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Globalization and Media in the
Digital Platform Age
Global media expert Dal Yong Jin examines the nexus of globalization, digital media, and
contemporary popular culture in this empirically rich, student-friendly book.
Offering an in-depth look at globalization processes, histories, texts, and state pol-
icies as they relate to the global media, Jin maps out the increasing role of digital plat-
forms as they have shifted the contours of globalization. Case studies and examples focus
on ubiquitous digital platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix, in tandem
with globalization so that the readers are able to apply diverse theoretical frameworks
of globalization in different media milieu. Readers are taught core theoretical concepts
which they should apply critically to a broad range of contemporary media policies, prac-
tices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world—North
America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia—with a view to determining how they
shape and are shaped by globalization.
End-of-chapter discussion questions prompt further critical thinking and research. Stu-
dents doing coursework in digital media, global media, international communication, and
globalization will find this new textbook to be an essential introduction to how media
have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and com-
parative contexts.
Dal Yong Jin is Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University. His major
research and teaching interests are on Globalization and Media, transnational cultural
studies, digital platforms and digital gaming, and the political economy of media and
culture. He has published numerous books, including Korea’s Online Gaming Empire;
De-convergence of Global Media Industries; Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political
Culture; New Korean Wave: Transnational Cultural Power in the Age of Social Media; and
Smartland Korea: Mobile Communication, Culture and Society. With Micky Lee, Jin also
published a textbook titled Understanding the Business of Global Media in the Digital Age
(2017). He is the founding book series editor of Routledge Research in Digital Media and
Culture in Asia.
Globalization and Media in the
Digital Platform Age
Dal Yong Jin

First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Dal Yong Jin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-35146-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-34360-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-33003-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Contents
Preface ix
1 Globalization in the Age of Digital Platforms? 1

Is Globalization Dying? 1
Globalization in the Era of Digital Platforms 2
What Is a Digital Platform? 2
Definitions of Globalization 4
Keywords in Globalization 4
Three Paradigms to Globalization Studies 5
Modernization Approach 5
Critical Political Economy Approach 6
Cultural Globalization Approach 7
Six Dimensions in Globalization Studies 8
Economy 8
Politics 9
Culture 10
Technology 11
Global Consumption 11
Diaspora 12
How to Interpret Globalization: The World Is Flat vs. The World
Is Asymmetrical 13
Questions 15
2 Media History in the Age of Globalization 16

Oral Communication and Early Written Materials 17
The Printing Press and Capitalism 18
The Telegraph and the Electronic Media Era 20
Development of Broadcasting: The Core of Electronic Media 23
The Advent of the Digital Age 24
Digital Platform and Media Convergence Era 25
Evolution of Social Network Sites 27
Questions 29
vi Contents
3 Approaches to Globalization in the Age of Digital Platforms 30
Theorization of Globalization: Political Economy vs. Cultural Studies 30
Free Flow of Information 33
World-System Theory 34
Cultural Hybridization 35
Case Study: Hybridization in Japanese Popular Culture and the
Korean Wave 37
Glocalization/Localization 38
Regionalization 40
Transnationalization 41
Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy 42
Questions 44
4 From Cultural Imperialism to Platform Imperialism 45

Definitional Essay: The Discourse of the West vs. the East
in Media Studies 45
The Evolution of Imperialism 47
Cultural Imperialism 48
Is Imperialism Disappearing in the Era of Globalization? 50
Development in Local Culture 50
Peripheral Vision 51
Active Audience Theory 51
Counter-Reverse Cultural Imperialism 52
Emergence of Platform Imperialism 53
Increasing Dominance of American Platforms 54
Commodification of Data and Digital Platforms 55
Asymmetries in Digital Platforms 57
Questions 57
5 The Nation-State: Dead or Alive 59

The Formation of Nation-State in the 15th Century 60
Major Roles of the Nation-State 61
The End of Nation-State 62
What Is Replacing Nation-States? The Rise of Non-Nation Entities 63
Critiques to the Globalists 65
Balances between Nation-States and Globalization 66
Nation-States in the Media and Cultural Industries 66
Nation-State and Digital Platforms 67
Interplay between Nation-States and Platform Corporations 68
Questions 71
6 The Business of Global Media Industries 72

The Growth of the Global Media Industries 73
Major Media Corporations around the World 74
Alphabet (Google) 75
The Walt Disney Company 76
Corporate Convergence 77
Contents vii
The Emergence of De-convergence in the Media Industry 80
Case Study: De-convergence of News Corporation 81
New Wave of Media Convergence 82
Convergence between Digital Platform and Digital Platform 83
Convergence between Content Firms and Content Firms 84
Questions 85
7 Smartphones in the Era of Globalization 87

Smartphone Revolution in the Early 21st Century 88
Globalization in the Smartphone Era 90
Case Study: iPhone’s Globalization Process 92
Global Dominance of Android Operating System 93
Global Digital Divide in the Smartphone Era 95
Questions 97
8 Globalization and Broadcasting 98

Changes in the Global Broadcasting System 99
Global Trade of Television Programs 99
Global Television Formats 101
Case Study: Television Formats in the Korean Broadcasting Industry 103
Netflix as a Cultural Platform in the Broadcasting Industry 105
Growth of Netflix 107
Netflix as a Digital Platform 108
Globalization of Netflix in the Realm of Screen Media 108
Questions 110
9 The Cultural Politics of Film 111

Growth of the Global Film Markets 111
Globalization and Films 114
Global Trade of Films 114
Runaway Productions 114
Remaking of Films 115
Cultural Issues Embedded in the Globalization of Film 116
Hollywood vs. The Third Cinema 117
Hollywood as The First Cinema 117
Asian Cinema as The Third Cinema 119
Bollywood 119
Chinese Cinema 120
Mexican Cinema 122
Western Cinema vs. Third Cinema 123
Case Study: The (Indie) Film Industry in the Digital Platform Era 123
Questions 125
10 The Culture of Global Music 126

Globalization and Music 127
The Global Music Industry in the 21st Century 127
YouTube as a Social Media Platform and Localization 129
viii Contents
Online Streaming Services and Globalization: European Spotify
Now Plays in Japan 131
The Global Rise of K-Pop in the Age of Social Media 132
Hybridization of K-pop around the Globe 134
Case Study: BTS and a Global Fandom 136
Questions 138
References 141
Index 161
Preface
The close relationship between Globalization and Media has been one of the most
significant subjects in communication studies since the mid-1990s. The linkages of
Globalization and Media have meticulously expanded due to the indispensable role of
media and culture in the globalization process. From popular culture like films and
television programs to digital technologies, including the Internet and smartphones,
media have facilitated and expedited the contemporary globalization process. A lthough
globalization in terms of the integration of the world into a single unit e xisted several hun-
dred years ago, even partially, new media have certainly played a key part in advancing
globalization over the past two decades.
In the early 21st century, the partnership between Globalization and Media has fun-
damentally changed with the emergence of digital platforms. Unlike traditional media,
like broadcasting and music, digital platforms, such as social media (e.g., YouTube),
smartphones and relevant apps, online streaming services (e.g., Spotify), and o ver-the-top
services (e.g., Netflix) have changed the contours of global cultural consumption and pro-
duction so that people heavily rely on these platforms. The Internet, as one of the most
significant digital technologies, has already resolved time and space constraints so that
it contributes to the growth of our global society. Digital platforms have furthermore
shifted our world because they allow people to connect with each other in real time; to
consume the same experiences while sharing them with friends; and to produce their own
cultural materials, as can be seen in the growth of YouTubers. For example, Netflix has in-
creased its role as a new exhibition outlet as people enjoy movies and television programs
on this particular platform instead of visiting theaters. Partially because of Netflix and
other over-the-top (OTT) services, movie theaters in North America have started to face a
new challenge as the number of movie-goers has slightly decreased. Likewise, Spotify has
changed global youth’s music consumption habits as many college students enjoy popular
music through online streaming music services instead of buying CDs. In all but a few
countries, like Japan and Germany, people around the globe primarily listen to music via
online digital platforms.
This book examines the nexus of Globalization and Media, focusing on digital plat-
forms as a reflection of the surge and influences of various platforms in our contemporary
society. This does not mean that we give up on studying the important role of tradi-
tional media in the globalization process. What I rather emphasize is the shifting milieu
surrounding Globalization and Media. As digital platforms have greatly increased their
impacts on our daily activities and cultural lives, it is time to critically interpret the crucial
relationship between globalization and digital platforms from various perspectives.
Given their short history, there are no available textbooks emphasizing digital platforms
and their roles in the globalization process. While several academic works on digital
platforms (Jin, 2015a; Srnicek, 2016; Gillespie, 2018; Steinberg, 2019) have just recently
x Preface
been published, providing important discourses and ideas, they have not focused on
lobalization yet. In particular, textbook-level discourses are still missing, despite the fact
g
that undergraduate and graduate students who study globalization need new perspectives
and directions. Therefore, I hope that these carefully documented discussions in the form
of a textbook will shed light on more recent trends in the shifting globalization process.
Some parts of the book have been developed from my original works. I have continued
to develop my research on globalization and published several relevant articles and books,
such as “Where Is Japan in Media Studies in the Post-Cold War Era: Critical Discourse of
the West and the East” (2009, in Social Science Research 22(1): 261–293); “Reinterpretation
of Cultural Imperialism: Emerging Domestic Market vs. Continuing U.S. Dominance”
(2007, in Media, Culture and Society 29(5): 753–771); and Digital Platforms, Imperialism
and Political Culture (2015, Routledge), although I have fundamentally advanced and
re-organized my perspectives with new cases and information. This current book project
is also made possible because of my teaching experience with Globalization and Media at
several institutions, including Simon Fraser University in Canada and Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Students in my various classes have helped
me rethink the trajectory of globalization, and some students especially provided their
meaningful observations and ideas through presentations and discussions in classes.
I would like to express my thanks to the students who shared their ideas and opinions
together.
Meanwhile, I also want to thank a few media scholars who supported the book writing
process. Professor Kyong Yoon at the University of British Columbia Okanagan always
listened to my viewpoints and progresses while providing invaluable friendship. Professor
Ju Oak “Jade” Kim at Texas A&M International University provided some suggestions
and thoughts after reading the original table of contents and ideas. Marc Steinberg at
Concordia University in Canada and I have exchanged ideas on platform imperialism
and the increasing role of Asia-based digital platforms, which confirmed the necessity of
this book. Finally, I want to thank Erica C. Wetter, who has been very supportive since
our meeting on the book project during the 2018 IAMCR (International Association for
Media and Communication Research) conference held in Eugene, Oregon, in the USA.
Her effective editorship has been very helpful during the entire process. Without their
supports and interests, the resulting book would not be the same.
1 Globalization in the Age of Digital
Platforms?
Is Globalization Dying?
While globalization as a practice goes back to several hundred years ago, media globalization
as part of academic discourse mainly started to appear in the 1990s. With the rapid growth
of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and relevant socio-economic dimen-
sions, including political, economic, and cultural elements developed during the same period,
globalization has become one of the most popular topics and theories in all academic fields,
and in particular in media studies. It is certain that “there was a period in which that word
globalization seemed to many people to capture the essence of what was going on around
them” (Rosenberg, 2005, 3). During the 1990s, many politicians, academics, and cultural pro-
ducers observed the spread of economic liberalization, the rise of new ICTs, the increased
salience of international organizations, and the resurgence of a cosmopolitan Human Rights
Agenda; many of them believed that “the world was opening up to a new form of intercon-
nectedness, and that a multi-layered, multilateral system of global governance was emerging”
(Rosenberg, 2005, 3). As Toby Miller and Marwan Kraidy (2016, 22) point out, “global media
studies, therefore, is an interdisciplinary rubric that emerged in the 1990s to describe the con-
vergence of areas of study traditionally known as international communication and compar-
ative media systems.” Global media studies reflects conceptual disciplinary and ideological
changes, and its name notwithstanding, the field remains dominated by a few major forces,
including the United States.
However, since around the mid-2000s, some theoreticians (Rosenberg, 2005) claim that
“the age of globalization is over” as the world has not seemed to follow what the globalists
predicted, which is the integration and/or interdependence of the globe, and consequently,
the decreasing role of the nation-state. In the 2010s, the opposing paradigm to globaliza-
tion has even become more pronounced. As can be seen with Brexit (British Exit) in Eu-
rope in late 2019 and the border wall issue between the United States and Mexico, which
is under consideration by President Trump’s administration, many parts of the globe are
dis-integrating and focusing on national priorities rather than global ones. The Guardian
of the United Kingdom (Sharma, 2016) indeed claims,
even if Brexit does not herald the unravelling of Europe or of the global economy, it is
the most important sign yet that the era of globalization as we have known it is over.
Deglobalization will be the new buzzword.
As such, global politics and economy have continued to shift their dynamics as both the
United States and the United Kingdom have changed their political and economic policies
starting in the 1980s. These two countries initiated and forced neoliberal globalization—
guaranteeing maximum profits to the private sector through deregulation, privatization,
2 Globalization and Digital Platforms
and liberalization while pursuing a small government function—but they have suddenly
changed direction to focus on the separation of their countries from global affairs. Since
they are the giants who decide the roles of nation-states in the global society, other small
countries may follow this trajectory once again, and perhaps deglobalization may be real-
ized in contemporary society.
However, globalization is not simple at all. While there is an increasing trend of national
priority movements, global citizens, from both the West (e.g. the United States, the United
Kingdom, France, and Germany) and the East (e.g., countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle
East, and Latin America) are still witnessing the borderless flow of information, people,
and capital, which facilitates the integration of the world into one single global unit. In
particular, in the realm of media and culture, the level of interconnectivity has increased.
Globalization has become more complicated than ever instead of disappearing as several
players, whether Western-based or non-Western-based actors, such as nation-states, in-
ternational agencies, transnational corporations, and even consumers, are increasingly
involved. How to comprehend globalization over the next decade or so, therefore, relies
on people’s understanding of two major elements: the directions of flow of people, culture,
and capital, and the role of major players in the globalization process.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Globalization in the Era of Digital Platforms

