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Chapter 13
Identities in a Global Age, 1970-2000
A new globalization?
In the 1990s a new term, “globalization, came into use. Wherever people looked — at the economy, the
environment, or their culture — they saw global interconnections, for both good and evil. On the good side,
new technology has greatly speeded connections among us: telecommunications can connect almost any two
voices on earth, and aircraft can move people or goods to any point within a day or two. In contrast, the
shrinking tropical forest, which provides the largest portion of the world’s oxygen, has become a concern to
communities everywhere.
One aspect of the globalization taking place in the 1990s is corporate economic expansion. Take Coca-Cola,
for example. Aggressive marketing, corporate organization, and attention to popular taste by the Coca-Cola
Company have sustained Coke as the world’s leading soft drink. In the same era, another type of globalization,
on a smaller scale, has also proved highly successful. Thai restaurants have come on the scene in cities and
suburbs everywhere. This collection of small but successful expatriate businesses reminds us that global
economic growth can come without either corporate organization or a base in the U.S.
Is globalization new or not? Might it be true that global connections in earlier times were equally significant?
This CD-ROM demonstrates that there have been centuries of global connections, even if they took place at a
slower rate. The circumnavigation of the globe verified its shape; the prices of wheat, rice, and sugar have long
allocated those products around the world. Even speed is not new: telegraph connections provided instant
linkage to its users from the 1840s.
In this look at the past thirty years, we can make the case that there was as much global activity in 1970 as in
2000. Student rebellions of 1968 on every continent revealed a restive young generation. The petroleum crisis of
1973-1974, as oil-producing countries cut off sales to most countries in retaliation for the attacks of Israel on its
Arab neighbors, created a worldwide inflationary spiral in prices. The democratization movements of 1989-1992
were planet-wide, but so also were the networks of the 1970s aligning opposing sides of the conflicts in Vietnam
and Angola. The world has changed, but one can argue that globalization is nothing new.
Perhaps the difference is that, today, most people are conscious of globalization. In past centuries, migration
and other processes of global connection steadily worked their influence on society, but only a small number of
people were aware of it. Now we all discuss it.
Forms of contemporary connection and identity
So let us reformulate the issue. Rather than ask whether globalization is new, let us ask two questions: What
changes are taking place in global connections? How do people identify their role in global connections? In
discussing these questions, we will emphasize two types of change in realities and in our ideas about ourselves
and the world. Global connections lead to convergence but also to divergence. In this investigation of connected
patterns, we encourage you to think about the convergence and divergence in material connections and in ideas.
You should explore the relationship between globalization and changing identities, and consider the importance
of migration in all these types of change.
We have spoken in earlier units of various forms of connections in culture, noting that some connections are
simple and one-directional, while others are complex. These categories of connections can be applied to the
material world and to ideas.
In the material world, one side of global connection is the imposition of global trends on localities. Both
technological advance and economic stagnation in recent times fit into this pattern. From 1970 to 2000, stereo
equipment, computers of increasing power and decreasing size, and wireless communication devices spread
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from centers of manufacture to consumers. This growth was offset by decline elsewhere in the economy, so that
working families earned no more in real terms in 2000 than in 1970, except perhaps in some Asian economies.
For these types of changes, awareness of global interactions did not do much to either speed them up or slow
them down.
Another side of globalization is that local populations have been able to take advantage of global trends. The
Chechen people of the Caucasus seized the initiative and were able to make their local politics diverge from the
global trend. Members of this small ethnic group, exiled to Kazakhstan in the 1940s, regained their homeland
and reaffirmed their identity by the 1960s. As the Soviet Union crumbled after 1989, Chechen leaders relied on
strong local organization, the Russian disarray, and the support of other Muslims to achieve virtual
independence from Russia by 1996.
Similarly, ideas about oneself and about globalization are undergoing both convergence and divergence. We
have also spoken in earlier units of alterations in identity for individuals and groups as their lives are transformed
by migration and other social changes. What shall we assume to be the basic source of identity? Is it one's
national birthplace and citizenship? Is it religion, age, gender, economic status, work, or styles of cultural
expression? Identity operates now on so many levels that it has become a matter of individual choice rather than
something assigned according to national and cultural associations. Recent decades have been labeled a time of
“identity politics” because of the many public assertions of and changes in self-identification.
In an unusual set of events, for example, the local population of Chiapas defined its own identity in a striking
mix of local and global terms. This Amerindian population of southern Mexico supported a rebel group that
followed up a brief military action in 1994 with a long political struggle against Mexico’s central government.
