Culture: intercultural communication
monic project by a new modern, technocratic,
internationalist elite’ speaking ‘the language of a
new international, a new world order’. However,
Tehranian perceives the ‘periphery’ reacting
against the ‘core’ in a number of potentially
confl icting, even explosive, ways.
He speaks of countermodernization as a signif-
icant contemporary trend, in which pressure
groups such as some traditional religions react
against modern ideas and dominant ideologies- the resurgence, for example, of fundamentalist
religion in the face of scientifi c and technological
advances; while a contrary trend, demoderniza-
tion, is expressed by the voices of environmen-
talists or feminists; and by those ‘localites’ (as
contrasted with ‘cosmopolites’) whose advocacy
is inspired by the notion that ‘small is beautiful’.
The nature and degree of globalization of
culture will continue to be fi ercely debated, and
such debate will inevitably have to take into
account inequalities of wealth, provision and
media technology across nations. See news:
globalization of; information gaps;
slapps. See also topic guide under global
perspectives.
▶Peter Golding and Phil Harris, eds, Beyond Cultural
Imperialism (Sage, 1996); Daya Kishan Thussu,
ed., Electronic Empires: Global Media and Local
Resistance (Arnold, 1998); Barry Smart, ed., Resisting
McDonaldization (Sage, 1999); George Monbiot,
Captive State: the Corporate Takeover of Britain
(Macmillan, 2001); Mike Savage, Gaynor Bagnall and
Brian J. Longhurst, eds, Globalization and Belonging
(Sage, 2004).
Culture: intercultural communication See
communication: intercultural communi-
cation.
Culture jamming See genre.
Culture of deference In an article entitled
‘Pressure behind the scenes’ and subtitled ‘A
history of deference, and cosy relationships in
Westminster, have made self-censorship accept-
able’ (Index on Censorship 4 & 5, 1991), journalist
Richard Norton-Taylor writes of a ‘deep-seated
culture of deference’ existing between many
British editors and journalists in their relation-
ship with those in authority (see power elite).
This, Norton-Taylor claims, arises out of an
anxiety to be accepted by and be a part of the
Establishment. The deference has its ‘origins
in the centralization of the British state and in
Britain’s imperial past – where there was virtu-
ally unchallenged consensus about the Empire’s
“civilizing mission”’.
Deference, says Norton-Taylor, continues
to be applied to institutions of the State such
corporatization promises, says Gitlin, but liberty,
equality and fraternity: all can ‘be affirmed
through the existing private commodity forms,
under the benign, protective eye of the national
security state’.
Th e vision of a world dominated by American
cultural products is challenged by observers who
see in localism a force of resistance, or if not
resistance, assimilation. Roland Robinson off ers
us a useful term in this respect – glocalization (in
‘Globalization or glocalization?’ in the Journal
of International Communication, 1 (1994)), that
is the ability of people in their own cultures to
deal in their own way with the cultural imports
from the West; to absorb them, to adapt them, to
glocalize them.
John B. Th ompson in Th e Media and Moder-
nity: A Social Theory of Media (Polity, 1995)
urges us to see trends of dominance within
historical perspectives: ‘Rather than assuming
that prior to the importation of Western TV
programmes etc. many Th ird World countries
had indigenous traditions and cultural heritages
which were largely unaff ected by external pres-
sures, we should see instead that the globaliza-
tion of communication through electronic
media is only the most recent of a series of
cultural encounters, in some cases stretching
back many centuries, through which values,
beliefs and symbolic forms of diff erent groups
have been superimposed on one another, often
in conjunction with the use of coercive, political
and economic power.’
Thompson maintains that the media-
imperialist position underestimates the power
of audiences to make their own meanings from
what they read, listen to or watch. ‘Th rough the
localized process of appropriation,’ Th ompson
believes, ‘media products are embedded in sets of
practices which shape and alter their signifi cance.’
Evidence for the process of glocalization is
off ered by Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz in Th e
Export of Meaning: Cross Cultural Readings of
Dallas (Oxford University Press, 1990; Polity,
1993). Their researches indicated that the
American soap Dallas was read in quite diff erent
ways by people of diff erent origins, cultures and
outlooks. It was Dallas which was dominated,
not the audience for Dallas.
Majid Tehranian in his chapter ‘Ethnic
discourse and the new world dysorder’ in
Communication and Culture in War and Peace
(Sage, 1993), edited by Colleen Roach, argues
that the levelling-out which is said to be a benefi t
of globalization is more apparent than real. In
fact the ‘levelling’ has camouflaged ‘a hege-