ABSTRACT
Whether we are witnessing the development of a single global culture and if so what form this might take are two of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary social science. Although the term globalization has more than one meaning, referring as it does to economic, political, and technological processes, as well as cultural ones, our concern here is with its use to refer to the tendency for the whole world to become culturally homogenous, as what has been called “global compression” takes place (King, 1990, p. 401).1 Many commentators believe that such a culture is emerging, and indeed that “it is here, now and everywhere” (Smith, 1990, p. 177). The related critical question then concerns the nature of this culture and, crucially, if it could be said to be equivalent to that of the West or not; in other words, whether the process of globalization is really just another name for Westernization. J. Tomlinson is one of many academics who believe that it is. He writes, “In a world where everyone from Bratislava to Bangkok eats Big Macs, wear jeans, works with pirated versions of Windows, and watches MTV, cultural diversity would seem to be acutely threatened. Moreover, when we consider that most of these global goods and ideas are of western origin we can well imagine that globalization is simply another name for Americanization or westernization” (Tomlinson, 1999, pp. 40-41).2
