Selected Research Papers in Social Change, Education, Labour Market, and Criminology Volume II

2 Globalization and its consequences

The second half of last century was the period in which the process of unification and cultural universalism grew, mostly due to modern electronic means of mass communication. MacLuhan’s idea of the ‘global village’ was gradually realized, and the world slowly evolved into such an electronic village (see McLuhan, 1962, 1968). This was accompanied by previously unknown levels of monopolization and concentration of cultural goods. Production, as the phenomenon of mass culture, consisted also of applying economic categories of ‘production’ and ‘sale’ to the

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products of culture. Today everybody must have their ‘agents’ and ‘producers’, without whom it is impossible to move into a very complicated cultural market.

All this would not have been possible without fast scientific and technological development, particularly visible in the domains of transport and communication. We have at our disposal fast cars, trains, and planes, which make the distance less obtrusive in contacts with others. The impression of distance disappearance is even intensified by electronic means of communication. We, thus, have satellite television (non-existent in the times of McLuhan – the prophet of the ‘electronic era’), cellular telecommunications, and probably the most important product of progress – world-wide computer network. We live not only in a global, but also in a wired village. The number of Internet users is growing day by day. The World Wide Web makes it easier to get – almost unlimited (all you need is a computer with the network) – access to information, to exchanges of opinions and, what is important for this paper, to products of pop culture: films, songs, recorded concerts.

As a result of these changes, the world is shrinking, which also means that decisions taken in New York, London, or Paris are suddenly important for everyday life conditions in distant parts of the world. This is the phenomenon of globalization. Everything becomes global – economy, politics, and culture in all aspects. Hence, ideas conditioning our thinking about the world and life and determining lifestyles (liberalism, individualism, consumptionism) also become global. Marketing campaigns which promote new products and services and the world of fashion are global as well. The world of advertising tells us how to live, what to do, which equipment to use, and principally what to think and feel.

However, this virtual world also brings news about existing and appearing new boundaries, this time based on and expressed in religious, cultural, political, and economic differences. Sometimes it seems that, despite communicative improvements, it is more difficult to communicate and understand others in our global village.

1A question arises, though: Isn’t it true that the above-mentioned processes of globalization – apart from the positive effect – also involve threads? Much has been written about the economic and political consequences of globalization, about limiting the function of a nation state. I would like to concentrate on one dimension of these fears – losing national identity. This is important, since globalization and integration propose different, alternative models of identity: European, regional, local.

Today, though, we have the impression that the world, and its norms, values and models of behavior, beliefs, and ideas, have reached our homes thanks to processes of globalization and uniformization. This impression of living in McLuhan’s ‘global village’ is reinforced by electronic mass media. After press, film, and radio, television has become the dominating channel which shapes the reality. It has become a mirror for dwellers of the globe, in which they find their reflection. TV screens showed rockets and bombs during Operation Sandstorm, planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers and bombing Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the results of hurricanes, tsunami waves, floods, and earthquakes, sporting events, fantastic concerts, or masses in front of St. Peter’s

1 It is one of notions which appears contemporarily very often in psychological and sociological analyses.

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2Basilica, and even waiting for the death of the Pope John Paul II transmitted on TV (particularly Polish private and public stations). This is the television picture which shapes our imagination of reality. We often know more about what is happening in the world, in San Francisco, or Baghdad than in our closest neighborhood. However, for this analysis another aspect of functioning of today’s mass media is important, namely their cultural or even culture-creating function, as they are basic channels of spreading cultural content. Contemporary cultural diffusion process takes place thanks to their help. They spread contemporary universal models of culture – mainly popular and commercialized mass culture. This culture may constitute basic risk for cultural identity of young and small nations, because it creates a danger of a new, perhaps more dangerous addition to old-time metropolises.

If we try to synthesize the processes taking place currently in the domains of society and culture, we can assume that as a result of the world shrinking thanks to technological revolution in transport and communication, globalization, and integration in economy and politics, the processes of uniformization and unification of culture also accelerated. Is it not true that we experience the emergence of a new type of ‘dominating culture’, which is a product of a satiated, liberal West, which is responsible for the fact that the notion of ‘cultural pluralism’ worked out by anthropologists has entered the dictionary of academic correctness terms.

