Lecture: Commodities and Borders, Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets and Local Realities, Howes, David, 1996
Keywords: Americanization, Creolization, Homogenization, Economic Sociology, Economy and Society, Globalization, McDonaldization
Bachelor of Arts
University of Delhi
Economic Sociology & Economy and Society
Reading to be Covered: Howes, David, 1996, Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets and Local Realities, London: Routledge, Chapter: I, Introduction: Commodities and Borders, pp. 1-16
Course Structure
Important points to be kept in mind while studying the article
Expected Outcome
Introduction
Worlds of Goods
The Global Homogenization Paradigm
-Coca-Cola Advertisement: India
-“The God Must Be Crazy” and Coca-Cola
The mutability of the Commodity Form
-Pay Attention: The Creolization Paradigm
-KNOW MORE: What is Creolization
Cross-Cultural Consumption
The Mirror of Consumption
-UNDERSTAND: Complexity of Business
Consuming the ‘Other’
Consumption and Identity
Conclusion
TERMINOLOGY EXPLAINED: Creolization
Important points to be kept in mind while studying the article
How globalization is working in the field of culture.
What is the relation between food, clothes and culture?
How consumer product is not just a physical product rather a part of the culture, and they are able to carry the specific culture to their consumer.
How consumption, culture, and identity are interrelated.
How multi-national brands are promoting the homogeneity of culture.
Expected Outcome
Students will able to understand the relationship between goods, culture, and social identity. How the goods, food, clothes are caring about the particular culture and globalization of these products are also promoting the homogeneity of the culture. They will also be able t understand the Fordism, McDonaldization and Americanization.
Introduction
The article is about the relationship between commodity or goods and culture. How goods are not just a physical product rather also a product of particular colure and wherever they go, they carry the culture. Every food, cloths, and other commodity have the ability to carry forward the culture also.
However, sometimes the product of other culture can be misused. For example, when the American company introduced the baby food, the African people felt it a horrible product, because there was a picture of the baby on the pack. So they thought this is not the product for baby rather a product of baby. That is called cross-cultural consumption.
World of Goods
The good are material objects of culture. Both goods and culture are interdependent, their relationship p is complex. Martial part of the culture, good afford sets of marketers which both structure perception and facilitate social interaction. For example, we often infer what people are like based on the clothes they wear, he makes of car they drive or the way they furnish theory home. In another word, we judge them on the basis of the ‘assemblages’ they construct from the total cultural repertoire or ‘system of object’. As Douglas absorbs, ‘goods in their assemblage present a set of meanings, more or less coherent, more or less intentional. They are ready by those who know the code and scan them for information.
Goods are also carrying for the culture. When goods cross borders, then the culture they ‘substantiate’ is no longer the culture in which they circulate.
The Global Homogenization Paradigm
Watch this advertisement before going to the next section. This advertisement comes after an allegation of pesticide in the Coca-Cola by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) lead by Suniya Narayain in February 2004
The migrations of goods are making global humanization, for example, Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola believes in ‘one sight, one sound, one sell’, Everywhere Coca-Cola is representing the American culture, pride, symbol, taste, and pride, and American dream. This is not just a product rather a cultural symbol, identity and ideas. Coca-Cola is representing this product as your ‘good friend’ and ‘a democratic luxury’. This product is for everyone, irrespective to their social, cultural, economic or ethnic, gender, and sex identities.
Coca-Cola Advertisement: India
Watch here some Coca-Cola Advertisement to know how the company tried to address the whole nation not just to a particular segment of the population.
The God Must Be Crazy and Coca-Cola
The Coco-Cola give a magic feeling to their consumer, even to the primitive society. You can find in the film ‘The God Must Be Crazy’ 1980.
You can watch the film ‘The God Must Be Crazy’ 1980here –
https://www.facebook.com/jewelfilms/videos/2143635272395088/
The mutability of the Commodity Form
The fact that same mass-production and marketed goods – Coca-Cola, Blue Jeans, Hollywood Movies – are not only increasingly available in countries all over the worlds but sometimes appear to serves as a catalyst for cultural and political change in those countries, is a powerful argument in the factor of the paradigm of global homogenization.
The assumption that such goods, on entering a culture, will inevitably retain and communicate the value they are accorded by their culture of origin must be questioned.
The foreign imported goods are tending to incorporated into the new cloture and they get the alternative meaning.
Pay Attention: The Creolization Paradigm
(Dear students please see the meaning of the Crealization at the end.)
Wherever the foreign products go they are promoting their own culture but at the same times that also adopting the local culture. Like culture, the products also have the process of hybridization to assimilate with the local culture.
