Page 187 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Transnationality, Globalization, and Postcoloniality 171

and East Germany) shared many characteristics and traits across national
borders, from the structure of their creative industries, to the popularity
of the aesthetic movement of social realism, to various forms of national
cultural rituals such as military parades. In other words, despite each
country ’ s emphasis on its unique ethnic and cultural character, national
language, and even open animosity to one another, they shared many
cultural traits with their neighbors, all thanks to a participation in a social-
ist economic system and a shared experience of existing under Soviet
military, political, and economic control. Something similar occurs when

national cultures are influenced by the spread globally of American tastes
and cultural proclivities, from McDonalds to hip hop, from Facebook to
blue jeans, to the extent fi nally that such things cease to be “ American. ”
Cultures, therefore, are affected by, but not limited to, national bounda-
ries. Some cultures are regional in character – the Amazon Basin, for

example, or the Pacific Islands, while whole regions such as “ Latin ” America
share cultural assumptions and practices across borders while nevertheless
differing remarkably in other ways (from salsa to mariachi in music, for
example). A transnational approach to the study of culture is particularly
important in the study of stateless and migrant cultures and ethnic groups
that are not protected by national or international laws: the Palestinians
and the Kurds in the Middle East; the Jews or Roma in Europe; Native
Americans; indigenous populations in post - colonial nations in South
America, Africa, and Asia; tribal communities in Africa; sexual minorities
in most countries; and so on. In some sense, we must speak of a planetari-
ness of cultures.
Transnationality and globalization and post - coloniality are intercon-
nected phenomena and processes. In popular discourse, economic, tech-
nological, or military globalization are often presented as the very condition
of progress – a one - way process of democratization and modernization of
non - European and non – North American states and peoples that starts at
the center of Western capitalist democracies and travels worldwide reach-
ing all developing countries. It is true that globalization in its many forms
connects diverse cultures, economies, and peoples, but the recent collapse
of financial markets worldwide; the deregulation of labor laws in countries

as diverse as the US, Mexico, and Indonesia; and the environmental deg-
radation caused by the unchecked, exploitative policies of transnational
companies all reveal the inequality and dangers inherent in such a global
connectivity network when it is guided by the immoral principles centered
on unrestrained self - interest.