The Cultures of a Globalized World

Raul Pertierra

Contemporary world culture contributes significantly to the crisis of modernity. The global condition
has engendered a variety of cultures, each adjusting to its particular condition. Instead of culture being
an expression of values, perspectives, and practices within a territory, contemporary culture acts more
like a free-floating signifier loosely connected to its material base. Each expression of culture develops
according to its own internal logic: high culture vs. popular culture; culture of virtuality & virtual culture;
and local, national, and globalized cultures. Each expression of culture is variedly connected to its material
base or spatial configuration. Culture both includes and excludes, depending on notions of normativity
and exemplarity. All cultures are autopoesic and complexly related to their specific ecologies.

Keywords: high vs. popular culture, imaginaries of culture, normativity, exemplarity, autopoesis

Introduction
This paper explores cultures in a globalized world. Hitherto understood
primarily as a system of values, practices, and perspectives characterizing
a specific group in a given locality or territory, contemporary cultures have
become free-floating signifiers only loosely connected to their material
structures. Freeing itself from its context, culture is now free to develop
according to its internal logic. One example is the distinction between high
and popular culture: the former requires increasingly specialized skills while
the latter is constrained by more general tastes. This divide between high
and popular culture is a major aporia of modernity.
As a free-floating signifier, culture can take many other forms and link a
diverse range of collective entities. While sovereign territories can be a basis
for culture, necessary ideological ties—nationality or ethnicity—are needed
to link their members. Other common bases for culture could be shared
perspectives arising from common identities or material conditions. Filipino
communities abroad exhibit a diasporic culture formed through common

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identities. The post-modern condition and the new communications
technologies provide other bases for cultural formations such as cultures of
virtuality (e.g. Second Life members) and virtual cultures (e.g. Facebook).
These latter examples are no less real than other forms of culture. They
share values, practices, and perspectives. Proximate corporeality is no
longer necessary for cultural formations. Hitherto, cultures depended on
quotidian face-to-face interactions. Presently, we live in a technologically
mediated world. We interact as often with absent others (via technology) as
we do face-to-face. It is important to understand the many manifestations
culture takes in the contemporary world. While culture always has a
material substructure (e.g. a set of practices), it is primarily a collection of
representations and hence partly fictive or imaginary.

High culture & global values

High culture is generally seen as autonomous practice answerable only to
its practitioners and specialized audience. Consisting of highly developed
accomplishments, high culture is given a certain freedom from general
norms. Hence, Art is answerable only to itself, while popular culture depends
more on the conventional practices of its wide audience. Art with its more
specialized and limited audience enjoys a relative autonomy from general
norms (e.g. sexuality, blasphemy, and commercial success), while popular
culture (except for radical expressions) requires broad normative support.
As the Frankfurt School argued, popular culture depends on business and
commercial interests (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989). For Theodore Adorno
and his colleagues in the Frankfurt School, popular culture is another
name for business, even as it behaves as ideological apparatus for capitalist
exploitation, and as entertainment. In Adorno’s view popular culture’s
capacity for extending human aesthetic experience is extremely limited
because of severe constraints imposed by commercial interests; radical
practitioners challenge these interests. Adorno valued high culture as the
major expression of the achievements of global modernity, though he clearly
undervalued the originality of popular culture.
While high culture may exercise a limited autonomy, it is nevertheless
connected to politics, the economy, and the broader society. Art reflects
and generates social values such as esteem which is used by other parties for
their own interest. Social, political, and economic elites use high culture as a
justification of their status. When first invented, electronic media such as the
telephone and radio were initially used to disseminate high culture (Briggs
& Burke, 2010). Germany invented high fidelity radio broadcasting (1935)
which was used to transmit classical music and was henceforth associated
with Fascist rule. Elements of high culture emphasizing extraordinary

