Globalization and culture: A sociological perspective

The media imperialism thesis is the most widespread systemic account of cultural globalization. This is in spite of the fact that various ethnographic studies of culture consumption continue to produce evidence that shows that the predictions derived from this approach are not consistent with what is observed. In‐ stead of homogeneity of consumption, we find diversity of interpretation; instead of a decline in the pro‐ duction of domestic local culture, we find increasing “creolization” and a revitalization of folk cultures un‐ der globalization. In this paper, I argue that the media imperialism approach, as a global version of mass culture theory, shares with it many of its analytical and empirical limitations. However, while ethnographic approaches provide useful evidence against the accuracy of the media imperialism paradigm, they are una‐ ble to produce an alternative account of equal analytic and systemic scope. I attempt to remedy this situa‐ tion by proposing a “sociostructural” approach to theorizing the process of cultural globalization, which is a) consistent with recent research at the individual level in the sociology of taste and audience segmenta‐ tion and b) consistent with the actual evidence on transnational patterns of cultural flows and culture con‐ sumption. Using data from various cross‐national sources, I show that the sociostructural account is better able to account for the observed empirical results than the media imperialism thesis in almost every case, including that of transnational film imports and exports.