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Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization

Transtext(e)s Transcultures
Journal of Global Cultural Studies

4 | 2008 : Cultures in Transit

Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization

ALAIN SUBERCHICOT
p. 5-17

Rsum
This essay explores cultural change in the context of the econom ic globalization currently underway . It aim s at analy sing the role that theoretical inv entiv eness and ethical v alue play in fashioning broader cultural representation and responsibility , and shall explore issues of cultural disunity and conflict, while assessing the influence that leading intellectuals m ay hav e in prom oting a finer perception of v alue worldwide. The role of higher education as an asset in the defence of dem ocracy and indiv idual self-dev elopm ent shall be discussed with a v iew to ev aluating its potential for an altered course of globalization.

Texte intgral
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We are alway s in need of definitions whenev er we want to ex plore why cultures change. We are pressed to come up with answers as to what culture might be and how the idea of culture might fit into a nutshell. The general applicability of the answer we struggle to dev ise inv ites theoretical formulas and abstraction from specific historical dev elopments. It also, as a result, cautions us to choose fields from which to cull situations and conflicts that may help deliv er the concepts we want to grasp, and inv ites to understand the theory of culture as shaped by how ev ents unfold, and how society mov es along. In particular, one may hav e in mind what the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about Napoleon (our fav ourite dictator, to us French people) in a book he dev oted to figures of historical importance (Representative Men): Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born 1 .
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This strikes a negativ e note, as does a quote from Napoleon himself that Emerson has unearthed from the v ast body of memoirs the Napoleon era has handed down to us. Emerson is reported to hav e once declared: My hand of iron [] was not at the ex tremity of my arm; it was immediately connected with my head 2. The remark and the quote hold a tentativ e definition of culture. Culture begins when sheer force is mitigated by intellect, intellect itself being shaped by a response to facts, and, we hope, as Emerson hopes, abstracted from fact by ethical imperativ e. On top of this, we feel Emersons attempt at rationality is run through by doubt: what if one might nev er discriminate between intellect and action? What if one might nev er grasp how ethics can disengage us from the cogs of history and were incapable of controlling an ongoing process that leads to disaster and apocaly pse? Whenev er one tries to define culture, culture breaks down into its many components: it splinters into action and responsibility , and we feel there might nev er be a connection between them. There lies Emersons historical pessimism, which it is hard to tone down. In recent y ears, a debate has been brought to the foreground, for reasons that hav e to do with our increasingly globalized world. Are there any v alues left? If such a thing as culture ex ists, then, there might be precise contents of an ethical sort that we want to pin down. Might not this sense of emptiness be the result of a crisis of v alue, as if the v ery idea of v alue had been swept away ? This is what the French cultural critic Hubert Damisch thinks has happened, in a recent contribution to a v olume aptly titled Which V alues for our Time , published by the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon. Damisch rounds up his interrogation as follows: Crisis of v alues, or crisis v alue? 3 The suggestion is of course that v alue is no longer v isible on the horizon of our history to be, that the trend should be resisted, and that intellectual resistance is what we need. It is by no means new to be aware, among philosophers and cultural critics alike, that v alues are hard to come by . In Platos Republic , book sev en, humankind is looking at the walls of a cav e, noting the shadows dancing there, and being taught that our poor sight precludes the perception of good and ev il, and the difference between them. Now that the walls of the cav e hav e turned into telev ision screens, one image is chased away by the nex t one, while our sense of global responsibility dissolv es into thin air ev en though all the fields of human action hold perspectiv es of responsibility within them. Culture, like v alues, is a plenum and a v oid, a constant ex pectation and in the end something impossible when one looks at results and facts. We should keep in mind Jacques Derridas anthropology of culture, and the degree to which it identifies conflict as the prime-mov er within our cultural narrativ es. In a major contribution at a Cerisy conference in Normandy in 1 980, titled On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy 4, Jacques Derrida opposes two sets of attitudes: seeking rationality , and seeking my stery . Derrida v iews culture as the competition between the Afklarer and the my stics, and suggests there are possibilities that the two trends in cultural discourse might ev entually reach some kind of truce achiev ed as a result of an interaction between them. No doubt he was try ing to hold historical pessimism at a distance by suggesting gain might be reached in the historical dev elopment of cultures if rationality were capable of reading through the language of my sticism, and curb the influence of those he chose to call the my stagogues, in whom he saw a danger for democracy and human dignity . Cultures change, and when they do, they are pulled in opposite directions if we abide by Derridas critical thinking. They change to eliminate reason, ev en, as Derrida puts it, to emasculate it, and we must, as a result, apply pressure to preserv e amity , and to uphold the v alues of democracy . To be sure, Derridas
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onslaught upon my stery is no onslaught upon religious v alues: there are many other targets we might think of in the current contex t of globalized liberal economies and env ironmental ov eruse, such as religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and the emergence of a global self-appointed elite, although Derridas inquiry was started some thirty y ears ago, and he nev er gets that precise about what should be indicted.

