On 2/22/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Lizardo's paper is at <http://www.nd.edu/~olizardo/papers/
> globcultsoc.pdf>.]
>
> New York Times - February 22, 2007
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/business/22scene.html>
>
> Some Countries Remain Resistant to American Cultural Exports
> By TYLER COWEN
>
> American movies and music have done very well in some countries like
> Sweden and less well in others like India. This may sound like a
> simple difference in human tastes, but decisions to consume culture
> have an economic aspect.
Notice, of course, setting the whole stage for his argument that 1. this is relevant to for economists to consider and 2. the question of culture is about "choice" and "consumption"
> Loyalties to cultural goods and services — be it heavy metal music or
> the opera — are about social networking and choosing an identity and
> an aspiration. That is, we use culture to connect with other people
> and to define ourselves; both are, to some extent, economic
> decisions. The continuing and indeed growing relevance of local
> economic connections suggests that cultural imperialism will not
> prove to be the dominant trend.
"Culture" in this definition is basically just an intersubjective transfer of meaning. The thing to really take away from this little section is that we should think of culture in terms of economics (rather than the other way around) and that, ultimately, it can be summed up by the mantras of incentives and choices.
> Local culture commands loyalty when people are involved in networks
> of status and caste, and they pursue religious and communal markers
> of identity. Those individuals use local cultural products to signal
> their place in hierarchies.
This sort of watered down cultural anthropology is used to signal his authority--in particular to the western readers who don't identify themselves as being "involved in networks of status and caste." But this is basically just another way of saying that structure determines agency to a certain extent. Where the structure comes from how authority is consecrated or challenged--why those are the questions being asked by the actual cultural imperialists and Cowen, by trying to turn these discussions about meaningful social interactions into something that is *really* just a question for neo-classical economics is exemplary of what the former are up to at the current moment.
> An Indian Muslim might listen to religious Qawwali music to set
> himself apart from local Hindus, or a native of Calcutta might favor
> songs from Bengali cinema. The Indian music market is 96 percent
> domestic in origin, in part because India is such a large and
> multifaceted society. Omar Lizardo, an assistant professor of
> sociology at the University of Notre Dame, explains this logic in his
> recent paper "Globalization and Culture: A Sociological Perspective."
Citing Lizado's paper is definitely self interested here since Lizado cites Cowen as his own inspiration. The trouble is that niether of them reall address the original thesis of cultural imperialism or any of the more recent works of political economy of mass communication that follow in their stead. Namely, they don't consider Schiller's pathbreaking work /Mass Communications and American Empire/ which catalogs a long history of complicity and cooperation between the US radio and TV networks and the US military and industrial complex. The idea was to use the media to spread propaganda for "US values" and US goods. The hoped to accomplish this by setting up a variety of pirate radio stations and beaming signals across borders. And, if we want to actually talk about economics, they hoped to take advantage of the WWII decimation of the domestic European media industries to dump US products, then cry foul when French cultural ministry tried to stem the flow. On these, Armand Mattelart is key not only to seeing the pattern over time but also the policies and thinkers that were involved in each case.
Cowen and Lizado have some key points about the ways that this account fails to correctly describe, in minute details, how successful these attempts were. But they make the key mistake of making the litmus test of cultural imperialism if the cultural product (narrowly defined as they make it) is adopted in the proscribed way. Thus, if no adoption of imposed culture, then no imperialism. It's a blinkered way to talk about imperialism and wouldn't pass the muster if we were talking about something else (i.e. is the fact that the US seems completely unable to impose its will on Iraq evidence that it isn't still engaged in an imperialist endeavor?)
I know Doug and others on this list aren't convinced that media "bigness" is necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't argue that it is and I think the failure of McChesney and Wasko and others in the Political Economy of Communication field have gotten too hung up on the structural issues. But the fact is that when Cowen is presenting these arguments, he acts like the only people that resist US cultural products (or US cultural hegemony, which I would argue has a lot more to do with the intellectual endeavor Cowen is involved in alongside the right wing think tanks here at GMU) are people in the US who critique forms of defacto cultural policy that the US engages in. In other words, the point of Cowen and others is that anyone who critiques the policies or practices of US corporations should be dismissed: in every way these institutions may be engaged in all sorts of political pressure to get access to markets, protection for "Intellectual Property" (if US goods are so unpopular why do they even care?) and monopoly control of whatever is eventually produced, but the upshot, according to Cowen, is that they just can't swing it. They may be imperialists, but they're bad at it So don't worry about it (unless, of course, you are one of these imperialists in which case, as Schiller pointed out in his rebuttal of the critique of his original thesis in /Culture Inc./ you should really give Cowen and his pals a call: then they can help you fine tune the message to the audience or figure out which local media products to buy up and license for exclusive distribution rights in that country and around the world).
