![]() Cultural Contact and Global MashupsPeter Heehs THE CLASP OF CIVILIZATIONS: GLOBALIZATION AND RELIGION IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD By Richard Hartz D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 2015, pp. ix 270, Rs. 750.00 VOLUME XXXIX NUMBER 5 May 2015 Globalization:
the word is hardly fifty years old but the process has been going on for a very
long time. Scholars generally trace its origins to the early seventeenth
century, but it is possible to go back much further. The prehistoric migrations
that took homo sapiens from
Africa to Eurasia to the Americas were the first waves of globalization,
setting the scene for all that followed.
When
sedentary civilizations were established they came in contact with one another
through aggression, trade and cultural diffusion. These three
motives—politicomilitary, economic, and cultural—remain the driving
forces of globalization today.
In this
fascinating collection of essays, Richard Hartz looks primarily at cultural
contacts, especially between what are still called ‘the East’ and ‘the
West’—although these terms have now lost much of their meaning on account,
precisely, of globalization. How eastern is a software engineer working for a
German firm in Bangalore, speaking English as his primary language, and queuing
up to see the latest Hollywood film? And how western is a Manchester-born woman
who trades in her mini-dress for a burqa, quits her job in a biochemistry lab
and flies to Turkey to join the ISIS? Regional cultures still count for
something, but global mashups
will dominate the future.
Increased
globalization is inevitable, and the forces propelling it are beyond the
control of any organization, much less any individual. But, Hartz insists, our
individual choices could still make a difference. We ‘have to think
about what kind of global society we want. If another world is possible, what
kind of world do we want it to be?’ After stating his central concern in these
words, he acknowledges that ‘economic and political issues loom
large among the problems’ of the globalizing world. He is chiefly concerned
with cultural matters because ‘economics and politics operate in cultural
contexts which can no longer be ignored.’ This choice of focus is a natural one
for Hartz: he is, the jacket informs us, a scholar interested in Asian
languages and cultures, notably Sanskrit literature and the works of Sri
Aurobindo.
Throughout
the book he relates the thought of Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Jawaharlal
Nehru and other Asian thinkers to the globalization theories of Samuel
Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and other western political
scientists. But before examining Hartz’s take on cultural interaction, I want
to reflect a bit on the relations between economics, politics and culture in
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