Disaster and Apocalypse

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Our globalizing societies offer alternativ es to an ideal world. In particular, market mechanisms and the rise of global capital hav e impov erished some non-European nations, while Europe has, in recent y ears, worked to thin the immigration flux while downsizing out of their jobs the low-skilled workers of a once predominantly industrial economy that has now turned to serv ices. As a result, local communities hav e been struck, either in Europe or the United States, by being impov erished within the more glitzy contex t of affluence. In China as elsewhere, industrial activ ity has surged, while working conditions hav e nev er been worse among the former peasants driv en to urban areas. Globalization may well pass for an agenda of disaster and social apocaly pse, as Joseph Stiglitz has demonstrated 5. Welfare and human rights hav e hardly benefited from the promise economic liberalism keeps harping on, and human dev elopment has been restricted to the rising middle-classes of China, or India, if we look at the most significant ex amples. Richard Rorty , meditating on social hope, has brought home the idea that globalization has been a blow to democracy . He wrote the following in an essay published in 1 993: We now hav e a global ov erclass which makes all the major economic decisions, and makes them entirely independently from the legislatures, and a fortiori of the will of the v oters, of any giv en country 6. Rorty s remark comes as an apposite reminder that there is no such thing as a world gov ernment, a fact that we all tend to ov erlook. The ideology of economic growth heralds human dev elopment, but deliv ers little in terms of the strengthening of local communities, both in rising nations as well as in Western ones. Might not this ideology form the most recent embodiment of some pseudo-thinking the my stagogues parade as rationality for us to kneel to? Communities, we hear, hav e gone global, which means they are now glocal. The portmanteau word means more than it seems to say . On the one hand, the buzzword suggests that local communities may be strengthened by globalization; on the other, it suggests that local communities are shaped, in way s that cannot all be positiv e, b y the adv ance of global liberalism. Howev er, one of the unsought effects of glocalization may well be that cultural interference with distant or unknown communities might emerge from the pressure of global liberalism, by dissolv ing national, or ev en nationalist perspectiv es, and fav ouring international contacts. Let us be cautious in this: international interaction, in the contex t of globalizing economic ex change, may well be no other than buy ing and selling, and one more v ersion of materialism without national v alues being cross-fertilized. Globalization cannot control the rise of a new conserv atism, in spite of the surge in optimism that comes with it in some areas, if we look at the poor condition of welfare sy stems across dev eloped countries and elsewhere. As Habermas has pointed out, modernity sees itself as dependent ex clusiv ely upon itself 7 , and utopian ideals are increasingly wiped out of the Zeitgeist. Globalization is in dire need of strengthening, not ex hausting, utopian energies. If it prov es incapable of effecting this, renewing utopian energies, the
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road down globalization may well be what one supposes it to be from recent ev idence: a hurdle-race, with one winner, a few good athletes, and v ast crowds of anony mous losers. Jacques Derrida has pointed out that we need peace in culture, and that peace can be achiev ed when the my stagogues accept to interact with rationality . Rationality howev er, to him, is not an empty bottle, or an instrument by which societies may solv e practical questions. Rationality inv olv es moral choice, and one may well suggest that the Habermas notion that utopian ideals hav e to be upheld is the best way to reorder, and refashion global liberalism. No doubt, the culture wars must go on, to stay the current backlash and its related traumas, terrorism East and West, the political v iolence within national borders and without, the religious fundamentalism which has found in globalization its ecotope, in Israel, in the Arab world, in the United States, and elsewhere, while env ironmental disasters from North to South take their toll upon communities. Cultures, as a result of globalization, change, for reasons that hav e to do with the innate sy stemic risks that globalization runs through them, risks which are supra-human, but which, for that v ery reason, hav e to be identified, deconstructed, and eliminated, although we do know that this process cannot be the work of one sole generation. Indifference as well as navet ought to be av oided. If, as Habermas thinks they are, utopian v alues are used-up, because they are targeted, then, they must be inv igorated. No doubt any such inv igoration, if we want it to hav e pragmatic efficiency , we need specific measures, and precautions. Intellectual clarity can help. And meditation upon what is and what is not scientific can be an asset. It is true odium has been cast on the precautionary principle by some scholars of env ironmental studies. In a fairly recent issue (2004) of the M.I.T. Press quarterly Global Environmental Politics, scholars Emery Roe and Michel V an Eeten hav e condemned the precautionary principle in matters of env ironmental policy on the grounds that scientific ev idence is not sufficient, calling for empirical knowledge, supposed to be an index to what is and what is not scientific 8. Is it that globalization has reshaped the image of science in academia, making us wistful once again, and inv iting us to find peace of mind in a belated v ersion of science which is reminiscent of the nineteenth century , when science was largely considered to rely on empirical observ ation, whatev er this might mean? Empiricism and dogmatic thinking are birds of a feather flocking together. More open intellectual attitudes are necessary to face the risks of globalization u pon our env ironment. Doubt, in particular, may be protectiv e, in this respect. Without it, scientific thinking can be stultified. Science cannot be independent of general interest and social respect, and requires critical detachment to shelter us from the sy stemic dangers inherent in its objects of inquiry and the applicability of its fundamental findings. In scientific knowledge as well, the culture wars loom large, though they tend to be ov erlooked. These wars may lead both way s: to cultural changes that will crush social hope, and to cultural changes that will uplift a sense of community and cooperation.

