PR 1450 Introduction to Globalization

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PR 1450Introduction to Globalization

• Week 15
• Identity and belonging
• Chris Rumford

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How does globalization impact upon my life?

• Globalization is not just about things out
  there in the big, wide world. Globalization is
  also about our own place in the world, and how we
  experience the world
• Remember, Robertsons definition with which we
  began the course emphasises both the growing
  interconnectedness of the world and the awareness
  this this is occurring
• To investigate the relationship between
  globalization and the individual we will look at
  the issue of identity

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Globalization and identity

• US golfer Tiger Woods famously described himself
  as Cablinasian rather than black
• Cablinasian is a word Woods made up to describe
  his Caucasian-Black-Indian-Asian heritage

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Tiger Woods

• Woods made his remarks on the Oprah Winfrey TV
  show.
• When asked if it bothered him, the only child of
  a black American father and a Thai mother, to be
  called an African-American, he replied
• "It does I'm a 'Cablinasian I'm just who I
  am
• But how easy is it to be just who you are in
  the global age?
• To what extent can we choose our identities?

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Many black Americans were unhappy with Woods, and
he was accused of being a traitor and of
selling out. His comments caused quite a storm

• Read the Time magazine article Im just who I
  am by Jack White
• www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,986278,00.html
• However, not everyone feels free to choose their
  identity
• Former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell,
  commented In America, which I love from the
  depths of my heart and soul, when you look like
  me, you're black

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Tiger Woods - one-man globalization process?

• Woods comments may have caused a mini-racial
  fire storm to quote the Time article
• But the question of Woods identity has a
  resonance beyond the confines of US race
  relations
• He has been seen by some as embodying
  globalization
• Read the article Global Tiger
• www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId2
  582
• Do you think this article overstates the case
  for Woods being a symbol of globalization?

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How easy is it to choose an identity?

• Former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsli Ali has
  been highly critical of the status of women in
  some Islamic cultures.
• She received death threats after saying she was
  renouncing her religion and no longer wanted to
  be a muslim.
• Read an article about Ayaan Hirsli Ali entitled
  Taking the fight to Islam
• http//books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsp
  hilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2005267,00.html
• How free was she to choose her identity?

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Multi-racial USA?

• In the US new categories were added to the 2000
  census
• The reason was there has been a great increase
  in the numbers of mixed-race children in the US
• It was the first time options for multiracial
  Americans were provided e.g.
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• American Indian and Alaska Native and White
• American Indian and Alaska Native and Black or
  African American

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According to the Time article cited earlier

• if current demographic trends persist, midway
  through the 21st century whites will no longer
  make up the majority. Blacks will have been
  overtaken as the largest minority group by
  Hispanics
• Since 1970, the number of multiracial children
  has quadrupled to more than 2 million, according
  to the Bureau of the Census
• an explosion of interracial, interethnic and
  interreligious marriages will swell the ranks of
  children whose mere existence makes a mockery of
  age-old racial categories and attitudes

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As with Tiger Woods declaration of racial
independence, there are those who opposed the
move to change the census categories

• For example, the NAACP was against the addition
  of multi-racial categories
• Why do you think they adopted this stance?
• Read the article Do the multiracial count? by
  Gregory Rodriguez for some clues
• http//archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/02/15/
  census/index.html

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Identity and belonging

• At root, the issue of globalization and
  individual identity comes down to this
• There exists a major tension between the need
  to establish group solidarity and the increased
  opportunities for individual choice
• While Tiger Woods celebrates the latter, Ayaan
  Hirsli Ali struggles with the former

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Beyond nation and class

• Who am I?
• To what group(s) do I belong?
• These are questions which presume a high degree
  of individual choice
• In the latter part of the C20th there was a
  shift away from nation and class as core
  identities, towards a politics of identity
  based around lifestyle preferences, consumption,
  and individual choice
• Fixed identity has been replaced by a search for
  identity

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These shifts have been linked to globalization
which has stimulated the power of identity, to
use Castells phrase

• Castells says that In a world of global flows
  of wealth, power, and images, the search for
  identity -- collective or individual, ascribed or
  constructed -- becomes the fundamental source of
  social meaning
• Read an interview with Castells on this topic
• http//globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/
  castells-con5.html

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Global homogeneity or global difference?

