Globalization Broadly Defined Globalization is the worldwide spread, over both time and space, of a

number of new ideas, institutions, culturally defined ways of doing things, and technologies. Harvey (2005) spoke of a compression of both time and space in the spread of capitalist modernity on a global scale. Giddens ( 1 99 1 ) defined globalization a s "the intensification of worldwide social relations [with] distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa" (p. 64). Giddens (199 1 ) stressed four areas of globalization as primary: multilateralism, global divi sion of labor, spread of capitalism, and military alliances. Appadurai (1990) talked of five scapes of globalization that cover migration, finance, technol ogy, culture, and ideology. Closer to the focus here on the role of globaliza tion in mediated communication, Tomlinson ( 1 999) said, "globalization refers to the rapidly developing and ever-densening network of interconnec tions and interdependences that characterize modern social life" (p. 1 74).

Tomlinson ( 1 999) said complex connectivity leads to a variety of proximities for people, beyond the local and national. Featherstone (in Featherstone & Lash, 1 995) said that globalization undoes local cultural

unities and creates cultural complexity, and I will argue that globalization adds more layers of culture for television production, flow, and consumption

82 Chapter 4 above the local and national. While that may reduce somewhat the salience

of the local and national to many people, most people will continue to have strong local and national identities, even as they gain other layers as well.

Economic Globalization Economically, globalization is often seen as the spread of capitalism as a

system (Wallerstein, 1979), as capitalist modernity (Tomlinson, 1999), as a specifically neoliberal form of capitalism (Harvey, 2005), as consumerism

and commercialism in systemic models, and as social ethics, sometimes referred to as McDonaldization (Ritzer, 2004a, 2004b), and as the grow ing penetration and power of international corporations (Herman & McChesney, 1 997). Economic analyses tend to focus on finance, on owner

ship and foreign investment, on models of operation, and on the ability of the state or others to regulate or control economic activity.

Business leaders (Wriston, 1 988), pundits (Friedman, 1 999), and others have noted how globalized finance has become overall and how quickly money moves around the world (Sassen, 2004). Television, however, is most often a stubbornly national system, even in terms of finance. Most television markets are still financed by nationally focused advertising, which operates under rules defined largely by nations, with advertising conceptualized in terms of national audiences, even if the advertiser is a multinational corpo ration with a global sales strategy. In ownership, even though foreign direct investment flows globally, television network ownership rules are still usu ally defined by national governments, as are those of cable television sys tems. Direct-to-home satellite television systems may try to bypass national governments, but if they wish to collect a subscription fee or work with national advertisers, they usually end up having to cooperate with national governments, which most often try to regulate such activities. Clearly, too,

national governments vary enormously in their ability and will to regulate. At one pole, China quickly forced _ Murdoch's Star TV to submit to intense regulation, allowing very little into the country, and at the other are fragile

states like Belize, where foreign satellite television preceded national televi sion (Oliveira, 1986).

Globalization as the Spread of Capitalist Modernity Globalization can be seen as both spatial-the outward geographic

spread of ideas and forms, particularly those related to capitalism-and

Creating Global, U.S., and Transnational Television Spaces 83 temporal--changes over time within many locales, often portrayed as a

process of hybridity (Kraidy, 2005; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004). "One way to attempt to simplify the level of complexity which the intensification of global

flows is introducing in the figuration of competing nation-states and blocs, is to regard globalization as an outcome of the universal logic of modernity" (Featherstone & Lash, 1 995, p. 2).

Inside the academic debate on communications-indeed, in most of the debate about change and development of nations-modernization was seen as an outmoded idea. Modernization, in the original sense of following a set of stages toward development derived from Western nations' experience (Lerner, 1958), was seen as unworkable, given structural differences between nations, such as the economic dependency of former colonies on their

former colonial powers (Faletto & Cardoso, 1 979). Modernization was also seen as introducing unnecessary Westernization or Americanization

(Hamelink, 1 983; Schiller, 1 976). Outside the academic debate, however, many governments, particularly in East Asia and Latin America, were still pursuing a strategy of modernization, regardless of the cultural imperial ism and dependency debates. However, in practice, many of their concrete policies and initiatives were, in fact, aimed at increasing autonomy and minimizing dependence. In pursuing autonomous mini- and microcomputer industries, for example, countries such as South Korea and Brazil were pur suing a practical antidependency policy (Evans, 1 992).

Since the 1 990s, academic debates have revived modernity as a key concept. Tomlinson ( 1 99 1 ) argued that much of what was labeled cultural imperialism was in fact a broader spread of a globalized pattern of moder nity. This discourse argued, in particular, that much of what was seen as Americanization or Westernization was a more general, deeper globalization of capitalism, "the broader discourse of cultural imperialism as the spread of the culture of modernity itself" (Tomlinson, 1 991, pp. 89-90, italics in the original).

A related question is whether modernity is a singular tendency or one with many possible versions and outcomes. As I will show later, a number of aspects of globalization tend to standardize certain kinds of economic modernity, such as financial institutions, trade rules and regimes, and com

mercial media models. However, Tomlinson ( 1999) also argued later that

a " decentering of capitalism from the West" was taking place (p. 140). A number of writers, such as Iwabuchi (2002), argued for distinct Asian or Japanese versions of both capitalism and media/cultural modernity. China

has also steadily emerged as a major site and alternative form of capitalist production in the current neoliberal system (Harvey, 2005), with many fea

tures of current global capitalist modernity. The fact that China has refused

84 Chapter 4 Western prescriptions of the sort of democracy that is supposed to accom

pany modern capitalist development presents a long list of contradictions to traditional notions of modernity.

One problem with this modernity-focused analysis, with relying on a rather systemic notion of modernity as the key concept, is losing sight of real issues of differential power between different parts of the world in econom

ics, in politics, and in cultural industries like television. Some forms of cul tural production, such as commercial television genres, for example, soap

opera, could be analyzed either as forms of capitalist production or as man ifestations of modern approaches to media. The two angles offer somewhat

different insights. Both imply limits placed on-and resources available to cultural producers (television networks) and cultural consumers (television

audiences) . One virtue of cultural imperialism is that it reminds academics to consider that different actors within the world system have different

resources and levels of power. One problem with classic, neo-Marxist approaches, in contrast, is that they tend to reduce too many things to linear conceptions of political eco nomic power. For authors such as Schiller ( 1 969) or Herman and McChesney ( 1 997), the power of ownership is paramount, but as Murdoch's attempts to

enter China show, simply owning something, even something as apparently powerful as Star TV, is no guarantee of obtaining access to a nation's audi

ence. Building on Appadurai's ( 1 996) notion of scapes, I must note that there is not a single dimension or continuum of action or power at work.

A country might well be highly dependent on outside technology, while relatively autonomous in cultural production. The investigation of popular culture "requires taking the cultural sphere as neither derivative from the

socio-economic, as a merely ideological phenomenon, nor as in some meta physical sense, preceding it. Rather it (Barbero, 1988) is the decisive area

where social conflicts are experienced and evaluated" (Rowe & Schelling,

1 991, p. 12).

Globalization Broadly Defined Globalization is the worldwide spread, over both time and space, of a