Unlike the political and economic milieu surrounding the contemporary world in the
early 21st century, globalization as a form of the integration of the globe into a single unit
in the field of media and ICTs has continued and even substantially grown. With the rapid
growth of digital platforms, such as social media (e.g., Facebook and YouTube), search
engines (e.g., Google), smartphones and their operating systems (e.g., Android and iOS),
digital games, and online streaming services (e.g., Netflix), the global cultural markets
have been closely connected and increasingly interdependent. On the one hand, some dig-
ital platforms have played a key role as cultural producers, and on the other hand, other
digital platforms have worked as cultural distributors, although the boundaries between
production and distribution, which were previously clearly separated, are getting blurry.
Digital platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook in the United States have es-
pecially increased their market shares around the globe to continue and extend their
hegemonic dominance. Although several emerging markets and cultural producers in
non-Western countries like Mexico, Brazil, India, and South Korea (hereafter Korea)
have developed their local-based popular culture and digital platforms to become a major
part of the global society, their roles are still limited. These countries furthermore utilize
American-based platforms, including YouTube, to disseminate their popular culture to
both regional and global markets. Regardless of shifting power dynamics in politics and
economy, the integrations in the realm of culture and technology have never stopped, and
therefore, globalization is alive and vivid in this particular context.
What Is a Digital Platform?

Digital platform is a buzzword in our daily lives. “The rise of digital platforms is hailed as
the driver of economic progress and technological innovation” (van Dijck et al., 2018, 1).
Whenever we turn on TV and read newspaper articles, it is not uncommon to learn about
digital platforms. From elementary school students to college students, watching YouTube
and using smartphones are very common and daily routines. “Individuals can greatly
Globalization and Digital Platforms 3
benefit from this transformation because it empowers them to set up businesses, trade
goods, and exchange information online while circumventing corporate or state interme-
diaries” (van Dijck et al., 2018, 1). Digital platforms heavily influence the contemporary
cultural industries and their popular culture. The digital platform has been a relatively
new concept in media studies; however, there are already several significant works of this
new concept and phenomenon.
A few media scholars (Gillespie, 2010, 2018; Hands, 2013; Jin, 2015a; Srnicek, 2016; Steinberg,
2017; van Dijck et al., 2018) have adopted and used the notion of platforms; however, they
barely developed any reliable definitions. In general, a platform describes the current use of
digital technology and culture, and it explains “the online services of content intermediaries,
both in their self-characterizations and in the broader public discourse of users, the press
and commentaries” (Gillespie, 2010, 349). As Gillespie (2010, 349) points out, intermediaries
like YouTube and Google provide “storage, navigation and delivery of the digital content of
others.” As Lev Manovich (2013, 7) also points out, “platforms allow people to write new soft-
ware,” and “these platforms, such as Google, Facebook, iOS, and Android, are in the center
of the global economy, culture, social life, and, increasingly, politics.”
These explanations, however, do not convey the true nature of digital platforms, which
can be explained in several different but interconnected ways. Most of all, as Van Dijck
(2013, 29) points out,
a platform is a mediator rather than an intermediary: it shapes the performance of so-

cial acts instead of merely facilitating them. Technologically speaking, platforms are
the providers of software, (sometimes) hardware, and services that help code social
activities into a computational architecture.
More specifically, digital platforms have various functions, which are connected. First,
the term “platform” designated something like a computing infrastructure, the hardware
basis for computational activities. Some people associate platforms with their compu-
tational meaning (Bodle, 2010), which is an infrastructure that closely supports the de-
sign and use of specific applications or operating systems in computer systems and/or
smartphones.
However, the platform extends beyond the computational domain (Jin, 2015a). Plat-
form has come to denote what we would call social media: sites or platforms as they were
known, on which users could post, contribute, share, and so on, to a particular web-based
and then app-based media interface—whether Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter (Steinberg,
2017). This trait does mean that the platform can be configured as a transactional or me-
diatory mechanism. In other words, digital platforms should be judged “by market forces
and the process of commodity exchange” (Dijck, 2012, 162). Platforms have both a direct
economic role as creators of surplus value through commodity production and exchange
and an indirect role through advertising (Garnham, 1997). In this paradigm, the platform
“signifies something akin to the mediation structure or intermediary that makes certain
kinds of transactions possible. This is also arguably the cultural dominant form of plat-
form” (Steinberg, 2017, 189). As some theoreticians argue (Feenberg, 1991; Salter, 2005),
technologies are not value neutral but reflect the cultural bias, values, and communicative
preferences of their designers. Platforms clearly reflect designers’ values and preferences
that are oftentimes at odds with the values and preferences of the users (Bodle, 2010).
As such, it is critical to comprehensively understand the notion of platforms. Putting
together these dimensions, we can consider that platforms have emerged not simply in a
functional computational shape, but with cultural values and communicational aspects
embedded in them. As the growth of new media cannot be separated from society, we
must address digital platforms as a complicated but interconnected whole (Jin, 2015a).
Digital forms of power are connected together through the three core pillars of digital
platforms: hardware, corporate sphere, and cultural and political values. Domination
over these three elements provides a great source of power to the United States over other
countries. As Moran and Punathambekar (2019) point out, due to American dominance
in the realm of digital platform, it is critical to understand the ways in which global digital
platforms like YouTube and Facebook penetrate in the early 21st century. A closer under-
standing of the technological functions, characters of platforms as a corporate sphere,
and their cultural values help people determine the distinctive prospects of platforms in
the globalization process, which has been closely related to imperialism theory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definitions of Globalization
Globalization is the major framework in international communication research in the
early 21st century. There are several features characterizing globalization. Most of all,
globalization implies the borderless flow of information between various countries. The
flow of information can be made possible as countries, international agencies, and trans-
national corporations work together to integrate and interconnect, which means that
many constituents attempt to converge their units, not politically but economically and
culturally to make one big umbrella. Marshal McLuhan (1964) especially termed the in-
tegration of the world into one village through the use of electronic media as a “global
village” in 1964. As for the definition, McLuhan (1964, 254) described the ways in which
electronic technology has contracted the globe into a village because of “the instantaneous
movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time.” McLuhan’s
definition of global village certainly provides several important conceptual ideas for
understanding globalization, which are supported by media technology. Based on these
basic characterizations, we can identify several keywords explaining globalization below.
Keywords in Globalization
• Borderless flow of information
• Integration
• Interconnectivity
• Interdependence
• Convergence
• Global village
• Global economy
While the significant role of media technology plays a part, there are several different
dimensions expediting the globalization process, including flows of people and capital be-
tween various countries. People are moving from one country to another country, and
some corporations like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts also have their stores
in many countries. Consequently, globalization, driven by the flows of people, culture, and
capital, conceptually makes a borderless, singular village. Globalization is thus a process
by which the global politics, economy, and culture are becoming a connected and interac-
tive whole (Giddens, 1999). However, as Anthony Giddens (1999) himself argued, “globali-
zation is a complex set of processes, not a single one,” mainly because the flows of these
elements occur in a more complicated way than in one simple direction. Ritzer (2007, 1)
also defines globalization as “an accelerating set of processes involving flows that encom-
pass ever-greater numbers of the world’s spaces and that lead to increasing integration and
interconnectivity among those spaces.” Robertson (1992, 8) already defined globalization
as a concept referring “both to the compression of the world and intensification of con-
sciousness of the world as a whole.” These scholarly definitions commonly emphasize the
compression of time and space and the interconnectivity of the world as a result.
What I want to emphasize furthermore are the players who develop the globalization
processes and the diversity of flows that shifts the globalization dynamics. Therefore, in
this book, globalization is not only the integration of the world as a whole, but also the
diversification of the processes in actors, flows, and dimensions in expediting global in-
terdependence. There are many different actors and directions in the globalization pro-
cess, and without understanding this complexity, people cannot fully comprehend the
real nature of globalization. Previously, forces of globalization were linked with a few
Western countries, in particular the United States, and they seemed to “subjugate weaker,
national/cultural identities” (Shim, 2006, 26). However, as the case of BTS—a globally
popular Korean boy band—in the late 2010s implies, several non-Western countries have
expanded their roles to become major actors, which potentially changes the directions of
cultural flows. This fundamental question requires us to contemplate who the major play-
ers are and in which directions people, capital, and culture flow. In this regard, we must
identify several major paradigms and dimensions when we analyze globalization.
Three Paradigms to Globalization Studies