• In previous weeks we have seen how globalization
  is sometimes assumed to lead to greater
  homogeneity (e.g. Americanization)
• Some thinkers (Robertson, Castells, Pieterse)
  have emphasised how globalization can lead to
• difference (glocalization)
• the search for identity
• hybridization
• melange (an assortment of elements a mixture)

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Global melange

• Pieterse (2004) argues that homogenization was
  in fact the project of the nation-state
• One impact of globalization has been to loosen
  bonds of the nation-state and allow for greater
  ethnic diversity, minority rights, and the right
  to difference
• Hybridity and melange are the results of
  globalization

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Ethnicity and globalization

• Why has ethnicity become such an important
  vehicle for the expression of collective
  identity?
• need to forge distinctiveness and identity in
  world where identity is everything
• mobility and migration contact with others
  across national borders
• UN, protection of minorities, human rights
  encourage identity claims
• divorce between nation and state

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Ethnicity and collective identity

• Sheila Croucher (2004 146) argues that
  globalization creates incentives for individuals
  and groups to cling to or form ethnic attachments
  and provides mechanisms that facilitate doing so
• Ethnicity is not a rejection of globalization or
  regression to pre-modernity
• Ethnicity is a strategy for coping with
  disorientation

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According to Appadurai

• Ethnicity was less important when ethnic
  communities were scattered. It now has the
  potential to be more important because they are
  better networked
• ethnicity, once a genie contained in the
  bottle of some sort of locality (however large)
  e.g. the nation-state, has now become a global
  force, forever slipping in and through the cracks
  between states and borders (199641)

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Fundamentalism and globalization

• It is often supposed that Islamic Fundamentalism
  is opposed to globalization. For example, in
  Afghanistan the Taliban tried to ban satellite
  TV, and electronically reproduced music
• Read the article, Taleban telly ban
• http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/12892
  1.stm

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• But, it would be a mistake to conclude that the
  Taliban were trying to dodge globalization
• A more plausible explanation is that they were
  trying to create a space for themselves within
  global culture.
• As Beyer points out, the central thrust is to
  make Islam and Muslims more determinate in the
  world system, not to reverse globalization. The
  intent is to shape global reality, not to negate
  it (quoted in Robins, 1997 42).

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Concluding thoughts linking individual identity
and collective belonging

• You may be familiar with the term metrosexual -
  a heterosexual male who has a strong interest in
  appearance and style
• metrosexual men are muscular but suave,
  confident yet image-conscious, assertive yet
  clearly in touch with their feminine sides. Just
  consider British soccer star David Beckham. He is
  married to former Spice Girl Victoria Posh
  Adams, but his combination of athleticism and
  cross-dressing make him a sex symbol to both
  women and men worldwide (Khanna, 2004)

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Is Europe a metrosexual superpower?

• Just as modern metrosexual men mix traditional
  masculine traits such as strength with an eye for
  fashion, Europe wields influence around the globe
  through soft power and finesse (Khanna, 2004).
• Just as metrosexuals are redefining masculinity,
  Europe is redefining old notions of power and
  influence.
• Read The Metrosexual superpower, by Parag
  Khanna
• http//yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id436
  6

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Final points

• Globalization has created the need for identity
  it is particularly important in a world that is
  becoming more similar in many important respects
• It is not simply that everyone needs identity,
  but that everyone needs to assert their identity
  in order to be a global actor
• Ethnicity can provide an important vehicle for
  identity assertion (beyond nation and class)
• Such collective identities (and sense of
  belonging) can come into conflict with individual
  assertions of identity (right to be different)
• In the same way as it creates sameness,
  globalization can also create melange

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References

• Appadurai, A. 1996 Modernity at Large Cultural
  Dimensions of Globalization (Minnesota Univ.
  Press)
• Croucher, S. 2004 Globalization and Belonging
  the Politics of Identity in a Changing World
  (Rowman and Littlefield)
• Khanna, P. 2004 The Metrosexual Superpower
  Foreign Policy, 16 August http//yaleglobal.yale.
  edu/display.article?id4366
• Pieterse, J.N. 2004 Globalization and Culture
  Global Melange (Rowman and Littlefield)
• Robins, K. 1997 What in the worlds going on?
  in P. Du Gay (ed) Production of Culture/ Cultures
  of Production (Sage)
• NBRead my review of the books by Pieterse and
  Croucher at
• www.politicalreviewnet.com/polrev/reviews/PSR/R_1
  478_9299_1435_1004840.asp