Cultural identity, internationalization, and regional diversity

The concern of the workshop was the Asian region, including the sub-continent and the Asia-Pacific region - where identity politics are played out in diverse arenas, and where political, linguistic and religious differences complicate visions of shared cultural spaces. Concerns with cultural identity have been sharpened by a tide of separatist and independence movements in India, Indonesia, East Timor, Malaysia, Taiwan, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. Australia and New Zealand have not been immune from feelings of social disenchantment, with populist movements such as the One Nation Party forming uneasy anti-government alliances with progressive social movements opposed to globalisation.

These solidarities across Asia and the Pacific are in many instances exacerbated by the politics of resentment as economic gaps emerge between classes, and tensions erupt among ethnic divisions. However, as Michael Vatikiotis of the Far Eastern Economic Review has argued, regional linkages and solidarities may hold out for hope for social reform if they can be effectively disengaged from nationalism, and nurtured by civil society mechanisms (Vatikiotis, 2000). Whether such outbreaks of resistance are isolated instances of dissent or in fact part of an emerging transversal ‘globalization from below’ remains to be seen. Moreover, if new solidarities can be mobilised in the struggle for cultural development, what role can academics play in the process?

Who speaks?

A group of academics gathered in such a peaceful setting might seem to some to be symptomatic of an increasingly estranged relationship between theory and practice, between the ivory tower and social reality. However, it is necessary to question theoretical premises, particularly given the fashionable turn to globalization theory often as a surrogate for Marxist political economy. A question that underlined the discussions therefore was whether a global world order of converging policy and markets, of Diasporic and refugee populations, can be accounted for by critical theory? Or should those concerned with culture and communication look to other disciplines and areas of expertise - such as economics, law, marketing, and international relations etc - to explain the internationalization of content industries and the harmonization of global standards?

Indeed, as cultural studies itself endeavours to internationalize its research agendas, the problem of colonization by theory is evident. One of the judgements subsequently levelled towards scholars working in area studies is the tendency to often uncritically apply theory whose explanatory power is derived from specific European historical contingencies. In order to counter this tendency we need to take into account the manner in which Asia is constructed by those writing outside its territorial borders - as well as by those situated within. The best writings have challenged the validity of imported ways of imagining the relations between culture and power. The current work of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies group, and the contributors to positions: east asia cultures critique have demonstrated the capacity to synthesise European and Asian traditions.

This work is progressive, and challenges the more radical responses exemplified by cultural nationalism, which manifests in clarion cries for cultural purification and protection of ancient civilisation and cultural traditions. Sun Ge, echoing the warning by Arjun Appadurai (1990) to be wary of equating homogenization and commoditization with Westernization, has recently noted that ‘the question of Asia must not be merely be pursued within the framework defined by the dichotomy of East vs West, but should also be considered as dealing with internal problems in the Asian region’ (2000: 14).

The problematic of culture and cultural identity

The distinction between cultural identity and national identity remain problematic within the region. The contradictions inherent in talking about cultural identity were perhaps best illustrated by three presentations on indigenous cultural belonging and cultural exchange. Michael Aird, an Indigenous person from the Mt. Tamborine hinterland spoke of his photographic collection Portraits of the Elders. A film presentation, Kahankar: Ahankar (Storymaker: Storytaker) by Anjali Montiero and K.P. Jayasankar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay eloquently captured the stories and painting of the Warlis, a community of Adivasis. Both presentations illustrated the importance of media and memory in the preservation of cultural histories.

Christine Morris, a matrilineal custodian of the Kombmerri clan in South East Queensland brought these into a different perspective by demonstrating how indigenous culture could be used positively as a commodity form. By learning to use intellectual property as a tool Indigenous people can protect their culture from exploitation and earn economic return from its transference across global networks.

These preliminary papers were important in identifying the fuzziness that pervades academic theorizing when addressing issues of globalization and cultural identity. Elites have been quick to point the blame at Western culture – particularly US media content - as polluting traditional meaning systems. It seems that while globalization is by most accounts a destructive influence on traditional cultures, an unresolved question is to what extent global trade, foreign direct investment and technology transfer have transformed the day-to-day lifestyles and standards of living of people. Again, it is difficult to generalize. As supporters of globalization such as Mario Vargas Llosa (2000) have argued, flows of information and ideas help to break down the sometimes straitjacketing of cultural tradition, allowing greater diversity. At the same time the disappearance of traditions is akin to Yuri Lotman’s (1990) idea of the semiosphere as repository of meaning systems being stripped of its creative diversity.

