Vanishing borders
Identity in search of new cohesion
Globalization has, through dramatically increased means of physical and electronic communication, created global markets for goods where transnational references and codes of style and quality prevail. Global references and markets also apply for music, art, and architecture. Food is in an intermediate stage. Many types of food are spread very widely through industrial recipes, but local specialties attract great attention – in particular through the growing public interest in high quality restaurants around the globe (among the growing number of rich people who have the globe as their “playground”). The local sense of identity is in a crossfire. On the one hand, globalization makes it more interesting and important to hold on to local identity. On the other hand, globalization makes it much harder to hold on to it, because the common global culture in arts, music, architecture, literature and entertainment takes a harder hold on people's interests and spare time. This process is met with several types of resistance that create frictions in nation states, with xenophobia and racism being a notable one.
It becomes less clear what the indicators of a national culture are. National values are being brought out as a subject for discussion, but such discussions often disintegrate. It may happen that regional identity gradually will replace national identity as the basic reference for persons when they wish to reflect on or signal their identification.
Communities are developing very fast in cyberspace. Will these cyberspace communities be the future arenas where a sense of identity or belonging will be the strongest – replacing spatial notions as areas where identity is formed?
Finance - the tyranny of the unified rates of return
Along with the liberalization of capital markets and the capital flows between OECD-countries, came the possibility for internationally oriented companies to buy smaller companies in other countries at low prices that had been in force behind market barriers. When more global companies took over such smaller companies, and when local capital had the option of going international, these two tendencies produced a convergence of expected rates of return on the part of both local and global investors. These “unified” rates of return then started to apply to most investments, and firms which earlier were producing a profit to the satisfaction of local investors and communities suddenly found themselves in deficit because international owners demanded dividends that exceeded the firms’ normal profits (which had been considered satisfactory by the earlier owners). A company having been sheltered by barriers to capital flows, and living with lower annual rates of return, might have accumulated capital reserves over a long period of time. These reserves would be quickly siphoned away by the new owners (in fact, it would be the first thing they did – with the philosophy that capital reserves should be lodged with the mother company and hidden in a tax shelter).
These higher global rates of return, when imposed on companies’ planning and budget estimates, produced pressures on the employees to increase productivity or lower their wages. The result of this process has over a long period of time been that capital owners have strengthened their position at the expense of employees. All types of job benefits have been put under pressure, whereas return on capital has increased. A brutalisation of the workplace has taken place, especially for the least qualified employees.
High demands on employee productivity have also been directed towards more qualified workers, but as demographic trends show an increasing shortage of qualified manpower in the OECD countries these groups are being given a better deal. Production which does not require advanced employee competence is outsourced to countries where labour cost (i.e. work conditions) is low. Unqualified workers in OECD countries are losing jobs to the countries where outsourcings are directed, and losing relative purchasing power in their local labour markets. In the USA this polarization of purchasing power has gone so far as to endanger the macroeconomic stability of the USA, because the wealth-creation is channelled more into volatile passive financial assets than into more stable consumption patterns.
Culture - the battle between Lamination and Identity
Cultural specificities within and between countries have traditionally been quite strong and noticeable. Inter-regional and international trade has contributed to the spreading of goods and habits between people in different parts of the world. Other forms of communication have contributed to the spreading of ideas and modes of thinking. In earlier times, these new goods, habits and ideas mainly reached the small minority of people who engaged actively in trade. Tourism had not yet developed. Only the elite in each country could afford to buy those goods that were transformed industrially or by craftsmen. Trade in raw materials and basic agricultural goods did not have much power of cultural transformation in the recipient countries. Crafted goods and industrial goods were far more significant in this respect.
Barriers to trade have diminished, and the media for communication in all forms have developed in an explosive way. This development, in combination with the true globalization of production and trade, has given people around the world almost immediate access to both new products and new ideas – regardless of where they have been produced. Anybody with a new product or a new idea has the possibility to make it known globally through channels that communicate globally and instantaneously. These channels have far greater socio-economic outreach than before, and they reach all people with technical access to the relevant communication channels. Such access can be acquired by people who don’t have the means to buy the technology, because they can borrow or rent it. The main barrier at present is your capacity to master the communication technology.