The Secularization of Value

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The v alues of science, therefore, should be secularized, and scientists should av oid generating sy stems which hold dangers in them that might ex press their potential for destruction. The French philosopher and Stanford scholar JeanPierre Dupuy has pointed out that the atomic bombing of Japan was the result of sy stemic danger, in an amazing remark: Why was the bomb ev er used?
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Because it ex isted, quite simply 9. The implication of what he say s is that science too, and what was at one point presented as an adv ance of the civ ilized mind, may lead to pragmatic consequences that reshape thinking and emasculate it, if we want to harp on the Derrida proposition that the my stagogues are able to emasculate rationality (let us pardon Derridas male chauv inism if we can). Human thinking inv olv es sy stemic dangers, and one therefore has to rethink thinking in different terms, which has been the task of modern philosophy . Perhaps we might suggest at this point that cultural change inv olv es the thinking of rationality in secularized terms. This means that technology may well lead us astray , tethered as it is to scientific knowledge which we tend to v iew as total, whereas any inquiry into the results of science tends to demonstrate that science is prov isional, and that its propositions will sooner or later be refined, or redefined, and that intellectual inquiry , whatev er its field, rarely comes to conclusions that will nev er be reworded, or rev ised. Knowledge is an ongoing process, and if we keep this in mind, we secularize science, instead of projecting it onto the higher plane of superior frozen truths. Science, like any other human adv enture, unfolds through time, and taking this into consideration helps science respond to social needs. Political scientists are struggling for secular v iews, as John Rawls has amply demonstrated. Behind his eulogy of democracy as a condition and an effect of economic and political liberalism, one finds an attempt to define the nature of rationality as the mainspring of social hope. It is striking, when reading John Rawls, to realize the ex tent to wh ich rationality is assessed in conjunction with its effects upon social organization, which y ields workable political conceptions of justice. John Rawls, in his second major opus, Political Liberalism , defines political rationality as outcome-centered, and this leads to a list of primary goods, which reads as follows: basic rights and liberties []; freedom of mov ement and free choice of occupation against a background of div erse opportunities; powers and prerogativ es of offices and positions of responsibility in the political and economic institutions of the basic structure; income and wealth; and finally , the social bases of self-respect. 1 0

