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References

Bowker, G.C. and L. Star (2000) Sorting ThingsOut: Classification and its Consequences.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cohen, L. (2005) Operability, Bioavailability, andException, in S.J. Collier and A. Ong (eds)

Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics andEthics as Anthropological Problems. Malden,MA: Blackwell.

Collier, S.J. and A. Ong (2005) GlobalAssemblages, Anthropological Problems, inS.J. Collier and A. Ong (eds) GlobalAssemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethicsas Anthropological Problems. Malden, MA:Blackwell.

Dunn, E. (2005) Standards and Person-Making inEast-Central Europe, in S.J. Collier and

A. Ong (eds) Global Assemblages: Technology,Politics and Ethics as AnthropologicalProblems. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Giddens, A. (1994) Living in a Post-TraditionalSociety, inReflexive Modernization: Politics,Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social

Mundialization/GlobalizationRenato Ortiz

How can one understand the specifics ofglobalization from a cultural perspective?

One possible answer would be to go backto the world system paradigm, for its critique ofthe nation-state as a unit of analysis opens a wayto envision the world dynamics in other bases. Thisperspective, however, opens up other problemsthat, if ignored, will lead us into a dead end. Thereis, first, a strong economic inclination of theanalyses, for the world systems history isconceived as the evolution of capitalism (Waller-stein, 1991). As the economic basis is the privi-leged unit of analysis, political and cultural

manifestations appear as its immediate reflections.In fact, this way of understanding social phenom-ena transposes to a wider territoriality a well-known reasoning: society is formed by aneconomic infrastructure and an ideological super-structure. The material floor would comprehendand determine the upper part of such architecture.

Another dimension posited by the analysis is itssystemic character. A world system is an articu-lated set within which all elements are function-ally integrated into the whole. An example is to befound in Luhmanns work, that, conceiving societyas a system, can extend the concept to reach aplanetary scope; in this sense, the world would be

a sole communicative system, where the parts, intheir differences, would be linked to the same set.There would even be a hierarchy among socialsystems, from simple to complex, i.e., from less tomore differentiated. The difference, however, hasa simply functional role, the part functions for theintegrity and coherence of the whole.

This theoretical conception allows us to answeran array of questions related to the role ofeconomic and political forces in the worldsystem. It includes, however, a series of contra-

dictions that unveil its weaknesses. There is, first,a lack of social actors; a system-society does notneed individuals and political actors: it consum-mates itself independently of their existence.The systemic approach encompasses the limi-tations of the sociological objectivism character-istic of Durkheimian or structuralist theories. By

Keywords culture, globalization, mundializa-tion, pattern, world modernity

Order. Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.

Lakoff, A. (2005)Pharmaceutical Reason:Technology and the Human at the ModernPeriphery. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action: How to FollowScientists and Engineers through Society.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Scheper-Hughes, N. (2005) The LastCommodity, in S.J. Collier and A. Ong (eds)Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics andEthics as Anthropological Problems. Malden,MA: Blackwell.

Weber, M. (2002) The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism and Other Writings. NewYork: Penguin.

Stephen Collier is an assistant professor in theGraduate Program in International Studies at theNew School in New York. His research examinespost-Soviet transformation, welfare, neoliberal-ism, globalization, and security.

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understanding society as a thing or structure,one transcends the existence of the men whomake history, i.e. the individuals and institutionsthat act and interact with each other. It would bedifficult to conceive of social action within thistheoretical framework, for the social actor wouldhave a passive role in the social interaction process(at best, he or she would perform a function). Ina word, the fate of all would be determined (notonly comprehended) in the planetary structurethat encompasses us. Another aspect has to dowith the degree of interaction required by analyti-cal thinking. In order to function, a systemrequires an articulation such that the movement ofeach one of its parts would be solely coordinatedby the whole. Internal cohesion has to be high, andwithout this systemic unity would be compro-mised. Within this perspective, as Wallerstein(1991) emphasizes, culture is a structure throughwhich the world system operates. In fact, it wouldsimply have the function of a geo-culture, guar-anteeing the maintenance of an order imposed byitself, independent of the culture.

The above criticisms allow us to take up thecultural question at another level. There is, in theidea of globalization, the suggestion of a certainunity. When we speak about a global economy, wehave in mind one single structure, underlyingeconomic exchange in any place on the planet.Economists can even measure the dynamics of thisglobalized order through various indicators:exchanges and international investments. Thesame can be said of the technological sphere: it ismarked by the unity of techniques computer,satellites, electric or nuclear energy. But, would itmake sense understanding the cultural theme inthe same way? Could we speak of one globalculture or one global identity in the same mannerwe consider the economic and technologicallevels? Surely not, and language offers a goodexample. For historical reasons British colonial-ism, North American imperialism, capitalisteconomic expansion, the development of sciencein the USA after the Second World War, and thelike English became the language of worldmodernity; it would not make sense, however, toimagine the disappearance of other languages inthe face of its dominance. The existence of a hypo-thetical universal language, shared by all theplanets individuals, would require that all humanexperiences converged towards one and the samesource of meaning. But such a linguistic specu-lation is not reasonable. The emergence of Englishas a world language gives a new definition to theworld market of linguistic goods at a planetaryscale, shows an unmistakable power situation butdoes not imply a single way of speaking. And thatis the reason why it is useful to establish a differ-

ence between the termsglobalization and mundi-alization. The first may well be applied to theeconomic and technological spheres; the secondadapts itself better to the cultural universe. Themundi (world) category is then articulated toboth dimensions. It is bound first to the movementof globalization of societies, to the economic andtechnological transformations that involve them.Without this material dimension we could hardlydiscuss the existence of a process of mundializa-tion of the cultural sphere. But it also correspondsto a world (mundi) vision, a specific symbolicuniverse of todays civilization, that coexists withother world visions, establishing hierarchies,conflicts and accommodations with them. Itstransversality reveals modern lifes globalization,its mundiality expresses the cultural diversity thatis inherent to the process.

