Good Move. People Move. Ideas Move. And Cultures Change.
Today we are in the throes of a worldwide reformation of cultures, a tectonic shift of habits and dreams called, in the curious argot of social scientists, "globalization." It's an inexact term for a wild assortment of changes in politics, business, health, entertainment. "Modern industry has established the world market. All old-established national industries are dislodged by new industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote this 150 years ago in The Communist Manifesto. Their statement now describes an ordinary fact of life.
How people feel about this depends a great deal on where they live and how much money they have. Yet globalization, as one report stated, "is a reality, not a choice." Humans have been weaving commercial and cultural connections since before the first camel caravan ventured afield. In the 19th century the postal service, newspapers, transcontinental railroa
ds, and great steam-powered ships wrought fundamental changes. Telegraph, telephone, radio, and television tied tighter and more intricate knots between individuals and the wider world. Now computers, the Internet, cellular phones, cable TV, and cheaper jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these connections.
Still, the basic dynamic remains the same: Goods move. People move. Ideas move. And cultures change. The difference now is the speed and scope of these changes. It took television 13 years to acquire 50 million users; the Internet took only five.
Not everyone is happy about this. Some Western social scientists and anthropologists, and not a few foreign politicians, believe that a sort of cultural cloning will result from what they regard as the "cultural assault" of McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, MTV, and the English language itself—more than a fifth of all the people in the world now speak English to some degree. Whatever their backgrounds or agendas, these critics are convinced that Western—often equated with American—influences will flatten every cultural crease, producing, as one observer terms it, one big "McWorld."
move offPopular factions sprout to exploit nationalist anxieties. In China, where xenophobia and economic ambition have often struggled for the upper hand, a recent book called China can say no became the best-seller by attacking what it considers the Chinese willingness to believe blindly in foreign things, advising Chinese travelers to not fly on a Boeing 777 and suggesting that Hollywood be burned,
There are many Westerners among the denouncers of Western cultural influences, but James Watson, a Harvard anthropologist, isn't one of them. "The lives of Chinese villagers I know are infinitely better now than they were 30 years ago," he says. "China has become more open partly because of the demands of ordinary people. They want to become part of the world—I would say globalism is the major force for democracy in China. People want refrigerators, stereos, CD players. I feel it's a moral obligation not to say: ‘Those people out there should continue to live in a museum while we will have showers that work.'"
Westernization, I discovered over months of study and travel, is a phenomenon shot thro
ugh with inconsistencies and populated by very strange bedfellows. Critics of Western culture blast Coke and Hollywood but not organ transplants and computers. Boosters of Western culture can point to increased efforts to preserve and protect the environment. Yet they make no mention of some less salubrious aspects of Western culture, such as cigarettes and automobiles, which, even as they are being eagerly adopted in the developing world, are having disastrous effects. Apparently westernization is not a straight road to hell, or to paradise either.
But I also discovered that cultures are as resourceful, resilient, and unpredictable as the people who compose them. In Los Angeles, the ostensible fountainhead of world cultural degradation, I saw more diversity than I could ever have supposed—at Hollywood High School the student body represents 32 different languages. In Shanghai I found that the television show Sesame Street has been redesigned by Chinese educators to teach Chinese values and traditions. "We borrowed an American box," one told me, "and put Chinese content into it." In India, where there are more than 400 languages and several very strict religions, McDonald's serves mutton instead of beef and offers a vegetarian me
nu acceptable to even the most orthodox Hindu.
The critical mass of teenagers—800 million in the world, the most there have ever been—with time and money to spend is one of the powerful engines of merging global cultures. Kids travel, they hang out, and above all they buy stuff. I'm sorry to say I failed to discover who was the first teenager to put his baseball cap on backward. Or the first one to copy him. But I do know that rap music, which sprang from the inner-city ghettos, began making big money only when rebellious white teenagers started buying it. But how can anyone predict what kids are going to want? Companies urgently need to know, so consultants have sprung up to forecast trends. They're called "cool hunters," and Amanda Freeman took me in hand one morning to explain how it works.
Amanda, who is 22, works for a New York-based company called Youth Intelligence and has come to Los Angeles to conduct one of three annual surveys, whose results go to such clients as Sprint and MTV. She has shoulder-length brown hair and is wearing a knee-length brocade skirt and simple black wrap top. Amanda looks very cool to me, but s
he says no. "The funny thing about my work is that you don't have to be cool to do it," she says. "You just have to have the eye."

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