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The Mythology about Globalization 33

gospel of the global market. Second, and relatedly, when we explore the global
worldview (as manifest in, for example, ‘Big’, ‘More’, ‘Democracy’ and ‘NWO’)
we find that it is refashioning an ideological mantle of historical materialism in
its own image.
What is clear is that globalization is a teleological doctrine that promotes,
explains and justifies an interlocking system of world trade. What is not clear is
the future evolutionary path of this form of market economy determinisn. The
new Marx has yet to arrive who will periodize the globalizing phase into a stage
model of human history. Given its problematic and contingent nature, therefore,
globalization either as mythology or as ideology is being shaped both by the
unpredictability of world events and by the tendency of economic and political
theologians to revise (and re-revise) their dogmas. 15
What is clear, also, is that the old centre–periphery models of economic and
cultural imperialism no longer fit a volatile geopolitical structure that decon-
structs and reconstructs ‘before our very eyes’, any more than they fit the criss-
crossing migration of investment, jobs, people, products, communication and
consumption that characterizes the late twentieth century.
It may be that lacking as we do any single (or bipolar) vantage point of obser-
vation or control, the kaleidoscope is a more apt metaphor than the panopticon for
the postmodern world. It may also be as Tylor (1891: 282) averred that ‘even as
“truth is stranger than fiction”, so myth may be more uniform than history’. Thus,
the myths about globalization may prove more consistent than their future as
history or ideology. On present evidence, neither the gospel of the market nor glob-
alization as the planet’s manifest destiny seem particularly uniform or universal.

Notes

Aspects of this essay were presented in papers for: Sommatie ‘90, Eindhoven, The Netherlands,
1990, the Communications and Culture Symposium, Yugoslavia, 1990, the 18th Telecommuni-
cations Policy Conference, Airlie House, VA, 1990 and the 4th International Television Studies
Conference, London, 1991. I would like to thank particularly Jay Blumler, Denis McQuail, Philip
Schlesinger and Sari Thomas for helpful comments on earlier papers or versions. A book devel-
oping these ideas is forthcoming.

1. Postmodernist emphasis on culture (defined to include theme parks and fast food restau-
rants as well as media artefacts) and patterns of common cultural consumption cross-
nationally also features in media imperialist/cultural dominationist critiques, most notably
Schiller’s (1991).
2. Financial data source: University of Maryland on-line company report (Barton, 1991).
3. As early as 1925, one-third of Hollywood’s gross film earnings came from foreign sales
(Jowett, 1976: 125). In the 1980s exports soared as demand rose for audiovisual products
from proliferating VCRs, broadcast and cable channels; by 1990 US film and television
export trade reached a surplus of §3.5 billion (US Department of Commerce, Assistant
Secretary Obuchowski).
4. Following Eliade (1968: 18), myth becomes fictive only when it ‘becomes “decandent”,
obscured; it turns into tale or a legend’.
5. As such their stories continue a tradition, recurrent across two-and-a-half millennia from clas-
sical Greece to contemporary popular culture. Work on myth and communications has drawn
upon early cultural anthropology and sociology (e.g. Durkheim, 1976; Malinowski, 1974),