This document discusses new approaches to understanding global politics through a cultural lens. It first defines culture and how it forms with communities. It then explains how culture shapes global politics, citing examples like European colonialism imposing their cultures. The main part presents Arjun Appadurai's theory of "scapes", or dimensions of global cultural flow, including ethnoscapes of human migration, technoscapes of technology, financescapes of economies, mediascapes of media, and ideoscapes of political ideologies. It concludes that understanding these cultural dimensions is important for comprehending differences between societies and global conflicts.

1. NEW
APPROACHES TO
GLOBAL POLITICS
Cultural Dimension and
International Relations
Presented by
San Sel
Ka Nyar Maw
VNU, 10 September 2014

2. Contents
I. What is culture?
II. Culture changes global politics
III. Five Scapes by Appadurai
IV. Conclusion
V. References

3. I. What is CULTURE?
•Whenever human beings form communities, a culture comes
into existence.
• All communities produces a linguistic, literacy and artistic
genre, as well as belief and practice that characterize social
life and indicate how society should be run.
• Culture transcends the ideology. It’s about substance of
identity for individuals in a society.

4. II. Culture Changes Global Politics
• Culture can help us to understand why humans act in the way
they do, and what similarities and differences among them
• As European built their world empires, they imposed their
culture by force. (Romance & Greece).
• “The differences between civilizations would become the
principal cause of international conflicts after the cold war,”
Samuel Huntington.

5. Five Scapes by Appadurai
1. Ethnoscape: migration of people across borders
• Affects cultural demographics of nations
2. Technoscape: new types of communication facilitated by changing
technology
• Allows for more rapid distribution of information from a wider range of
sources

6. • Financescape: the wildly fluctuating economy which is tied
closely to technology
• Changes to global trades and relationships between nations
• Mediascape: the imaginary world constructed by the media
through television, radio etc.
• shapes cultural understanding based on the content produced

7. • Ideoscape: the ideologies of a government and those that oppose it,
dependent on the context of the spectator
• Political discourse from both sides of political spectrum

8. Conclusion
• Western values
• Individualism, and freedom, human rights
• Asia Values
• Respects on family, group, nationality:

9. References
• European Cultural Values, Field work February-March 2007, Report
Publication September 2007 in Special Eurobarometer 278 by
European Commission
• ASEAN Values, A new model for developments?: by Molly Elgin,
Stanford University
• In: Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at large, Minneapolis 1997
• http://html.rincondelvago.com/culture-of-civilizations.html
• https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/courses/1011F/
MUSI/MUSI-04-1011F/blog/node/229354