WHOSE GLOBAL VILLAGE?
DOES THE GLOBAL VILLAGE INCLUDE MY VILLAGE?
by Charles Quist-Adade
"The people in my village, Teawiah in Eastern Ghana, where there are no telephone lines, no electricity, no computers, and where the villagers are in no way connected to the so-called information super highway know better. Like thousands of villages and millions of the wretched of the "Global Earth" my kindred in Teawiah know that no one will ever listen, no one will ever care that they even exist."
Canadian mass media philosopher Marshall McLuhan put us all in a global village. If we are to go by the logic of McLuhan’s postulate, we are all [citizens of the global village] to speak out and be heard equally. However, the village Marshall McLuhan left us in does not give all of us equal say in the day-to-day running of its affairs. The principle of democracy is subverted by village members who happen to have acquired the ability to speak louder than the rest; McLuhan’s other postulate that the “medium is the message” has taken another ironic twist—power is the message [and consequently is right]. Thus the powerful wielders of “loudspeakers” and amplifiers, i.e. the dominant media in the North and their multi-national accomplices in the industralized corporate world, have arrogated to themselves the right to shape the attitudes and feelings of other inhabitants of the village. They have also appointed themselves the cultural purveryors of the village.
According to a 1999 UN report, cultures in poorer members of the much tauted global village are under siege from the forces of global economic integration. While apologists for globalisation(read global-corporatization, Westernization) say it opens people’s lives to a global culture and to all its creativity - and the flow of ideas and knowledge, the truth is that the flow of the “new” culture is unbalanced, uni-directional, from rich countries to poor, from North to South. Not much has changed since the 1970s when the developing world charged the West of cultural imperialism. The only real change is in the technological realm. The Western media grew ever powerful and the chasm in the digital divide between the North and South has grown ever wider.
Global Villagers
Whiles the lives of the global villagers are being linked more deeply, intensely and immediately than ever before as distance, time and borders diminish thanks to the scientific-technological revolution "global-corporatization" is contributing to cultural insecurity in poorer nations which have removed barriers against imports of art and entertainment from the West. At the same time, culture has become a commodity to be sold in the form of handicrafts, music, books, films and tourism. Many defenders of globalization have argued that the spread of ideas and images enriches the world. But what these defenders fail to tell us is whose ideas? Whose images? And how are they being spread? McLuhan had argued eloquently that "the medium is the message." But in the global village, it is not so much the medium, but the words and images, and therefore the message that matter.
According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the world trade in goods with cultural content almost tripled between 1980 and 1991: from 67 billion dollars to 200 billion dollars. At the core of the entertainment industry - film, music and television - there is a growing dominance of US products, and many countries are seeing their local industries wither, according to the UNDP study.
The single largest export industry for the United States is entertainment - not aircraft or automobiles - the document notes. In 1997 alone, Hollywood films generated gross profits of more than 30 billion dollars worldwide and last year’s blockbuster, ‘Titanic’, grossed more than 1.8 billion dollars. It is not the profits per se that is our concern here. After all businesses operate in order to make profits. Without the profit motive, no one will stay in business. The problem is in the process of maximizing profits, the global corporate managers destroy the cultures of weaker members of the global village.
The octupus-like expansion of global media networks and satellite communications technologies give rise to a powerful new medium with a global reach. The Western-based wires services, the Associated Press, Reuters’, and Agence France Presse put between them 24 million words around the world per day. Cable News Network (CNN) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have infiltrated most developing nations, at times beaming programmes 24 hours a day. CNN is seen by 150 million households in 212 countries. The same networks that open Third World homes to CNN and BBC news programming also have brought Hollywood to an increasing number of otherwise remote villages as the number of television sets per 1,000 people almost doubled between 1980 and 1995, from 121 to 235. In a market-driven “global village”, these mega media empires are reducing complex international issues to soundbites and sightbites. Foreign coverage is cut back. Ethnic conflicts in other parts of the globe, such as Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone barely get coverage but when the West bombs Yugoslavia, coverage is around the clock. No one is fooled when CNN executives maintain that they are free of from US geo-strategic and economic interests. How can one be part of a society and yet be free of that society? How can the economic-cultural elite, to which the CNN executive belong, cut loose from the political elite? The logic of power dictates that they team up to support and service the status quo. The status quo stands or falls with them.
The spread of global brands - Nike, McDonnald’s - is setting new social standards from New Delhi to Warsaw to Rio de Janeiro,. It does not take rocket science to figure out that such onslaughts of western culture is wreaking havoc on cultural diversity and eroding the identities of weaker members of the new global (dis)order.
Once-thriving film industries around the world declined in the 1970s and 1980s, a result of the rise of television. Mexico once produced more than 100 films per year but local production dropped to fewer than 10 films last year - despite a resurgence of cinema attendance. Faced with such threats, many countries have argued that cultural goods should be exempt from free trade agreements.
Addressing delegates early last year, UN Deputy Secretary- General Louise Frechette argued that like almost everything in life, the phenomenon of globalization ‘’brings up many opportunities to learn from each other, and to benefit from a wider range of choices, but it can also seem very threatening.’’
"Parents find their children attracted by products and role models from alien cultures" just as workers find their jobs rendered obsolete by imported technology and foreign competition, according to Frechette. "Instead of widening our choices, globalization can seem to be forcing us all into the same shallow, consumerist culture - giving us the same appetites but leaving us more than ever unequal in our ability to satisfy them. Many millions of people have yet to feel its benefits at all," she noted.
"What is needed is support (for) indigenous and national cultures - to let them flourish alongside foreign cultures," the study contends. But is anyone listening? Will anyone even listen? The people in my village, Teawiah in Eastern Ghana, where there are no telephone lines, no electricity, no computers, and where the villagers are in no way connected to the so-called information super highway know better. Like thousands of villages and millions of the wretched of the "Global Earth" my kindred in Teawiah have long decided that no one will ever listen, will ever care that they even exist.
This article first published in SANKOFA NEWS
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