Themes > Current Issues
03.06.2003
The International Culture Trade
Jayati
Ghosh
It is no
secret that culture has become an economic good under late
capitalism, or that globalization in the past decade has
accentuated this process quite dramatically. There
are two aspects of this process in particular that are
important. First is the idea that culture can be
identified and expressed in physical or other goods, such
as crafts, films, books and music, that can be traded and
sold. In particular cultures even tourism has become a
commodity for sale. Trade in culture has therefore become
an explosively growing activity, thanks to new
technologies, such as satellite television, multimedia and
the Internet.
This makes the international culture industry currently one of the largest and certainly the fastest growing in the world. According to a UNESCO study, world trade in goods with cultural content-printed matter, literature, music, visual arts, cinema, along with photographic and television equipment-nearly tripled in the period between 1980 and 1991, amounting to $200 billion then. Since then, it has grown even faster because of satellite technology and other such changes.
Internationally, the number of television sets per 1,000 people has gone up by 3 times from 121 in 1980 to 365 in 2000. In East Asia alone, the number of televisions per 1,000 people zoomed from less than 50 to more than 320 in the same period. The multimedia boom has spawned large multimedia companies which can now be counted among the largest multinational corporations.
But there is an aspect of this process that has the potential for shrinking cultural horizons rather than expanding them. As the trade in culture grows, it is becoming more and more of a uni-directional process, a one-way street leading from the United States to the rest of the world. Entertainment has become the single largest export industry of the US, which dominates the world trade in culture in a way that was unimaginable even two decades ago.
The single most dramatic indicator of this is the film industry, in which the global dominance of America is starker than ever before. India is the only country in the world which provides some competition in this sphere, where residents still apparently prefer domestically produced cinema to that of Hollywood. Indeed, Bollywood produces the largest number of films of all countries in the world, but the US still leads in terms of international spread.
At the moment, more than half of Hollywood's revenues come from outside the US. Hollywood accounts for 70 per cent of the film market in Europe, 83 per cent in Latin America, 50 per cent in Japan and as much as 30 per cent even in Russia. Not only is this a huge penetration, it is substantially more than what existed even in the late 1980s.
A new and more complex form of domination by the US is being evident in the international music industry too. Popular music has now become more and more delocalized and international in form-a sort of amorphous ‘world music' taking inspiration from a range of very diverse sources. Thus salsa music from the Caribbean, African drums and Indian instrumental techniques can all be found in traces or with more extensive incorporation in the compositions generated by the popular music industry and disseminated throughout the world.
In this process, the original forms themselves tend to lose their distinctive character. In some cases, they even begin to appeal to people in their own place of origin only in the new, homogenized form. This is a kind of monopolizing control, whereby every cultural expression is taken out of its own context, massaged into acceptable form and then returned to the sender, who is actually made to like it.
A fascinating account of how this happened to Brazilian samba music is related by Alma Guillermoprieto in her book Samba!. She describes how some of the most effective and zestful samba songs of the local favelas (or slums) of Rio de Janeiro were effectively stolen and then sanitized and ‘sweetened up' in recordings for a larger international audience. They were then presented as ‘the real thing' and widely publicized through the advertising of the music and entertainment industry. Such was the sheer power of this industry that the younger residents of the Rio favelas actually began to prefer the imported version of their own music to the original, even though it lacked the special character of the original.
In other areas of culture, the hegemony of the US is even more apparent. Television programming in all countries, as well as on international cable channels, is now effectively determined by the US model, and many locally made programmes (not just in India but in most other countries) are simple copies of those popularized by American television. International news media too are very much the offspring of parents to be found in US media.
Even the Internet is not immune to the dominating presence of the US. Although the Internet is touted as, and in fact is, a truly international medium, more than 80 per cent of the websites are in English and the overall concentration of American English suggests that there is a homogenizing pattern at work here as well.
There is a major process of concentration in operation in the international culture industry as well. A few large corporations control both news gathering and dissemination. A few large entertainment businesses-which are themselves diversified and spread across the whole range of vertically integrated activities related to entertainment-control not only what people all over the world see and listen to, but also what they think they enjoy.
In fact, that is the ultimate problem-the determination by a handful of large corporations, of what people across the world find enjoyable and entertaining, of how they spend their leisure time and how they choose to indulge their creativity. So, what appears to be much more choice and freedom for individuals in different societies, ends up being predetermined aspiration without even the knowledge that it is unfree.