Here the small group demanded not independence but recognition within the larger nation. The Chiapas
population relied on the growing consciousness of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, in the Arctic,
the Pacific, and parts of Africa. Their spokesperson, the masked and mysterious Subcommandante Marcos,
relied equally on Internet communication with allies around the world. The people of Chiapas managed to avoid
being labeled in local terms as a tribe or ethnic group, but spoke as citizens of Mexico and as participants in the
broad movement of indigenous peoples.
Global connections and changing identities are reinforcing one another. In material connections, Coca-Cola
becomes tied to the identities of its consumers everywhere, so that it is not seen as a foreign product. Yet
worldwide processes bring local innovations such as Thai restaurants, Chechen independence, and the
revolutionary movement in Chiapas. These successful divergences, contradicting the main global trends, then
become part of globalization.
The peasants of Chiapas identified themselves not only as “Indians” or “Maya,” but also as citizens of Mexico
and as an indigenous people. In so doing they extended their recognition to other Mexicans and other
indigenous peoples, and gained support from all over Mexico and all over the world. Groups and individuals
have long asserted their own identities; what is different about the late twentieth century is that people are more
willing to recognize each other’s identity. While stereotyping of the other is still a common practice, in recent
decades people have become cautious about projecting labels such as “heathen,” “native,” and “uncivilized” on
each other. Increased recognition of each other, much of it facilitated by migration, allows for deeper
interaction.
In grappling with the shifts in connections and identities that are commonly called “globalization,” we can
begin to see where these changes are taking us. Will we all become alike? Or are new differences growing among
us? It seems that we will see some of each, particularly through the influence of migration. Migration brings the
connections that spread innovations all across the planet, but it also brings the improvement in communications
that enable people to resist or transform global influences.
As global connections and new identities reinforce each other, how will the process of globalization change?
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For the period ahead, we believe, we can expect a mix of convergence and divergence — new similarities and
new differences around the world. In the next two sections, we discuss each type of change.
A smaller world?
As communication improves, the world gets “smaller” and people in different situations find they share a
common fate. Symbolic events can mark the fate that we share or that we fear. The catastrophic 1985 meltdown
of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, became a symbol of a shrinking world. People everywhere, in
learning of the disaster, identified with those affected by the breakdown. Nuclear power plants provided
electricity but also the threat of radiation and death to all humanity. Chernobyl became a global symbol of the
dangers of new technology and the ineffectiveness of big government. The Chernobyl disaster, recalling the
previous generation’s fear of nuclear war, pulled people together.
Another way in which the world has become smaller is in the resonant calls for democracy. In movements that
surfaced in Iran in the 1970s, the Philippines and Haiti in the 1980s, and in China plus all the world starting in
1989, masses of people have called for less governmental restriction, much more freedom of speech, a voice in
selecting their government, and recognition of the rights of minority groups. While at times the movements for
democracy seemed to include all the people, in fact it became clear that the professional classes — students,
people in the professions, and government workers — were the strongest supporters of this movement. (Of
course, there also developed movements of backlash against the democracy movements.)
In interpreting our steadily smaller world, we tend to give national names to global phenomena. Commonly,
instances of rapid social or cultural change are labeled as “Americanization, in the U.S. and in other countries as
well.” For Americans, this term reflects a tendency to regard themselves, their lifestyle, and their culture as the
norm and others as the exception. Furthermore, and more subtly, their reasoning presumes that change and
development are natural for the U.S. and exceptional for other areas. They conclude that a McDonald's
restaurant in Moscow reflects Americanization of Russia rather than change for both societies.
Americanization is only one of many types of global connection. The changes of the late twentieth-century
world are not limited to the radiation of power and influence from urban and industrial centers. The Caribbean
diaspora, at once a new and an old movement, displays the range of ways in which identity may be defined.
From 1500 to 1850, this region received more migrants than almost any other area; by 1950, it had begun to
send out more migrants than all but a few areas. People from English-, Spanish-, and French-speaking
Caribbean islands have migrated in growing numbers to the mainland countries of the Americas, to Europe, and
to other continents, creating new diasporic connections, and linking their traditions in religion, cuisine, music,
and work to each other and to those of the regions in which they settle. Perhaps, in this regard, there is also a
“Caribbeanization” of the world.
The multicultural alternative
As the world grew smaller, the pressures of global connections tended to create differences as rapidly as they
created uniformity. Divergence, which is always a part of global connection, now took the form of
multiculturalism.
