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February 6-9, 2003
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Response Paper

Wang Jieru
Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Options of Cultural Identification in Constructing Globalization:
Global Culture or Cultural Globalization?

In CRN group, the word of "identification" was posited a "revised constructivism". It more focus on the constructing process of "identification", not the constructed results of "identification". In this constructing process, no matter official identification and vernacular identification they are based on the culture or link closely with culture issue. Cultural identification as a crossed issue with official identification and vernacular identification raise up, and make thinking far and more about the history of human's culture related to present globalization tide. What kind of role of cultural identification in globalization? And what kind of option human will go? It is essential to answer in human's cultivation history. The following pieces thinking is refined and developed in the process of references studying for CRN research.

Ethnic identification is one step of the process constructing cultural identification. Ethnic cultural identification as the core to solid and maintain the diversity of human's culture.

Culture is not static; it grows out of a systematically encouraged reverence for selected customs and habits. Indeed, Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines culture as the "total pattern of human behavior and its products embodied in speech, action, and artifacts and dependent upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations." Language, religion, political and legal systems, and social customs are the legacies of victors and marketers and reflect the judgment of the marketplace of ideas throughout popular history. The organizers of society—politicians, theologians, academics, and families—to impose and ensure order, the rudiments of which change use culture over time as need dictates.

Human beings create the culture in the practice of struggling with the nature and survival environment. Human's culture is distinguish and diverse due to they were created in different historic period and diverse natural condition. Cultural identification is the tendentiousness common understanding and permission, which were produced and accepted by human society (Zhen 1992).

In a rather long development stage of human's culture, culture has its respective unique niche, while present people who are in different ethnic group or nationality load the cultural difference of in different ethnic group since culture. It is the national feature of culture. That means the nature between two or more than two different nationalities is one kind of their culture distinguish from the others. Due to geographic reason and the limitation of diffusion, human culture originally and respectively was created in certain group and in certain area. Following the improvement of transportation, different ethnic group began to communicate each other, their culture were diffused and mixed. Gradually, people identified and absorbed the elements of culture from different ethnic group, and expanded scale of this culture identification. Till today, many culture becomes common culture of all over world overstep time and space. For example, English origins from England, but spreads out as a international communication language in global; Disco originally danced by African, and it is enjoyed by people all over the world. Following the development of human society, more and more common cultural identification will accepted and extremely diffused by global human society.

The process of diffusing and blending culture in different ethnic group is the process of developing cultural identification as well as the process which the ethnic group identify their culture and their identity. In a other word, ethnic identification is part of stage of cultural identification.

Due to each ethnic group has their own ethnic cultural identification, and people in different ethnic group value their own identification. This kind of ethnic cultural identification as the core to solid and maintain the diversity of human's culture. For example, in Man er, a Dai nationality's village located in Xishuangbana, southwest of China. The township government asked villagers to plant rubber trees in their White Elephant Hill behind of the village. It was greatly opposed by villagers, especially by old generation. Since White Elephant Hill is valued as their holly place traditionally by generation to generation. Under the administrative press, villagers explored and planted hundreds rubber tree. After more than one year, a child unfortunately suffered and died in the hill. Villagers identified it was the retribution for they explored the holly hill, then they pulled down the rubber trees, and recovered to protect this hill.

Culture identification is a changing construction process, it is effected by the elements of culture, and towards a globalising process impacted by the power of market economy and internet technology.

In general, the concept of culture was commonly accepted and destructed three elements by anthropologists: substance culture, institutional culture and spirit culture. Those three elements construct the system of culture, they relatively independent, meanwhile they constrict and depend on each other at same time. Substance culture means those to meet materials demand of human being including food, clothes, architecture, transportation, technologies and tools etc. Institutional culture is the cultural outcome of the social relationship of individual and others, and individual and collective including political institution, economic institution, marriage institution and clan system etc. Spirit culture is the reflection of human being's ideology and psychology(Malinowski,1940; Kluckhohn, 1952; Wang 1995).

There is the same construction and destruction of cultural identification as well as culture. In the changing construction process of culture identification, it is easily to attach or change the periphery of the structure of culture: substance culture and institutional culture.

