>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: cultural imperialism
>Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:05:14 -0500
>
>Mina Kumar wrote:
>
>>But people also like the stuff, something which causes
>>>anguish among high-toned Europeans and American leftists.
>>
>>
>>Is it just me or is there a tone of relish in this remark?
>
>It's not, and there is. I find the a lot of the anti-Coca Cola and
>anti-McDonald's stuff coming out of Jose Bove and Helena
>Norberg-Hodge rather tiresome. Workers Vanguard had a nice line about
>Bove - something like they hadn't realize that food chauvinism was
>part of a revolutionary political program.
That's funny, that's what I was going to say about thinking Afghani/Iranian consumption of Titanic was some kind of revolutionary political program! : )
But in fact, this reminds me of nothing so much as the guy who was asking why the high-toned Europeans and American leftists of LBO were intent on forcing gay rights on working class unionists. His relish was that the working class unionists were in fact heterosexist, causing anguish to the liberal elite etc. Faux populist e'patering of leftists is always predicated on the assumption that subalterns (Mexican lesbian grocery clerks or Madhu Kishwar) have not made similar critiques themselves.
Nathan writes:
>There is sometimes a fetish to discount the quality and substance that
> >makes major brands successful - the scope of books in Barnes & Noble,
> >the low-price and consistency of McDonalds, the taste of Coke -
This has been widely discussed in the Indian context, and I don't think you can make the case that McDo is *cheaper* than indigenous equivalents. What McDo and Coke (and for that matter, jeans (viz. "Jeans") and Valentine's Day) have is the cachet of modernity, hipness, freedom, Westernization.
Ah, colonization as a pre-release advertising campaign! : )
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