Anthropology 266/466: Global Culture

This is the fluid milk available to supply the demand of the people who live in Oneonta. In each instance, before emerging from the various processing and bottling plants, the milk was harvested from cows somewhere.  Where are these cows?  Who owns them and feeds them?  How does the owner manage to own and feed the cows?  How does their milk end up on the shelf in the Price Chopper in Oneonta?  Who is involved in this process?  Who benefits, and who does not benefit? 

According to what political economist Robert Reich calls "vestigial thought," the milk at Price Chopper in Oneonta would come from the numerous cows which roam the surrounding hillsides.  After all, Delaware and Otsego counties have been dairy producing counties for well over a century, doing their part to contribute to the largest industry in New York State.  By this logic, for instance, the 60 cows at the Hoskins' farm on Rose Brook road outside of Bloomville, in Delaware County, would help to stock the shelves at Price Chopper in Oneonta.  However, the cows at the farm in Rose Brook are carefully managed not to produce milk, but to produce desirable genetic traits such as strong legs, backs and udders, which are then marketed in the form of eggs to buyers from Brazil, Japan, and elsewhere. 

This project attempts to locate agriculture in the context of the emergent global culture.  I explore how rural landscapes, which have tended to remain self-sufficient and isolated from transnational processes, are increasingly linked into the global flows of money, people, ideas, images and technology.  In other words, using the terminology of anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1990), I attempt to draw a picture of the financescapes, ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, and technoscapes of agribusiness.  Finally, I focus on the consequences of the ongoing restructuring of global capital for rural landscapes.  In a transnational context characterized by financescapes, ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, and technoscapes, what becomes of the original landscapes? 

For the consumer who purchases a gallon of milk in Oneonta, the question, "Where did this milk come from?" is at best impossible to answer; at worst it is meaningless.  Although the milk from a cow in Massachusetts may flow to the Cumberland Farms processing plant, the final product is in no way "Massachusetts" milk.  First of all, the milk is mixed with milk from all over the northeastern United States.  Then the milk is separated and reconstituted.  Must the consumer resign herself to the knowledge that the milk is regional, "New England" milk?   Yet the price she paid for the milk is determined by the price in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and by traders in Chicago. The milk not only travels on county and state roads, but on roads funded by the federal government.  It is processed by virtue of flexible capital based in Dallas.  This, then, is national milk, made in the U.S.A.  Yet the cows that produce the milk may be eating grain from South America.  The cows themselves are purebred descendants of immigrant cows from Europe.  The cows' sires may live in Canada or the Netherlands.  And the milk contains oil from shark and halibut which are deterritorialized in another way.  Clearly, the consumer in Boston has in her hands a transnational commodity: this is global milk. 
 
One of the consequences of such deterritorialization is that the people and organizations in a given rural landscape may not have any particular relationship to one another in terms of the regional and global flows in which they participate and which associate them to others and thereby constitute their communities.  In the case of Delaware County, New York, the milk from one farm may be bought by a processor in Boston, while the milk from the next farm may flow to a cooperative based in Syracuse.  The grocery store in Oneonta may stock its supply of milk from a processor in Binghamton.  Finally, in purchasing fluid milk, the farmers' (non-farm) neighbor may choose from a variety of sources, including UHT milk packaged in Michigan.  But the overwhelming probability is that none of these choices will contain milk from the cows next door. 

This past fall,  the Bali Nirwana Resort opened in Depensar, Bali.  Although this is the first fully integrated resort in Bali, tourism and the development it sparks already pervades every aspect of Balinese life.  Since the Master Plan for the Development of Tourism in Bali was drawn by the government  of Indonesia in 1972, tourism and development have flourished at incredible rates.  Although tourism has been an omnipresent force in Bali for decades, tensions reached unprecedented heights with the proposed construction of the US $200 million Bali Nirwana Resort.  This 121-hectare resort contains a world renowned Greg Norman Golf Course  and a Le Meridien Hotel .  The Bali Nirwana Resort is located a mere five minute walk from the sacred Tanah Lot, one of BaliÕs holiest temples.  The suggestion of this construction by the Jakarta-based Bakrie Group  sparked waves of protest, making visible mounting tensions in Bali surrounding tourism.  Leading the demonstration against this resort was the central board of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI), Bali's highest Hindu body.  The PHDI stated that a two kilometer distance must exist between the Tanah Lot and any development unrelated to spiritual purposes.  This rule would necessitate the termination of the Bali Nirwana Resort.  Focusing on religious aspects of the controversy, masses lobbied parliament.  Although such efforts stalled work on the resort, in March 1994 construction resumed at full speed. 

