Culture and global change

346 Pages·1999·8.21 MB·English

by  Tracey Skelton

CULTURE AND GLOBAL CHANGE
Investigations into cultural aspects of ways of life can be crucial in making valuable assessments of
processes of change. Understanding culture in a broad conceptual framework helps us interpret what things
mean to different people in different cultures and places.
Culture and Global Change presents twenty-five chapters which each offer their own particular take on
‘culture’, provoking new debate, opening up new areas of research and questioning conventional
assumptions. Multiple meanings of culture—culture as representation, as discourse, as practice, as product,
as action, as explanation—are represented here in this unique collection of contributions from leading
writers in the field.
The book is divided into eight parts: Culture and Development; Questioning Cultural Assumptions;
Representations and Cultural Commodification; Culture as Explanation; Culture and Resistance; Culture
and Human Rights; Religion, Culture and Politics; Culture as Product: Culture as Pleasure. The editors
guide readers through the debates, themes and places covered within individual chapters, ranging across
topics which include: cricket in the Caribbean; Indian cinema and Hollywood; sex tourism in Thailand and
the Philippines; London’s representation through the Evening Standard; the Japanese economic miracle and
workplace; street children in Brazil; Mexican-US and Latin America-UK migration; female circumcision in
Sudan; women and New Hinduism; and film in Soviet and Russian society.
Exploring the significance and meaning of cultural issues for different people in different parts of the
contemporary world, this book highlights the dangers of using reductive models of culture and of adopting
culturally deterministic positions. The book stresses that we have to understand social action within the
context of cultural change and both recognise and respect the diversity, dynamism and relevance of
cultures. With chapters dealing with the importance of ‘Third World’ cultures but also with change in
Russia, Japan, the USA and the UK, this book considers the relationship between culture and development
at a sophisticated level and within a truly global context.

Tracey Skelton is a lecturer in the Department of International Studies, Nottingham Trent University and
Tim Allen is a lecturer at the Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics.
CULTURE AND GLOBAL CHANGE
TRACEY SKELTON AND TIM ALLEN