2 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

achievement or heroic values were easily incorporated into elitist rule.
The notion of the ubermensch or superman suggested by philosophers like
Friedrich Nietsche (Briggs & Burke, 2010) reinforced the link between high
culture and superior achievement. However, the association between high
culture and the collective lack a firm basis in the popular imagination; it
is difficult to rally a nation using highly aestheticized concepts. The close
association between cultural forms and common tastes is better achieved
by popular culture and its accessible values and skills. The democratization
of society often involves the leveling of tastes more suitable for popular
culture rather than the aesthetized sensibilities of high culture (Habermas,
1979).
While modernity is global, it is neither homogenous nor uniform; it
includes various expressions depending on social, economic, and historic
contexts. In its western manifestation, modernity has largely replaced
earlier perspectives provided by religion. This is not the case in countries
such as Saudi Arabia and Iran even if they are also exposed to the influences
of modernity. The rise of religious Fundamentalism is a response to
the secularizing effects of western modernity. While culture framed
religious and mythological beliefs, modernity disengaged culture from
these structures, allowing it to develop along separate dimensions. In the
West, Art (music, painting, & literature) disengaged itself from religious
representation to express secular values and to challenge religious and
other mythological beliefs (Levi-Strauss, 1978). This relative autonomy of
art is not fully recognized in the Philippines, as indicated by the cancellation
of an art exhibit in the Cultural Center several years ago on the grounds that
a painting offended religious sentiments. Artistic expression is constrained
by the more general requirements of religious sentiments. One of the
characteristics of late modernity is the recognition of art as an autonomous
field of expression.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1978) argued that the onset of modernity was
marked by the demise of most mythological beliefs. Western modernity
also saw the rise of classical music such as Frescobaldi, Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven, and Wagner. According to Levi-Strauss: music (and presumably
the arts) replaced the earlier collective representations found in myths. The
cognitive elements of myths, their knowledge, and explanatory claims have
been replaced by science, while their affective and sensorial elements are
found in music and art. The merging of classical music and mythical themes
is best exemplified in Wagner’s operas such as the Ring Cycle. Its characters
combine extraordinary achievements with superhuman qualities. Their
combination is attractive for elites who see power and status as co-terminant.
This view is useful for the legitimation of a Unitary State, combining both

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 3

power and legitimacy. In modern democracies, republicans and democrats
often debate the necessary balance between exemplary values and popular
tastes. In the Philippines, the debate revolves around authoritarian values
and personal choice.
Imelda Marcos is an example of advocating high culture for elevating the
sensibilities of Filipinos. She established the Cultural Center as a venue for
performances of high culture, founded a school for the Arts in Mt. Makiling
to train young artists, and generally encouraged Filipinos to develop their
aesthetic tastes. This interest matched her approach emphasizing the
importance of state institutions, including the Heart Centre and other
prominent government bodies. In this view, high culture supports the
centrality of the State, and is reflected in Imelda’s passion for exemplar
edifices (Lico, 2003). In her case, this interest coalesced with personal views
about political ideologies supporting her family’s grip on power.
Malakas and Maganda represent the polarities of power and legitimacy.
The connection between high culture and power attracted German fascists
(Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989). On the other hand, Maoist revolutionaries
identified high culture, particularly in its western form, with bourgeois
values. Chinese intellectuals and artists were exiled to remote villages to
re-learn proletarian values. Despite these varied views of the role of high
culture, its importance for modern governmentality is firmly established.
In the Philippines, no other prominent politician has matched Imelda’s
support of high culture though other politicians have exploited the political
potential of popular culture (e.g. Erap & FPJ).
Imelda Marcos’s support for high culture suffered a major setback when
the family was deposed and exiled overseas. Critics of martial law conflated
Imelda’s display of wealth with her support of high culture; while the two
may be linked, they are not identical. This produced a backlash against high
culture that persists presently. Contemporary politicians generally ignore
any interest in high culture, and favor its more populist expressions. Only
bureaucrats in offices established by Imelda Marcos, including the National
Commission for Culture & the Arts, and individuals with a continuing
interest in high culture continue to offer support. As a consequence, the
nation’s social imaginary has not achieved its full potential.
Necessary features of high culture are mastery of particular skills,
and upholding standards. High culture is necessarily global because its
standards exceed local and national borders: its practitioners cultivate
highly developed skills. Ethnic artists may also contribute to high culture
after their achievements are recognized (Jimenez, 2016). For the reasons
above, it is important to develop an appreciation for high culture as a source
for a national imaginary.