A concern emerges that it is not so much the issue of heterogeneity or homogeneity as the effects of globalization – but the language of markets, global trade, and the transformations within society brought about by desire for commodities. Arif Dirlik (2001) reminds us that reams of worthy debate about the effects of globalisation on cultures may not be as revealing as the more nuanced and focused analyses of consumption conducted by marketing companies. He says,

It is arguable that advertisers and marketers display a greater awareness of what is at issue in these conflicts than academics who seem to drift aimlessly over these discursive terrains with no visible purpose other than adding case after case to the questionable assertions of postcolonial or postmodern criticism concerning hybridization, localization or re-signification... (Dirlik, 2001: 15).

The question thus shifts from globalization towards internationalization. If one concedes that trade across borders is necessary, then cultural identity becomes something that can be commercialized, utilizing the logic of markets to resist the impacts of transnational media players, and all the while adding to the preservation of tradition. Cultural identity is thus the software that constitutes commercialized forms of culture, primarily audio-visual. Domestic industries can resist global domination by being smarter and knowing how cultural identity translates into economic value. This becomes obvious when we examine pan-Asian cultural trade. It is not so much the question of cultural imperialism but cultural translation. Or in other words, a media commodity becomes hybridized, localized or transferred across national mediaspheres finding its way into the viewing schedules of cable and satellite television providers (Keane 2001).

In terms of identifying a body of theoretical work that illustrates common approaches to the question of cultural identity we encounter problems not specific to Asia. Cultural identity is in itself a fluid concept. Cultural identity is more than just belonging. It also entails strategic use of cultural resources, texts, and messages to construct transportable identities. Critical anthropology, feminism, and cultural studies have contributed to understanding of identity as unstable and defined through various kinds of power relations: capital, class, race, language, subculture, and nation. The role that cultural origins plays is not straightforward in a world of nomadic subjectivity and cultural traffic increasingly distributed across borders through the internet and by pirated CDs and DVDs. Cultural identity entails both the sense of structural continuity and the idea of agency.

Ien Ang has written eloquently of the feeling of displacement when carrying the visibility identity marker of racial origin into different territories. As she says ‘ question of 'where you're from' tends to overwhelm and marginalise that of 'where you're at' (1993: 33). However the ‘fixing’ performed by race and ethnicity as well as class gender, and geography is offset by the capacity to self-identify. Blanc (1997) notes that a Sino-Thai executive working the China-Thailand import-export markets can play simultaneously at being Chinese, Teochew, modern Asian, and loyal Thai. In addition, the impact of consumerism and mass culture is being felt by populations in remote places as much as in large urban centres. In many cases popular commercial culture offers opportunities to resist or negate cultural identities proscribed by ideology or tradition. Hybridity and ambivalence displace essentialism. Consider the following:

∑ The ‘Upriver People’ of interior Borneo find a source of strategic identification in the blond, blue-eyed professional wrestler Hulk Hogan (Metcalf, 2001).
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∑ The rituals of the ‘Lords of the Three-in-One’ in rural China draw from Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism and incorporate elements of karaoke and pop iconography (Dean, 1993).
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∑ The popularity of Japanese culture in Taiwan is enhanced by a legacy of Japanese colonialism as well as indigenous resistance to the government’s strategy of enforcing the construction of a Chinese heritage (Wu, 1998).
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∑ Japan's nostalgia for its lost ‘Asian-ness’ is reflected in a desire to position itself as an architect of a pan-Asian identity (Iwabuchi, 2000).
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Media and identity

The role that the media plays in the construction of cultural identity is crucial - as the above examples attest. In fact, the idea of cultural identity in modern societies is often understood as heavily influenced by the communications media. At least this is a widely held perception reflected in routine moral panics and calls for government regulation of the media. This same materialist logic also informed the deliberations of the UNESCO appointed McBride Commission, a group of non-aligned states that met in 1976 to address the problem of ‘the free flow of information’ (McBride & Roach 1989). This study drew upon reports such as those by Nordenstreng and Varis (1974), which demonstrated that a few Western Countries (U.S., U.K. France, and Germany) controlled the international flow of television programs.