London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Selection and editorial matter © 1999 Tracey Skelton and Tim Allen;
individual chapters © 1999 the contributors
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.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98412-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-13916-3 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-13917-1 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Culture and global change: an introduction 1
TRACEY SKELTON AND TIM ALLEN
I CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT 12
1 Classic conceptions of culture 13
PETER WORSLEY
2 Globalised culture: the triumph of the West? 23
JOHN TOMLINSON
3 Culture and development theory 32
PETER WORSLEY
II QUESTIONING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS 45
4 Modernisation versus the environment? Shifting objectives of progress 46
ALAN THOMAS
5 Local knowledges and changing technologies 59
GORDON WILSON
6 Understanding health 72
MURRAY LAST
III REPRESENTATIONS AND CULTURAL COMMODIFICATION 87
7 Finding the right image: British development NGOs and the regulation of imagery 88
HENRIETTA LIDCHI
8 Representations of conflict in the Western media: the manufacture of a barbaric 1 05
periphery
PHILIPPA ATKINSON
9 Sex tourism: the complexities of power 1 12
JAN JINDY PETTMAN
v
10 The city and identity: news frames and the representation of London and Londoners in 1 21
the Evening Standard
JENNY OWEN
IV CULTURE AS EXPLANATION 1 29
11 Culture as ideology: explanations for the development of the Japanese economic 1 30
miracle
ROGER GOODMAN
12 Cultural disease and British industrial decline: Weber in reverse 1 40
MIKE HICKOX
13 Ethnicity 1 48
JOHN EADE AND TIM ALLEN
V CULTURE AND RESISTANCE 1 60
14 Local forms of resistance: weapons of the weak 1 61
HAZEL JOHNSON
15 ‘The people’s radio’ of Vila Nossa Senhora Aparecida: alternative communication and 1 70
cultures of resistance in Brazil
VIVIAN SCHELLING
16 The new migrants: ‘flexible workers’ in a global economy 1 84
CHRIS J.MARTIN
VI CULTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS 1 95
17 The West, its Other and human rights 1 96
ROLANDO GAETE
18 Female circumcision and cultures of sexuality 2 05
MELISSA PARKER
19 Street lives and family lives in Brazil 2 16
TOM HEWITT AND INES SMYTH
VII RELIGION, CULTURE AND POLITICS 2 26
20 Religion and political transformation 2 27
JEFF HAYNES
21 Religion and development 2 36
PARVATI RAGHURAM
22 Paying the price of femininity: women and the New Hinduism 2 45
DINA ABBOTT
VIII CULTURE AS PRODUCT: CULTURE AS PLEASURE 2 54
vi
23 Whose game is it anyway? West Indies cricket and post-colonial cultural globalism 2 55
HILARY MCD.BECKLES
24 Bollywood versus Hollywood: battle of the dream factories 2 65
HEATHER TYRRELL
25 Mimicking Mammon? What future for the post-communist Russian film industry? 2 82
KATE HUDSON
References 2 91
Index 3 15
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
3.1 Uganda/Sudanese repatriation. These are new arrivals from Nimule, Sudan, en route between 42
Bibia and Arinyapia, where a large new reception centre has been built.
5.1 Cheziya Bakery, in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Labour-intensive, Fordist production styles are subtly 64
adapted, resulting in a highly flexible and effective work-force.
5.2 Metal-working in Mbare suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe. The ‘informal sector’ workshops of Mbara 67
cover a large area with significant clusters of metal-working, wood-working and other trades—
learning and copying from, sharing and competing with, one another.
6.1 Laropi, Uganda, 1991. A young woman is possessed by spirits while being trained as an Ojo, 80
spirit medium/healer. The importance of indigenous religious practice remains strong, even
among the young.
6.2 A nyanga in Tonga, Zimbabwe. Nyangas are formally registered local healers who still form an 82
important part of Zimbabwe’s health care system.
7.1 Disasters Emergency Committee East African Appeal, press advertisement, June 1980. 90
7.2 Christian Aid, poster advertisement, April-May 1990. 91
7.3 Christian Aid, press advertisement, April-May 1990. 97
7.4 Christian Aid advertising schedule, 1989–90. 98
13.1 A refugee from Bosnia-Herzegovina, now in Croatia, holds a newspaper with the headline, 149
‘Through Terror to Great Serbia’. She has lived through some of that terror.
15.1 A street in Vila Aparecida. 174
15.2 Arriving in Vila Aparecida, the bus stops by a football field and circus tent. 174
15.3. Photographs on the church wall record events and themes in the history of Vila Aparecida as a 174
Basic Community. These photographs are images of the ‘Day of the Migrant’, when the church,
‘committed to justice, the land and brotherhood’, was inaugurated.
15.4. The church built by the inhabitants of Vila Aparecida with loudspeakers on the roof. 174
15.5 A cloth banner behind the stage where the Festival was being held: ‘Blacks: A Cry for Justice’. 174
21.1 Growing up in the desert offers few distractions for Algerian/Saharan refugee children of Smara 237
Camp in the Tindouff region. This Koran teacher keeps a group of youngsters busy during the
school holidays.
An RSS poster of Bharat Mata (Mother India) spreading luminously across and beyond the South 246
Asian continent, erasing national boundaries from Afghanistan to China and Russia.
22.2 Celebrating the space of the Sati Sthal, where Roop Kanwar was burned to death on her husband’s 252
funeral pyre on 4 September 1987, in Deorala, Sikar district, Rajasthan. She was eighteen years
old.
22.3 Photo collage sold in Deorala of a beatific Roop Kanwar on the pyre, glorifying her Sati. 252
viii
24.1 Front cover of Movie International magazine, February 1996 issue, showing (clockwise from top 267
right) Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Shammi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Rekha, Raj Kapoor,
Amitabh Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, and (centre) Madhubala.
24.2 Drawing of Amitabh Bachchan by Deepa Mashru, age nine, from Leicester. 270
24.3 Publicity poster for Cliffhanger in Hindi. 271
24.4 Cassette cover of soundtrack to Mani Ratnam’s Bombay. 272
24.5 Still from Mani Ratnam’s Bombay. 274
24.6 Sanjeev Baskar, presenter of BBC 2’s Bollywood or Bust! 276
FIGURES
11.1 Short-termism in the west: what managers cite as their top priority. 132
11.2 Typical Japanese office set-up. 133
19.1 Diagram to show the complexities of children’s lives on and off the street in Brazil. 217
TABLES
9.1 Arrivals of tourists from abroad and receipts from international tourism. 115
9.2 Tourist arrivals and income in Thailand, 1985–90. 116
11.1 Opposing values said to underlie ‘Japanese’ and ‘western’ capitalism. 130
11.2 Total days lost by annual labour disputes. 132
14.1 Domination and disguised resistance. 166
CONTRIBUTORS
Dina Abbott is a Lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Derby and an associate lecturer
for the Open University. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in Maharastra, India and published on
women’s poverty and income generation, slum housing and living conditions, and religiously motivated
conflict in Bombay. She is currently collaborating on a major research project on slum dynamics with the
University of Bombay.
Tim Allen is a Lecturer in the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and senior
visiting lecturer at the Open University. He presents the radio programme series ‘Developing World’ and
is the author/editor of numerous books and articles on aspects of development. He has carried out long-
term fieldwork in Uganda and Sudan. His most recent publications include The Media in Conflict (with
Jean Seaton) and Divided Europeans: Understanding Ethnicities in Conflict (with John Eade).
Philippa Atkinson is based at the Development Studies Institute of the LSE and has done local level
research over many years in war zones in Africa.
Hilary McD. Beckles is Professor of History at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus in
Barbados. He is the author and editor of several books on Caribbean slavery, emancipation and
independence. He is also Director of the Centre for Cricket Research.
John Eade is a Reader at the Roehampton Institute in London.
Rolando Gaete is a Reader in Socio-Legal Studies at South Bank University and a lawyer. He took part
in the agrarian reform process in Chile from 1970 to 1973 and defended political prisoners from 1973 to
1976, during the early period of Pinochet’s dictatorship. He got a Ph.D at the LSE and settled in the UK.
He is the author of Human Rights and the Limits of Critical Reason and articles in various academic
journals.
Roger Goodman is University Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Japan and a Fellow of St
Anthony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Japan’s ‘International Youth’: The
Emergence of a New Class of Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (Routledge, 1992), and author and
co-editor of Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (Routledge, 1992), Case Studies on Human Rights in
Japan (Curzon, 1996) and the East Asian Welfare State: Welfare Orientalism and the State (Routledge,
1998).
Jeff Haynes is a Reader in the Department of Politics and Modern History, London Guildhall University,
where he teaches courses on Third World, African and international politics. His most recent books are:
Religion, Globalization and Political Culture in the Third World (editor, 1999); Religion in Global
Politics (1998) and Democracy and Civil Society in the Third World (1997).
Tom Hewitt is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the Technology Faculty of the Open
University. He has been director of the Open University’s M.Sc. in Development Management (1995–8)