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Rawls agenda relies on the traditions of the common-sense philosophy of the English-speaking world and the theoretical culture of pragmatism, which he found ready for use in his New-England intellectual env ironment. Nowhere do we find perspectiv es that would be disconnected from and independent from day -to-day preoccupations. Rawls wants to harness human dev elopment to democracy , to wring democracy out of economic growth, while there is an increasing belief, in this century , that our globalized economies hold a promise of democracy as an ex pectation which will alway s be contradicted by fact. Just recently , in a major contribution to the debate, the Slov enian philosopher Slav oj Zizek has pointed out that China allies a v icious use of the Asian bludgeon in Tibet with the logics of the European stock-market, and that this betray s the belief that democracy is an obstacle to economic growth. As a result of this, Zizeks assumption is that our global culture might be brought to understand that democracy is no longer needed to back human dev elopment, which might lead global cultural change in the wrong direction1 1 . Democracy has to be maintained as a horizon of belief, and as the sole teleology worthy of respect. Rawls helps us understand that teleology should be one v ersion of
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practicality , though we tend to think that any political teleology is an empty promise. His contribution to political philosophy v iews rationality not just as a belated v ersion of theology , but as a tool that may help deliv er collectiv e results, following in the footsteps of American intellectual traditions which assess v alue in terms of their pragmatic consequences rather than in terms of otherworldly conceptual ex ploration. What if, bey ond this sound conception of political v alues, and the organic laws that go to frame them, human culture was unresponsiv e, thus precluding cultural change, and sustainable dev elopment? It is this situation that Samuel Huntington ex amines, leav ing little room for hope, suggesting that cultures cannot change, or will change slowly or with difficulty , on the grounds that society will not change and that there is no connection between assumptions, beliefs, and the economic and political opportunities that the modern liberal state offers if we are willing to grasp them. Huntingtons dream is to get rid of cultural obstacles to economic dev elopment, while it is y et unclear whether there is any strong belief in the v irtues of democracy in what he has to say . Huntingtons answer does not intend to demonstrate that it is democracy which has to be left out of his global picture. In his case, if progress is not fast enough, it is because those cultures which resist progress as seen from Massachusetts are obstacles which one must remov e, but Huntington is no clear analy st of how culture and democracy might hinge. [] We define culture, Huntington writes, in purely subjectiv e terms as the v alues, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underly ing assumptions prev alent among people in a society 1 2. His v ision of culture has left one notion unmentioned: what about solidarity , the cornerstone of Richard Rorty s v ision of social hope? It may well be that this is one v alue that the modern liberal state has eroded, and that solidarity is a basic asset to those communities forming the lesser dev eloped countries of Africa, Latin America and parts of the Asian world, where welfare is weak, and institutionalized education poorly dev eloped, where, for political reasons, states are not ready to reach out to populations and areas left to their own resources and inv entiv eness in terms of welfare. Huntingtons discourse, as a result, is a perfect illustration of the New Conserv atism that Habermas has targeted. Modernity , in Huntingtons world-v iew, is seen as totally dependent on itself. Beliefs, in particular, are taken to task, in Huntingtons definition of culture. What if beliefs were an adequate instrument of the progress Huntington has in mind, one notion which is empty enough, and which Huntington parades to conceal his conserv ativ e v iews? Inherited ideas and attitudes are more of a surv iv al-kit than an obstacle to social cohesiv eness. One hardly knows, when reading Huntington, whether progress, the norm of his perspectiv e, is one serious academic case of my stagogic thinking, or