The creolization is an integral dimension of cross-cultural consumption; this can significantly enhance one’s understanding of the migration of goods both within the world’s market system and the local level.
This is important to emphasize that creolization is not simply the opposite of global homogenization or what we have been calling, ‘Coca-Colonization’.
We can also take another example like Reebok athletic shoe and other multinational brands. All these are promoting the ‘the globalization of fragmentation’.
KNOW MORE: What is Creolization
Encyclopedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/creole-languages
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
Cross-Cultural Consumption
This section of the article is talking about the chapters of the book that which chapter is describing what? To know this you need to read the chapters from the original book.
However, the meaning of the cross-cultural consumption is a consumption of goods or services across the couture. This is important to know that how people are reaching with these products and how that product is able to change the culture of the consumer society and country if that is the product of another country or society.
You can understand this from the above described in the previous section of this study material.
The Mirror of Consumption
This is recognizing that the culture is constructed through consumption. The product is not just product rather is also a part of the culture. These phenomenon relations have also recognized by the sociology and anthropology.
Historians have increasingly come around to this view as well.
After the industrial revolution, we have a consumer revolution, hence the birth of the consumer society is no longer presumed to be explicable in terms of technological innovation and hence in the force of production alone. Conceptualizing the relationship between mode of production and mode of consumption has thus become far more complex.
Consumer revolution thus consumer society is no more explicable term for technological revolution and change.
Now, the mode of production and mode of consumption had become more complex.
UNDERSTAND: Complexity of Business
Try to understand this complexity of modern business by this video on Eye Glass Business
The western countries are success to create the special value for their goods. This is the reason that the one African chief ordered the European-style suite to look like a western. The colonial rulers work hard to promote their western clothes to the ethnic communities of Africa.
They materialized and transformed their product into the culture. Atomization and privatization speed up this process at a large scale.
Consuming the ‘Other’
In globalization we are consuming the ‘other’s’ product means a product from other society. These products are coming from the globalization, liberal trade and westernization of the goods and services. Moreover the products these also represent the ‘culture of others’. These are also called ‘other’ because they try to portrait their product as ‘authentic’. They call themselves authentic because they for them they are representing the origin of the products. However, sometimes they also face resistance. For example, Tanzania promoted own coffee products.
Despite the ‘value of cultural difference’ market of Unites States of America has also produced from the third world countries, even the handmade crafts.
Consumption and Identity
These days through the globalization of goods and services the consumer also become globalised, from both perspectives, choice of goods and services from the consumer perspective and selling to the global consumer from sellers perspective.
In the process of globalization of goods and services not only consumers become the global but culture also become part of the market – this is called ‘marketization of culture’.
All culture has to face the market. Only ‘stronger’ in the eyes of the market will survive. Thus this is the process of saving many cultures from becoming ‘museum item’.
However, these museums can have the opportunity for promotion ‘ethnic tourism’. (For detail please read the first paragraph of Page No. 13)
Conclusion
We are living in the era of globalization where both consumer and seller and global. Both are free to rich the globe. However, most of the companies are American thus sometimes this is also called Americanization of the society. Many American companies are the icon of the globalization and icon of global identity from both consumer and seller perspectives. This process is also called Fordism, and McDonaldization because of their classical examples of business operation.
Globalization of goods and services are not just a globalization o the good and services but this also globalization of the ideas, politics social and cultural hegemony. Many times these globalizations are also able to change the social structure, social thinking, social thoughts, culture and political set up. Because the products are not coming alone rather in the banal in which ideas and ideologies are inbuilt.
Because of the globalization of the goods and services many culture, cultural identity, and language are come at the adage f vanishing and now they are becoming subject to the museum.
TERMINOLOGY EXPLAINED: Creolization
It means a mixture of language and culture from a different origin. When two or more cultural groups meeting or coming together and exchanging their language, culture and habit then this process is calluses a creolization. The language emerges after a mixture of two or more society is also called the Creole Language for example language of Mauritius is called the Creole Language which is born after a mixture of French + African Languages + Indian Language.
ALSO PAY ATTENTION: For better understanding go the terminology, political power and sociology behind the language. This is important because language is one of the important parts of the globalization, hegemony and identity.
Sanskrit is also kind of Creole Language. The SANSKRIT LANGUAGE emerged after contact with Iran. The SANSKRIT is a result of a mixture of Indian and Persian Language Family.
KNOW in-DEPTH: What is Creolization
https://www.britannica.com/topic/creole-languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
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