Global Policy Forum

by Wole Akande

The aggressive spread of market economics and communication technologies - often under the control of Western multinationals - brings new challenges to local cultures and values in Africa and other non-Western societies. Sometimes it seems as if a tidal wave of the worst Western culture is creeping across the globe like a giant strawberry milkshake oozing over the planet, with a flavor that is distinctly sweet, sickly and manifestly homogenous.

Suddenly, people all over Africa and the rest of the non-Westernized regions of the world, appear to be imbibing materialistic and individualistic values previously associated with Western culture. What explains this apparently abrupt Westernization? One major reason is the structural change in the world economy: globalization and the flood of goods dumped in poor countries that are marketed by mass seductive advertising which is blatantly superficial but nonetheless successful in creating fresh desires in peoples of traditional societies.

For some, especially the young, these new products and content with new ideas can be exhilarating. Change may mean escape from oppressive traditions. It may also bring new opportunities for cultures to mingle in creative ways. Obviously, it would be an excessive form of cultural fundamentalism to suggest that Africans should try to keep everything exactly as it is, rather than allowing culture to develop. However, there is genuine cause for concern about the rate at which cultures (African and non-African) are being undermined in a world that is bound together by ever-stronger economic ties.

Starting in the sixteenth century, Western adventurers made a conscious effort to undermine the cultural heritage of various peoples around the world; this has been accomplished by imposing Western religion and cultural practices on those with a different way of life.

Justified initially as a civilizing mission and subsequently dubbed modernization, in practice it was wholesale Westernization with very little room for any viable middle ground. For instance, in the 19th century, Abeokuta (a town in West Africa), inspired by its Western educated former slaves, responded to the challenges of these pervasive foreign influences with a unique form of defensive modernization and reform which eventually crumbled under the weight of the overwhelming imperial British power. Accordingly, until the late twentieth century, it was assumed that development for the colonized peoples must involve a denial of their history, a rejection of their cultural heritage and the adoption of Western cultural practices.

The effect of this policy in the case of Africa, as Professor Andah once noted, was untold damage to the African psyche, "so much so that most Africans have come to believe as truth, the myths and lies about them as being primitive, history-less, mindless, cursed, lazy, inherently evil and corrupt, third world, underdeveloped."

In short, today, African culture has been decimated. More importantly, colonialism paved the way for today's cultural globalization by leaving the colonized in a state of cultural disorientation and consequently vulnerable to continuing cultural invasion. This disorientation manifests itself in one or two extreme forms:

1) exaggerated attachment to an often reinvented past in the name of tradition and culture; or
2) attempts at wholesale adoption of anything and everything foreign.

It may sound extreme but academic language studies have proven that particular aspects of culture can and do disappear forever; even optimistic estimates suggest that as many as 90 percent of the world's languages will disappear in the next century.

While an important feature of globalization today is its de-Westernization (with the emergence of some non-Western nations - like Japan - as key actors), the reality is that in many important respects, Western culture (some would say American culture) remains the domineering force in the world today. Western culture fuels globalization today and, as it did during the age of imperialism and colonization, helps to reinforce the hegemony of the West. Information technology, as the driving force of economic globalization, has also become a veritable instrument for propagating Western culture.

Perhaps by far the most important far-reaching effect of cultural globalization is the commercialization of culture. Production and consumption of cultural goods and services have become commodities, along with the essentials of social life (marriage and family life, religion, work and leisure), that are the crucibles of cultural creation. In a way very similar to economic globalization, most people (and especially the poor) do not experience cultural globalization on terms they have decided for themselves. Culture - whether it is music, food, clothes, art, sport, images of age or youth, masculinity or femininity - has become a product, sold in the market place. As the former chairman of Coca-Cola, Robert Goizueta, said: "People around the world are today connected by brand-name consumer products as much as by anything else."

The commercialization of culture has a disturbing impact on people. What once was an element of their way of life becomes a product, rather than something unique they had made to suit their own specific needs and circumstances. At the same time, people are increasingly bombarded with new images, new music, new clothes and new values. The familiar and old are to be discarded. While there was cultural change long before globalization, there is a danger that much will be lost simply because it is not valued by global markets. "In Ghana [West Africa]," says Siapha Kamara, formerly of the Ecumenical Training and Consultancy Centre, "traditional values have been overtaken by Coca-Cola culture. The Michael Jackson style of music and culture is taking over and we don't have the values to cope with it."

Consequently, it has been observed, globalized "cultural" industries are taking over traditional forms of creation and dissemination of culture. Local culture's role as a spontaneous and integral part of people's life is eroded and it ceases to serve as the means of constructing societal values, reproducing group identity and building social cohesion. The end result becomes global integration at the expense of local disintegration.

As with other markets, the players of the cultural market place are unevenly matched. Global media is increasingly in the hands of a few, large, powerful organizations, as is the production of music and film. For example, by 1997, the MTV television station was available to 280 million households in over 70 countries. Fearing a loss of viewers, local television stations in many African countries have filled their transmissions with cost effective Western produced shows, superficial news broadcasts, quiz shows and, of course, advertisements. Consequently, TV programs all over the world resemble each other more and more and so do the products in the field of music, film industry and publishing companies.

The common aspect of the globalized culture is that it pursues the same "one size fits all" ideal: the archetypical middle-class family according to the American model in which consumerism is the norm. The result of this cultural process of homogenization is that a large section of the world's population dreams of living like Cosby & Co. or like the characters in any other stereotype American soap opera. In addition, the dream of living a better life causes thousands of people to move to already overcrowded cities like Lagos, Nigeria's sprawling commercial capital; this city has grown from a population of 18,000 in 1901 to over 12 million in 2001. The majority of these new immigrants end up in slum quarters leading to poverty, pollution and misery.

Such a radical undermining of people's existing values and cultures has a corrosive impact on their sense of who they are, what they want and what they respect. It attacks spiritual values and faith traditions. The cumulative effect in Africa is a crisis of cultural confidence, combined with the increased economic uncertainty and crime which global integration often brings. This creates real problems for social solidarity, whether it is at the level of nation, community or family. While it offers shiny new goods as compared to old faded ones, the market offers no replacement for such community solidarity.

In conclusion, cultural globalization, or worldwide McDonaldization, destroys diversity and displaces the opportunity to sustain decent human life through an assortment of many different cultures. It is more a consequence of power concentration in the global media and manufacturing companies than the people's own wish to abandon their cultural identity and diversity.

*Wole Akande, a former opinion columnist with Ireland's Irish Examiner newspaper, is a freelance journalist. In addition to his work with YellowTimes.org, Wole also maintains http://www.abeokuta.org, a Nigerian community website. He is currently writing a book about Abeokuta's 19th century defensive modernization.