Although the debate over the construction of the Bali Nirwana Resort was presented as a religious issue, a closer examination into the situation reveals other powerful underlying concerns.  Prior to the birth of the resort, the Tanah Lot was far from an untouched Garden of Eden.  Numerous travel guides hailed the site as one of the most spectacular places to view sunset, thus contributing to the more than 600 visitors daily.  In addition, the Tanah Lot was already closely surrounded by several locally-owned shops selling tie-dyed shirts and trinkets.  Therefore, the simple argument that the resort would spoil a sacred religious site appears to be weak.  Simply state, the Balinese realize that their land and culture are of paramount importance in attracting visitors to their island.  The Balinese daily perform numerous aspects of their culture for tourists.  For example, a schedule of regularly performed Balinese religious dances is available through travel agents or on the World Wide Web. 

An examination into the details of this conflict reveals many underlying issues facing Bali today.  Broader issues, such as the role of global corporations in developing nations, and competing claims for control on local cultures are brought to surface.  This examination attempts to tease through the competing arguments and pertinent literature to evoke a multifaceted inquiry into the currents underlying the flow of tourism in Bali. 
 

By closing the communications gap, universal access to information and communal democracy become ideals that are perpetuated by marketers and information society pundits. When escaping into an alternate world that doesnít really exist is society truly expanding its boundaries (as technology propagandists never tire of repeating) or simply demonstrating a need to interact with like-minded and available souls? In seeking control over self and space, reality (or virtual reality) is shaped, the possibilities are endless and the local, real world with its physicality becomes, to a degree, undesirable. The tools for creating and sustaining relationships over this virtual medium are there and being used effectively, but I feel that people are using these tools to seek out differences, not the entire world. From migrant music fans, to transnational citizens, to video game addicts this medium has exploded outward physically, but for many, also become inwardly focused and localized through the commonalties of the participants. 
 

The Internet enables individuals to feel physically close and sustain the continuum necessary for their version of community. The technology becomes the mechanism that creates or maintains groups that create the sense of connectivity. The Internet may be a global network of people but these "communities" are no less than cohesive, contributing networks of people. But this network is not always the open utopia that the information technology commercials try and sell you. As opposed to surfing the net blinded to ethnicity and nation (as MCI advertisements would have you believe their customers do), groups of people seek out nationality and those like themselves and form bonds similar to those you find in minority communities of large cities. 
 

In transcending from their real local lives, people are trying to control portions of their lives that exist in relevance to their surroundings. Digital transnationals are now able to touch base and reaffirm their ethnic identity from the convenience of their home computer. Information technology gives digital citizens the means to live beyond the immediate; to virtually live out what Arjun Appadurai calls "possible lives". 
 

 

The issue of culture and identity is an important one for many immigrants that leave their homeland and arrive in the United States.   This is definitely a relevant issue for Indians that leave India and come to the United States.  My semester project aimed to identify specifically the reasons why Indians left India to come to the United States and how they keep up their culture.   Ways in which the immigrants kept up their culture directly reflected what they specifically identified to be the important points of Indian culture. (See also The Hindu Webpage and Links about India: Art and Culture.) 

Like many immigrants, the Indians that I interviewed came to the United States to seek further opportunity in their careers.  Opportunities were lacking in India and their fields of interest were more developed in the United States.  Thus, economic factors were the reason why these families came to America and the reason why they remain here.   They all do go back to visit often, having family and friends back home with whom they still want to keep ties.   One of the individuals of my generation that was interviewed stated that he does not go back as often as others might because he does not have any direct family ties back to India.  He, along with a young woman of the same age, stated that he goes back as an effort to redefine himself.  Every time he goes back he feels that he rediscovers a part of himself that he had lost here. 
 