Globalization refers to the process and context of our world becoming integrated. There are
several approaches explaining the globalization process, and mainly three major paradigms
constitute globalization discourses: modernization, critical political economy, and cultural
globalization, known as hybridization. As can be seen in Chapters 3 and 4, under these fab-
rics, there are several theoretical frameworks interpreting the globalization process.
Modernization Approach
One of the oldest approaches to globalization started with modernization theory in the 1960s.
Modernization theory called upon developing countries to learn from, and imitate, the West.
Since developing countries could use media to learn from the West, it is the media-oriented
version of globalization (Giddens, 1991; Curran, 2002; Shim, 2006). The project of moder-
nity, which was mainly developed in Europe starting in the 17th century, has been
largely concerned with making a break with the past by modernizing arts, literature,
culture and religion. The quintessential aspects of modernity include a respect for
individual freedom, the belief in human beings’ ability to decide their destiny, and the
adoption of science and technology.
(Habermas, 1990; Giddens, 1991; Neyazi, 2010, 911)
As Alberto Martinelli (2005, 101) especially argues, “globalization is one of the most visi-
ble consequences of modernity and has in its turn reshaped the project of modernity.” For
him, “modernization is a global process.”
Modernized countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and France,
equipped with advanced technologies, cultures, and systems, especially demand devel-
oping countries to follow their leads. In other words, modernity summarizes the modern
transformation of social life, from pre-modern to modern, technologically, culturally,
politically, and economically, and modernization theory “called upon the developing
world to learn from and imitate the West” (Curran, 2002, 167).
The major issue here is that the modernization process flows from a few advanced and
modernized countries to less-developed countries, and one of the major areas that these
modernized countries ask developing countries to follow is their economic system, which
is capitalism, triggering some problems. As Robert McChesney (1998) criticized, globali-
zation is an outcome of modernity because it provides an aura of inevitability to the rise of
neoliberalism and corporate control of the media. “Globalization erodes the sovereignty
of the nation-state that has been the key institution and the basic element of structuration
of modern society” (Martinelli, 2005, 102). Again, modernity is closely related to media
and culture, as international communication systems could be used to spread the mes-
sage of modernity. International communication systems, prior to globalization studies,
could transfer the economic and political models of the West to the independent countries
after World War II (Thussu, 2006). Some believe that several ICTs and the media would
help transform traditional societies. Modernization as one major approach and media are
meticulously related and connected.
Critical Political Economy Approach

The second approach to Globalization and Media developed by critical political econ-
omists claims that globalization should be comprehended as one element of the trans-
formation of contemporary capitalism. This paradigm addresses “the centrality of the
economy as the prime mover of social and cultural change” (Ampuja, 2004, 68). In par-
ticular, “the new media and information technologies have made it possible for multi-
national corporations to extend their reach,” and “the media corporations (themselves
global entities) create a demand for commodities and deliver audiences to powerful
advertisers” (68).
From a critical political economy approach, one of the most important processes is
the concentration of power in the hands of transnational corporations and, in connec-
tion with this, the deregulation and liberalization of media systems throughout the world.
Under this circumstance, as Herman and McChesney (1997) clearly pointed out, since
the 1990s, the media markets have become truly global for the first time in history, and
they have been dominated by a few Western-based transnational corporations that hold
substantial economic and cultural power. At the same time, the developments in media
markets around the globe prove a constant imbalance of cultural flows, as several Amer-
ican media corporations and platforms, such as Walt Disney, Netflix, Google, and Apple
dominate both content production and distribution channels.
This approach emphasizes that the global integration of the world has been actualized
by a few Western countries, in particular the United States. For this perspective, globali-
zation is nothing but Americanization, which means that the United States as a major
force has greatly increased its influence in the global cultural markets. As can be seen
in the global film sector, films produced by Hollywood majors have continued to pene-
trate global box offices. As a result of the fearful lobbying by Hollywood majors, the U.S.
government has demanded non-Western countries, like Mexico, Korea, and China, to
open their national film markets, and therefore, the global film markets are controlled by
Hollywood with a few exceptions. As will be detailed in Chapter 4, cultural imperialism
as a major approach to globalization studies emphasizes that the world becomes a single
unit and tastes American popular culture in every corner of the world. This approach,
therefore, has focused on an asymmetrical power relationship between the United States
and the remaining countries in the globalization process.
For critical political economists, the essential feature of the globalization of media is
the ongoing commodification of culture. The main argument made by critical political
economists is that globalization is about the formation of a worldwide capitalistic system
that promotes the interests and values of powerful Western-based transnational corpora-
tions (Ampuja, 2004). This approach also discusses the globalization of media or culture
in terms of homogenization.
Cultural Globalization Approach

The third paradigm in Globalization and Media emphasizes the cultural elements of
globalization. This cultural paradigm was born mainly “out of critiques of the so-called
cultural imperialism thesis. Cultural globalization theorists argue that the globalization
of media is not leading to the homogenization of global culture under the auspices of
Western consumerism” (Ampuja, 2004, 67). For Roland Robertson (1995), a key cultural
globalization theorist, cultural globalization refers to a process in which the relations
between the local and the global are being re-organized instead of homogenized. At one
level, global transnational media corporations have to adjust their production so that
they meet the standards of local markets and their needs. On another level, local cul-
tural forms may become globally marketed phenomena. Robertson refers to this feature
as glocalization—the combination of globalization and localization.
The cultural paradigm emphasizes the idea that global cultural flows are multidirec-
tional and that this trend leads to a proliferation of new cultures—to a formation of new
kind of cultural forms, in which the local and global are mixed together in various ways.
Cultural globalization emphasizes different cultures to redefine itself as hybridization.
This process is devoid of Western domination, because, for example, in popular music,
new stylistic innovations can come from the third world. For the cultural paradigm, with
its conception of global culture as a new type of hybridization, “the earlier cultural impe-
rialism perspective, which emphasized the analytic separation of core and periphery, now
seems outdated” (Ampuja, 2004, 67).
For its representatives, a global cultural change is not a unitary process. Rather, it is com-
plex and a very paradoxical development. Cultural theorists see globalization typically in
a positive light: it creates new forms of cultural expression, and it offers new opportunities
for previously marginalized groups to be heard, thus promoting cultural diversification.
Many cultural globalization analysts claim that the dynamics of capitalistic markets foster
the freedom of cultural expression: globalization “pluralizes the world by recognizing the
value of cultural niches” (Waters, 1995, 136). Globalization is “hailed especially in the sense
that it frees local cultures from narrow national contexts” (Ampuja, 2004, 67).
This approach has two different dimensions, which are closely connected. On the one
hand, some claim that non-Western countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and India,
develop their own unique cultures and export them to other countries. On the other hand,
others argue that these non-Western countries are advancing hybridity in popular culture so
that they play a key role in the global markets. In other words, cultural firms in these coun-
tries are not only admitting and consuming Western cultures, but also developing hybrid
culture by mixing two different cultures between local and global and eventually penetrate
other countries, including the United States. Cultural globalization, also known as hybrid-
ity, rejects a one way cultural flow and argues that local cultural producers in these countries
are able to create popular culture by mixing local mentality and uniqueness with Western
and universal characteristics. Since local-based popular culture in this context has been
made through hybridization processes, contra-flow of local culture could not be done with-
out cultural globalization. In this transnational context of the nexus between the periphery
and the core, hybridity reveals itself as encouraging new practices of cultural expression: the
local appropriates the global, including global goods, conventions, and styles, including mu-
sic, film, and gaming and inscribes their everyday meaning into them (Bhabha, 1994; Young,
2003; Shim, 2006). As such, depending on one’s own different positions, globalization can be
understood differently. Admitting that diverse paradigms in globalization studies exist, it is
important to develop careful critical thinking to interpret Globalization and Media.
Six Dimensions in Globalization Studies