With this economic and technological background, music, clothes, codes of behaviour, language, habits and all other elements that people attach importance to, have spread through large chains of trade and media that have established themselves in all major cities around the world, with the same goods on the shelves, the same messages regarding how people should dress, what music they should listen to, how you dance at discoes, what is “politically correct” in different environments, etc. This has affected cultural life in all socio-economic groups that are part of the global economy, which in effect means all citizens of developed countries and the higher income groups in less developed countries.
This process of cultural “lamination” of local customs and habits has been going on unchecked for decades. In the earlier periods of this process, local customs were seen as backward and kept in low esteem among the elite in local communities. The new patterns and fashions were the “in thing”. Gradually, this process has produced reactions in local communities – where the attachment to ancient traditions and local notions of identity has grown. The need to link back to one’s roots to get a grip on one’s own identity has increased along with the loss of identity produced by the lamination process.
As global tourism has picked up speed and momentum, market demand for manifestations of local particularities has grown as well. In this way, globalisation has worked pro-actively to produce a reaction to the cultural lamination it has caused. When people travel, they generally wish to experience something different than what they already have at home – be it weather, fashion, music, dance, food, architecture, or other manifestations of cultural life. A minority travels only to get different weather and wishes to see as little change as possible with regard to cultural factors. Most people travel because they seek combinations of such elements as mentioned. This demand for local culture has generated a new demand for products that convey this local culture. Folk dance, ethnic music traditions, local art forms, museums showing the cultural roots of a community, and older building traditions have as a consequence been given a new chance to survive.
This may seem as a paradox, given all the destructive forces at work when mass tourism makes its entry into a community. A community needs to have a very strong idea about what it wishes to preserve of its culture before it allows mass tourism to deploy its destructive forces. Generally, when tourism picks up in a community, it develops so fast, brings so much revenue and so many jobs that their citizens do not have time to reflect on their own identity before it may be too late. The things the tourists come for in the first place, may be washed away by the extensive flows of tourists before the local community manages to take stock and realise what they have that is attractive. Once their attraction is destroyed, the flow of tourists will move to other destinations – like when nomads in older times moved to greener pastures, away from those pastures they had depleted.
Globalization has, through dramatically increased means of physical and electronic communication, created global markets for goods where transnational references and codes of style and quality prevail. Global references and markets also apply for music, art, and architecture. Food is in an intermediate stage. Many types of food are spread very widely through industrial recipes, but local specialties attract great attention – in particular through the growing public interest in high quality restaurants around the globe (among the growing number of rich people who have the globe as their “playground”). The local sense of identity is in a crossfire. On the one hand, globalization makes it more interesting and important to hold on to local identity. On the other hand, globalization makes it much harder to hold on to it, because the common global culture in arts, music, architecture, literature and entertainment takes a harder hold on people's interests and spare time. This process is met with several types of resistance that create frictions in nation states, with xenophobia and racism being a notable one.
It becomes less clear what the indicators of a national culture are. National values are being brought out as a subject for discussion, but such discussions often disintegrate. It may happen that regional identity gradually will replace national identity as the basic reference for persons when they wish to reflect on or signal their identification.
Communities are developing very fast in cyberspace. Will these cyberspace communities be the future arenas where a sense of identity or belonging will be the strongest – replacing spatial notions as areas where identity is formed?
Finance - the tyranny of the unified rates of return
Along with the liberalization of capital markets and the capital flows between OECD-countries, came the possibility for internationally oriented companies to buy smaller companies in other countries at low prices that had been in force behind market barriers. When more global companies took over such smaller companies, and when local capital had the option of going international, these two tendencies produced a convergence of expected rates of return on the part of both local and global investors. These “unified” rates of return then started to apply to most investments, and firms which earlier were producing a profit to the satisfaction of local investors and communities suddenly found themselves in deficit because international owners demanded dividends that exceeded the firms’ normal profits (which had been considered satisfactory by the earlier owners). A company having been sheltered by barriers to capital flows, and living with lower annual rates of return, might have accumulated capital reserves over a long period of time. These reserves would be quickly siphoned away by the new owners (in fact, it would be the first thing they did – with the philosophy that capital reserves should be lodged with the mother company and hidden in a tax shelter).
