pop videos, international sporting events and Hollywood films char-
acterises the mass media in many parts of the world. A shared
consumption of similar goods such as Nintendo games, Reebok
trainers and Coca-Cola is thought to have helped create an inter-
national popular (youth) culture. Internet developments such as
YouTube and MySpace have enabled the creation of interactive global
youth networks sharing music, chat and video clips.
Unprecedented levels of international travel – both for holidays
and business, and even for education and spiritual enlightenment –
have been made possible by modern technological developments. In
addition television documentaries, advertisements and films have all
familiarised people all over the globe with something of the way of
life of people in faraway places – especially that of affluent America.
On a perhaps more serious level, international publishing
operations and the growing practice of international professional
communication through journals and conferences have made pro-
fessionals in all spheres more rapidly aware of the new achievements
and standards of international colleagues.
The social and political implications of all this is immensely
controversial. In countries as varied as France and Iran many of these
developments have been denounced as ‘creeping Americanisation’.
There seems little doubt that a growing awareness of standards of
living and freedom in the rest of the world was immensely influential
in bringing about the end of communism in Eastern Europe.
It is increasingly difficult for national governments to cut their
people off from knowledge of developments elsewhere in the globe
and this knowledge can be political dynamite. In the USA in the
1960s a series of urban riots were said to have been incited by the
greater knowledge of the urban poor of the extent of their deprivation
as a result of television. As singer Gil Scott-Heron once satirically
announced, ‘The Revolution will not be televised’. It is not beyond
the scope of possibility that one of the greatest forces for instability
and change in the next century will be a similar awareness of
deprivation on behalf of the millions of inhabitants of the South.
Many of the themes introduced so far are encapsulated in the
concept of ‘globalisation’ (Luard, 1990; McGrew and Lewis, 1992;
Baylis and Smith, 2005). Definitions of globalisation, and attitudes
towards the idea differ radically from writer to writer (see Box 2.2).
SYSTEMS 45