If we looked closely at the processes taking place in the area of culture, we could distinguish two parallel processes: cultural unification and universalization, manifested firstly by the “McDonaldization of culture” as a result of the dominance of mass media as a means of transmission of cultural content; secondly, it is visible in popularizing the canon of European culture thanks to school and the realization of school canons; and thirdly, in the effect of pluralization of cultural content thanks to modern ways of communication. The second process is an attempt of opposition against unification and universalization, against globalization and enforcing foreign models, and consequently affirmation of national culture (cultures).

Universalism is nothing new. Europe had experienced it much earlier than mass media started their existence. A kind of cultural universalization was the process of hellenization as long ago as in ancient times, a diffusion of Greek culture, the Greek language, Greek art, Greek knowledge, as well as Greek political institutions. The area it reached became a kind of universum, a common range of experience. Similar effects resulted from the process of not only the military and political, but also the cultural expansion of Rome.

In the Middle Ages Europe also became a common, relatively uniform cultural area. This was facilitated by the institution of the Church, Latin (as the religious language), law, diplomacy, science, and art, as well as university as the place where not only intellectual elites were educated, but also where knowledge was created and people were prepared to receive the products of culture. Later we experienced the dominance of the French language and culture in Europe. A Russian aristocrat was often more fluent in French than Russian. This was followed by a period of the German language – as the language of literature,

2 I wrote about the formation of a specific ‘television reality’ as opposed to real, social reality, to which we stick and by means of which we create our own picture of the world (Niezgoda, 2000a).

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philosophy, and science, and also German culture. Nowadays, English is a contemporary lingua franca, so its cultural region has a dominating role.

We can thus observe competition, rivalry of values, and symbols enforced by cultural centers – local (national) ones and super-local (super-national). This is not the only field of conflict, as there exists another one, no less important for culturecreating processes, namely competition between traditional high culture and mass culture. Here appears the question of whether culture standard is this universal model of mass culture or whether high culture standard is also important (canon) (Szpocinski, 1991). This competition may take a form of opposition between cultures defined generationally: pre- and post-figurative cultures (cf. Mead, 1976). Does not the generation gap currently get deeper in the era of electronic means of communication between parents, who are similar to Riesman’s people steered by tradition, and the young outer-controllable, so to say, addicted to the media?

A specific normative chaos may appear as a consequence of these phenomena. People, particularly the youth, are attacked by attractive models of behaviors, fashions, proposals of lifestyle, and accompanying ideologies constantly present in the media, often different from these which are typical for national, local, or religious communities, in which they exist and live. This causes problems with defining their own identity and answering the question: who am I? A European? A Macedonian? A Slovak? A Catholic? An Orthodox? A Muslim?

An educational effect is more or less evident. The conviction that individual, democratic liberal democracy and the liberal market model of economy, stress on the individual and his rights (including private property) became an official ideology and educational program.

In 1993 Huntington published his The Clash of Civilizations? (1993)3, which was a polemic with the conception of Fukuyama’s “end of history”. He wrote, “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” (Huntington, 1993: p. 22). This is to a certain extent an answer to the question formulated above about the origins of identity, because his concept of “civilization” refers to a certain set of characteristics and among them the religion and national community are the ones of the greatest importance. So the national and religious affiliations may become the basis of one’s identity.

Huntington’s analysis is of a very general character. A conflict in the cultural sphere takes place in his opinion on the global level, between civilizations defined by him. It is interesting that one side is always Western civilization – European, American – with its values stressing the significance of an individual, rights and

3 The book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” published in 1996 was a development of the theses included in the paper The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs, no 72 Summer 1993.
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liberties and the image of the world, its social order, and an image of man. Due to economic and military power which is in the background this civilization is very expansive. Its major opponent is Islam civilization which is, we can say, defending and advocating its own value system. The other civilization types depending on the situation support Western civilization or not. If we assume that factors which characterize, organize, and differentiate civilizations are value systems, culture patterns, attitudes, beliefs (religion), then we really have (could have) the conflict of cultures.