These higher global rates of return, when imposed on companies’ planning and budget estimates, produced pressures on the employees to increase productivity or lower their wages. The result of this process has over a long period of time been that capital owners have strengthened their position at the expense of employees. All types of job benefits have been put under pressure, whereas return on capital has increased. A brutalisation of the workplace has taken place, especially for the least qualified employees.
High demands on employee productivity have also been directed towards more qualified workers, but as demographic trends show an increasing shortage of qualified manpower in the OECD countries these groups are being given a better deal. Production which does not require advanced employee competence is outsourced to countries where labour cost (i.e. work conditions) is low. Unqualified workers in OECD countries are losing jobs to the countries where outsourcings are directed, and losing relative purchasing power in their local labour markets. In the USA this polarization of purchasing power has gone so far as to endanger the macroeconomic stability of the USA, because the wealth-creation is channelled more into volatile passive financial assets than into more stable consumption patterns.
Culture - the battle between Lamination and Identity
Cultural specificities within and between countries have traditionally been quite strong and noticeable. Inter-regional and international trade has contributed to the spreading of goods and habits between people in different parts of the world. Other forms of communication have contributed to the spreading of ideas and modes of thinking. In earlier times, these new goods, habits and ideas mainly reached the small minority of people who engaged actively in trade. Tourism had not yet developed. Only the elite in each country could afford to buy those goods that were transformed industrially or by craftsmen. Trade in raw materials and basic agricultural goods did not have much power of cultural transformation in the recipient countries. Crafted goods and industrial goods were far more significant in this respect.
Barriers to trade have diminished, and the media for communication in all forms have developed in an explosive way. This development, in combination with the true globalization of production and trade, has given people around the world almost immediate access to both new products and new ideas – regardless of where they have been produced. Anybody with a new product or a new idea has the possibility to make it known globally through channels that communicate globally and instantaneously. These channels have far greater socio-economic outreach than before, and they reach all people with technical access to the relevant communication channels. Such access can be acquired by people who don’t have the means to buy the technology, because they can borrow or rent it. The main barrier at present is your capacity to master the communication technology.
With this economic and technological background, music, clothes, codes of behaviour, language, habits and all other elements that people attach importance to, have spread through large chains of trade and media that have established themselves in all major cities around the world, with the same goods on the shelves, the same messages regarding how people should dress, what music they should listen to, how you dance at discoes, what is “politically correct” in different environments, etc. This has affected cultural life in all socio-economic groups that are part of the global economy, which in effect means all citizens of developed countries and the higher income groups in less developed countries.
This process of cultural “lamination” of local customs and habits has been going on unchecked for decades. In the earlier periods of this process, local customs were seen as backward and kept in low esteem among the elite in local communities. The new patterns and fashions were the “in thing”. Gradually, this process has produced reactions in local communities – where the attachment to ancient traditions and local notions of identity has grown. The need to link back to one’s roots to get a grip on one’s own identity has increased along with the loss of identity produced by the lamination process.
As global tourism has picked up speed and momentum, market demand for manifestations of local particularities has grown as well. In this way, globalisation has worked pro-actively to produce a reaction to the cultural lamination it has caused. When people travel, they generally wish to experience something different than what they already have at home – be it weather, fashion, music, dance, food, architecture, or other manifestations of cultural life. A minority travels only to get different weather and wishes to see as little change as possible with regard to cultural factors. Most people travel because they seek combinations of such elements as mentioned. This demand for local culture has generated a new demand for products that convey this local culture. Folk dance, ethnic music traditions, local art forms, museums showing the cultural roots of a community, and older building traditions have as a consequence been given a new chance to survive.
This may seem as a paradox, given all the destructive forces at work when mass tourism makes its entry into a community. A community needs to have a very strong idea about what it wishes to preserve of its culture before it allows mass tourism to deploy its destructive forces. Generally, when tourism picks up in a community, it develops so fast, brings so much revenue and so many jobs that their citizens do not have time to reflect on their own identity before it may be too late. The things the tourists come for in the first place, may be washed away by the extensive flows of tourists before the local community manages to take stock and realise what they have that is attractive. Once their attraction is destroyed, the flow of tourists will move to other destinations – like when nomads in older times moved to greener pastures, away from those pastures they had depleted.