Different academic disciplines focus on diverse elements in globalization studies; however,
the fields of media, culture, technology, and global consumption are commonly major inter-
ests. Including these dimensions, media studies also emphasizes several relevant areas as core
domains that media scholars, students, and practitioners analyze. Here are six major domains
that this book attempts to discuss as the most significant areas that people might find useful.
• Economy
• Politics
• Culture
• Technology
• Global consumption
• Diaspora
Economy
Some of the earliest discussions on globalization explore in great detail how the evolution
of international markets and companies led to an intensified form of global interdepend-
ence. These discussions point to the growth of international agencies, such as the Euro-
pean Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, now replaced by
the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2018), and other regional trading blocs
(Steger, 2014). As one columnist for HuffPost (Sato, 2014) argues, “globalization was orig-
inally proposed as a way for developed countries to seek additional growth opportunities
abroad, after it became difficult to achieve economic growth domestically. It was prem-
ised on international competition and the pursuit of ever-increasing economic growth.”
Globalization is mostly witnessed in the realm of economy as the national economies of
all countries are now interconnected. Transnational corporations in both Western and
non-Western countries have increased their economic interdependence and worldwide
corporate enterprise. Countries around the world have also substantially developed a great
deal of economic exchange as they organize several economic agencies, including EU,
NAFTA, and now USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), the WTO (World
Trade Organization), and G20 (Group of Twenty). Of course, these economic entities do
not last forever as several countries attempt to exit from these international organizations
to pursue their own benefits.
In the case of Brexit, the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. It was scheduled to
depart on March 29, 2019. European countries previously banded together
to promote trade, defend human rights, protect the environment and repel threats.
They sign treaties and join international groups, and each time they do, they give up
a bit of independence. That happened in a big way with the creation of the EU, a free-
trade zone and global political force forged from the fractious states of Europe.
(Hutton, 2017)
The question always was, could this extraordinary experiment hold together? The people
of the United Kingdom responded to this question in a June 2016 referendum, “shocking
the world by voting to leave the bloc they had joined in 1973.” For many, the EU was
expensive, out of touch, and a source of uncontrolled immigration (Hutton, 2017).
As U.S. President Donald Trump has also redirected the NAFTA system toward US-
MCA in 2018 in order to bring more benefits to the United States, these global economic
entities are in jeopardy, which suggests anti-global movements initiated by a handful of
Western countries. This does not mean a debacle of economic interdependence between
countries is imminent. Many small countries feel that they must continue to work together
so that they can benefit from the bigger markets rather than just their own small markets.
The world is already connected, and people acknowledge the importance of interdepend-
ence; therefore, they do not follow these two countries. Instead, they may stick together
to further develop a closer global economy than before. The United States and the United
Kingdom possibly continue to work independently, and these deglobalization movements
may not remain the mega trend in the long run in the global economy.
Politics
Until the early 2000s, in the field of communication studies, International Communi-
cation was one of the major courses that students took to study the dynamics of major
players in initiating the flows of information and cultural goods. However, starting around
the same period, International Communication as an academic course in the Department
of Communication in many universities disappeared as Globalization and Media has re-
placed this particular course. While there are several major differences between these
two classes, one of the primary areas differentiating them is the role of the nation-state.
In the International Communication class, the nation-state was one of the most power-
ful players as it mainly decided the flow of culture and information. In other words, the
international trade of television programs and music was decided by government poli-
cies, and the foreign exchange rates between countries were decided by the nation-states.
With the growth of economic integration and interdependence, however, several players,
in particular transnational corporations and international agencies, such as the WTO,
the USMCA, and EU, have rapidly increased their roles, resulting in the decreasing role
of the nation-state. Partially as a reflection of these new trends, Globalization and Media
has started to replace International Communication as a new core course in the field
of communication. As such, most of the debates on “political globalization involves the
weighing of conflicting evidence with regard to the fate of the nation-state,” as economic
globalization potentially leads to “the reduced control of national governments over eco-
nomic policy” (Steger, 2014, 7).
As several scholars (Strange, 1996; Sinclair, 2007) argued, the nation-state as a mean-
ingful unit in the global trade of culture and technology seemed to decline, as diverse
globalization processes, including the increasing role of transnational corporations and
the national markets, undermine the significant role of the governments. Harvey (2006)
especially points out that the nation-state has been challenged in global cultural trade,
although the pivotal role of the nation-state is still worthy of careful attention. In other
words, several globalization theorists predict the end of national boundaries and national
labels, including national corporations and national industries, which have brought about
the end of national economies. What they emphasize is that the reach of national regula-
tions and actions cannot control transnational organizations and global affairs (Ryoo and
Jin, 2018). As national economic policies cannot be as effective as they once were, many
countries have to rethink their identities because old politics are obsolete. For example,
after the Cold War ended in 1991, many people believed that nations no longer have en-
emies. In the neoliberal era, when the role of government must limit its power in order
to guarantee the maximum profit of corporations, nation-states around the globe have
developed deregulation, liberalization, and privatization.
However, as has been briefly discussed, the United States and the United Kingdom
have recently developed nationalistic political directions in global affairs in the 2010s.
The September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001 also changed
the course, as people began to think about terrorists as the new enemies and that
nation-states must protect their own citizens from their attacks. These new develop-
ments ask us to recast the roles of the nation-state as considered below, which will be
fully discussed in Chapter 5:
• Does globalization bring about the weakening of state power?

• Do nations lose some of the economic power they once had?
• Have the nation-states lost most of their sovereignty?
• If so, who and which agencies and organizations have replaced the nation-state?
• And therefore, are the nation-states still powerful?
Culture
While both economic and political domains are significant elements for the globalization
process, culture is one of the most fundamental dimensions as it nurtures globalization.
Cultural flows through television, films, and new media, such as the Internet and smart-
phones, have played a crucial role in increasing interdependence between countries and
people. Along with the technological domain, focusing on ICTs, culture and media would
be the drivers for globalization.
The flow of culture around the globe is not new. From the beginning of the 20th century,
several cultural products like films immediately started to flow beyond national bound-
aries. Later, television programs produced in a few countries, in particular in the United
States, were received in many parts of the planet. American music has also become pop-
ular in many countries. As such, Hollywood movies, American television programs, and
MTV, as well as CNN as a news channel, have become symbols of globalization.
Of course, there are several new developments as, at least, a few, if not many, countries
have advanced their own popular cultures to become part of the global markets. As
American and European citizens also admit these products, some Westerners enjoy very
similar local or regional options in their own territories. Starting in the early 1990s, and
in many cases in the early 21st century, once small and peripheral countries in the realm
of popular culture and media, such as Mexico, Brazil, India, Turkey, and Korea have
substantially advanced their own popular cultures and penetrated the regional markets,
and partially followed by the Western markets. Telenovelas developed by Mexico and
Brazil, Bollywood movies in India, and the Korean Wave in the 2010s are certainly inter-
esting local cultures that people in many countries enjoy. These countries have certainly
advanced their national images as some of the major powers in the realm of cultural
production.
In the 21st century, it is not important to identify the nationality of popular c ulture.
What is significant is that people around the globe are increasingly consuming culture
developed by other countries, and therefore, are culturally integrated. This does not
mean that all people accept other countries’ popular culture. Many people in Asia and
Latin America resist American culture, and some people in North America and Western
Europe are reluctant to receive popular culture from Asia and Latin America. Instead of
culturally becoming a global village, they prefer their own culture to other culture. In this
context, we have to address several key points in understanding the globalization process
in culture:
• What is the direction of cultural flow?