Of course, this is the most pessimistic and extreme scenario, and there is much in today's world that is already fighting against such cultural hegemony. There are some responses that are simply reverting to an imagined ‘pure' past. But there are also other, more inventive forms of cultural dissidence to a unifying pattern. These try to emphasize the diversity and creativity of human response, with a basic sense of tolerance as well.
This makes the international culture industry currently one of the largest and certainly the fastest growing in the world. According to a UNESCO study, world trade in goods with cultural content-printed matter, literature, music, visual arts, cinema, along with photographic and television equipment-nearly tripled in the period between 1980 and 1991, amounting to $200 billion then. Since then, it has grown even faster because of satellite technology and other such changes.
Internationally, the number of television sets per 1,000 people has gone up by 3 times from 121 in 1980 to 365 in 2000. In East Asia alone, the number of televisions per 1,000 people zoomed from less than 50 to more than 320 in the same period. The multimedia boom has spawned large multimedia companies which can now be counted among the largest multinational corporations.
But there is an aspect of this process that has the potential for shrinking cultural horizons rather than expanding them. As the trade in culture grows, it is becoming more and more of a uni-directional process, a one-way street leading from the United States to the rest of the world. Entertainment has become the single largest export industry of the US, which dominates the world trade in culture in a way that was unimaginable even two decades ago.
The single most dramatic indicator of this is the film industry, in which the global dominance of America is starker than ever before. India is the only country in the world which provides some competition in this sphere, where residents still apparently prefer domestically produced cinema to that of Hollywood. Indeed, Bollywood produces the largest number of films of all countries in the world, but the US still leads in terms of international spread.
At the moment, more than half of Hollywood's revenues come from outside the US. Hollywood accounts for 70 per cent of the film market in Europe, 83 per cent in Latin America, 50 per cent in Japan and as much as 30 per cent even in Russia. Not only is this a huge penetration, it is substantially more than what existed even in the late 1980s.
A new and more complex form of domination by the US is being evident in the international music industry too. Popular music has now become more and more delocalized and international in form-a sort of amorphous ‘world music' taking inspiration from a range of very diverse sources. Thus salsa music from the Caribbean, African drums and Indian instrumental techniques can all be found in traces or with more extensive incorporation in the compositions generated by the popular music industry and disseminated throughout the world.
In this process, the original forms themselves tend to lose their distinctive character. In some cases, they even begin to appeal to people in their own place of origin only in the new, homogenized form. This is a kind of monopolizing control, whereby every cultural expression is taken out of its own context, massaged into acceptable form and then returned to the sender, who is actually made to like it.
A fascinating account of how this happened to Brazilian samba music is related by Alma Guillermoprieto in her book Samba!. She describes how some of the most effective and zestful samba songs of the local favelas (or slums) of Rio de Janeiro were effectively stolen and then sanitized and ‘sweetened up' in recordings for a larger international audience. They were then presented as ‘the real thing' and widely publicized through the advertising of the music and entertainment industry. Such was the sheer power of this industry that the younger residents of the Rio favelas actually began to prefer the imported version of their own music to the original, even though it lacked the special character of the original.
In other areas of culture, the hegemony of the US is even more apparent. Television programming in all countries, as well as on international cable channels, is now effectively determined by the US model, and many locally made programmes (not just in India but in most other countries) are simple copies of those popularized by American television. International news media too are very much the offspring of parents to be found in US media.
Even the Internet is not immune to the dominating presence of the US. Although the Internet is touted as, and in fact is, a truly international medium, more than 80 per cent of the websites are in English and the overall concentration of American English suggests that there is a homogenizing pattern at work here as well.
There is a major process of concentration in operation in the international culture industry as well. A few large corporations control both news gathering and dissemination. A few large entertainment businesses-which are themselves diversified and spread across the whole range of vertically integrated activities related to entertainment-control not only what people all over the world see and listen to, but also what they think they enjoy.
In fact, that is the ultimate problem-the determination by a handful of large corporations, of what people across the world find enjoyable and entertaining, of how they spend their leisure time and how they choose to indulge their creativity. So, what appears to be much more choice and freedom for individuals in different societies, ends up being predetermined aspiration without even the knowledge that it is unfree.
Of course, this is the most pessimistic and extreme scenario, and there is much in today's world that is already fighting against such cultural hegemony. There are some responses that are simply reverting to an imagined ‘pure' past. But there are also other, more inventive forms of cultural dissidence to a unifying pattern. These try to emphasize the diversity and creativity of human response, with a basic sense of tolerance as well.
© MACROSCAN 2003