The transnationals also had a clear sense of what was defined as Indian culture.  The elements that most clearly defined culture were religion and language.  Not surprisingly, speaking the native language and practicing the family religion were the two main ways of maintaining Indian  culture within an American society.   It didn't really matter what the language was or what the religion was.  I interviewed Sikh, Hindu and Muslim families and individuals and they spoke either Kannada, Hindi, Punjabi or Urdu.   The fact that it wasn't so much that the language or religion itself mattered but that these people valued these specific cultural elements  was what defined elements of Indian culture - what is valued.   This directly reflects the nature of Indian nationalism.  Nationalism in the Indian sense is not defined by the fact that the people's language or religion unites them into a nation.  It is the fact they all define themselves as part of the same nation that allows these individuals of different cultural affiliations to be united together by a national identity.   India is a nation that defines itself in different terms than does the United States.   She is made of up of people of beliefs and cultural heritage so varied that it would seem impossible that the people be united under one nationalistic symbol or name.  But it has been accomplished.  In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister after independence from the British: 

Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.  That unity was not conceived as something imposed from the outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged . . . 
 

Michael Jackson is considered the master, the king of pop, and a world-healer.  His music and videos speak for this eccentric entertainer whose influence is apparent all over the world, including on the internet in the form of an internet fan club.  His music career began at the age of five with his four brothers in the Jackson 5, and at the young age of nineteen he was named "The Greatest Entertainer in the World."  No other artist, male, female, or group, has consistently maintained such a long-standing level of excellence with such albums as "Thriller," "BAD," "Dangerous" and "HIStory."  These albums and videos (short films) have awarded him over seven American Music Awards, eight Grammy Awards, and eight Emmy Awards.  His musical career has created this phenomenon of musical popularity around the world. 

It is not only Michael's musical ability that sets him apart from other artists.    His image is defined not only by his music, but also by the standards of philanthropic support that he sets:  "Michael Jackson is also legendary for his humanitarian commitment to children the world over and for the exceptional, symbiotic relationship he enjoys with his international fans." 

Michael's music is produced, marketed and distributed by Sony Music.  While it is a global corporation with over sixty factories in different countries, it tries to maintain a local connection to each of the countries is finds a home in.  They call this "global localization" where the purpose is to decentralize authority and adapt working arrangements, product lines, and promotion ideas to local conditions but all within the context of a coherent global strategy.  Because of Sony's size and influence in many countries, it has political influence over policy that affects it, it creates standards of practice for other global corporations (philanthropic responsibilities, environmental concerns), and transnational migrants (transnational identity, etc). 

Is Michael Jackson weird?  There seems to be a parallel between his increasingly global management and record companies, and his eccentricity.  With Michael's increased popularity -- a direct effect of changing management and record companies who have been more and more international and global as time goes on -- his eccentricity seems to have increased also.  The climax of this parallel occurred when the Los Angeles Police Department announced that he was under criminal investigation following allegations of sexual misconduct involving a 13-year-old boy.  Following this announcement, his career seemed to go down the tubes.  He lost many fans and a corporate sponsor, Pepsi, and he soon began treatment for an addiction to painkillers.  The effects of popularity seemed to have taken a toll on his health and his personal life.  Since that incident, he has recovered and laid to rest the fears that recent events could harm his popularity when he released his HIStory album and sales rocketed. 

With reference to Arjun Appadurai, Michael Jackson has created his own "webs" of global connection where he is the center and the countries where his fans live are the outer perimeters.  He creates his own flows of information dealing with his music, videos; standards of aid to children, physical appearance, global localization, national identity, philanthropy, the responsibility that global personalities have to the public; and discussions of popularity and eccentrism, and a separation of public and private life for celebrities. 