• What is cultural imperialism and does cultural imperialism theory explain the con-
temporary flow of popular culture?
• How can we understand the increasing role of the small cultural markets (e.g., Mexico
and Korea) in the global market?
Technology
The technological domain is important as ICTs are the drivers for globalization. ICTs
have expedited the connection/interaction of countries and played a key role in creating
a global village. Starting with the telegraph, developed in the mid-19th century, several
different new media technologies, including telephone, satellite, the Internet, social me-
dia, and smartphones have substantially advanced a borderless global entity. High school
and college students from the world in the United States and Canada simply connect with
their families back home via instant mobile messengers like WeChat, Kakao Talk, Line,
WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. In the late 2010s, teens and people in their twenties
engage in eSports (electronic sports) anytime and anyplace, and for them, national bound-
aries are meaningless.
Meanwhile, the expansion of ICTs has also been crucial for the growth of European
capital as in the case of the telegraph and the expansion of American capital in the case
of telephones and smartphone technologies. The availability of fast and reliable informa-
tion actualized by the expansion of ICTs has been created within the overall context of
capitalism in the early 21st century. Winseck and Pike (2007) discussed, with the example
of the global expansion of cable and wireless companies (e.g. Western Union, Eastern Tel-
egraph Company, Commercial Cable Company, Anglo American Telegraph Company or
Marconi) in the years 1860–1930, that at the time of Lenin there was a distinct connection
between communication, globalization, and capitalist imperialism. They argue that
the growth of a worldwide network of fast cables and telegraph systems, in tandem
with developments in railways and steamships, eroded some of the obstacles of ge-
ography and made it easier to organize transcontinental business. These networks
supported huge flows of capital, technology, people, news, and ideas which, in turn,
led to a high degree of convergence among markets, merchants, and bankers.
(Winseck and Pike, 2007, 1–2)
In the 2010s, digital platforms, including Google, YouTube, Netflix, and smartphones
have certainly taken a pivotal role in the globalization process. People around the world
have connected on these digital platforms as people enjoy music, film, and television pro-
grams through them, while global citizens instantaneously communicate through mobile
instant messengers like WhatsApp, WeChat, Kakao Talk, and Line.
Global Consumption
People throughout the world in the early 21st century experience the same or similar goods
and services due to the integration of the planet. Although the global flows of popular
culture and food are not new, people consume some foods and cultures originated in other
countries in our own countries or enjoy them while traveling to other countries. For exam-
ple, people do not need to visit the United States to enjoy Disneyland anymore as there are
now several Disneyland parks, including in Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. People also en-
joy Starbucks coffee in more than 70 countries (Knoema, 2018), and McDonald’s is present
in almost every corner of the world (close to 120 countries). More importantly, whenever
they turn on their televisions, people in many countries can enjoy American music, film,
dramas and news on MTV, HBO, Netflix, and CNN in addition to their countries’ cable
channels. This kind of global consumption has been known to contribute to Americaniza-
tion as these cultural products flow from the United States to the rest of the world.
Of course, sometimes, Asian and Latin American foods also arrive in North A merica
and Europe. One of the most significant examples is the California roll invented by
Hidekazu Tojo who was born and trained as a chef in Japan. After learning the basic
skills at home in southern Japan, he travelled to Osaka to study the intricacies of being
a Japanese chef, before moving to Vancouver in 1971 (White, 2012). Here he eventually
created a new type of sushi for North Americans and established Vancouver as a sushi
capital, at least for Vancouverites. Tojo stated,
When I came to Vancouver, most Western people did not eat seaweed, so I tried to
hide it. I made the roll inside out. People loved it. A lot of people from out of town
came to my restaurant—lots from Los Angeles—and they loved it. That’s how it got
called the California roll. I was [going] against Japanese tradition with the inside-out
roll, but I liked it, and my customers liked it. And so it spread all over—even into
Japan.
(White, 2012)
Diaspora
The sixth domain in globalization studies is diaspora, symbolizing the flows of people in
several different forms, like immigration, study abroad, and refugee, which constitute the
integration and interconnectivity of the world. What is interesting is that the flows of peo-
ple have mainly occurred as people in non-Western countries to Western countries unlike
other previous five domains. People from countries like Mexico and China move to North
America and Western Europe to pursue a better life and opportunity.
In fact, the United States has been the top destination for international migrants since
at least 1960, with one-fifth of the world’s migrants living there as of 2017. According to
American Community Survey (ACS) data, more than 43.7 million immigrants resided in
the United States in 2016, accounting for 13.5% of the total U.S. population of 323.1 million.
When 1.49 million foreign-born individuals moved to the United States in 2016, India was
the leading country of origin, with 175,100 arriving in 2016, followed by 160,200 from China/
Hong Kong, 150,400 from Mexico, 54,700 from Cuba, and 46,600 from the P hilippines.
India and China surpassed Mexico in 2013 as the top origin countries for recent arrivals. In
contrast, Canadian arrivals dropped 19%: 38,400 in 2016, versus 47,300 in 2015 (National
Policy Institute, 2018).
This trend is a bit different in Canada. According to the Census of Population in
Canada (Statistics Canada, 2016), among the recent immigrants to Canada, people
from the Philippines were the largest, followed by India and China. Until the mid-2000s,
Chinese were the largest; however, people from the Philippines and India accounted for
27.7%. Unlike the United States, people from the Middle East, including Iran and Syria,
also made large segments as a reflection of the liberal immigration policy enacted by the
current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Many refugees have also moved mainly from non-Western countries to Western coun-
tries like the United States, Canada, Germany, and France. In 2015 and 2016, the refugee
crisis dominated the global news due to a sharp rise in the number of people coming to
Europe to claim asylum. After the Arab uprisings of 2011, the number of people coming
to Europe to seek asylum began to rise. In particular, during Syria’s civil war in the 2010s,
hundreds of thousands of people have died, and about 5.1 million Syrians fled the country
as refugees (The Guardian, 2018).
Overall, globalization has continued to happen mainly because of these six domains,
and the following chapters discuss their major characteristics in conjunction with several
theoretical frameworks.
How to Interpret Globalization: The World Is Flat vs. The World

Is Asymmetrical
Globalization itself has been complicated as can be seen thus far; it is not possible to
simply identify its characteristics. As several approaches and dimensions discussed thus
far explain, it is not possible to categorize globalization from either a positive or negative
aspect. In particular, when we discuss the power relationships between several players,
including the West and the East, the debates on globalization can be easily convoluted.
In this regard, two of the most compelling ideas in interpreting globalization were de-
veloped by Anthony Giddens (1999) and Benjamin Barber (1992). On the one hand, during
his lecture on BBC in 1999, Giddens divided globalization processes into two different
groups known as the skeptics, which are mostly against globalization processes, and the
radicals, which are mostly for globalization processes. The skeptics believe that globaliza-
tion is not real as the economic integration is mainly regional, not global, while the radi-
cals consider that globalization is real and happening because the global market is much
more developed and bigger than it was several decades ago. For the radicals, nations have
lost most of the sovereignty they once had, and politicians have lost most of their capabil-
ity to influence events, while for the skeptics, governments still intervene in economic life
and the welfare states remain intact.
Based on this dichotomy, Giddens (1999) sided with the radicals by saying that
the level of world trade today is much higher than it ever was before and involves a
much wider range of goods and services. But the biggest difference is in the level of
finance and capital flows. Geared as it is to electronic money—, the current world
economy has no parallels in earlier times.
The problem with skeptics and radicals is that both have not properly understood the
concept of globalization and its implications for us. Both also see the phenomenon almost
solely in economic terms. As discussed, globalization is political, technological, and cul-
tural, as well as economic, and globalization is a complex set of processes, not a single
one. However, Giddens’s notion of globalization ignored the long history of globalization,
which had preceded industrialization, and he had recent economic integration in mind
(Briggs and Burke, 2009, 268).
On the other hand, Barber (1992) envisioned globalization as the war between the op-
posing ideologies of McWorld (forces of the free market, consumerism) and Jihad (a type
of Holy War). McWorld (MacDonald’s, Microsoft, Mac Computer) represents for glo-
balization, while Jihad represents against globalization. Barber believes that all national
economies are vulnerable due to the inroads of transnational corporations within which
global trade is free and access to banking is open. In many parts of the world, transnational
corporations such as MacDonald’s, CNN, and Apple “increasingly lack a meaningful na-
tional identity that neither reflects nor respects nationhood as an organizing or regulative
principle.” In contrast to this, however, several small countries in the Middle East and
Eastern Europe fiercely attempt to protect their own identities. Their major goal
is to redraw boundaries, to implode states and resecure parochial identities: to es-

cape McWorld’s dully insistent imperatives. The mode is that of Jihad: war not as an
instrument of policy but as an emblem of identity, an expression of community, and
end in itself.
(Barber, 1992)
However, both destroy the nation-state and the democracy. McDonald’s needs to expand
and merges with others and destroys nationhood. MacWorld therefore throws nations
into one homogeneous global theme park. Jihad has fragmented the nation in retreating
to the local identities. Both hurt civil society and belittle democratic citizenship. “Jihad
delivers a different set of virtues: a vibrant local identity, a sense of community, solidarity
among kinsmen, neighbors, and countrymen, narrowly conceived. But it also guarantees
parochialism and is grounded in exclusion” (Barber, 1992) (Table 1.1).
It is not prudent to consider globalization simply as a winner or a loser game. As glo-
balization has continued to grow, we are already deeply influenced by the globalization
process, and therefore, it is not time to choose either pro-globalization prospects or
anti-globalization prospects. In particular, in the realm of media and digital technology,
the process of globalization in the late 2010s has been much different from the early 2000s
due to the emergence of digital platforms. Until the late 2000s, global flow in culture
mainly occurred through global trade, and therefore, material possessions. Back then,
people had to buy or borrow cultural products in order to enjoy them; however, in the
2010s and 2020s, people simply use various digital platforms like YouTube, and therefore,
there is no need to possess cultural products such as films, television programs, and music.
Global platforms’ strategies are different from traditional cultural industry corpora-
tions. Over the past several decades, one of the major discourses in globalization in the
field of culture has been the potential homogenization, and therefore, elimination of local
identity due to the dominant role of Western cultural industries. However, in the era of
digital platforms, they are developing glocalization models (see Chapters 3 and 8). For
example, Netflix has continued to penetrate the global cultural market. While selling their
cultural products, these platforms provide funds to local cultural producers. The border-
less flow of capital has substantially increased in the 2010s, and therefore, their global
market dominance also seems to continue to increase.
Table 1.1 M
acWorld vs. Jihad
MacWorld Jihad
For globalization Against globalization

Forces of the free market A type of Holy War
Consumerism/demand integration and Bloody Holy War on behalf of partisan identity
uniformity
Driven by universalizing markets Driven by parochial hatreds: parochial community
to protect itself from the cosmopolitan universal
standards of the West
Destroy nationhood Fragment the nation in retreating to the local
Source: (See Barber, 1992).