Using an idea by Marcel Mauss (Mauss, 1974),I would say, mundialization is a total socialphenomenon, which pervades all cultural manifes-tations. The whole goes to the core of its parts,redefining them in their specificities. In this senseit would not be proper to speak of a world-culturewhose hierarchical level would be situated outsideand above local, regional or national cultural prac-tices. Thinking in this manner would amount toestablishing dichotomous relations between variousplatforms (local vs. national; national vs. global;local vs. global), promoting the dualist reason in aplanetary scale. In order to exist, a culture has tohave roots, to be situated in mens everyday prac-tices, without which it would be an abstractexpression of social relations. With the emergenceof globalization/mundialization, the cultural wholerecasts the situation where multiple particularitiesare located, without the need to think in systemicterms. Thinking mundialization as a totality allowsus to approximate it to the notion of civilization,an extra-national set of specific social phenomena,common to many societies. But it is necessary toemphasize a particularity of our times. Historically,a civilization extended beyond a peoples frontiers,but limited itself to a determined geographical area.A mundialized culture corresponds to a civilizationwhose territoriality is globalized. This is not,however, synonymous with uniformity. I emphasizethis aspect for the cultural debate sometimes iden-tifies both dimensions, and this is inadequate. Fora long time, the discussion of culture, especiallywhen it refers to the so-called mass culture, hasdebated the dilemma of consciousness homogene-ity. In fact, the conception of mass itself is associ-ated with the idea of crowd (a popular notion inthe 19th century), where the individuals tended todissolve into the whole. The theme is posed anewin the context of the planetary diffusion of tech-nologies. For a good many authors, the global village

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would consecrate the homogeneity of habits andthinking. Communication technologies, gettingpeople closer to each other, would make the worldsmaller and identical. An example: TheodoreLevitts (1983) diagnosis of markets globalization.We would be living a reality that had suffered astandardization of products consumed at a globalscale, leveling cultural practices to a sole commondenominator. It would be nave to non-criticallyoppose this globalizing perspective. Science, tech-nology, consumption, all are important vectors ofthe globalization process. There is in fact a pattern-ing of modern lifes different domains. This is dueto some extent to industrialism that invades thecultural sphere itself. The industrial making ofmovies, television series, books, video games,clothes, is doubtless bound to product patterning.

It is, however, important to distinguish patternand standards. Anthropologists teach us that thereis no society without a determined culturalpattern. And for this they understand the models,the norms that structure social relations. Individ-ual behavior is bound to this ground shared byall. A society is a set of subgroups whose particu-lar ways are distinguished within a commonframework. But no one ever refers to culturestandardization when dealing with indigenoussocieties (as it would make no sense to describeTrobriand aborigines life in terms of patterning).It is only in the discussion of industrial societiesthat pattern and standard are identified to theidea of homogeneity. Such an association becamenatural due to the high degree of rationalizationof modern life and to the extension of industrialprocedures to the cultural domain. The modernworlds rationality distinguishes different areas ofsociety, in one of which, consumption, thepatterning process is deeply established. Theserial production of cultural artifacts even allowsfor an analogy with industrial rationality. Thisfundamental trait of contemporaneous societies,however, should not lead us to be confused. WhenWeber writes on the rationalization about Westernmusic, he has in mind the casting of a culturalpattern in the sense anthropologists give to thenotion. We could hardly assimilate such a patternto the idea of standardization. In other words, thepattern is not to be confused with the standard.The point is to understand how the patterningprocess takes on hegemonic character, althoughnot univocal, in the globalized context. Taking on

again the concept of civilization restores thediscussion to another level. There is no concep-tual opposition between the common and thediverse; a mundialized culture promotes a culturalpattern without imposing the uniformity of all; itdisseminates apattern bound to the developmentof world modernity itself. Its width certainlyinvolves other cultural manifestations, but it isimportant to emphasize that it is specific,founding a new way of being-in-the-world andestablishing new values and legitimizations. Andthat is the reason why there is not and there willbe not a single global culture, identical in allplaces. A globalized world implies a plurality ofworld-views. What we do have is the consoli-dation of a civilization matrix, world modernity,that is actualized and diversified in every country,region, place, as a function of its particular history.And this means that globalization/mundializationis one and diverse at the same time. We shouldnot conceive of such a diversity as equivalent tothe idea of pluralism. In the global situation, partsare different and unequal, fill hierarchicallydiverse positions, and are permeated by the powerrelations and force lines that constitute the realityof the game of the worlds interests.

References

Levitt, Theodore (1983) The Globalization ofMarkets,Harvard Business ReviewMayJune: 92102.

Luhmann, Niklas (1982) The World Society as aSocial System,International Journal ofGeneral Systems 8: 1318.

Mauss, Marcel (1974) Thorie des civilisations,in uvres, vol. 2. Paris: Minuit.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1991) Geopolitics andGeocultures: Essays on the ChangingWorld-System. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Renato Ortiz is Professor of Sociology at the StateUniversity of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. He wasan undergraduate at lUniversit de Paris VIII(Vincennes), and gained his PhD at lcolePratique des Hautes tudes (Paris, 1975). Hispublications include Mundializacin y Cultura(Buenos Aires, 1997), and Otro Territorio: ensayossobre el mundo contemporaneo (Bogot, 1998).

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