ABSTRACT
We are living in a period marked by profound changes. The political upheavals of recent times in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, South Africa, Central and South America—to note a few examples—and the aftermath of the Gulf War, signal major realignments in the structuring of the world political order. There has been a fundamental transformation in the political economy of late twentieth-century capitalism with a growing dominance of multinational capital, an increasing consolidation of global markets, the development of new techniques in production and distribution systems, the formation of a new international division of labour, and a revolution in the technologies of communication. In the cultural sphere, the homogenizing tendencies of mass cultural consumption across transnational boundaries are paralleled by a reassertion of the local aesthetic, political and ethnic tradition, and a call for a recognition of heterogeneity and cultural difference.