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far as the public is concerned, the thing is then finished. Fortunately,
this form of magic often works—but unfortunately, it does not work
so often as it used to.[65]
What has been said indicates that magic may be regarded as a
form of thought characteristic of, but not confined to, primitive—or
what Professor Ellsworth Faris has called preliterate—man. It
suggests, also, that primitive thought and primitive mentality are
ordinarily associated with a definite organization of life and
experience, perhaps even a definite economic organization of society.
We all are disposed to think in magical terms in those regions of our
experience that have not been rationalized, and where our control is
uncertain and incomplete. The stock exchange and the golf course,
where success is uncertain and fortuitous, all tend to breed their own
superstition.
“Magic,” as Thorndyke says, “implies a mental state, and so may
be viewed from the standpoint of the history of thought.” But magic,
if it is a form of thought, is not science; neither is it art. The arts may
be said to begin with the lower animals. But in the art with which the
beaver constructs a dam and the bird builds a nest there is neither
magic nor science.
We can best understand magic and its relation to science if we
recall that thought is itself an interrupted act, “a delayed response” to
use the language of the behaviorists. There is the impulse to act,
which is interrupted by reflection, but eventually the impulse
completes itself in action. Magic has the character of thought in so
far as it is an impulse that is interrupted and so becomes conscious.
But it is not rational thought because it does not foresee and seek to
define the relation between the end it seeks and the means necessary
to achieve that end. Between ends and means there is always a hiatus
in which there is feeling but not clear intuition of how that end is to
be achieved.
All human activities tend to assume the character of magic in so
far as they become purely traditional and conventional, defined in
some sacred formula piously transmitted. It is peculiarly
characteristic of modern life, however, that all our inherited forms of
behavior tend to become rationalized. It is characteristic of modern
life that nothing is accepted merely on authority, every tradition is
subject to criticism.
It is only in very recent years that we have achieved scientific
agriculture and scientific cooking. On the other hand we have already
scientific advertising and scientific “cheering.” “Yelling” at ball
games, once so spontaneous, has now become an art, if not a duty.[66]
III. MENTALITY AND CITY LIFE
The reason the modern man is a more rational animal than his
more primitive ancestor is possibly because he lives in a city, where
most of the interests and values of life have been rationalized,
reduced to measurable units, and even made objects of barter and
sale. In the city—and particularly in great cities—the external
conditions of existence are so evidently contrived to meet man’s
clearly recognized needs that the least intellectual of peoples are
inevitably led to think in deterministic and mechanistic terms.
The embodiment of rational thought is the tool, the machine, in
which all the parts are manifestly designed to achieve a perfectly
intelligible end. The primitive man lives in a vastly different world,
where all the forces about him are mysterious and uncontrollable,
and where nature seems as wild, as romantic, and as unpredictable
as his own changing moods. The primitive man has almost no
machinery, and relatively few tools.
The mentality of the modern man, on the other hand, is based
upon the machine and upon the application of science to all the
interests of life—to education, to advertising, and, presently,
perhaps, to politics. The culture of the modern man is
characteristically urban, as distinguished from the folk culture,
which rests on personal relations and direct participation in the
common life of the family, the tribe, and the village community.
In fact, if we define them strictly, as Lévy-Bruhl seems to do, we
may say that reason and reflective thinking were born in the city.
They came, if not into existence, at least into vogue, in Athens, in the
time of Socrates and the Sophists. The Sophists were, in fact, a
distinctly urban phenomenon, and we owe to Socrates—who was one
of them—the first clear recognition of conceptional, as distinguished
from perceptional, knowledge. We owe to Plato, Socrates’ disciple,
the definition of the most fundamental tool of modern scientific
thought, namely, the concept, i.e., the Platonic idea.
Magic may be regarded, therefore, as an index, in a rough way,
not merely of the mentality, but of the general cultural level of races,
peoples, and classes. It is even possible that a more thoroughgoing
analysis of the mental processes involved in magic and rational
thought will permit us to measure the mentalities of social groups
with as much precision, at least, as we now measure and grade—with
the aid of the Binet-Simon tests—the intelligence of individuals. At
least we should know in this case what we were measuring, namely,
the extent and degree to which a given group or class had acquired
the ability and the habit of thinking in rational rather than magical
terms.
With a more precise conception of the nature of magic and of the
mechanisms of pre-logical thinking, we shall, no doubt, be able not
merely to compare and perhaps measure with a certain degree of
accuracy and objectivity the mentality and cultural levels of different
cultural groups, but we shall be able also to describe the process by
which races and peoples make the transition from one cultural level
to another. This transition, which Thorndyke has described in his
history of magic, is everywhere in progress. These changes in a
contemporary and living society are open and accessible to
investigation, now that history has enabled us to see them, as they
can never see them later, when they have become history.
In a recent paper in the American Journal of Sociology,
Professor U. G. Weatherly has called attention to the advantages of
the West Indies as a sociological laboratory.
Islands are peculiarly interesting sociologically, provided, of
course, that they are inhabited. For one thing, they are physically
defined. The island community is, for this reason, invariably isolated,
geographically and socially, and because the means of
communication are known, the extent of isolation can be reduced to
relatively measurable terms.
This isolation tends to give to each separate island community
an individuality that one rarely finds elsewhere. Because islands are
geographically limited and isolated, the influence of climate and
physiographic characteristics, as well as of economic organization, in
defining cultural traits, can be estimated and assessed with greater
accuracy than elsewhere. Until one has visited some of the Lesser
Antilles, he is not likely to understand or appreciate Frederick A.
Ober’s rather drastic summary of their history—“Discovered by the
Spaniards, appropriated by the Dutch, Danish, or English, and finally
abandoned to the semi-barbarous blacks from Africa, this has been
the usual succession in the islands.”[67]
The rather bitter note of this statement probably reflects the
tone of the white planters, whose position in the islands has
gradually declined since the emancipation of the slaves.
It directs attention, however, to what is, from the point of view
of the student of human nature and of society, the most interesting
and unique feature of the islands, namely, the racial situation. As
Professor Weatherly has said, “Perhaps nowhere else is there a better
opportunity for securing definite evidence bearing on the opposing
theories of race and contact as factors in cultural growth.” Every
island, in fact, is a separate racial melting-pot in which the mingled
cultures and races of Europe, Africa, and Asia seem to be gradually,
very gradually, simmering down to a single cultural, and eventually,
also, to a single racial, blend.
IV. OBEAH: THE MAGIC OF THE BLACK
MAN
Outside the Spanish Islands, Negroes are the dominant race in
the West Indies. In regions where they have not been replaced by
Hindus, as they have been in Trinidad and Demerara, British
Guiana, they constitute 90 per cent of the population. They are, in
fact, the only people who regard themselves as natives. The Asiatics
and the Europeans are, for the most part, mere sojourners.
So far as the islands now have a native culture it is the culture of
the Negro folk. It is, at the same time, the most characteristic
manifestation of the mentality of the West Indian black man, so far
as he has preserved what Lévy-Bruhl describes as the mentality of
primitive man.
What is more interesting about obeah is that while as a practice
and a belief it is universal among the uneducated classes of the black
population in the islands, it is everywhere different, and everywhere
in process of change. Practices that were originally imported from
Africa tend to assimilate and fuse with related practices and traits of
the European and Hindu cultures wherever the Africans have come
into contact with them.
This is evident, in the first place, from the fact that the obeah
man is not always a Negro; he may be, and not infrequently is, a
Hindu. In the second place, the ritual of obeah may include anything
from patent medicine to Guinea pepper. Among the instruments of
obeah in the possession of the police of Trinidad recently were a
stone image, evidently of Hindu origin, and a book of magic ritual
published in Chicago, which pretended to be, and no doubt had been,
translated originally from the writings of Albertus Magnus, the great
medieval writer on magic. A book called Le Petit Albert is said to be
extremely popular among obeah men in the French Islands.
The favorite decoctions in use among witch doctors consist of
bones, ashes, “grave dirt,” human nail parings—mixed, perhaps, with
asafetida or any other substance having a pungent odor. But in
addition to these, obeah men in the West Indies use the candles, the
little shrines, or “chapels,” as they call them, and various other
portions of the ritual of the Catholic church.
In January, 1917, a woman known as Valentine Sims, a native of
St. Lucia, was convicted, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, of obtaining
money by the assumption of supernatural powers. The testimony in
the case showed that, among other things, she attended the Roman
Catholic church, and, on pretense of receiving holy communion, took
the altar bread distributed to the worshipers during the communion,
and used it in practicing obeah.
All this suggests that obeah, as one finds it in the West Indies, is
not so much a tradition and a cultural inheritance as it is an innate
predisposition, like a sense of humor, or “the will to believe,” as
James describes it. Behind these practices, and supporting them, are
all sorts of fears and a general sense of insecurity in regard to the
physical and spiritual environment that more cultivated persons
either do not feel, or they find escape from in quite different
practices.
This is clearly indicated in the letters found among the papers of
obeah adepts which have been confiscated from time to time by the
police. From these letters one gains an insight into the nature and
extent of the terrors, anxieties, and perils of the soul which trouble
the dreams and imaginations of the black man, whom we ordinarily
think of as roaming, cheerful, care-free, and unconcerned in a
worried and troubled world.
The black man in the West Indies is greatly troubled about a
great many things. He has more than the usual number of obscure
pains and aches, which he worries about a great deal, and for which
he, like most of us, is in search of some sovereign remedy. He is
disturbed about his relations with his employer. Not that, like the
workingman we know, he talks or thinks about his rights and the
rights of labor. He is not class-conscious. Quite the contrary, he is
constantly worried because he is not in favor with his employer. If he
is scolded or scowled at, he is troubled. His first assumption, in such
circumstances, is that some fellow-employee in some dark way is
influencing his employer against him, and he seeks the obeah charm
which will discover and circumvent his enemy and win back his
employer’s good will.
If he gets into a quarrel with the family next door, if his
sweetheart looks coldly upon him, if his wife deserts him, he
inevitably assumes that there are personal and magical influences at
work, seeking to undermine otherwise sweet and happy relations.
Frequently he is right. At any rate the obeah man exploits these
suspicions, and that is the reason strenuous efforts are being made in
the British Islands to stamp the superstition out.
Visiting the police courts in the English islands, one is
profoundly impressed by the patient efforts of most of the judges to
discover and apply the rules of law to the petty personal and
neighborhood difficulties that the natives are so fond of airing in the
courts. One gets the impression that the most difficult thing for the
primitive mind to conceive and administer for himself is justice. On
the other hand, the Negro, at least, knows and appreciates justice
when he meets it. That is probably one reason why he likes to take
his troubles to court.
V. FASHIONS IN OBEAH
One gets the impression that there are fashions in obeah.
Dominica, for example, is noted for its use of love-philters; in
Montserrat, obeah is mainly a protection against evil spirits and a
means of communication with the dead; in Antigua, obeah is most
generally a form of medicine. Amulets, “guards,” as they are
popularly called, intended to ward off evil spirits or protect one
against the ill-will of an evil-minded neighbor are also popular. Nevis
has a reputation for “black magic.”
The older generation of obeah men were supposed to have a
knowledge of vegetable poisons the effects of which cannot be
detected on postmortem. In Nevis the older tradition has apparently
lingered longer than elsewhere. At any rate, magical practices seem
to have assumed a more malignant form in Nevis than in some of the
other islands.
In 1916 an old woman, Rose Eudelle, deaf and bedridden, was
convicted of practicing obeah. She seems to have been one of the few
witch doctors who believed sincerely in the efficacy of their own
practices. She had a great reputation, and boasted that she had killed
one man and sent another to the asylum. Curiously enough, she
practiced obeah mainly through correspondence, and when she was
finally arrested, some fifty letters from clients in various islands, one
of them in New York City, were discovered. There was great
excitement in Nevis when she was arrested. As she had solemnly
threatened the colored police sergeant who arrested her, the whole
black population was confidently expecting that some dramatic
misfortune would overtake him. Here there seemed to be something
more nearly approaching primitive and African magic than in any of
the other thirty-eight cases of which I obtained some sort of record.
Not only is the fashion in obeah different in the different islands,
but interest in magic, which is said to be declining everywhere, is less
modified in some islands than in others. In Barbados, though the
practices still persist, prosecutions for obeah have almost entirely
ceased. In the police station at Castries, St. Lucia, on the other hand,
there are still preserved the heart and hand of a Negro boy who was
killed some years ago to furnish an obeah man with the instruments
of magic to enable him to open the vaults of the local bank and rob it
of the treasure which was supposed to be amassed there.
The fact is, then, that the mentality of the black population of
the West Indies, as that of Africa, is changing under the influence of
contact with the white man’s culture, and particularly under the
influence of the very energetic prosecutions which not only have
made the profession less profitable, but by undermining faith in his
supernatural powers, have robbed the obeah man of the terror which
he at one time inspired.
Aside from the superficial changes in the original superstition
and the gradual decline of interest and belief in magic, it seems as if
certain more fundamental changes, reflected in these practices, were
taking place. First, the obeah man tends to become, on the one hand,
a sort of unlicensed physician, as in the case of Percival Duval, an
obeah man who maintained regular office hours, wrote prescriptions,
and prescribed medicines. Actually, Duval seems to have used a little
less medicine and a little more hocus pocus than the average medical
practitioner in our own country did a few years ago. But he was
convicted, and upon appeal to the higher court his conviction was
confirmed. Another obeah man in St. John’s, Antigua, was found to
be dealing, along with the other instruments of obeah, very largely in
patent medicines and homely household remedies. Among the
instruments of obeah taken from his office when it was raided were
the following: (1) Exhibit labeled “ground bones and ashes.” The
sample consisted of a mixture of a calcium compound and probably
lime, wood-ashes, and incense. The incense content was 26.3 per
cent. (2) Exhibit labeled “ground glass and smith coal.” This sample
consisted of a coarse commercial oxygen mixture. (3) Yellow powder.
This consisted of a cheap, scented starch powder. (4) Supposed dog’s
tongue. This consisted entirely of vegetable matter composed
principally of starch cells. (5) Exhibit labeled “ashes and incense.”
The sample consisted of incense, wood-ashes, and charcoal, earth,
and small pebbles, with a small proportion of oxygen mixture. It
contained 17.3 per cent of incense in lump and powdered form. (6)
Exhibit “vial with yellow liquid.” The sample consisted of ordinary
commercial oil of anise. (7) Vial with brownish liquid. The sample
consisted of a solution of iodine in potassium iodine of
approximately 15 per cent strength.
The fact is, the obeah man in the West Indies is in a way to
become a quack doctor. This represents one direction in which
change is taking place.
On the other hand, there is a disposition of the obeah man to
become a sort of confessor and privy counselor in all the intimate
and personal affairs of the common people. The black people—and
not only black, but occasionally Portuguese, who are the traders in
the smaller islands—go to him with affairs of business and of the
heart. They write him long personal letters, and he sends them a
magical prayer or incantation to cure them of bodily ailments, to
protect them from dangers of travel, and to insure general good
fortune. In an affair of the heart, the witch doctor frequently
prescribed a magic powder, sweetly scented, to accompany and lend
a delicate and stimulating fragrance to a love letter. In principle, this
aspect of the obeah man’s practice is like Mr. Coué’s—“Every day, in
every way, I am better and better”—only that the uses of obeah are
more specific. In any case, there is here a very evident tendency of
the practice to assume a form in which the ritual of obeah is merely a
device, like the prayers of primitive folk, for magically re-enforcing
the expression of a wish. So closely are the magical practices of the
obeah man connected—in the mind of the ordinary black man—with
religion that in one case, at any rate, he pretended to cure a boy of
insanity by making believe that he was operating as the agent or
proxy of the priest.
This, then, represents a second tendency to change in the
practices of magic by the black man. If obeah in some instances
seems to be taking the form of popular medicine, in others it tends to
assume the form of a pagan religious ceremony, adapting itself to the
forms and the ritual of the local church.
VI. THE PROBLEM STATED
In a recent volume, Studies in Human Nature, Mr. J. B. Baillie
has suggested that the disposition and the ability to think abstractly,
disinterestedly, and scientifically is not only a relatively recent
acquisition of the human race, but at the same time is a local
phenomenon.
This geographical limitation of science is indeed a remarkable fact, the