4 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

The rise of popular culture
Whereas high culture may have exemplary features, it lacks the mass
base of popular culture. The expansion of mass media has given popular
culture an expanded role in the national imaginary. Drawing on earlier
modes of folk culture such as the komedya and sarsuela, (Pertierra, 1995)
film, radio, and television make available an almost unlimited number of
cultural representations. Enriquez writes that “the music recording and
radio broadcast technologies, foreign as they were initially, became the
media of an emerging Filipino popular culture” (Sabangan, 2016, p. 81). In
1908, Maria Carpena, a well-known operatic singer from Laguna, was the
earliest recorded female artist in the Philippines (Sta. Maria-Villasquez,
2016). Unfortunately, she died (1915) before the ready availability of radio
and shellac records became available. But her successors like Atang de la
Rama and Sylvia La Torre enjoyed popular fame. This popularity was fully
developed by singers such as Pilita Corrales, Nora Aunor, and Sharon
Cuneta (Sta Maria-Villasquez, 2016).
In many rural communities, radio still plays a prominent role. Film
also played an important part in constituting a national imaginary, but its
costs were often prohibitive. By combining visual, aural, and textual images,
television effectively transmits popular culture to its mass base. Politicians
and others have taken quick advantage of these connections between media
and its audience. For this reason politics and consumerism are closely linked
(Turner, 2010).

Eat Bulaga as entertainment and politics

Eat Bulaga has been one of the most successful midday television shows.
Recently, one of its subplots (kalyeserye) generated a media phenomenon
known as “AlDub” (Pertierra, 2016). This involves formerly unknown
actors who unexpectedly developed an onscreen romance that has since
taken a life of its own independent of the original TV series. Recognizing
its huge fan base, many commentators expressed positive views about this
phenomenon, claiming it contains valuable lessons reinforcing traditional
elements of Filipino culture such as respect for elders. Those who prefer
high culture criticize AlDub as shallow, exploitive, and humiliating.
Despite its clear connections, no one seems to have associated this
phenomenon to an equally puzzling aspect of Philippine life—the links
between politics and entertainment. The AlDub case poses interesting
questions regarding political and social capital. These phenomena draw
on collective ties linking individuals to their respective leaders or idols.
Journalistic accounts of AlDub generally lack a solid ethnographic analysis of
the role Eat Bulaga plays in everyday life as well as the relationship between

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 5

its material context of production and the social context of consumption.
Some anthropologists have provided an ethnographic context explaining
the basis for their success (Pertierra, 2017b, Lorenzana, 2018).
Recently, anthropology has begun to include analyses of media and
the construction of a lived-world (Lorenzana, 2018). Contemporary life
is not only suffused with media, but also reproduces itself through media
images and practices. We not only live with media but also in media and
through media. Watching TV, sending text messages, posting pictures in
Facebook, and performing in videoke sessions are not only common forms
of entertainment, but also essential aspects of self-representation and
construction (Deuze, Blank, & Speers, 2012). Much of contemporary life
is conducted virtually or digitally, connecting subjects spatially separated.
Everyday life is based on technologically mediated relationships covering
both familiar and non-familiar interlocutors. Contemporary culture both
in its global and local versions favor popular expressions rather than more
specialized tastes of high culture. The latter may still be seen as elitist and
exemplary, while the former reflects more general, non-specialized tastes.
Popular culture is also more closely associated with consumerism, a major
factor in contemporary society. Scholars such as Nestor Garcia Canclini
(1995) and Graham Turner (2010) view popular culture positively: as a site
of resistance and innovation.

