European inventory of
societal values of culture

Appadurai - Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2-3): 295-310.

The central problem of today’s global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization. A vast array of empirical facts could be brought to bear on the side of the ‘homogenization’ argument. Most often, the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization, or an argument about ‘commoditization’, and very often the two arguments are closely linked. What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or other way: this is true of music and housing styles as much as it is true of science and terrorism, spectacles and constitutions.