Cultural Imperialism Versus Globalization of Culture: Riding the Structure‐Agency Dialectic in Global Communication and Media Studies

This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so‐called cultural imperialism and globalization of culture perspectives in global communication and media studies. At an extreme, cultural imperialism is cast as the international extension of the long‐discredited hypodermic needle theory which views cultural consumers as passive automatons. At the other end of the extreme, the globalization of culture perspective is cast as a wildly postmodern standpoint in which free‐floating individuals are said to be able to make an infinite set of localized meanings from cultural products. There has been a growing trend among many global communication and media scholars to locate a productive middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. In this author’s view, the most effective melding of the two perspectives would situate local, creative appropriation of cultural objects against the backdrop of larger, hegemonic regional and global macro‐forces. This approach ought also to acknowledge the many complexities that characterize the intersections among globalization, culture, and media, including the ways in which the local, national, regional, and global constitute one another and the ways in which resistance to local hegemony can paradoxically fuel national or global hegemony.     

Policy Sequencing and the Development of Rice Value Chains in Senegal

In response to the world food crisis in 2008, Senegal developed a productivist national food self‐sufficiency programme. However, the critical question is not whether the programme can meet its ambitious target of self‐sufficiency in rice production by 2015, but, if it does, how will domestic rice reach urban markets, where consumers generally prefer imported rice for its superior grain quality. Information collected through interviews and a stakeholder workshop advances the argument that policy sequencing will be crucial in order to upgrade Senegalese rice value chains progressively. Any large‐scale investments in productivity will need to be preceded by investments in post‐harvest grain‐quality infrastructure before sector‐wide marketing strategies can be adopted that enhance the chain competitiveness of domestic relative to imported rice.     

Diversity and change in Cambodian households, 1998–2006

Extant ethnographic studies suggest that the nuclear family has been the predominant living arrangement in Cambodia, and the country’s rapid socioeconomic transformation since the early 1990s may have accentuated that dominance. To examine these claims, we analyse here household structure in Cambodia between 1998 and 2006, based on data from the 1998 Census, two nationally-representative surveys (2000 and 2005), and a continuing demographic surveillance system (from 2000 on). Our analysis confirms the large prevalence of nuclear families, but not an unequivocal trend toward their increasing prevalence. First, nuclear families are less prevalent in urban than in rural areas, and nationwide, they appear to have receded slightly between 2000 and 2005. We find that increases in the prevalence of extended households correspond to periods of faster economic growth, and interpret these contrasted trends as signs of tensions during this transitional period in Cambodia. While the nuclear family may still be the cultural norm, a high degree of pragmatism is also evident in the acceptance of other living arrangements, albeit temporary, as required by economic opportunities and housing shortage in urban areas.