This document discusses different theories of global culture and cultural flows: - Global culture emphasizes the digitization and sharing of culture online, though access barriers still exist. - Cultural differentialism emphasizes lasting cultural differences unaffected by globalization. Samuel Huntington argued major world civilizations will clash as Asian societies and Islam rise. - Cultural hybridization emphasizes the mixing of cultures through globalization, creating new hybrid outcomes. - Cultural convergence suggests globalization leads to increasing cultural sameness through flows of global culture overwhelming local barriers. - World culture theory argues global models are structuring states, organizations, and identities worldwide, enacting a shared culture throughout the world.

1. SOC 451
Global Culture and Cultural Flows
Asst. Prof. Fatma Altınbaş Sarıgül

2. GLOBAL CULTURE
• Culture exists increasingly in digitized forms.
• The internet permits global downloading and
sharing of digitized cultural forms such as movies,
videos, music, books, newspapers, photos and so
on.
• Those who see themselves as part of the same
culture can contact through e-mail, skype, social
media.
• Eventhough there is easiness of sharing culture,
there are still barriers to its flow, the lack of
access to the internet.

3. CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM
• It emphasizes lasting differences among and
between cultures largely unaffected by
globalization.
• This is not to say that culture is unaffected by
globalization, but it is to say that at their core
they are largely unaffected by it; they remain
much as they always have been.
• The most famous supporter of this theory is
Samuel Huntington.

4. CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM

5. CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM
Huntington differentiates world civilizations:
Sinic (Chinese)
Japan (Far Easterns)
Hindu
Islamic
Orthodox (centered in Russia)
Western Europe
North America (along with Australia, New Zealand)
Latin America
Africa
Huntington argues:
The decline of west, Rise of Asian societies
Resurgence of Islam
Huntington foresees:
Dangerous clashes between the West, Islam and Sinic.

6. RELIGION AND GLOBALIZATION
• This relationship is quite ancient since religion
globalized before virtually anything else.
• ISLAM- Its universalistic ideas led to the belief
that they had to be diffused throughout the
world.
• HINDUISM
• BUDDHISM
• CHRISTIANITY- still growing fast
• JUDAISM
• MORMONISM

7. CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION
• It emphasizes the mixing of cultures as a result
of globalization and the production, out of the
integration of the global and the local, of new
and unique hybrid cultures that are not
reducible to either local or global culture.
GLOCALIZATION: The interpenetration of the
global and the local resulting in unique
outcomes in different geographic areas.

8. CULTURAL HYBRIDIZATION
5 global flows: ethnoscapes
mediascapes
technoscapes
financescapes
ideoscapes

9. CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
• It is based on the idea that globalization tends to
lead to increasing sameness throughout the
world.
• Supporters of this perspective see cultures
changing, sometimes radically, as a result of
globalization, specifically flows of global culture
and the relative weakness of barriers to those
flows.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM: It indicates that one or
more cultures are imposing themselves on other
cultures thereby destroying local culture.

10. CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
Deterritorialization: The declining importance of
the geographic location in which culture exists.

11. WORLD CULTURE
• A distinctive theoretical approach to convergence
in general, and cultural convergence in particular,
is known as world culture theory.
• As a result, there is striking amount of structural
isomorphism throughout the world as a result of
the spread of these models.
• World culture scholars describe the world in
terms of an enactment of culture.
• Culture is seen as shaping the state system, state
organizations like schools, firms and individual
citizenship and identity throughout the world.

12. CULTURAL HOMOGENIZATION
• McDonaldization