ABSTRACT

Many of the discussions about the nature of globalization, such as the extent of cultural homogenization or heterogeneity that results from globalization (Featherstone 1990; McChesney 1999) and the nature of the process itself as a form of cultural imperialism or as a syncretization of local and global processes (Robertson 1992), are very general and only superficially informed by knowledge and understanding of the actual activities, relationships, and processes involved in economic and cultural transactions between global actors in specific culture industries and institutions. Theorists writing about the globalization of culture have called for a substantive focus on the practical instances of globalization, through which processes of cultural integration and differentiation operate (Featherstone 1990). Notably, Roland Robertson (1992) argues that globalization is best understood through a mapping of actual intersocietal and intercultural encounters and that these should deal with the “processes of cultural syn-cretization—more specifically … the ways in which problems of particularism and universalism have been addressed” (p. 41).