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 "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
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