THE WORLD OF IDEAS

MEDIA, MUSIC, and RELIGION

With the World of Regions before,
we had seen the general perspectives of
Globalization and how it affects the
global/national set-up. With this World of Ideas,
we will divulge in a more specific ideologies:
Media, Music, and Religion.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
The etymological idea of “Globalization” and
“Media” has some comparison as well as contrast:
Globalization is a distasteful thought
while Media is not that hard to identify/define.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
The Miriam-Webster
dictionary dates “globalize”
to 1944 Theodore Levitt, a
former professor of the
Harvard Business School.
As a term, Globalization has
etymological subtleties-
drawing from the suffixes of
–ization, -ize, and –ation
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
“-Ization” an etymological dictionary says, is a suffix
that creates nouns indicating the process or
outcomes of doing something.

By perspective, there is a
debate whether
Globalization is already a
completed thought or an
ongoing process.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
Media on the other hand, is
quite easy to comprehend.
As a word, Media is a plural
definition of Medium- a
means of conveying
something , such as
channels of communication.
By 1920, it was
linked/related to the surge
of globalization
In the 1920’s, the idea of “Media”
was a concept to discuss due that
people were talking about their
fears over the harmful effects of
comic books, radio, and film. The
concern was that young people
would tend to read propagandas in
the radio, violence in comics, and
couples disappearing in the dark
movie houses.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
The Media theorist Marshall
McLuhan once declared that
“the medium is the message”.
He did not mean that ideas
(messages) are useless and do
not affect people but rather
the statement was media, as a
form of technology, reshapes
societies.
There are five (5) periods that capsulate
Media and Globalization: we will look at
different time periods and point out how
the media in each time period
contributed to the globalization of the
world. Media-and globalization as well-
have developed sporadically, erratically,
in fits and starts, driven by human needs,
desires and actions, resulting to greater
benefits and sometimes greater harm.

MEDIA WITHIN GLOBALIZATION

 ORAL COMMUNICATION
(human) Speech is the most
overlooked yet this is the
oldest and most enduring of
all media. Despite the
numerous years of changes
undergone by humans and
societies, the first and last
humans shared at least one
thing- the ability to speak.
 The Script has been
less than 7,000 years

Speech has been

with us for at least
20,000 years

Print for less than

6,000 years

Digital technology for

less than 50 years
Speech developed into LANGUAGE:
Homo sapiens had developed this medium to cover and
conquer the world:
- It allowed humans to cooperate
- Sharing information (adaptability to change)
- Sharing information (tools, weaponry, and
technology)
- Store and transmitted agricultural information
Thus, language was their most important tool.
(Ostler 2005)
The language led to markets, the trade of goods and
services, and eventually into cross-continental trade
routes.
By 4000 BCE, human’s first civilization was created in
Sumer in the Middle East (known as the cradle of
civilization): it was thought as the birthplace of the
wheel, plow, irrigation, and writing- all created by
language.
SCRIPT- the very first writing- allowed humans
to communicate and share knowledge and
ideas over much larger spaces as well as much
longer times: writing has evolved and
developed from cave paintings, petroglyphs,
and hieroglyphs.
It has developed from symbols to later on the
ALPHABET, the scripted letters that represented
the smallest sounds of a language- learned now
in preschool all around the world, central to the
evolution of humankind and civilization
But script has to be written somewhere: some of
these where beget from wood, clay, bronze, stone,
and etc. But in Ancient Egypt, sheets of PAPYRUS
(both the plant and later on the paper) catapulted
globalization. Script allowed for a permanent
codification of economic, cultural, and religious
practices.
 The PRINTING PRESS started as part of the
“information revolution” that transformed
markets, businesses, schools, churches, and
governments. All histories of media and
globalization acknowledge of its quintessential
role- and its easy to know why.
With the advent of the Printing
press, first made by movable
wooden blocks at China, and later
with movable metal type by
Johannes Guttenberg in Germany,
reading materials suddenly was
cheaply made and easily
circulated. It has:
1. changed the very nature of
knowledge (preserved and
accessible)
2. standardized knowledge (which
can vary if only done orally)
ELECTRONIC MEDIA
Beginning at the 19 Century, a
host of new media would
revolutionize the on-going
processes of Globalization:
Scholars have come to call this
“Electronic media” because they
require “electromagnetic
energy”- or electricity to use.
The telegraph, telephone, radio,
film, and television are the usual
media collected under this
category.
ELECTRONIC MEDIA (by the dates)
TELEGRAPH (Samuel FB Morse, 1830s)
TELEPHONE (Alexander Graham Bell, 1876)
RADIO (1890s, after WWII- “death Radio”)
FILM (1870s- Silent Films, 1890s – film development, 1903- the
Great Train Robbery, 1920s the surge of directors capturing
narratives)
TELEVISION (1920s- TV programming existed, 1960s- half of the
world has television)
The DIGITAL MEDIA are the most often electronic
media that relies on digital codes- a long arcane
combinations of 1s and 0s. The computer is the
common representation of digital media, it comes as
the latest and some would argue as also the most
significant medium to influence globalization.
 In the realm of economics, computers allow
instantaneous, global trading 24 hours a day.
Anyone with a computer has access to
economic information that just a few years
ago was in the hands of a wealthy few.
 POPULAR MUSIC AND
GLOBALIZATION

