Precolonial Cultural History and Television Abu-Lughod (1993) argued that too much of the analysis of globalization

Precolonial Cultural History and Television Abu-Lughod (1993) argued that too much of the analysis of globalization

focuses on the effects of European colonialism: the world after 1492. There were significant cultures before 1492 at local, national, and cultural-linguistic or regional levels, and these still define many of the essential characteristics

of the cultural markets for television in 2006.

There were partially overlapping regional systems of empire, trade, and religious and cultural influence. Some of these constituted significant empires of millions of people, influencing cultures in profound ways. The

Islamic world stretched from Indonesia to Spain, a world system of its own that invaded Europe and actively combated and survived the spread of European colonialism. China was the center of a vast geocultural system that profoundly influenced cultures from Southeast Asia to parts of what is now Russia to Japan. The Hindu religion, social system, and culture of what is now India was the center of another geocultural system in South and Southeast Asia, interpenetrated in many places with Islam. These regional systems created the historical roots of some of the main geocultural televi­ sion markets in the world today: the Arab world, Hindi South Asia, greater

China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. All of them build on spatially defined regional developments that preceded European colonialism. Most of the other regional or transnational systems, such as Latin America, the Anglo­ phone world (United States, Canada, Australia, and so on), the Francophone states (France, parts of West Africa, and so on), and the Lusophone world

(Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique), were in fact largely the result of European colonial expansion. Some of those are geocultural geographic

units, but several are dispersed transnational cultural-linguistic markets usu­ ally defined by colonial language groups: Anglophone, Francophone, and

Lusophone. In fact, until quite recently, it made more sense to talk of geocultural or cultural-linguistic regions than nations in many parts of the world. The idea of the nation-state developed in Western Europe after 1492, in fact, and spread slowly to other parts of the world (Smith, 1993) . So while scholars can talk of the early regional roots of modern Indian culture, they have to

Hybridization and the Roots of Markets 35

recognize that India, Brazil, and other national units are recent, modern creations. In fact, that is why this book starts historically with local cultures

and geocultural and cultural-linguistic regions (in this chapter) and only then turns to nations and their modern cultural industries (Chapter 3 ) .

Looking a t the world before 1492 also shows how the pattern of hybridization developed historically and how it functions. There are several prototypes of hybridization, ranging from cataclysmic shocks and conquests to gradual contacts. As peoples, languages, religions, and cultures moved, they encountered existing peoples and societies. The Aztecs the Spanish con­ quered in Mexico had themselves taken over lands and people from other indigenous cultures just a little earlier.

Few of these earlier conquests and empires were achieved particularly peacefully. Many of these movements and impositions of peoples, religions, and cultures were forceful and bloody. Many North Americans are descen­ ded from Celts who were driven from central Europe through Western Europe to Spain to the edges of the British Isles, pushed by other warlike tribes. However, over time, these cultures blended as well as conquered. The Norsemen who conquered parts of France after 9 1 1 C.E. became Normans who conquered England in 1 066 C.E., but ultimately, they blended into both places. Although some conquered cultures were literally wiped out, others persisted under the new rulers in a way that provided one of the fundamen­ tal prototypes for the kind of hybridization still seen in the world. Change was rapid, almost cataclysmic, breaking boundaries and patterns of culture,

but a surprising amount often remained, hybridized into the new dominant culture or surviving in subcultures.

A more gradual or emergent hybridization prototype is based on more gradual contacts between cultures. Even before the European conquests after 1492, almost all human cultures were touched by some form of trade, by

small-scale movements of people, and by the movement of tools, ideas, stories, and religious ideas-in short, of culture. Although some primitive groups remained truly isolated, most peoples were slowly changing as these new forces gradually moved in (Nederveen Pieterse, 2004). For example, religious movements are often key to both gradual and rapid cultural change. Missionaries sometimes came with the backing of armies, as did

Christians in Latin America and Muslims in Africa, southern Europe, and South Asia. Often, however, religious ideas moved slowly as a few individu­ als or organizations spread their ideas one by one, with increasing effect

over time.

This gradual process can also be quite revolutionary in its impacts. Changes in tools and economic systems alter cultures powerfully over time. However, cultures also resist and push back. Some tools and economic ideas

36 Chapter 2 are ignored or even specifically rejected because they are too alien or threat­

ening to the receiving culture. An often cited example is the way that Japan stopped using firearms for hundreds of years because such weapons were too threatening to the position of the warrior class, the samurai (Perrin, 1 979). Although firearms in the hands of peasant soldiers were equally threatening to European knights, who became an anachronism on the battlefield, other dynamics in Europe pushed the development and use of firearms forward, so that they became a major tool of subsequent European conquests.

Because we are interested primarily in recent change connected with media, particularly television, which of these two basic models is more applicable? Some writers think about television as an invasion, almost as if media were missionaries backed by the force of armies of conquest, armies now of economic and technological change (Herman & McChesney, 1 997). But is world television really as powerful in changing culture as the move­ ment of peoples, literal conquests by force, and the massive spread of new religions, by both conversion and conquest?

Some other writers see gradual, incremental change as a better prototype for the kind of impact that modern world television systems have (Pool,

1 977). Rather than an overwhelming force, is television a more subtle part of long-term changes, interacting with the cultures that receive and use the forms and technologies of television? This sort of prototype is often analyzed with the theory of hybridity (Bhabha, 1 994; Canclini, 1 995, 2001; Kraidy, 2005; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004). Throughout this chapter, I further define models of hybridization and give concrete examples of how complex cultural hybridization occurs. I discuss the role of television and show how it affects or accelerates the ongoing process of hybridization in a variety of countries.