Consumerism & entertainment

Anthropology has also turned its attention to less exotic realities, looking
instead at quotidian activities, such as watching TV, hanging out in malls,
and engaging in ordinary practices of consumption (Pertierra, 2010). None
of these are generally seen as involving deep and significant meanings but
are nevertheless essential for the construction and reproduction of the
self. These trivialities of everyday life are often viewed as evidence of the
superficiality of modernity, and its preference for the merely entertaining in
contrast to classical aesthetic standards. The spotlight on ordinary practices
of consumption is also viewed as the triumph of the profane over the sacred.
Anthropologists have pointed out that the profane and the sacred are two
aspects of a common reality (Douglas, 1966); this insight explains the
relationship of silly programs like Eat Bulaga with politics, the economy and
other more abstract and profound aspects of living. Entertainment media
connect the profound with the superficial areas of contemporary life.
Many foreigners are disconcerted by the insistence of Filipinos to mix
hilarity with seriousness. Even the most sober Filipino personalities are
required to engage in behavior such as singing and dancing to amuse their
audience. Miriam Santiago, a politician known for her stern lectures and

6 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

contempt for untutored opponents, delighted her young audiences with silly
jokes and even occasionally dancing. Serious talk shows and even academic
conferences often include lighter moments when people share jokes and
indulge in silly and vulgar comments; sobriety and lewdness are often two
sides of the same coin. Anthropologists refer to these practices as rituals of
reversal (Turner, 1974). These oblige the highborn to momentarily play the
fool as a form of self-deprecation. Displays of self-abnegation reinforce and
legitimize social hierarchies; Alterity is a reciprocal and necessary aspect of
the self.

Fandom & politics

Observers of Philippine life are often struck by the importance of media
personalities involved in local and national politics. A sure way of achieving
political success is to have myriads of fans willing to vote one into office
simply for being well known. Reciprocally, being well-known generates its
own fan base. Hence, media stardom and political success reinforce one
another. Senator Tito Sotto, a founding member of Eat Bulaga, obtained
among the highest votes for the senate in the 2016 elections buoyed by the
success of AlDub. Manny Pacquiao, the nation’s boxing icon and former
congressman, was also elected senator in 2016. They have separate though
similar wide and loyal fan bases. Senators Sotto and Pacquiao are politicians
and media personalities, so their fans run the gamut from fandom to
politics.
While media personalities often come from the entertainment world,
others build their popularity by generating collective compassion. The
election of Pnoy (Benigno Aquino Jr.) as president in 2012 and the sudden
political success of Senator Grace Poe resulted from feelings of collective
compassion following the deaths of Aquino’s mother and Poe’s father. These
latter examples share similar structural sources of support as fandom and
shared grief. They involve members unknown to one another but drawn
together in a common sense of belonging based on a prominent personality
or event. Becoming the recipient of collective compassion and occupying a
prominent, visible place in fandom and politics guarantee political success.
As Benedict Anderson (1991) has pointed out, this sense of individualized
collectivity is the basis for imagining the nation. The new communications
media has provided a new basis for popularity. The effectiveness of social
media in generating such imaginaries is now a familiar event (Pertierra,
2012).

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 7

Televisuality & everyday life
Anthropologists such as Leila Abu-Lughod (2004) and Nestor Canclini
(1995) revealed the importance of popular culture in generating a national
imaginary. Eat Bulaga is not only an iconic example of popular culture;
it also plays a quotidian role in representing and experiencing everyday
Filipino life. A cursory peek into the average household quickly reveals
people watching, perhaps not always intently, their favorite Eat Bulaga
segment; Eat Bulaga (and similar talk shows) is part and parcel of people’s
everyday experience both televisually and sensorially. Given its silly and
superficial appearance, how Eat Bulaga achieves this important cultural
role requires serious investigation (Pertierra, 2017a).
Popular culture requires more than interpretative approaches to unpack
its significance; performance should be seen both as material production
and cultural consumption. Popular culture must be located outside itself
to identify its sources of power and to reveal its constituting practices. In
other words, popular culture must be seen as a component of a broader
sociological reality. Otherwise, popular culture remains only a series of
shallow representations. Instead, we should view popular culture as a field
of practices using images to impose a view of the world, including a position
within this world, with the partial consent of its participants.
Culture is both a domain of signification and a field of signified
practices. Revealing these practices will expose the sources for their powers
of identification (Turner, 2010). The central role of media in merging
entertainment with politics is a feature of late capitalism. Do participants
in Eat Bulaga consent to their humiliation or do they see their actions as
expressions of momentary solidarity? What appears as exploitive from a
bourgeois and high culture perspective may express authentic representation
by members of the exploited class. In this way popular culture may be an
expression of the voice of an otherwise unrepresented class.
How do we account for the deep ties connecting political, religious, and
economic structures with seemingly superficial and silly entertainment? Eat
Bulaga is able to generate feelings of solidarity and community among its
viewers. Guy Debord (1994) views modern society as a series of spectacles or
simulacra passing themselves as real. The spectacle is not just a collection of
images or representations; rather, it is a social relationship between people
mediated by images. This capacity to generate social relations using images
illustrates the power of media and its underlying technology. In this sense,
Eat Bulaga is as much a creation of social relations using televisual means
combined with material distribution as it is entertainment. In other words,
Eat Bulaga is a form of politics, using entertainment as its rationale. Here
the spectacle and the simulacrum merge creating the real and hyperreal.

8 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

Eat Bulaga is possible only because it depends on the material resources
of its sponsors and its consumer base. It is fundamentally a business using
entertainment as its form and rationale. The simulacra in Eat Bulaga are
politically and economically real. They generate loyalties and redistribute
goods. It is also a basis for a national imaginary of which AlDub is an
important component.

Cultures as free-floating signifiers

In a world increasingly without boundaries, culture links diverse groups
and collectivities through a complex network of structures, often beyond
the nation-state. This influx results in an excess of meaning and a lack of
sense (Markus, 1997). Discursive structures are no longer directly related
to their productive sources. For this reason, culture adds as much to our
disorientation as to our location in the world. Culture is a major contributor
to the so-called crisis of modernity. Closely connected to its spatial base
in the nation-state, culture acts to justify its ideological unity. Presently
transcending its territorial base, culture challenges and subverts its earlier
role as unifier of the nation. Modern identities are no longer anchored within
the nation-state and following culture’s free-floating nature can now locate
subjects extra-territorially. Hence, some American born children of Filipino
parents refer to themselves as Filipinos from California. An earlier territorial
link to the nation-state (citizenship) has been replaced by a personal
ethnic identity based on descent (Pinggol, personal communication, July
2, 1995). Other Filipinos point out the inadequacy of conflating ethnicity
with nationality (Nagasaka & Fresnoza-Flot, 2015). Hitherto, the nation-
state has been based on a notion of culture that is territorial, homogeneous,
and exclusive. Each nation-state possesses a specific national culture that
distinguishes it from others. One of its major responsibilities is to preserve
and defend its national culture. Cultural borders are established and fiercely
defended. Foreign cultural elements are excluded or domesticated and
indigenized.

National imaginaries & virtual collectivities

What happens to cultures (e.g., national culture) earlier defined as being fixed
and bounded? As an important component of the national consciousness,
nation-states redefine culture to better suit its present dysfunctions on a
nationalism based on historical falsification, inconsistency, instability,
and exclusivity. Ernest Renan (1882), the major historian of nationalism,
claimed that historical falsification was a necessary component of a national
consciousness. In the Philippines, we are familiar with the controversies
involving Aguinaldo and Bonifacio about opposing claims for the title