Under the advance of sciences and technology, the transportation and communication in human society have improved. It speeds up the communication and diffusion of culture over the world, and make and construct the ethnic cultural identification towards a globalizing process.

Technology has now created the possibility and even the likelihood of a global culture. The internet, faxes machines, satellites, and cable TV have swept away the old national cultural boundaries. Global entertainment companies shape understandings and dreams of ordinary citizens, wherever they live. Their impact affects lifestyles, religion, language, and every other component of culture. Much has been written about the role of information technologies and services in this process. Today, 15 major U.S. telecommunications companies, including giants like Motorola, Loral Space & Communications, and Teledesic (a joint project of Microsoft's Bill Gates and cellular pioneer Craig McCaw), offer competing plans that will encircle the globe with a constellation of satellites and will enable anyone anywhere to communicate instantly with anyone elsewhere without an established telecommunications infrastructure on the ground near either the sender or the recipient (Loral puts the cost of such a call at around $3 per minute). Technology is not only transforming the world; it is creating its own metaphors as well. Satellites carrying television signals now enable people on opposite sides of the globe to be exposed regularly to a wide range of cultural stimuli. Russian viewers are hooked on Latin soap operas, and Middle Eastern leaders have cited CNN as a prime source for even local news. The Internet is an increasingly global phenomenon with active development under way on every continent.

Taking advantage of efficiency and effect, The capitalist world-economy is the primary engine driving globalization, The global marketplace is being institutionalized through the creation of a series of multilateral entities that establish common rules for international commerce. If capital is to flow freely, disclosure rules must be the same, settlement procedures consistent, and redress transparent. If goods are also to move unimpeded, tariff laws must be consistent, customs standards harmonized, and product safety and labeling standards brought into line. And if people are to move easily from deal to deal, air transport agreements need to be established, immigration controls standardized, and commercial laws harmonized. "In China, the influx of western brands has brought about lifestyle changes, not only to the more wealthy who can afford foreign goods, but also to the less well off, who buy copycat products from Chinese–run companies such as Jing Kelong, literally translated as Beijing Clon" (New York Times).

The economic stakes are immense considering the enormous investments that will be made over the next 10 years in the world's information infrastructure. The U.S. government estimates that telecommunications investment in Latin America alone during this period will top $150 billion. China will spend a similar amount, as will the member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations. In fact, the market for telecommunications services is expected to top $1 trillion by the turn of the century. During the decade ahead, it could be estimated that the globalization process will be speeded by Global Information Infrastructure. Today, the establishment of high-speed way of information and global internet network creates the condition for the "globalization". it makes the word of globalization means standard, effective, efficient but single and dominant. the issue of how to protect the cultural diversity/ diverse identification raises up and challenges human society.

It is an option for human beings in the process of constructing cultural identification in global: cultural globalization or global culture? Cultural identification in the globalization construction should be to establish global culture.

Following a global "consumer" culture, cultural identification is not avoid toward a constructing process of globalization, but It is an option for human beings in the process of constructing cultural identification in global: cultural globalization or global culture?

It should be "global culture" and not "cultural globalization" in the globalization process of constructing culture identification regards to present popular American/U.S culture.

Cultural globalization is the cultural imperialism, which is a kind of cultural domination by powerful nations over weaker nations, and it is the result of domination over global media channels by international media conglomerates.

Global culture includes all the merits of all over the world. It is be the aggregate of all kinds of colorful culture in the world. And it is not an alternative to use one kind of culture to take place the other one culture. It is rather dull If there is only one kind of culture / identification in the countries of the world. If we have not realized the important of respective native culture, we will lose our own culture, we will lose our own distinction oriented in the world.


References

Alfred Kroeber & Clyde Kluckhohn,1952. Culture: Review of Its Concept and definition.

Malinowski, Fei Xiaotong translated,1940. What is Culture. Shanghai, Commercial Affairs Publishing Press. (In Chinese)

Wang Enqiang edited. 1995. Culture Geography. Education Publishing House of Jiangsu Province.(In Chinese)

Zheng Xiaoyun, 1992. Cultural Identification and Cultural Diffusion. Beijing, Publishing House of Chinese Social Science. (In Chinese)

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