Saskia Sassen
George Soros
Anita Sieff
Ronald. M. Bosrock
Slavoj Žižek
Umberto Galimberti
Francesco Antinucci
Timothy Druckrey
Marina Gržinić
Rudi Rizman
Carlos Basualdo
John Peter Nilsson
Olu Oguibe
Irwin
Mika Hannula
Jordan Crandall
Eda Čufer
Aleš Erjavec
Nataša Petrešin
Mark Amerika
  Viktor Misiano
 
  "From both a technological and sociological point of view, globalisation has opened up numerous possibilities for the production and expression of national cultures. The national states in these new social conditions are no longer the absolute controllers and this contributes to an internal pluralism – or rather the liberation of national culture. The technology that globalisation has brought with it can act as a great support in the conservation and development of various cultural systems. For example, nowadays it isn’t difficult in single art exhibitions, or study rooms, or in the media, to divulge and increase “inter-culturalism” with these technologies, signifying a new awareness of the existence of different and complementary cultures and societies on this planet. Inter-cultural reciprocity is basically opposed to those too often expressed divisions of people in two adversarial polarities or two exclusive fields, whether these are you-us/them or equal versus different. From an inter-cultural point of view there is no space for a universal cultural model. However, the image which Janus gives of globalisation shows that an asymmetry or cultural stratification is being reached. There are many cultures which didn’t know or couldn’t rebel against the invasion supported by globalisation, TV, finance, international tourism, or by Anglo-isation and global consumerism. A few of these cultures can kid themselves that globalisation is good, but actually those who assimilate it definitively gradually, insidiously and subtly lose their identity. Therefore the problem of cultural protection will play an important role between the cultural creators, the groups of civil society concerned with the so-called “civilised”, in contrast to the “predators” who are the symptoms of globalisation. In other words, for the Slovenian culture a healthy globalisation mainly signifies the assimilation of those globalisation points of view which contribute to its further growth and to a creative heterogeneity, without ever reaching its absorption. In this positive context a more or less spontaneous fusion is attained between something which already exists in our culture in a latent form and which determines external or foreign influences and a further development. To tell you the truth, it was like this in the past – globalisation has accelerated these processes to the extreme.

Prof. Rudolf M. Rizman, DDr. (At the University of Ljubljana and Harvard), Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia