I place a theory of American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) in relation to larger theoretical models/debates with international communication and global media studies. Two general models describing the global cultural system — cultural imperialism and cultural globalization — have dominated scholarship within global media and international communication studies, with a third model, to which I ascribe, cultural hegemony, also significant.
Generally, debates between scholars who lean more toward a cultural imperialism perspective (e.g., Golding, 1977; Mattelart, 1979; Schiller 1976) and those who tilt more towards a cultural globalization perspective (e.g., Alim 2010; Cheshire & Moser 1994; Katz & Liebes 1987; Kirmse 2010; Thussu 1998, 2006) tend to imply that either the global cultural system is largely characterized by a top-down and/or center-out relationship or that it is primarily marked by localization, hybridization, cultural resistance and “counter flows” back to the top/center.
Cultural imperialism refers to a global situation in which powerful culture industries and actors located almost exclusively in the West and, in particular, in the United States, dominate other local, national and regional cultures and actors. This domination is understood as being largely the outcome of fundamental historical inequalities that have resulted in the bulk of political and economic power being concentrated in the West and, especially, in the United States. A number of different scholars have been associated with the development of the notion of cultural imperialism, among them Schiller (1976, 1991), Mattelart (1979), and Golding (1977), with Schiller widely viewed as the most influential of these. Many contemporary scholars (Boyd-Barrett, 2016; Sparks, 2007, etc.) continue to take up Schiller’s perspective, and despite what some academics have claimed, I strongly believe that it is clear that cultural imperialism still has relevance within the fields of media, cultural and global communication studies.
In contrast to cultural imperialism, which encourages scholars to concentrate on cultural domination and cultural producers as well as on the power of the latter to impose their ideology on others, cultural globalization encourages researchers to focus on cultural resistance and cultural consumers as well as on the power of people, both on individual and collective levels, to read, appropriate, and use cultural products in creative fashion. In the tensions between cultural imperialist-inflected and cultural globalization-inflected scholarship, we see disagreement about what level of analysis to focus on, with scholarship rooted in a cultural imperialism approach generally concerned primarily with macro-level (global/national) cultural production and distribution questions and issues and scholarship grounded in a cultural globalization approach tending to focus more on micro-level (local) questions surrounding cultural consumption.
Cultural globalization as an influential perspective emerges in the 1980s primarily in response to what many scholars charged were the overly-deterministic assumptions of cultural imperialism, including the alleged assumption that the widespread presence of, for example, American cultural products such as Hollywood films, music, television series and multi-national corporations such as McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, necessarily means the widespread adoption of American ideology. Much scholarship rooted in a globalization of culture perspective emphasizes the localization of, and adaption of cultural products to particular markets and cultures and/or the creative and local shaping of cultural products (Alim 2010; Cheshire & Moser 1994; Katz & Liebes 1987; Kirmse 2010; Thussu 1998, 2007)
Drawing from Kuisel (2003) and Ritzer (2003) among others, in building a theory of American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC), I draw from a perspective between cultural imperialism and cultural globalization called cultural hegemony. Cultural hegemony scholars, like cultural imperialism scholars, foreground power differentials within the global capitalist cultural production, distribution and consumption system, especially as these relate to an often disproportionate presence of American cultural products in the global cultural system. However, cultural hegemony does not see dominant cultures as necessarily determining culture in other places around the world and it acknowledges the clear reality of localization, re-appropriation, and individual and local audience readings of cultural products.
Like a cultural imperialism perspective, a cultural hegemony perspective foregrounds power differentials within the capitalist cultural production, distribution and consumption system. However, it does not see dominant cultures as necessarily determining culture in other places around the world. Instead, cultural hegemony sees a small number of cultures, the United States in particular, as typically occupying more space at what might be referred to as a global table of cultural options. Writing about “Americanization” in France, Kuisel (2003) puts forward an apt, and useful metaphor for culture in the global context, describing it as a “smorgasbord”. Here, he tips his analytical hat to globalization of culture scholars, conceding that there are often many options on the global table of culture. However, he contends that these options still tend to tilt toward more American and fewer “other” options:
Globalization [ . . .] holds that America merely adds one dish to an ever-widening menu of choices. One might argue, however, that while globalization gives us a wide smorgasbord of dishes, the American dish remains the biggest and it tends often to crowd out the local cuisine (p. 107).
The metaphor of cultural “smorgasbord” is particularly useful because it shows that those (Chalaby, 2002; Kuisel, 2003; Ritzer & Stilman, 2003), including myself (Demont-Heinrich, 2011), who hold what I define here as a cultural hegemony perspective, acknowledge that there is some — but also often quite limited — “choice” in terms of the cultural options available to cultural consumers in different places around the world.
References
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