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 9

of father of the nation. To complicate matters, Rizal, the most revered
nationalist figure, disagreed with the plan to launch an armed revolt against
Spain. The Ilustrados were a fractious bunch who often disagreed with one
another (Quibuyen, 1999). These disputes and inconsistencies reveal the
problematic notion of a national imaginary.
Since nationalism is essentially counterfactual, it succeeds only by
coercing its members into conformity. A nation-state imposes its will
through physical force and often terror (hence the Moro wars). Eventually,
the nation-state miraculously transforms itself into a seemingly consensual
agglomeration of free citizens willing to die in its defense. This transformation
is achieved by culture: Anderson (1998) provides us with more details on
how this almost magical transformation is accomplished.
What happens to the nation-state when this view of a territorialized
and homogeneous culture is no longer tenable? What may be expected
when cultural borders are routinely breached and culture fragments into
innumerable elements? At the very least, the nation-state must reinvent
itself to adapt. It must accept that many of its members adhere to different
cultural orientations and ethnicities. Hence, contemporary nation-states
must base themselves on pragmatic notions of economic security, social
justice, and personal freedom. A booming economy now seems to be the
primary legitimation for a modern state. Consumption becomes a civic
duty of citizenship. Other elements such as social justice and personal
freedom are often subject to dispute and controversy. Nation-states can
no longer rely on the myth of cultural unity to justify compliance. These
pragmatic notions are based in the historical past or in ethnic and aesthetic
commonalities. Moreover, nation-states must now recognize and accept
difference.
A product of global interconnectedness transcending national, linguistic,
religious, and cultural boundaries, culture is one of the major aporias of our
times: it expresses fundamental contradictions in contemporary society, and
disorients as often as it locates its subjects. This condition penetrates our
traditions and localities, overwhelming them with new signs and meanings
elsewhere generated. George Markus (1997) identifies this condition as a
surplus of meaning but a lack of sense.

Kalinga & Kankanai

Anthropologists used culture to describe the way of life of a particular
people. This description includes practices, ideas, beliefs, and material
objects that distinguish a people from their neighbors. In this sense, culture
is as much a practical orientation to life as it is an awareness of identity. The
Kalinga are distinguished from the Kankanai as much by their practices (e.g.,

10 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

dress, tattooing, economy & ritual) as their beliefs. Culture is perceived as
a consensual whole adopted because it reflects shared material conditions
and ways of life (Pertierra, 1997). A rich Kankanai is beholden to the same
cultural norms as his poor neighbor. In this understanding, culture is
what people living together share with one another. Sharing a life-world
constitutes the basis for this common culture.
When societies become complex and differentiated, sharing a life-world
is no longer common or possible. A rich Kankanai may live in Forbes Park,
holiday in Paris, and send his children to exclusive schools abroad, while a
poor Kankanai ekes a meager living in Ilocos. They may still share an ethnicity
but this is no longer rooted in a shared life-world, and hence no longer
reproducible. All contemporary societies are complex and differentiated.
While modernity is global, it encompasses a variety of incommensurable
life-worlds. These incommensurable life-worlds produce distinct cultures,
each expressing a manifestation of modernity.

Real territories & virtual communities

The nation-state was the first virtual society based on an imagined territorial
culture. Earlier territorial cultures based on a notion of a homeland were
likewise imagined, but lacked the resources to implement this imagination.
Jews are an example of a culture strongly based on a conception of an original
homeland. They nourished this conception for millennia but were unable
to operationalize it until modern, historical conditions led to the creation
of the State of Israel. But not all Israelis subscribe to Judaism. Some are
Arabs and others are non-believers. Israel has to find a practical rather than
an ideological or political way to reconcile these differences. Palestinians,
Kurds, Armenians and other peoples have tried to emulate Israel, but with
even less success (Bauman, 2005).
While globalization challenges the cultural basis of nation-states, it
also, paradoxically, provides for ethno-nationalism, the expression of other
cultural formations. As the nation-state’s cultural homogeneity fragments,
distinct cultural units seek protection from national sovereignty (e.g., MILF
& MNLF). As argued by some scholars, opponents of colonialism often
employed colonial models for their own purposes. Arjun Appadurai (1995)
has argued that in opposing the nation-state, these new cultural formations
insist on reproducing themselves through similar means. It appears that
territoriality is often the ultimate goal of certain cultural formations.
Forms of materiality (e.g., territory, economy, language, religion) are often
necessary for culture to represent itself. Should we see the MNLF, MILF,
as ethnic entities that wish to transform their imagined, virtual homelands