It is visible not only on the level of civilization differences. Many researchers think (contrary to Huntington) that globalization limits the role of the nation states not only in economic and political terms, but also in the sphere of culture. Globalization in this approach is a challenge for national and local cultures, because the great and strong politically and economically dominate culturally as well.

Their cultural products dominate on the market of culture products, which is created by mass media being the most important channel of their distribution. This is the area of popular and mass culture domination. Not only their products such as music, films, and popular literature but also their contents, i.e. values, lifestyles, behavior patterns, career models, life aims, and created needs, are the content of communiques which are directed to us, or rather to particular target groups by means of the press, radio, television, and the Internet. The media is full of persuasive communiques, either in the form of commercials – if you want to be trendy, buy this car, those clothes, or cosmetics or through the presentation of artificially created life stories of celebrities – or via actors, media people, and the like.

If we look closer at this phenomenon, we can notice that those contents constitute the alternative to traditional, religious transmission and patterns included in them. Media in the media-oriented society has more power than the family, religious groups, or schools.

Nevertheless, there appears a doubt about whether the expansion of mass culture models is not rather a conflict in culture, that is within one culture, one group, where a discrepancy between values, behavior models, and symbols is found. On the one hand, we have here conflicts between mass and elite characters and, on the other hand, between culture models (values, symbols) of the adult world and the young generation.

4If we assume that a conflict can be defined as a kind of internal, structural tension and competition of elements which belong to a whole, the opposition mass culture, traditional cultures may be defined more as a conflict in culture. It seems that this conflict – and perhaps only the underlying contradiction – has always been present. This is a competition between universal and particular symbols and meanings. Between what is owned and what is borrowed (enforced). Good examples here are processes of spreading religious beliefs and artistic movements.

Nowadays, it takes a new shape. This is a competition between cultural goods treated as products, mass produced on an industrial basis and sold by means of

4 The notion is discussed in more detail in Niezgoda (2000b).

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marketing methods, which are cheaper, more attractively wrapped, promoted, and leading on the market. For a young person with average education meaningful elements are: Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Claude van Dame, Steven Spielberg, and not Enrico Caruso, Sarah Bernard, Molier, Michelangelo, or Rubens. It does not mean that the second group had always been important for everybody; quite the opposite – it belonged to high-class culture. But currently they have no chance to become socially aware, to exist as common knowledge that is something present in the cultural experience of average people, preserved and able to reproduce in any moment, like popular songs or stories stemming from the resources of folk or labor culture65. Contemporary mass culture transmitted by the use of means of mass communication, currently mainly television, is an impact of something foreign and also more attractive. Due to an orientation towards mass receivers and its specific features in the form of standardization, homogenization, and the rule of common denominators (cf. Kloskowska, 1980), mass culture may constitute a threat for domestic (national) creation, the more so that it is connected with introducing purely market mechanisms instead of aesthetic criteria.

3 Education in the changing world

The analyses presented above served to outline the cultural and social context of the educational process in contemporary society. With doubt we can say that the functioning of society and processes of cultural change taking place in it determine its course and effects.

What can we say about educational processes today7? What is the value of ideology, traditional value systems, or religious norms for education? I have already mentioned the discrepancy between value systems, some kind of normative chaos. A young person in the period of personality formation is under the influence of many factors. This is nothing new; it has always been like that.

5 The concept of cultural common knowledge and its analysis may be found in the book by W. Pisarek and T. Goban-Klas (1981).

6 I am aware that reference to mass culture may mean simplifying the issue. The processes of cultural change causing a whole list of transformations in this domain are connected not only with the impact of commercialized mass culture, but more fundamental transformations brought about on the one hand by the already mentioned media, but also in a specific way pointed out by Buadrillard (1996), Featherstone (1996), Jameson (1996), Sztompka (1999), de Kerckove (2001), Godzic (2002), Burszta, Kuligowski (2005), or Strinati (1998). That is why a new type of culture characteristic of the epoch of post-modernity is mentioned.

7 I understand education widely, on the one hand as a socialization process including spontaneous acquisition of social role rules, internalization of value systems and social norms, lasting practically for the whole life, and on the other hand as a set of intentional and aims-oriented interactions of groups and social institutions (school) aimed at forming a young person according to the adopted education ideal.

