Globalization and Orientalism

Globalization is often determinedas the growth and acceleration of economic and cultural networks which operate on a worldwide scale and basis. Globalization is strongly linked with debates about ‘world culture’, and emerged as a critical concept in the late 1980s. The term refers to that whole complex of flows and processes which have increasingly transcended national boundaries in the last twenty years. The growth of ‘global culture’ has resulted from major shifts and developments in multinational markets and corporations, communication and media technologies and their world systems of production and consumption. The process is distinguished from cultural imperialism in that it is conceived as more complex and total, and less organized or predictable in its outcomes.

For some recent writers, the cultural experience of globalization and the mishmash of world cultures which result can be seen as a telling aspect of the postmodern condition. From this point of view, the late twentieth century has seen decisive changes in the influence of national cultural and economic structures and their historical boundaries and ‘securities’ have increasingly had to confront the realities of international and global integration.

The results of these processes have been termed a new and distinctive cultural space – the global – which both erodes and destabilizes older established forms of the national culture and identity. These are replaced, it is suggested, by a global–local dimension, and everyday, situated cultures are now routinely saturated with references to the global. Central to this process has been the emergence of communication technologies and media networks which allow for faster, more extensive, interdependent forms of worldwide exchange, travel and interaction. The rapid developments and contradictions in these and other processes and their impact on diverse forms of cultural and social life provide a continuing and urgent site for debate and research. It is important that cultural and communication studies should recognize and respond to these global transformations.

In its turn Globalism, at its core, seeks to describe and explain nothing more than a world which is characterized by networks of connections that span multi-continental distances. It attempts to understand all the inter-connections of the modern world – and to highlight patterns that underlie (and explain) them. In contrast, globalization refers to the increase or decline in the degree of globalism. It focuses on the forces, the dynamism or speed of these changes.

In short, consider globalism as the underlying basic network, while globalization refers to the dynamic shrinking of distance on a large scale. Globalism is a phenomenon with ancient roots. Thus, the issue is not how old globalism is, but rather how " thin" or " thick" it is at any given time.

At the same time, it is important to note that globalism does not imply universality. After all, the connections that make up the networks to define globalism may be more strongly felt in some parts of the world than in others.

For example, at the turn of the 21st century, a quarter of the U.S. population used the World Wide Web. At the same time, however, only one-hundredth of one percent of the population of South Asia had access to this information network. Since globalism does not imply universality and given that globalization refers to dynamic changes, it is not surprising that globalization implies neither equity – nor homogenization. In fact, it is equally likely to amplify differences – or at least make people more aware of them.

Orientalism is the historical construction of eastern cultures and people as ‘foreign’, often alien or exotic objects of western scrutiny or contemplation. The concept is associated with the influential work of Edward Said, who has identified orientalism as a key feature of western attitudes and writing about the orient from the eighteenth century onwards.

Orientalism is best understood as a discourse which both assumes and promotes a sense of fundamental differencebetween a western or occidental ‘us’ and an oriental ‘them’ – the cultures and people of eastern, Asiatic origins and traditions. Grounded in particular ideological assumptions held by western writers, scholars, civil servants and politicians, the discourse of orientalism has been embodied historically in the complex social and political practices which western societies have employed to dominate and gain authority over eastern, oriental cultures.

Orientalism should not be understood as crude racism or jingoism although these may draw upon related values or assumptions. In Said’s terms, it refers to those forms of communicative practice, such as serious travel writing or journalism, academic or political accounts, which seek to present objective analysis of eastern phenomena to western audiences.

A characteristic of these accounts is their tendency to dehumanize the oriental, presenting a fixed, unchanging other, lacking subjectivity or internal variation and condensed in binary opposition to western consciousness and culture. In these and other forms, Said argues that the discourse of orientalism ultimately reveals less about the characteristics of the eastern countries to which it refers than about the consciousness and culture of western groups which have looked at them, studied them and sought to exercise rule over them.

As a historical set of ideas for making sense of the ‘unfamiliar’ – the orient – they reveal much about the preoccupations and structures of ‘our world’ – western European culture. Orientalism has emerged as a significant theme in recent discussions of reporting the Middle East, including the Gulf War and Islam and in the analysis of contemporary travel and tourism writing.