whether it may hav e practical applicability . It is arguable that progress, with Samuel Huntington, is an abstract notion. Asian culture turns out to be an epistemological obstacle to many political scientists. Once considered incapable of generating economic growth, Asian v alues are seen as an asset in the ongoing economic race, with growth rates that belittle Europe and the United States alike in some quarters of the Asian world. Can one blame economic stagnation on them y esterday , and now say that some basic v alues of Asian cultures are the lev erage of change helping those so-called miracle economies make some headway ? There may well be an emphasis on hard work in Chinese culture, but one cannot see how this is specifically Chinese, or American, or British. Lucian Py e, one prominent M.I.T. scholar in Chinese studies, has suggested that Taoism and the belief in good fortune, supposed to be specific to Chinese culture (although I am aware this might be challenged), has produced outgoing dy namic character in the
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Chinese people, which makes them ready to grasp any opportunity likely to turn to their adv antage. Py es v iew of Chinese culture may easily be taken to task, as he implies that Chinese c ulture leav es no room for introspection. This is most probably a ty pical misconception such as New-England protestant culture wants to bring home. Lucian Py e, in particular, writes the following when considering the reasons for Chinas rapid ex pansion: This stress of the role of fortune makes for an outward-looking and highly reality -oriented approach to life, not an introspectiv e one 1 3. This is, we guess, one academic v ersion of prejudice insisting that the Chinese hav e no soul, and no interest for an inner life. Economists, on the other hand, go for a more mundane v ision of Chinas dev elopment, insisting on the capacity to attract foreign inv estors1 4. This is also quite true of many other rising Asian economies besides China. Howev er, these observ ations lead us to want to ex tend our definition of culture. Culture is not just simply a cluster of beliefs and attitudes outside the realm of economic and political dev elopment. Culture is probably much more than beliefs and attitudes. It encompasses what we might call material culture, in the sense that attitudes matter in economic dev elopment, which is no big news, if we refer to Max Webers understanding of the ethic of capitalism, shaped as it is by the sense of insecurity that goes with the necessity to dev ise for oneself adv ancement in this world, the better to adv ance in the nex t one, or the higher or more sophisticated one in the rich oriental spiritual heritage. No wonder then that Derrida should suggest that between rationality and my stery , there is one connection to be established. And, in Derridas v iew of how rationality and my stery interact, one finds an abiding agreement occurring, and this is of course desirable to establish peace in what he calls culture, which to him is more of a socially encompassing substance than a mere indiv idual determinant of behav iour. Lucian Py e is interesting as an analy st of Chinese social dev elopment, not for what certainties he may hav e in store for us, but for the scepticism which his propositions will cause in most areas of the academic world, and across disciplines. Ex amining the reasons for Chinas economic adv ance, he writes that [...] the driv ing force in Chinese capitalism has alway s been to find out who needs what and to satisfy that market need 1 5. One might meditate for quite a while to determine whether markets are out there for any one to grab, or whether one should shape markets, create needs, and respond to ones ambition to grow by being inv entiv e. Nev ertheless, Lucian Py e v iews Chinese economy as a simplistic answer to world needs, and the capacity to adapt to them, whereas the West is seen as technology -driv en, and culturally more sophisticated: Western firms seek to improv e their products, strengthen their organizational structures, and work hard to achiev e name recognition 1 6. We wonder whether Chinese firms hav e not alway s tried to do precisely this, which can only be generalized with a v ast highly educated workforce, which China is try ing to obtain by adequate inv estment in higher education. This path is promising, from what we can judge when considering our Chinese students in our higher learning European institutions.