importance of which our familiarity with the scientific mood and our insularity of
mind constantly tend to obscure.... We should not forget that millions of human
beings have no interest in the scientific mood at all, and seem by constitution to
have no capacity for it.... Some individuals among these nonscientific peoples may,
and do, assimilate the science of the West. But experience seems to show that such
acquisition is at best a mere accomplishment, and leaves the racial structure and
composition of their minds unaffected.... The nonscientific peoples take up science
as they put on Western clothes. One may change one’s clothes, but there is no
changing the skin. The fact is that the scientific mood arises from a peculiar
attitude of the mind to the world found amongst certain peoples of the globe; and
without this attitude science will always appear a curiosity or an irrelevance.[68]
The author assumes that the disposition to think rationally and

to cultivate abstract and scientific thought is a racial attribute.
Perhaps a more accurate statement of the matter would take account
of the fact that even within the comparatively limited area where
science is in vogue, there are large numbers of people who still—even
while using the language of science—think in the more elementary
forms of folk-thought. This seems to be true wherever large masses
of the population are still illiterate, or where, for any reason, even
when able to read, they habitually think in terms of the spoken
language, rather than in the language of the printed page. Literacy
itself is very largely a product of modern city life. Books and reading
which used to be, and to a certain extent are yet, a luxury in the
country, become a necessity in the city.
The Negroes migrating in such large numbers from the West
Indies to the United States are bringing with them habits of thought
which have largely disappeared among the Negro population native
to this country. The obeah men of the West Indies have many clients
in the United States, and a recent issue of the New York Age
announced that the Negro quarter around 135th Street, New York,
was overrun with fortune tellers and witch doctors, many or most of
them from the West Indies.
Within a few years, however, most of these superstitions will
have disappeared, or at any rate will have assumed those more
conventional forms with which we are familiar and have learned to
tolerate. This is certainly true of the city population.
Great changes are taking place, with the introduction of modern
methods of education, in our own insular possessions. Mr. Axel
Holst, of the National Bank of the Danish West Indies, who has been
a close and assiduous student of Negro folklore in the Virgin Islands,
says that the effect of the American system of education will within a
few years totally change the mental habits of the natives of St.
Thomas. Since the younger generation have begun to read books,
they are not so interested as they were in the Nansi stories, which
correspond to the Bre’r Rabbit stories of the States. Since the
introduction of American rule, newspapers have come into vogue,
and the young men have taken to political discussion.
The changes in the “mentality” of the Negro population are, Mr.
Holst says, going on visibly, and at a surprising rate. These changes,
if they are actually taking place, should be made the subject of
further investigation. Such study should enable us to determine,
among other things, more precisely than we have been able to
determine hitherto, the rôle which cultural contacts, social heritages,
and racial temperament play in the whole cultural process.
It is evident that we are not to assume, as otherwise we might,
that there is no area of the experience in which primitive or
preliterate people think realistically and rationally. On the other
hand, in contrasting primitive mentality with that of civilized man,
we need not assume—except for the sake of the contrast—that the
thinking of civilized man is always and everywhere either rational or
scientific. As a matter of fact, there are still wide areas of our
experience that have not as yet been fully rationalized, notably the
fields of medicine and religion. In medicine, at least—if we are to
believe a recent medical critic of what, in imitation of Lévy-Bruhl, we
might call “medical mentality”—the majority of practitioners still
think of diseases as morbid entities instead of convenient labels for
groups of symptoms.
The following paragraph from a recent writer states the matter
from the point of view of a critic of “medical mentality.”
It is not to be thought that any educated medical man indeed believes “a

disease” to be a material thing, although the phraseology in current use lends
colour to such supposition. Nevertheless, in hospital jargon, “diseases” are “morbid
entities,” and medical students fondly believe that these “entities” somehow exist
in rebus Naturae and were discovered by their teachers, much as was America by
Columbus.... In fact, for these gentlemen “diseases” are Platonic realities;
universals ante rem. This unavowed belief, which might be condoned were it
frankly admitted, is an inheritance from Galen, and carries with it the corollary
that our notions concerning this, that, or the other “diseases” are either absolutely
right or absolutely wrong, and are not merely matters of mental convenience.
But if the practitioners think of diseases in pre-logical terms

what can we expect of the layman, whose medical education has been
largely confined to the reading of patent medical advertisements?
What has been said suggests a problem which may be perhaps stated
in this way: How far is the existence of magic and magical mode of
thought a measure of the mentality of a racial or cultural group in
which it is found to persist? How far is what Ballie calls “the
scientific mood” an effect of the urban environment?
Robert E. Park
CHAPTER VIII
CAN NEIGHBORHOOD WORK HAVE A
SCIENTIFIC BASIS?
Neighborhood work at present and as now practiced cannot, for

