cultural identity in which, while not unique identities are
lost or pushed aside by the force.
In Yugoslavia, besides not having a cultural center common to all people who were
part of it, there was no consensus among the ethnic groups they belong to a common
culture based on which to establish dialogue between them. When the dialogue
between ethnic groups does not take place, as in the case of Yugoslavia, conflicts tend
to escalate in a dramatic and cruel as happened recently in Kosovo.
The process of globalization by promoting the liberalization of world markets tends to
produce population migrations between countries and, consequently, generate new
ethnic problems. According Schaetti (1999), one of the effects of the migration process
is what is called for “cultural marginality” that describes a typical experience for global
nomads who are exposed to two or more cultural traditions. Such people do not tend to
stand comfortably in any of the cultures in which they were exposed, but whether
putting the margin of each.
Besides the “cultural marginality”, another effect of migrations is “encapsulated
marginality” which corresponds to the situation of people who feel insecure in the new
environment. They may have difficulty in making decisions, define its boundaries and
identify personal truths. They often feel alienated, weak, and dissatisfied with life
meaningless. The marginal encapsulated isolate themselves. They do not see a group
with which to establish a relationship. The “global nomads” can respond to this
situation by abandoning its international character to try to be assimilated into a society
in which they find themselves.
Finally, Schaetti (1999) concludes that the third effect of migrations is that of
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10. “constructive marginality” that describes the situation in which the nomads are able to
move easily and powerfully between different cultural traditions, acting appropriately,
feeling at home, and while maintaining a multicultural integrated sense of self. People
tend to put marginal constructive multicultural experience to good use. Global nomads
recognize that the knowledge and skills they have acquired through their international
mobility can help them in their personal and professional goals.
Nationalism is, in turn, according to Waters (1995), while a global phenomenon and
global. It is a component of culture that is transmitted over the planet as part of the
internationalization process. The establishment of the Nation-States provides the basis
on which companies can be connected to each other.
It should be noted that in the late eighteenth century, there was special attention in
Europe and other parts of the world in order to raise the national consciousness
favoring a new and modern form of political organization, the Nation-State. Hobsbawm
(1991) argues that the goal of the first nationalist movements was to invent the
coincidence between four landmarks, people (ethnic group) - the nation-state-
government-that is, between common identity, the political system, the community and
administration. To these one can also add another important component is the territory.
The political elites and intellectuals, who lead an action nationalist engage generally in
a series of ideological practices and seek to represent the nation as a social fact, and
historical space that is real, continuous and meaningful. These leaders, to implement
the action nationalist:
Tell stories or stories of the nation indicating common experiences, triumphs and
defeats;
Emphasize the national character;
Invent new patterns of ritual, symbolism and ceremonies that give collective
expression to the nation;
Establish myths and legends that are located outside the nation's history and give an
almost sacred and a sense of originality; and,
Promote the idea of common origin or racial purity.
Importantly, these practices are evident not only with the emergence of national states
in Europe early nineteenth century, but also, in the contemporary era with the advent of
Nazi-fascism and the national liberation struggles of the emerging countries against
imperialism and economic Western politician.
Waters (1995) summarizes the impact of globalization on national and ethnic issues
stating that:
10

11. Globalization is generally a process of differentiation, as well as being
homogeneous. Globalization pluralizes the world by recognizing the value of
cultural niches and local skills;
Globalization weakens the connections between nation and state releasing ethnic
minorities and allowing reconstitution of nations within the limits of the previous
state. This is especially important in the context of states that are confederations of
minorities;
Globalization brings the center to the periphery. It introduces new possibilities of
ethnic identities for cultures of the periphery. The vehicles for this cultural flow are
electronic images and affluent tourism; and,
Globalization brings the periphery to the center. An obvious vehicle is the flow of
migrants.
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