> Today, economic growth is booming in countries where American popular
> culture does not dominate, namely India and China. Population growth
> is strong in many Islamic countries, which typically prefer local
> music and get their news from sources like the satellite broadcaster
> Al Jazeera.
>
> The combination of these trends means that American entertainment,
> for largely economic reasons, will lose relative standing in the
> global marketplace. In fact, Western culture often creates its own
> rivals by bringing creative technologies like the recording studio or
> the printing press to foreign lands.
This is actually the kind of "economic" argument that Cowen uses throughout his book /In Praise of Commerical Culture/ as well as /Creative Destruction/. He's an economist and ultimately believes deep down in Adam Smith kinds of principles of the "wealth of nations." Thus, for example, the fact that some of the Jamaican steel drums are made out of old oil barrels is evidence that capitalism and commerce is good for the arts. If he was saying this tongue in cheek, I'd think him clever. But he says this (I'm paraphrasing as I don't have the book with me) in complete earnestness and throughout the book similar analogies are made.
So, in these examples above, because local culture is currently more popular in these areas and because these areas are (Malthusian moment) experiencing econmic growth which will lead to population growth, which, assuming the long term stability of current cultural conditions, will mean that American Culture will not be popular. Except for one kind of culture: I'm going to a talk this afternoon with Andrew Ross who's been doing ethnographic research in China for the past few years. One of the interesting things he finds in his discussions with young people is that they actually read a lot of American "literature:"
In his book /Fast Boat to China/ he talks about teens in the library "scanning the /Wall Street Journal/ or cramming business or management textbooks. Business literature was widely read among Shainghainese youth, more voraciously than any other Western popular culture, though self help-literature--from classics like Dale Carnegie to more-contemporary volumes like Stephen Covey's /The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People/, or Laurie Beth Jones' Christian-based /The Power of Positive Prophecy/--was gaining ground" (107-108)
And, as if to stem off the likely points made about the Chinese Government's attempt to counter this with more reviews for its students on Mao and Lenin, he quotes a student (reading /In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best Run Companies/) on why he had chosen the English name "Bill" for himself, sayin, "Bill Gates is my hero. Like Mao, he is a monopoly, he succeeded in dominating."
> American popular culture tends to be popular when people interact
> with others from around the world and seek markers of global
> identity. My stepdaughter spent last summer studying French in Nice,
> with students from many other countries. They ate and hung out at
> McDonald's, a name and symbol they all share, even though it was not
> everyone's favorite meal.
Cowen has a reputation in the Northern Virginia area (or at least at GMU) for having kept a long term guide to local "ethnic" dining
http://www.tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com/2006/09/welcome_1.php
This anecdote must horrify him. It proves nothing, on the other hand, but that he and his wife don't take his step-daughter to dinner often enough.
> Globalization is most likely to damage local culture in regions like
> Scandinavia that are lightly populated, not very hierarchical and
> looking for new global cultural symbols. But the rest of the world's
> population is in countries — China and India, of course, but also
> Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Indonesia — that do not fit that description.
Here, and below, there are actually far more reasonable cultural and economic explanations. If he wanted to look at an analysis from some folks who are mostly like minded, or actually engage in any sort of critical thought aside from what he assumes drives these differences, he could look at Hoskins, et. al. on /Global Television and Film/ which make the much more plausible observation that, if we're going to talk about population and culture in relationship to the global economics of the media, the advantage US producers have is that:
1. they have monopoly control of a market that has 250-300 million potential viewers. They can make most of the money they put into a picture (or all the movies and records for the year) off the TV advertising, ticket sales, rentals, etc. in the domestic market. This means that they can significantly undercharge for the products when shipped abroad. Hence the common accusation of "dumping" particularly in the case of Canada. This has been common practice for the better part of the last half century and has undercut the ability of local movie producers to compete. Cowen, like everyone else, seems to think that You Tube will change this.