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What is different in the contemporary educational processes can be summarized as follows:

1. Contemporary educational processes have an institutional character, which means that the influence of the family and spontaneous educational and socialization background is reduced, and the impact of the school and other institutions is growing. Mass media (also telematic) play the most important role among them as a transmitter of values, ideas, and culture patterns (also personal ones).

2. This process of growing institutionalization of educational processes can lead to the clash and often to the conflict of value systems being the base and the reference point of educational ideals, personal models or more generally conception of man, those which are oriented universally or specifically (towards the nation or a group). The normative chaos mentioned above supports this process.

3. In the process of socialization a young person faces dilemmas which are the result of the clash between what is global (universal value systems, images of the world and a human being in it, ideologies which are their product, culture patterns) and local (traditional, rooted in the value system characteristic of local, regional, and national communities, which form the base for natural education in the family and institutional education at school).

4. A young person is forced to choose between global and local (national, religious) value systems. The former ones refer to the set of Western values, such as individualism mentioned above – act alone, everything depends on it in your life, be assertive, think only about yourself; liberalism – you are allowed to do what you want as long as you do not hurt others; consumption value – consuming is the aim and the meaning of life, the ability to consume determines your position; hedonism – it is worth concentrating on individual pleasure. The latter ones, as a rule, put stress of the value of community, subordination to group interests, norms based on traditional and religious value systems, putting limitations on an individual for the sake of common good. The former ones often turn out to be more attractive, leading to lifestyles which are easier and nicer.

5. This is how the educational process takes place in the conditions of a conflict between competitive value systems, competitive culture patterns, and competitive ideologies. What is interesting is that the area where this conflict appears is the local micro-level. Its area is the school, which traditionally took part in it by preferring what was general and what was social (state), and students, who contributed values and ideas rooted in tradition, local community, the family, and the church (religious group).

The school was and still is – in the nation state – the place of the domination of national culture canon or legitimate culture. Both of them were often in opposition to local, group (class) cultures and also to ethnic minority groups’ cultures. It was the place of transmission of contents belonging to high elite culture (this is the characteristic feature of national or legitimate culture canon) and was in opposition to local culture – folk working, or in the past century mass culture (Chalasinski 1938).

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Today the situation is similar. The school is still the place of transmission of national symbolic culture canon and elements of universal high culture. However, its rivals are not so much tradition, religion, ethnic culture, or folk culture rooted in local communities, but popular culture transmitted by mass media. It is easier, more attractive, and popularizing more attractive culture patterns and ideas.

But the area of those conflicts (cultural and within culture) is also the family. It is to a great extent a generation conflict between grandparents, parents, and children. Grandparents and parents are more strongly rooted in tradition, fear changes, and experience some kind of “culture shock”. Children assimilate new patterns more easily and very often act as guides in the new world of technology.

4 Conclusions

What then are the effects of educational processes understood as the formation of value systems, attitudes, and beliefs of the young generation taking place in the society which is described not as a whole but more often as a set of individuals in the society where despite declarations about removing the most important ideological barriers and breaking with ideology there are still conflicts and where we can observe some form of normative chaos and conflicts in the sphere of culture (between cultures and within them), in the society where uncertainty begins to dominate and social life is ruled by risk, in the society where traditional social ties and communities decline and contacts are transferred to the Internet, so even a game of bowling, as it is claimed by R. Putnam (2000), becomes a lonely activity? I suppose that the answer to this question, namely what is the product of the education system (understood as a whole, as an ‘educating society’), cannot be only one and clear-cut. The role of school as a transmitter of values systems will become more and more important as a counterpart to the mass media. The role of the family will decline.

One thing is certain: Ideologies in the education contents will be present, but they will be an easy element to change if there is such a need. It is because the school is not an autonomous institution. It has been for a long time a transmitter of values and ideologies or of religious institutions (e.g. the Catholic Church) or of the state being controlled by the groups with their own values and interests and reflecting their ideologies. Now, in my opinion, the school is still a playground where different values systems and ideologies compete. The problem is that the process of changes we can observe, being the result of a competition in a global scale, is nowadays more rapid than in the past. So the school must update its programs according to the demands of changing society and trends in perceiving our wonderful world.

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