There is also information available on the internet on Michael's new personal manager, the latest news, everything you always wanted to know about Michael, international Michael information, and a tribute to Princess Diana. 

Sony provides information for shareholders, their W orldwide Music Channel, and their philanthropy policies. 

Whaling draws on global resources on several levels.  It harvests from the world's oceans, which can be seen to clearly connect on any map or globe.  Its targets are species that migrate through these waters in a manner still so unknown to man that accurate estimates of their population are often deemed either "impossible" at worst, or "tenuous" at best.  Whales have no respect for national boundaries, but some nations and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) believe that a global consensus is necessary to properly manage or protect the whales.  The whaling debate rages on a number of fronts from the high seas confrontations of NGO Greenpeace's activists and commercial whaling fleets, to the boardrooms of Monaco, where the International Whaling Commission held its fifty-first annual conference.  It draws facts and opinions from a broad range of interests-- ecologists, animal rights and environmental activists, commercial whaling interests, cultural preservationists, and national governments.  These opinions find clear sailing on the Internet, where their opinions can be broadcast to a world where decision-makers and fund donors to organizations are increasingly connected. 

This study focusses on five whaling related organizations that represent themselves on the Internet.  The Internet is a potent tool for the whaling debate, because of its nature and audience.  Whales are global animals, with ranges spanning much of the planet.  Similarly, the Internet has expanded to cover much of the globe, most notably the places where policy makers and persons with disposable income to contribute to whaling issues  live.  Arguments have been raised about the actual extent of the global permeation of the Internet, but it manages to reach the "right kinds of people" to allow the whaling debate to establish itself on the World Wide Web.  The organizations studied are the international NGOs Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, The High North Alliance (HNA), and the governmentally affiliated  International Whaling Commission (IWC) and Japanese Whaling Association (JWA). 

If "attitudes toward animals are part of national cultures," and are suddenly thrust onto the global arenas of conservation, sustainable use, and the ethics of eating certain animals, what happens?  The IWC's moratorium on all commercial whaling currently affects just a few whaling nations, as much of the world has abandoned this practice.  Whaling remains in the few cultures that traditionally ate whale, and have not found the substitute for their use of the animals, as Americans substituted petroleum products for those previously gleaned from whales.  Should the remaining whaling nations be forced to comply with the rest of the world's lack of use for whales?  This issue is debated on the Web with organizations posting pages dedicated to furthering their own viewpoint. 

In regulating whaling, the IWC regulates an activity previously engaged in by much of the Western world, where environmental groups like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, and, by way of another example, the World Wildlife Fund get their start.  The United States, for example, whaled until 1940 when cheap petroleum substitutes for whale oil were found.  The Japanese and Norwegians, along with the organizations High North Alliance and the Japanese Whaling Association maintain that whaling is a part of their culture, as much as raising and killing beef cattle is a part of American culture.  The first Japanese student's comment is evidence of the assumptions made by antiwhaling countries and by NGOs that whaling is not necessary and is environmentally detrimental.  This form of "white supremacy" privileges the norms and history of cultures where whaling has ceased and is frequently framed as an unfortunate chapter in history. 

There is a disparity in the antiwhaling argument as framed by Greenpeace, the IWC moratorium, and Sea Shepherd.  The same countries that descry whaling destroy acres of streambeds and plains, and produce (in the case of the U.S. alone) millions of tons of waste in obtaining their protein sources.  Food choice is part of a culture, in which something, be it species richness, space, or a clean environment, is regularly sacrificed to provide food for the people of a nation. While cattle are not in danger of extinction, they are serious environmental polluters. How do cultures and nations decide among themselves which is the lesser of two evils?  The Internet provides a forum for the decision to be wrestled with. 

The Olympic Games have seen enormous growth over the past twenty years and this is due in large part to corporate financing for the Games that has emerged during this time period.  The International Olympic Committee  now raises about $500 million during each four-year period between Olympic Games.  This is a result of the worldwide partnerships that the IOC has forged with several multinational corporations.   For the 1997-2000 quadrennial, the 11 worldwide partners are Coca-Cola , IBM , John Hancock, Kodak, McDonald's, Matsushita Electrical Industrial Company Limited -- Panasonic -- , Samsung, Sports Illustrated/TIme, UPS, Visa , and Xerox. 