two reasons, be said to be based upon science. First, the social
sciences—and I refer to sociology in particular—have at present little
to offer as a scientific basis for social work; secondly, what
knowledge the social sciences have accumulated has been used little,
or not at all, by neighborhood workers.
The trend of neighborhood work to a scientific basis.—But if
neighborhood work has not had a scientific basis, it has had, from its
inception, as one of its conscious or unconscious motives, the search
after knowledge as the basis of human relations. Settlement work,
especially, represents not only the most devoted and the most
idealistic, but also the most intelligent, phase of social work of the
past generation. The settlement in its origin was an extension of the
university. It carried over into a new environment the love of truth
and, it may be added, the spirit of science. The residents of the
settlement were brought at once into touch with social reality; that is,
with the concrete facts of human life.
This early venture into intimate contact with social reality may
accordingly be called the first stage in the trend of neighborhood
work toward a scientific basis. But settlement workers soon found
that sympathetic understanding and intimate contacts failed to solve
many of the actual problems of neighborhood work. The
recalcitrancy of the boys’ gang, the opposition and manipulations of
the ward boss, the competition of commercialized recreation, the
unsolvable cultural conflict between immigrant parents and
Americanized children are only a few of the many perplexing
conditions of neighborhood life in immigrant areas which resisted
the spirit of good will of settlement workers. They therefore began to
study their communities in the attempt to state the factors at work by
an analysis of the elements in the situation. Hull House Maps and
Papers, The City Wilderness, and Americans in Process are
illustrations of the careful study and keen observation of these very
early efforts to determine and to take account of the many and
different conditions affecting neighborhood work. This interest in
the discovery of factors in the social situation may therefore be called
the second stage in the trend of neighborhood work toward a
scientific basis.
Science, however, is concerned not with factors, but with forces.
The distinction is not always clearly drawn between a factor and a
force. “Factors are the elements that co-operate to make a given
situation. Forces are type-factors operative in typical situations.”[69]
A factor is thought of as a concrete cause for an individual event; a
force is conceived to be an abstract cause for events in general so far
as they are similar. A particular gang of boys, the Torpedo gang, of
which Tony is the leader—and which is made up of eight street Arabs
—is a factor in the situation which a certain settlement in an Italian
colony in Chicago faces. But as soon as the attention shifts from this
one gang and this particular settlement to settlements in general and
to gangs in general the transition is made from a factor to a force. A
gang is a factor to a given settlement; the gang is a force from the
standpoint of all settlements.
The study of social forces in the community.—If neighborhood
work can have a scientific basis, it is because there are social forces in
community life—forces like geographical conditions, human wishes,
community consciousness—that can be studied, described, analyzed,
and ultimately measured. In a series of research projects now in
progress in the Department of Sociology in the University of Chicago,
studies are being made of the social forces of community life. While
the city of Chicago is used as the laboratory for this investigation, it is
assumed that the processes of urban life in one community are in
certain ways typical of city life throughout the United States.
The term “community” is widely used by sociologists,
neighborhood workers, and others, but often with widely divergent
meanings. In research in any field it is necessary to define our
concepts and to make relevant distinctions. In the literature of the
subject there is a growing disposition to emphasize as one of the
fundamental aspects of the community its geographical setting.
Whatever else the community may be, it signifies individuals,
families, groups, or institutions located upon an area and some or all
of the relationships which grow out of this common location.
“‘Community’ is the term which is applied to societies and social
groups where they are considered from the point of view of the
geographical distribution of the individuals and institutions of which
they are composed.”[70]
Upon reflection it is evident that markedly different social
relationships may have their roots in the conditions of a common
territorial location. Indeed, it is just these outstanding differences in
communal activities, viewed in relation to their geographic
background, which have caused much of the confusion in the use of
the term “community.” For community life, as conditioned by the
distribution of individuals and institutions over an area, has at least
three quite different aspects.
First of all, there is the community viewed almost exclusively in
terms of location and movement. How far has the area itself, by its
very topography and by all its other external and physical
characteristics, as railroads, parks, types of housing, conditioned
community formation and exerted a determining influence upon the
distribution of its inhabitants and upon their movements and life? To
what extent has it had a selective effect in sifting and sorting families
over the area by occupation, nationality, and economic or social
class? To what extent is the work of neighborhood or community
institutions promoted or impeded by favorable or unfavorable
location? How far do geographical distances within or without the
community symbolize social distances? This apparently “natural”
organization of the human community, so similar in the formation of
plant and animal communities, may be called the “ecological
community.”
No comprehensive study of the human community from this
standpoint has yet been made. A prospectus for such a study is
outlined in an earlier chapter by Professor R. D. McKenzie, in this
volume, under the title, “The Ecological Approach to the Study of the
Human Community.”[71] Yet there are several systematic treatises
and a rapidly growing literature of scientific research in the two
analogous fields of plant ecology and animal ecology. The processes
of competition, invasion, succession, and segregation described in
elaborate detail for plant and animal communities seem to be
strikingly similar to the operation of these same processes in the
human community. The assertion might even be defended that the
student of community life or the community organization worker
might secure at present a more adequate understanding of the basic
factors in the natural organization of the community from
Warming’s Oecology of Plants or from Adams’s Guide to the Study
of Animal Ecology than from any other source.
In the second place, the community may be conceived in terms
of the effects of communal life in a given area upon the formation or
the maintenance of a local culture. Local culture includes those
sentiments, forms of conduct, attachments, and ceremonies which
are characteristic of a locality, which have either originated in the
area or have become identified with it. This aspect of local life may be
called “the cultural community.” This relationship of cultural
patterns to territorial areas has not yet been adequately studied
unless in the phenomena of language. What, for example, are studies
in dialect but one illustration of how local areas with their entailed
isolation differentially affect customs of speech? Concrete materials
for a wider study of culture in relation to location are increasing,
notably upon preliterate peoples and upon retarded groups
geographically isolated, as the southern mountaineers or the remote
inhabitants of Pitcairn Island.
The immigrant colony in an American city possesses a culture
unmistakably not indigenous but transplanted from the Old World.
The telling fact, however, is not that the immigrant colony maintains
its old-world cultural organization, but that in its new environment it
mediates a cultural adjustment to its new situation. How basically
culture is dependent upon place is suggested by the following
expressions, “New England conscience,” “southern hospitality,”
“Scottish thrift,” “Kansas is not a geographical location so much as a
state of mind.” Neighborhood institutions like the church, the school,
and the settlement are essentially cultural institutions, and
recognition of this fact has far-reaching implications for the policies
and programs of these local centers.
There remains a third standpoint from which the relation of a
local area to group life may be stated. In what ways and to what
extent does the fact of common residence in a locality compel or
invite its inhabitants to act together? Is there, or may there be
developed upon a geographical basis, a community consciousness?
Does contiguity by residence insure or predispose to co-operation in
at least those conditions of life inherent in geographic location, as
transportation, water supply, playgrounds, etc.? Finally, what degree
of social and political action can be secured on the basis of local
areas? This is the community of the community organization worker
and of the politician, and may be described as “the political
community.” It is upon this concept of the community as a local area
that American political organization has been founded.
These three definitions of the community are not perhaps
altogether mutually exclusive. They do, however, represent three
distinctly different aspects of community life that will have to be
recognized in any basic study of the community and of community
organization. A given local area, like Hyde Park in Chicago, may at
the same time constitute an ecological, cultural, and political
community, while another area like the lower North Side in the same
city, which forms a distinct ecological unit, falls apart into several
cultural communities and cannot, at any rate from the standpoint of
a common and effective public opinion, be said to constitute a going
political community. The Black Belt in Chicago comprises one
cultural community but overflows several ecological areas and has no
means of common political action except through ward lines
arbitrarily drawn.
It follows that the boundaries of local areas determined
ecologically, culturally, and politically seldom, if ever, exactly
coincide. In fact, for American cities it is generally true that political
boundaries are drawn most arbitrarily, without regard either to
ecological or cultural lines, as is notoriously the case in the familiar
instance of the gerrymander. Therefore it is fair to raise the question:
How far are the deficiencies in political action through our
governmental bodies and welfare action through our social agencies
the result of the failure to base administrative districts upon
ecological or cultural communities?[72]
This analysis of the community into its threefold aspects
suggests that the study of social forces in a local area should assume
that the neighborhood or the community is the resultant of three
main types of determining influences: first, ecological forces; second,
cultural forces; and third, political forces.
Ecological forces.—The ecological forces are those which have to
do with the process of competition and the consequent distribution
and segregation by residence and occupation. Through competition
and the factors which affect it, as trade centers, etc., every
neighborhood in the city becomes a component and integral part of
the larger community, with a destiny bound up by its relation to it. In
the study of the growth of the city it is found that the life of any
neighborhood is determined, in the long run, not altogether by the
forces within itself, but even more by the total course of city life. To
think of the neighborhood or the community in isolation from the
city is to disregard the biggest fact about the neighborhood.
Studies of urban growth reveal that the city grows outward from
its central business district (1) in a series of expanding zones.[73]
There is a “zone of transition” (2) encircling the downtown area. This
is the area of deterioration, the so-called “slum”, created in large part
by the invasion of business and light manufacture. A third area (3) is
inhabited by workers in industry who have escaped from the area of
deterioration (2) and who desire to live within easy access of their
work. Beyond this zone is the “residential area” (4) of high-class
apartment buildings or of exclusive “restricted” districts of single
family dwellings. Still farther, out beyond the city limits, is the
“commuters’ zone” (5) of suburban areas or satellite cities within a
sixty-minute ride of the central business district.
Within these zones of urban growth are to be found local
districts or communities, and these in turn subdivide into smaller
areas called neighborhoods. In the long run, geographical factors and
the process of competition fix the boundaries and the centers of
these areas. It is important that neighborhood work be in accordance
with, rather than in opposition to, these silent but continuous
influences. A map of local communities was prepared to show the
way in which rivers, railroads, large industrial establishments, parks,
and boulevards divide the city into its constituent local communities
—residential and industrial.

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ISBN: 978-0-367-35146-5 (hbk)

1 Globalization in the Age of Digital Platforms? 1

2 Media History in the Age of Globalization 16

4 From Cultural Imperialism to Platform Imperialism 45

5 The Nation-State: Dead or Alive 59

6 The Business of Global Media Industries 72

7 Smartphones in the Era of Globalization 87

8 Globalization and Broadcasting 98

9 The Cultural Politics of Film 111

10 The Culture of Global Music 126

Globalization in the Era of Digital Platforms

What Is a Digital Platform?

a platform is a mediator rather than an intermediary: it shapes the performance of so-

Three Paradigms to Globalization Studies

Critical Political Economy Approach

Cultural Globalization Approach

Six Dimensions in Globalization Studies

• Does globalization bring about the weakening of state power?

• What is the direction of cultural flow?

How to Interpret Globalization: The World Is Flat vs. The World

is to redraw boundaries, to implode states and resecure parochial identities: to es-

For globalization Against globalization

Source: (See Barber, 1992).

This geographical limitation of science is indeed a remarkable fact, the

The author assumes that the disposition to think rationally and

It is not to be thought that any educated medical man indeed believes “a

But if the practitioners think of diseases in pre-logical terms

Neighborhood work at present and as now practiced cannot, for

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