Cultural Change and Universities

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If therefore, cultures change, not just priv ate cultures, but also public ones, as we increasingly suspect cultures to be collectiv e assets, univ ersity education has a major role to play in this process. We, as academics, either ex perienced or aspiring ones, must address the issue of what a univ ersity education ought to be like. So fa r in this discussion, we hav e acknowledged
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that academics should av oid v oicing social prejudice, and this has not alway s been accomplished, to say the least. Jacques Derrida has meditated ex tensiv ely on this, with a v iew to promoting the role education might play in defending the v alues of democracy , no doubt because Derridas understanding of the effects of academic training is combined with the idea of a political education for y outh. This may be easily understood when one looks at the moral paraly sis of the German univ ersity sy stem and its many graduates embracing Nazism and prov iding the Nazi regime with its most destructiv e propagandists and functionaries. Howev er, Habermas is clear on this point. German univ ersities cannot be blamed for what befell. Habermas, in particular, points out that the number of students was halv ed during Nazism in Germany , dropping from 1 21 000 in 1 933 to below 60 000 right before the Second World War 1 7 . One reason why this happened, although Derrida is not ex plicit on this point, is that univ ersities tend to ov er-specialize knowledge. This has caused the decline of humanistic study . Habermas offers similar v iews, though they are cast in a more sociological mould. To Derrida, higher education should be critical of whatev er rationality wants to assess. He calls this the univ ersity without conditions, which to him inv olv es an ambitious agenda thus defined: the primal right to say any thing, be it in the name of fiction and of knowledge as ex periment, and the right to speak publicly , and to publish this 1 8. Habermas offers a more accurate v ersion of what ought to be done, and has been insufficiently accomplished so far: integrating humanistic study and technical ex pertise to curb the specialization of knowledge 1 9. This may sound v ague enough, and we wonder where it might lead, because one doubts whether knowledge, in v arious disciplines, might efficiently refrain from becoming specialized. This is why Derrida comes up with more practical propositions as to the contents and orientations of higher education in the book he published in 2001 , LUniversit sans condition. There are sev en such propositions, all hav ing to do with what one might call the architecture of knowledge, all answering the need to redefine humanistic study , which should come alongside more specialized training, either in established scholarly disciplines, or the training of students towards professions outside the academic world. The new humanities should, according to Derrida, deal with what he calls the history of man, which calls us to dev ote more attention than has so far been dev oted to human rights, be they for men or women. To him, these rights are legal performativ es 20 , which sounds otherworldly owing to the weight of abstraction in the phrase. Howev er, this might basically mean that these rights are to be upheld because they can be applied to the v arious fields of human activ ity . Furthermore we must bear in mind that these so-called legal performativ es are performativ es because they hold within them an applicability that may be constantly ex panded, in practical terms, to v arious areas of cultural practice, among which of course science and business, two areas of higher education that are growing to meet the social needs of human dev elopment. The idea of democracy comes second in Derridas architecture of the new humanities. It comes second for reasons of clarity in the presentation of the programme he has in mind. Y et the idea of democracy is not a secondthought, because it runs, let us be reminded, through all his oeuv re as a philosopher. Let us note that democracy , as far as what Derrida has to say about it, is not tethered to nationhood. Nationhood is dangerous, and one may easily understand this in the light of European history , and also of Asia. From this, we can easily infer that cultural change in the future should not rely on national traditions, and that, in this respect, globalization offers opportunities for positiv e cross-fertilization. Derridas meditation on this hinges on the
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concept of sov ereignty . While sov ereignty is a desirable goal for each and ev ery one of us; the idea is v iewed as misleading, as it has often been a concept without practical consequences, while we may still hope that sov ereignty will remain a horizon of belief for indiv iduals, and a v alue that will guide collectiv e decisions. Y et, if Derrida inv ites us to abide by this concept (sov ereignty ), he also believ es that any collectiv e formalization of the idea of sov ereignty should av oid reliance on the nation-state, which may too easily lead to a betray al of indiv idual dignity . Derrida then focuses on the necessity to recuperate the authority of teaching, and of literature, whose proposals cannot be easily understood. One suspects, when reading Derridas proposals, that teaching as well as literature hav e to do with amity , a concept that emerges from Derridas body of works. This is not a norm, neither is it prescriptiv e, nor can it be strictly defined as a doctrine or a set of mandatory rules. We gather this is to be understood as an opening to otherness on the part of the teacher, and a eulogy of respect for the other person, which inv olv es inv entiv eness and the by -passing of any sort of regulation that defines the other person in some way or other that might lead to a position of authority of a colonial or ex ploitativ e nature. It certainly is an attitude of respect, which elbows aside the v ery notion of authority , routs it, as Derrida say s21 . Univ ersities, therefore, should constitute an idea that transcends any specialized discourse on the technicalities of education; it consists in letting the other reach out for his or her potential towards selfdev elopment. The institutional strength of higher education springs, in Derridas v iew of it, from the interaction of the person who teaches and the one being taught, to liv e to the full his or her aspirations. Derridas ideal is so elev ated that it transcends any definition one might come up with. It certainly is a call to confront the normativ e nature of higher education in order to recuperate a lost sense of human warmth that has been eliminated by the technocratic complex ities of institutions seeking intellectual identity in the measurement of student skills and their willingness to comply to them. One also cannot rule out that a backlash has been underway in higher education itself owing to the rising number of first-generation graduates from the less educated groups of our national cultures. This has been more of an opportunity for univ ersities to fulfil their cultural mission from the six ties onwards than a serious obstacle to the growth of higher education, and one can argue that Derrida was balking away from the pessimistic discourse one hears in most academic circles today ill-grounded as it is on the relativ e accessibility to higher education. The challenges that higher education has to face, in the contex t of an ev erincreasing cross-fertilization of cultures, points to one underly ing question that surfaces from an ex amination of current economic and social trends. Is what we call culture tethered to social and economic factors? The question is by no means new, and was handed down to us by the industrial rev olutions of the nineteenth century , and by Marx ist theory . We now tend to believ e that culture is one mode of collectiv e representation that one may disengage from submission to social and economic facts. On this point, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to real structures , that he saw as disconnected from institutions or w orking facts . 22 There is still much thought to be dev oted to whether the degree of autonomy of culture as collective representation inv olv es radical or relativ e autonomy from economic factors. We are also hard pressed to determine whether, in this framework of analy tical thinking, autonomy is or is not hampered by the necessities of those real structures and the institutions that shape them, and ev en perhaps discreetly justify them. Hence, Stiglitzs v iew that one must respond to a democratic deficit, and
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Derridas v iew that one must face the serious issue of a democratic deficit in higher education. The question is not benign, and it calls forth an autonomy of the mind to bend social realities and economic factors to purposes that do not deriv e from them.