2. The reason for success in western europe and Scandinavia of these products is that they don't suffer what Hoskins, et. al. call a "cultural discount." In short, what they mean by this is that a common linguistic and cultural background makes it easier for these products to become popular in that market. Amazingly, Cowen seems to overlook this connection.
> "American" cultural products rely increasing on non-American talent
> and international symbols and settings. "Babel," which won this
> year's Golden Globe for best drama, has a Mexican director, and is
> set in Morocco, Japan and Mexico, mostly with non-English dialogue.
Babel is one out of how many movies? I'll admit that there has been a unique set of Mexican directors of late in Hollywood and, with the success of Crash, the latter is more willing to present shallow stereotyped pics about global connections between people, but it's hardly evidence of some great trend. The director's last movie was almost completely in English except when Benecio Del Toro was fighting with his wife.
But who owns it Tyler? Who gets to distribute it? Who gets the cash back from all this intercultural, international production?
> Hollywood movies are popular in Europe in part because of the
> successes of European welfare states and of European economic
> integration. Western Europe has become more equal in its treatment of
> citizens, it has moved away from an aristocratic class society, and
> it has strong global connections. All those factors favor an interest
> in American and global popular culture; Hollywood movies often
> capture 70 percent or more of a typical European cinematic market.
> Social democracy, which the Europeans often hold up in opposition to
> the American model, in fact aided this cultural invasion by making
> Europe more egalitarian.
Again, overlooks the notion of cultural similarity and, again, very oddly, says that population and hierarchy have an effect here. I suppose this all goes back to the original notion that "we" don't have systems of status and caste like "they" do. I guess if he can convince Jack Valenti of this logic, he might suddenly be interested in a more egalitarian global society.
> Many smaller countries have been less welcoming of cultural imports.
> It is common in Central America for domestically produced music to
> command up to 70 percent of market share. In Ghana, domestic music
> has captured 71 percent of the market, according to Unesco figures.
> Critics of cultural imperialism charge that rich cultures dominate
> poor ones. But the data supplied by Professor Lizardo show that the
> poorer a country, the more likely it will buy and listen to its own
> domestic music. This makes sense given that music is a form of social
> networking and the relevant networks are primarily local.
>
> That said, the poorest countries don't produce many of the films they
> watch. Making a movie costs much more than cutting an album. So as
> the world becomes richer, the relative market share of Hollywood
> movies will probably fall more than the relative market share of
> American popular music. Furthermore, moviegoers are starting to look
> to Bollywood films, or other Asian productions, rather than
> Hollywood, for their markers of global identity.
>
> The complaint of "cultural imperialism" is looking increasingly
> implausible. As I argued in "Creative Destruction: How Globalization
> Is Changing the World's Cultures," the funk of James Brown helped
> shape the music of West Africa; Indian authors draw upon Charles
> Dickens; and Arabic pop is centered in France and Belgium. Western
> cultural exports are as likely to refresh foreign art forms as to
> destroy them. Western technologies — from the metal carving knife to
> acrylic paint to digital filmmaking — have spurred creativity worldwide.
and don't forget the oil barrel drum...he seems to have no sense of what this argument is--even less so than Lizado--and his basic straw man is drawn from Adorno and Horkhiemer, who were writing at a significantly different cultural and economic moment. I think if they were to look at the situation today they wouldn't be a whole lot more positive, but they would certainly have a more rigorous approach than Cowen.
> Culture is not a zero-sum game, so the greater reach of one culture
> does not necessarily mean diminished stature for others. In the broad
> sweep of history, many different traditions have grown together and
> flourished. American popular culture will continue to make money, but
> the 21st century will bring a broad mélange of influences, with no
> clear world cultural leader.
Culture is a zero sum game in the sense that we only have so much time to engage in cultural production and consumption. It is also clearly the case that commodification of culture changes it. And, arguably, the purpose for the US cultural imperialism is now over. The point was to say that capitalism and the US model of growth was better and generally more fun and desirable. Since, as Cowen clearly believes, all that struggle is behind us now, it's fine if people have their own local culture--provided, of course, that they let Western media conglomerates copyright, license and distribute it.