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 11

into geographic territories? Is it possible for ethnic entities to seek virtual
rather than geographic territories? Filipinos in diaspora presently interact
in digital space, thus generating virtual territories.

Crises in modernities
Sociologists refer to these problems as the crisis of modernity; culture
is its most acute expression. Other major expressions are the crisis of
overproduction and environmental degradation. These crises began in
the nineteenth century and resulted in the separation of areas of life into
private and public spheres, each sphere governed by its own set of norms.
In The Work of Culture (Pertierra, 2002), I tackled some of these questions
and explored manifestations of culture in the contemporary world. While
culture seems to be everywhere, it no longer locates its subjects anywhere.
Airports and tourists encapsulate this non-locating culture. Airports
create spaces in transition, where tourists can act as transitory locals. The
architecture of airports emphasizes locality as well as passage. Some areas
display local icons while other spaces represent unobstructed passage and
mobility. Tourists are locals momentarily transiting in foreign places before
returning to their communities.
In a world increasingly globalized, the role of culture has become
problematic. The idea of a global culture is unable to reflect its inevitable
diversity. From expressing collective orientations and values, culture
marks difference. In a world characterized by a surplus of meaning and a
lack of sense (Markus, 1997), culture’s capacity to provide a shared lens
or framework for society is seriously challenged. As the world becomes
progressively more interconnected, a common basis for understanding
disappears. Only local and contingent perspectives are viable and even
these are often globally constituted. As Sherry Turkle (2012) and Stephen
Marche (2012) have argued, while we are increasingly interconnected, we
remain alone: this is a paradox of the modern condition.

The local, national, and global

No wonder modernity is ontologically insecure and constantly in search of
threats and solutions. Culture presents a world full of unfulfilled aspirations
juxtaposed with real achievements. While local culture is closely related
to experiences and routines of everyday life, it also includes pre-reflective
bases for inequalities involving gender, age, class, and ethnicity. Locality
abhors and creates hierarchies of difference: men above women, seniors
above juniors, rich over poor, Caucasians over people of color, professionals
over the unskilled.

12 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

 National culture is less directly connected to everyday experience
and consists predominantly of normative and exemplary rules imposed
by schools and governments. Ernest Renan (1882) argued that national
culture is often imperative, coercive, and intolerant. National culture is
mainly counterfactual and relies on myth and other mechanisms to enforce
its precepts. Despite these contradictions, a national culture can be very
powerful and altruistic. The monument of the Unknown Soldier stands as
a symbol of the stranger protecting the motherland (Anderson, 1998). The
altruism of the stranger unifies the nation, all of whose members stand for
one another.
Global culture is experienced vicariously rather than directly and acts
as a powerful incentive for new values, norms, and orientations. Its vicarial
nature encourages excessive expectations in contrast to the banality of daily
life. All these uses of culture generate their own aporias. Local culture is
unaware of its pre-reflective assumptions and is thus unable to question
basic inequalities. National culture imposes its values on resisting minorities
and insists on homogenization to further its own ideological purity. Global
culture promises a world of new pleasures and commodities located in a
space-time unconnected to other aspects of daily life. Global culture creates
its own virtual world with an excess of meaning and a lack of sense.

