Page 73 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

ULF HANNERZ

clusterings of relationships (cf. Hannerz 1992a). And we need to develop a
sense of its variety and density of linkages. The point I want to emphasize here
is that a great many kinds of actors now operate, if not literally globally, then at
least transnationally. There are more ethnic diasporas than ever before, dis-
persed kinship groups, multinational business corporations and transnational
occupational communities, as well as movements, youth cultures, and other
expressive lifestyles with a self-consciously border-crossing orientation; not to
speak of media, from the International Herald Tribune to CNN and whatever is
on the Internet. Each one of them is engaged in its own particular way in the
management of some part of contemporary culture. The combined cultural
process, and the overall habitat of meanings and practices in which we dwell,
can thus be understood as the outcome of the variously deliberate pursuit by a
variety of actors of their own agendas, with different power and different reach,
and with foreseen or unanticipated consequences.
Consequently, for a more comprehensive study of the cultural implications
of globalization, we need a fairly robust sociology of culture, mapping the ways
in which these activities come together. As one way of coming to grips with
the overall complexity of global cultural organization, I have attempted to
conceptualize it as ordered by four main organizational frames, existing in
interrelation with one another: state, market, movement, and form of life (see
e.g. Hannerz 1992b, 1996). To put it briefly, culture typically flows between
rulers and the ruled (citizens, subjects), between buyer and seller, between those
converted and those not converted, and between people engaging with one
another on a more symmetrical basis in a variety of relationships in going about
life, for example as kinspeople, neighbors, friends, or work mates. These
frameworks tend to handle meanings and meaningful forms according to dif-
ferent organizational, temporal, and spatial logics. There is probably a greater
strain towards innovation and towards spatial expansiveness, for example, in the
market framework than in the state framework or in the form of life frame-
work, the former being concerned not least with administrative routines and
historical legitimacy, and the latter being in large part preoccupied with daily
practicalities.
Particular types of actors and particular kinds of relationships may thus
evince some recurrent leanings in the way they deal with culture of whatever
kind. (Think, for instance, of the differences between a state religion and the
kind of religion propagated in the marketplace by televangelist entrepreneurs.)
Yet as we scrutinize cultural processes within the frames further, we may also
discern that they are not necessarily entirely homogeneous even within them-
selves. The global homogenization scenario, for example, is typically most at
home in the market framework: there may be a strong tendency on the part of
sellers to try and reach the largest possible number of consumers with the same
product. It may thus seem to be natural for the market to disregard or subvert
boundaries, rather than to respect them or even celebrate them, unless obstacles
are placed in its way. None the less, there is also an opposed tendency towards a

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