The realities of the world's many languages and cultures have always been there. But in the late twentieth
century, the various groups came to celebrate their identity more publicly. For the many countries with
nationally controlled press, electronic media, and school systems, the range of cultural choice available had been
restricted. But the opening of global connections has led to more cultural choices in every country and in many
families. As this trend developed, looking at a magazine stand or listening to a range of radio stations could give
the observer an indication of the major sub-groups in each region. The very ability to switch stations or to buy a
different magazine helped clarify the degree to which cultural identity had become a matter of choice.
In popular music, some simple and uniform changes in technology led to a striking differentiation in musical
performance. For example, the electric guitar, popularized in the 1940s in the U.S., spread rapidly to all the areas
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where guitars were in use — that is, to most of the world. Consequently, each local style of music developed an
electrified version. Then the development of more accessible systems for recording and playing back music —
45 rpm records, reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs — spread each of these types of popular music and
promoted their interaction.
Music became specific to each community, though individuals now listened to music of several types. Musical
preference became a statement of identity — by ethnicity, diasporic ties, and sexual preference — and especially
by age group. Age groups became increasingly important in late-twentieth century identity, and they showed up
with particular clarity in musical tastes.
The communities and the ideas of Buddhism provide another view of changing identities. Buddhism, being at
once a set of organized religious communities and a tradition of philosophy, is free to expand both by the
migration of its communities and by the work of its teachers. Migrations from Southeast Asia have spread the
communities; the search for inner peace in an increasingly tense world has spread the philosophy even further.
In a rather different pattern, Pentecostal Christianity continues to spread all over the world. Its first churches
emerged in the nineteenth-century U.S., drawing on both African and English traditions of Christianity,
emphasizing a basic Biblical text, access to God through spiritual expression, and a conservative political agenda.
Through the work of freelance preachers, it grew in many parts of the Americas, in Africa, and in Russia. With
few corporate ties and no large organizations, this movement of religious faith gathered adherents across
distances and language barriers.
Conclusion: connecting identities
Who, then, adopts a global identity? If globalization and global consciousness are closely related, then perhaps
a growing number of people identify themselves as “humans” or “people,” or “citizens of the world.” And if so,
is that identity in addition to or a substitute for a national or ethnic identity?
The revolutionary activist Thomas Paine labeled himself a “citizen of the world” in the eighteenth century,
though he traveled little further than Great Britain, the United States, and France. We may ask whether, after
two more centuries, the term “citizen of the world” has become more meaningful. There exists no global
government to convey citizenship or issue global passports, so becoming a citizen of the world still involves
adopting an idea rather than assuming a legal status.
The answer to who adopts global identities seems to lead in two directions. On one side, many people adopt
global and cosmopolitan identities, yet without cutting their local ties. On another side, many people
acknowledge the growing global connections but focus on reaffirming their own, local identity. The expansion
of global connections leads at once to greater toleration and to new types of intolerance.
Among the important changes in identity in recent times has been the assertion of rights by women and
children. Women now have achieved formal citizenship and legal equality in most societies. Children, in various
ways, now claim the rights of citizens: it is difficult to grant them full rights, but impossible to deny them
recognition. Growing recognition of the rights of children is changing the functioning of many families.
One of the most striking ventures in changing identities during the 1990s was South Africa’s Truth
Commission, more fully known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). After South Africa’s
century of racial and ethnic exclusiveness, police repression, and war, the commission was an attempt to create a
“new nation.” The commission, in its public hearings, relied on fact-finding, confession, and forgiveness as a
way to create emotional ties among the larger group. The work of the commission could not create uniformity:
for instance, most South Africans had to listen to translations in order to understand parts of the proceedings.
But the TRC acknowledged and renounced the hatreds of the past and offered a shared space for discussing
them. In so doing, it created a new national accommodation within which the various communities could
develop and overlap. Sharing the experience of their past, even from conflicting perspectives, tied South
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Africans together.
The TRC appears as a national institution working within national context. But in reality, there is a great history
of migration and connection behind it. It begins with the migration of people of all backgrounds to South Africa
as settlers and away from it as refugees. It continues with international connection among those calling for an
end to the apartheid regime. The very idea of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission migrated from Chile
and other countries, where it was developed earlier.
This experience may provide a lesson for world historians. If we recognize ourselves, today, as part of a global
community, does it still make sense to treat our past as having been lived in separated communities? Perhaps we,
as world historians, can go back and rethink the world and its connections, in a fashion analogous to the way
South Africans are rethinking their nation. If we do, who knows what discoveries might await us?