In their introduction to Global Communications: Toward a Transcultural Political Economy, Paula Cahkravartty and Yuezhi Zhao do a fine job of highlighting the awkward friction inherent in globalism and neoliberal economic policies, and its significant impact on political economies around the world. Far from the “seamless,” hyper-connected globe painted by the last couple decades’ of rhetoric (and Thomas Friedman’s global techno-utopia), they find a wide range of “shifting boundaries and trajectories” and new channels for citizenship and exclusion.
There are the “profound racial and cultural implications of a continental shift in the transnational flows of capital, labor, and culture” triggered by China’s heavy investment in African nations. There’s the “shining India” of brochures and the deeply unequal India of reality. There’s the “soft authoritarianism” of neoliberal poster child Singapore, and the “vocal rejection” of neoliberalism by increasingly socialist states like Venezuela. Cahkravartty and Zhao find globalization to be “multifaceted and extremely uneven.” In retrospect, it’s a little amazing we ever accepted the neoliberals facile version of such a large and varied planet.
The idea that a rational market exists independent of the rest of society is laughably naive. The market is, rather, embedded in society, and “must also be capable of at least staking a claim to furthering the ethical basis of social life” (Jenkins cited by Chakravartty and Zhao). The information, communication, and cultural industries are all inextricable parts of “the market” and fundamental elements of society itself. This is why the rest of the book focuses on case studies across a wide range of media and geography, from Canadian documentaries about women in Afghanistan to the gendered production of adinkra cloth in Ghana. (I’m not convinced when the authors say that these case studies are not arbitrary (outside of a few basic qualifying parameters), but they do seem to reinforce the points made in this introduction.)
The authors make the point, apparently forgotten, that history pre-globalization MATTERS, and developments prior to now are significant and cause greater friction to global links than neoliberal theory would like to believe (Chakravartty and Zhao, 6). Past Japanese colonialsim, for example, continues to be a limiting factor in the cultural power of transnational East Asian popular culture.
This way of thought is also hinged on the economy itself. The 1997 economic crash changed neoliberal policies in many of the affected nations, as nations from Russia to Brazil pivoted away. Even the global North is struggling with the realities of the rhetoric of “a connected world.” These ideas look great in Telco commercials and on billboards in airports, but in times of economic trouble they quickly manifest themselves “in the ferocious debates over immigration, national identity and secsecurity”, testing governance over cultural policy. We build fences, walls, and impenetrable visa programs while continuing to espouse the benefits of open borders.