What does it mean to be a “musician” today?

Popular music today serves as a gateway to explore
the representations and meanings associated with
music making in the time of globalization.
When the term globalization and music are
put together, they tend to conjure up
critical reflection regarding culture, place,
and identity. Music participates at once in
the reinforcing of boundaries of culture
and identity and in subverting them.
Sociologists have been ahead in this:
Engaging critically with Adorno’s (1991)
seminal work on the intimate relationship
between musical structure and social
structure.
Popular Music and Musicians in
Society: from the Local to the Global
Hall and Jefferson (1976) and Simon
Frith (1981) among others
emphasizes the links between music
and social change. The music of
youth, in particular, because youth is
conceived as liminoidal (Turner
1970)- that is representing a moment
of ambiguity, transition, even crisis,-
that had been central to investigating
class, racial, and generational tension
that permeate and inevitably lead to
social change.

Popular Music and Musicians in Society: from the Local to the Global
 CONTACT:
Re-Reading the History of Music and Globalization

Ethnomusicologist Jean Duling

tells the story of the transcultural
musical tradition that emerged in
the 9th Century as the Muslim
empire expanded into the Arabian
peninsula, westward towards
North Africa and eastward all
through Central Asia and the
northern tip of the subcontinent
of China (During, 2011)
 CONTACT:
Re-Reading the History of Music and Globalization
The Arabian maqams, the Indian
ragas, and the Persian Radius
which have been canonized as
national traditions are all related
in that they can be traced back to
a set of performance practices,
theoretical principles, and
aesthetic value that the spread
throughout Africa, the Middle
East, and Asia during the
Muslim empire.
 CONTACT:
Re-Reading the History of Music and Globalization
The impact of urbanization and
metropolization on the
development of new genres and
philosophies of music continues to
be felt today. Raymond Wiliams
would note that “the most
important general element of the
innovation of forms is the fact of
immigration to the Metropolis,
and it cannot be emphasized how
many of the major innovators
were…- immigrants”
 GLOBALIZATION AND RELIGION
The social-scientific study of religion is a field that
has played a critically important role in shaping the
contemporary scholarly understanding of
globalization.
 Religion would mostly assume that there is a
possibility of communication between humans
and the transcendent- we may define this as
either “God” or the “gods” of which we
permeate our beliefs at. This defines and judge
human action in moral terms
For most of the 20th Century, the research
agenda of the social sciences has been
dominated by the debate over
Secularization. A number of ideologies
puzzles and confronts different
mentalities over the issue:
1. a time superseded by re-evaluation
favour to the sceptics
2. operate to mitigate secularizing
tendencies
3. “vicarious religion”
4. a continual significance of folk
religion, contemporary spirituality, and
superstition.
SECULARIZATION is a cultural
transition in which religious values are
gradually replaced with nonreligious
values. In the process, religious
figureheads such as church leaders lose
their authority and influence over society.
In the field of sociology, the term is used
to describe societies that have become
or are becoming modernized—meaning
that features of society such as the
government, the economy, and schools
are more distinct, or less influenced by
religion.

https://www.thoughtco.com/secularization-definition-3026575 (retrieved 12/01/2021)

 VICARIOUS RELIGION
Idealized by Grace Davie
wherein it is “believing
without belonging”- for her,
religion is performed by a
minority only but on the
behalf of the majority, who
implicitly does not
understand, but does
approved what the minority is
doing.
 The contemporary conflicts
with which religion has been
associated are not solely
about religion [per se] – if we
are speaking of religion as a
set of beliefs. The conflicts
have been about identity and
economics, about privileges
and power- the things most
social conflicts are about.

RELIGION IN GLOBAL CONFLICT

THE WORLD OF IDEAS
MEDIA, MUSIC, and RELIGION