In each city that plays host the Games, a temporary city emerges while the Games are being held.  The question is, to whom does this city belong?  Does it belong to the residents of the city hosting the world for two weeks, or does this city belong to the multinational, international corporations that have poured millions of dollars into sponsoring the Olympic Games?  My work supports that this city belongs to the full-time residents of the host city.  Each organizing committee has either chosen a particular path of corporate sponsorship to allow mass commercialization, or they have left a public debt for later years in order to prevent excessive commercial involvement.  The scale and magnitude of the global city that is created by the Games is relative to the amount of corporate investing that has taken place prior to and during the Games. 

Most of my data and analysis comes from the specific case of the Atlanta Games as they are the most recently concluded Olympics and due to their presence on American soil, the amount of media attention that they received was enormous.  The legacy of the Games is also an interesting point.  The President of the International Olympic Committee has publicly stated that the '96 Summer Olympics were "most exceptional", and did not use the traditional phrasing of "the best ever." Excessive commercialization was not appreciated by some purists of the Games, but the IOC President clearly stated that the streets and the vendors that lined them belong to Atlanta, not to the Olympic Movement. 

The Games will next move to Nagano, Japan in February 1998, Sydney 2000, Salt Lake City 2002 and they will return to their roots in Athens, Greece in 2004.  It will be interesting to see how the Games continue to grow and expand in the competitive business world of the 21st century.  The temporary global city that is created by the Games will surely leave its mark on each of the above mentioned host cities, and it will be interesting to see how the legacy and spirit of the Games stamps itself on each host city in the years that follow the Games. 
 
 

Changes in the purpose and justification of music as an event are understood through the institutions of the society and groups of musicians.  Factors such as ritual, communication, prestige, employment and religion come into play as music is defined as an event.  The production of music everywhere is being affected by the penetration of the global market and the resulting changes of context when music is removed from its primary function or place.  A discussion of the structure of the music industry throughout the world is unavoidable.  This structure has been responsible for the redefinition of context, the creation of flows of music as commodity and idea, and the instigation of roots cultural concepts and backlash that has shaped music production. 

I find it necessary to discuss the birth of national pop cultures in opposition to roots or alternative cultures in countries.  The debate over the issue of flow and the changes of context caused by financial motivation and industrialization are central to the politics that surround World Music.  They also play a big part in determining how each country is defined by its musical products and which products flow out. In a section on collaboration in World Fusion, I will focus on Paul Simon's Graceland album.  Louise Meintjes has studied the reaction of different sectors of the western and African literary communities to the album, which demonstrate how global collaboration cannot be divorced from politics.  For instance, some black South African journalists portrayed Paul Simon as a technological and cultural imperialist and some white South Africans were introduced to a roots music from their country as a nationalist source of pride.  Paul Simon attempted to keep the album and tour apolitical, but failed.  I also want to highlight the national claims on an international community of musicians, such as projects like Nawang Khechong's "Tibet-Australia, Sounds of Peace," which plays on the spiritual connection between Tibetan and Australian aboriginal music to promote the legitimacy of both cultures.  This is one example of how the record industry is used by, and uses, cultural nationalism. 

I hope to show that the definition of national cultures and the use of music are all swept up in a global network.  There are definite biases in the way nations are viewed by other nations, and by themselves, through music.  Music has inexorably become a political force in the global scene.  It is a cultural commodity, and a representation of national art and identity.  The international community of musicians is a functional simplification of this process at the production level.  They attempt to reduce music to a local process of communication and collaboration.  Such projects succeed in bypassing the political nature of global music until they are recorded.  The global audience represented on the internet is in a sense peripheral to this process.  They have developed a desire for new alternatives in music as a response to its commodification as art.  This audience is able to detach music largely from any cultural significance in the pursuit of newness in sensory experience. 

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