Global Culture- Preview

Global Culture GLOBAL GOVERNANCE SERIES

Main belief systems and ideologies> governance and political systems> ethics and philosophy>

religion> education> social sciences> citizenship

Gold Mercury’s Global Governance Series is designed to offer an informative and invaluable insight into how our world works. The series is structured according to Gold Mercury’s Global Governance Model™ which identifies eight Global Governance challenge areas and a number of corresponding subareas. In each area we address where major policy discussion emanates from, who the key actors are, what developments and challenges we can expect the future to present and which actors are making a considerable contribution to finding global solutions to global challenges.

Global Governance Model ™

8

Global Governance Areas

Global Environment

Global Peace & Security

International Law & Humanitarian Affairs

Global Health

SYNERGY DESIGN

Global Economic & Social Policy

Global Science & Technology

Global Culture Global Resources

The Global Governance Model name and framework are trademarks of Gold Mercury International.

™

Towards an Understanding of the Contemporary, Global Human Condition When it emerged as a radical departure in the early nineteen-eighties, Postmodernism recognized the plural cultures that define our global society.

The first half of the twentieth century was dominated

by Modernism, a socio-political and cultural movement that actively rejected the legacy of the past, and showed enthusiasm for technological advancement. It further sought to reorient the world, and to promote modernization through innovative thought. Modernism, however, privileged Western cultural structures as models for redesign, isolating those societies that were yet to break free from colonialism. When it emerged as a radical departure in the early nineteen-eighties, Postmodernism recognized the plural cultures that define our global society. In his essay “Social Pluralism and Post-Modernity,� Kenneth Thompson states that one of the most distinctive characteristics of Postmodernism is the “loss of rational and social coherence in favour of cultural images, social forms and identities marked by1>

4 GOLD MERCURY INTERNATIONAL Eight Global Governance Areas: Global Culture

fragmentation and plurality” (Thompson, 1999 cited in Hall & McGrew, 1999).

Although loyalists argue that Postmodernism exists without foundational boundaries, its theoretical paradigms were cemented prior to the final wave of global liberation struggles. New voices from the South who have entered and altered cultural discourse suggest that Postmodernism was a mere step towards more participatory cultural movements. Beyond postmodern thinking, although it has been crucial in moulding the global ethos, is a contemporary cultural age where exchange is instantaneous, and ideologies are boundless. It brings with it both the grey cloud of homogenization, and the promise of democratized cultural agency. Thus, underscoring Global Culture is the responsibility to protect cultural diversity, and to promote cultural tolerance, while celebrating the unifying forces of globalism. As we move forward towards increased interdependence – the global financial crisis is a clear indicator that the boundaries of universalisation So what can key actors make of cultural have surpassed our expectations – we take with us diasporas that cross linguistic, political reactionary and progressive cultural paradigms built and geographic frontiers? What are on the monumental shifts of the twentieth century. the key mechanisms that drive the A thorough interrogation of contemporary Global transference of ideologies? What can Culture – essentially the human condition by way of compound cultural affiliation – is crucial for global be done to protect cultural diversity?

Will the Global Village evolve to be even governance and international cooperation.

If a Martian were to visit Earth in search of more culturally interdependent through primary sources for a paper on Global Culture, he1>

processes of globalisation, or will new, separatist cultural communities form in response to homogenisation?

5 GOLD MERCURY INTERNATIONAL Eight Global Governance Areas: Global Culture

or she (if either is applicable) would likely turn to the root meaning of each word before embarking on a mission to identify spaces in which both are actively evident.

It would become quickly apparent, however, that neither term is fixed. Our world, for instance, is ‘global’ in the interconnectedness of challenges, and through processes of time-space compression, but cross-continental migration is, in reality, unfeasible for the majority of the world’s people. Furthermore, the emphasis on the “post-national” in global analysis underestimates the principal role of the nation-state as a political and cultural entity – a tangible and restricted articulation of political space. “Culture,” on the other hand, has long been understood to be a local phenomenon, and the product of particularisation. So what can key actors make of cultural diasporas that cross linguistic, political and geographic frontiers? What are the key mechanisms that drive the transference of ideologies? What can be done to protect cultural diversity? Will the Global Village evolve to be even more culturally interdependent through processes of globalisation, or will new, separatist cultural communities form in response to homogenisation? Modern society creates and recycles transnational cultural systems daily, by way of real and imagined communities of fate. Such is the global condition! We have moved beyond vertically structured cultural systems into a horizontal, multi-centric, and permeable global ethos with interrelated codes of social interaction. This does not, however, negate the devastating effects of syncretisation on the Local, or disregard widespread suppression of free cultural practice throughout the world, but it does illuminate the multi-processes that fuel cultural globalism, a key global governance and sociopolitical phenomenon not exclusively linked to westernization.