Notes
1 Ralph Waldo Em erson Napoleon; or, the m an of the world in Joel Porte, Essays and Lectures , New York, The Library of Am erica, 1 9 83 , p. 7 3 1 . 2 Em erson, p. 7 3 1 . 3 Hubert Dam isch, A Crisis of Values, or Crisis Value ?, in Daniel S. Ham ilton (ed.), Which Values for our Time, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Center for Transatlantic Relations, The Johns Hopkins Univ ersity Press, 2 007 , p. 57 . 4 Peter Fenv es, (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy ; Late Essays by I mmanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida, Baltim ore and London, The Johns Hopkins Univ ersity Press, 1 9 9 3 , pp. 1 1 7 -1 7 1 ; French edition : Dun ton apocaly ptique adopt nagure en philosophie in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe et JeanLuc Nancy (ed.), Les Fins de lHomme: partir du travail de Jacques Derrida, Paris, Galile, 1 9 81 , pp. 4 4 5-4 7 9 . 5 See in particular Making Globalization Work , New York, Norton, 2 007 , chapter 7 , The Multinational Corporation. 6 Richard Rorty , Globalization, the politics of identity and Social Hope in Philosophy and Social Hope, London, Penguin, 1 9 9 9 , p. 2 3 3 . 7 Jrgen Haberm as, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians debate, Cam bridge, Mass., The M.I.T. Press, (1 9 89 ) 1 9 9 7 , p. 4 8. 8 Em ery Roe and Michel J.G. Van Eeten, Three Not Two Major Env ironm ental Counternarrativ es to Globalization, Global Environmental Politics , 4 :4 , Nov em ber 2 004 ; see in particular pp. 3 6 -3 9 . 9 Jean-Pierre Dupuy , Petite Mtaphysique des Tsunamis , Paris, Seuil, 2 005, p. 85. 1 0 John Rawls, Political Liberalism , New York, Colum bia Univ ersity Press, 1 9 9 3 , p. 1 81 . Joseph Stiglitz follows suits with a set of m ore technical criteria in Making Globalization Work; s ee the sectionResponding to the Dem ocratic Deficit, pp. 2 802 85. 1 1 Slav oj Zizek, Le Tibet pris dans le rv e de lautre, Le Monde Diplomatique, n 6 50, m ai 2 008, p. 3 2 . 12 Sam uel Huntington, Foreword in Lawrence E. Harrison & Sam uel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress , New York, Basic Books, 2 000, XV. 1 3 Lucian W. Py e, Asian Values: from dy nam os to dom inoes?, Culture Matters , p. 249. 14 On this consider Franoise Lem oine, LEconomie de la Chine, Paris, La Dcouv erte, 2 006 , esp. pp. 6 7 -6 8. 1 5 Py e, Asian Values: from dy nam os to dom inoes?, p. 2 50. 1 6 Py e, p. 2 50. 1 7 Haberm as, The New Conservatism , p. 1 04 . 1 8 Jacques Derrida, LUniversit sans condition, Paris, Galile, 2 001 , p. 1 6 . 1 9 See The Idea of the Univ ersity , The New Conservatism , pp. 1 00-1 2 7 . 2 0 Derrida, LUniversit sans condition, p. 6 9 . 2 1 Derrida, p. 7 2 . 2 2 On this, consider Daniel Parrochia, La Forme des crises : logique et pistmologie, Sey ssel, Cham p Vallon, 2 008, esp. pp. 1 04 -1 2 8.

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Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization

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Alain Suberchicot, Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization , Transtext(e)s Transcultures [En ligne], 4 | 2008, mis en ligne le 20 septembre 2009, consult le 29 aot 2012. URL : http://transtexts.revues.org/237

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Alain Suberchicot Professor, American Studies, University of Lyon (Jean-Moulin)

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