As time went by the centre-periphery paradigm and the media imperialism thesis came into dispute. For instance, while America is indisputably the centre and sender of mass mediated culture to the peripheries through its entertainment and information industries, this is offset by a flow of people from peripheries to the centres, changing the cultural mix of the centres of production. Arjun Appadurai (1990) has made the most distinctive contribution here in his five dimensions of global cultural flows: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes. He notes that now ‘people, machinery, money, images, and ideas now follow increasingly non-isomorphic paths’ (301). In addition, new centres have emerged in what were once viewed as peripheries. Sinclair, Jacka and Cunningham’s study of global television markets (1996) argued that trade in cultural products is now more accurately described as constituting a number of regions each with their own internal dynamics and global ties. A later study of the use of media by diasporic communities (Cunningham and Sinclair 2000) has usefully extended the notion of Appadurai’s non-isomorphic paths to argue that the public communities formed by increasing narrowcasting – what they call ‘public sphericles’– ‘are rarely sub-sets of classic nationally-bound public spheres but are nonetheless vibrant globalised but very specific spaces of self- and community-making and identity’ (Cunningham 2000).

One of the key ideas of the MacBride Commission was ‘cultural colonialism’. Culture was seen as a product of the media; that is culture was treated as a social phenomenon whose first cause was media content (see Ady 1999: 217). This media-centric and materialist approach to cultural identity construction needs however to be tempered by the realisation that cultural identity precedes and informs the content of media programs. Eric Ma’s (1999) discussion of how television drama mediated an existing ethnocentrism between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese demonstrates the contextual nature of identity formation. Ma argued that political tensions that existed between free-market Hong Kong and indolent Mainland China contributed to a process of othering, which was consistently reinforced through stereotypical media narratives of Hong Kong entrepreneurialism.

On the other hand, we might consider the point of view that the mass media has a certain binding influence on national cultural identity, and that without governmental intervention into the cultural sphere, valued forms of traditional cultures will be more at risk from foreign forms of culture, which engender different value systems. National cultures are thus seen as contributing to a sense of solidarity, an ethos of nationhood, and the preservation of tradition.

Between the two scenarios of communication as invigorating the mediasphere and communication as cultural glue is the idea that internationalization is not such as bad thing if it can invigorate cultural industries by providing employment, if it can help cultures to leapfrog technology, or if it can promote strategic forms of identity that empower subaltern groupings. In a positive sense cultural identity functions as the software content for the re-invigoration of cultural traditions through dispersal through the world wide web, as the rapid emergence of Internet web sites devoted to Chinese culture testifies. Cultural identity provides the software that is fashioned into audio-visual programs that cross between Asian cultures as the papers by Koichi Iwabuchi, Ki-Sung Kwak, and John Sinclair and Mark Harrison demonstrated. The MacBride Commission idea of media content as a ‘problem’ for cultural identity maintenance needs to be re-evaluated in the context of the viability of domestic media industries in the era of trans-national media domination.

Conclusion: the demise of the nation?

The linking of the fate of the nation-state with the cultural identity of national populations is often a case for juxtaposing the local against the global. The state serves to protect the purity of the national culture from the outside. During the late 1990s this binarism took the form of the ‘Asian values’ debate. The desire on the part of some governments to imagine a common Asian culture based on so-called Asian values and in opposition to a perceived threat of Western media had its precedent in the NWICO movement some twenty years previously. Politicians such as Dr Mahatir and Lee Kuan-Yew were quick to exploit the idea of an essential Asian identity during the 1990s. Meanwhile the government of the People’s Republic of China took a step sideways and announced a Chinese ‘socialist spiritual civilization’ (Lewis, 2001), or Asian values with a socialist face. Thanks mainly to the enduring potency of the hypodermic communication model, the idea of protecting national cultures and cultural industries was correlated with flows of propaganda between centres and peripheries, between North and South, between the First and the Third Worlds.

The question of the demise of the nation looms as a determining issue in discussion of cultural identity. For historic and security reasons states have erected symbolic boundaries between cultures. Due to the globalisation of the knowledge economy, these boundaries are becoming more transparent as national governments compete to invite foreign investment into broadcasting and telecommunications industries. The impacts of transnational media interests within the changing liberalized mediascapes of Asia therefore needs to be closely scrutinized, both from a perspective of what they take from the cultural diversity of the region and what they contribute in terms of acting as vehicles of civil society.

The discussion of culture and media policy resonates with the term regulation. National governments operate within a range of regulatory models: from the engineer state model at one end of the control spectrum to the ‘light touch’ facilitator state model exemplified by neo-liberalism. The question that we come back to is what is the relationship between government policy directed at protecting or maintaining cultural identity templates, often for nationalist purposes, and the kinds of ‘do-it-yourself’ forms of citizenship that emerge when people strategically make their own identities.

References

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Michael Keane is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Creative Industries Research and Application Centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. His most recent publication (with Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and Yin Hong) is an edited volume, Media in China, Consumption, Content and Crisis, Curzon (in press, November 2001).