Sociologies of culture
The industrial revolution created the conditions for the period of early
modernity between 1750 and 1850 (Ochial & Hosoya, 2012). Wage labor
dominated everyday life and society became differentiated into relatively
autonomous areas: business, politics, religion, and culture, each with its own
discourse. Earlier, pre-modern culture was embedded in everyday life and
provided the context and parameters for behavior. Modern culture separated
itself from other areas of life, and thus no longer provides an overall guide
for behavior. Appropriate action depends on context (e.g., business, religion,
family) that brings its own set of norms. An example of such a clash of
norms concerns the recent case of a Filipino wife who accused her husband
of having illegally acquired wealth while in government employment. Her
duties as a wife to support her husband and to preserve the family’s honor
clashed with her obligation as a citizen to denounce corruption. Her duties
in the domestic sphere clashed with her obligations in the public sphere. A
single moral code no longer applies across distinct social contexts. In the
case of the Philippines, these autonomous areas are not clearly demarcated,
resulting in cross-normative expectations. What is appropriate in a business
transaction may go against family norms of mutual assistance, or may
contravene religious beliefs (e.g., excessive profits or usury). The institution

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 13

of the family crosses what should be seen as autonomous areas. Political
power, religious office and social esteem are transmitted through familiar
connections crossing otherwise autonomous areas of culture and society
The family remains as a relic that has survived the transition from pre-
modernity to modernity.
Modernity has disconnected culture from its embeddeness in everyday
life. Modern culture expresses the ideals for accomplishment in various
areas (e.g., art, science, sport), and represents the most valuable ideas and
the most refined sensibilities or achievements. Modern culture also consists
of representations in the form of entertainment to fill in the short periods
of leisure in an otherwise work dominated world. Culture in the form of art
or entertainment is a cathartic response to a mechanized and pragmatic
life-world.
Following Karl Marx (1867), wage labor produced a culture of alienation
and commodification: the fundamental conditions within which modern
culture operates. This is the context for the bitter critique of culture found
in Dialectic of Enlightenment by Adorno and Horkheimer (1989). This book
was written when the authors lived in Los Angeles during their exile from
Germany. Despite its publication in 1944 (in German), it remains the most
exhaustive critique of the culture of modernity (Freeman, 2017). According
to Adorno and Horkheimer (1989), culture as entertainment becomes an
industry governed by the need for profit. Like other businesses within
capitalism, the culture industry, exists both to extract surplus labor and to
impose the alienated condition of workers. Hollywood, Fox News, and other
media players exist to create profit; the byproduct is an ideological apparatus
justifying exploitation. Technology mainly serves this same exploitive
purpose. Underlying such structures is the limited understanding capitalism
has of a rational worldview—instrumental reason and the ceaseless pursuit
of profit. Jurgen Habermas (1979), while agreeing with many views of the
Frankfurt School, has offered an alternative by arguing that modernity
also has the capacity for communicative rationality—the desire to achieve
a common understanding of a state-of-affairs. A condition where ego and
alter incorporate each other’s perspective in order to arrive at a common
understanding. While most structures in capitalism operate on the basis
of instrumental reason (ego is mainly interested in achieving his goal
irrespective of alter’s position), very few instances and institutions allow for
communicative rationality e.g., psychoanalysis, academic discourse, areas
of civil society. But even these areas are increasingly encroached upon by
the expanding needs of capitalist reproduction and political domination.

14 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

Histories of modernity
The culmination of early modernity (1880-1940) generated a public sphere
dominated by the nation-state with its fixed borders and a national economy
(Ochiai & Hosoya, 2012). The private sphere was controlled by the patriarchal
family and women’s role was confined to the home and childrearing. In the
second phase of modernity (1970-2017) the individual replaces the family
and locates itself within a global culture. Members of the generation in
between (1940-1970) experienced a significant transition marked by a time
of relative affluence and full employment in the West. This generation also
witnessed a growing awareness of individual rights in the spheres of race,
sexuality and employment. The growing influence of popular culture (film,
music, radio & television) generated a more segmented consumer market
based on gender, generation, race and class. This was accompanied by a
demographic shift from rural to urban areas. Urbanity replaced the gentilities
of rural society. The old regime was coming to an end even as members of
this transitional generation were largely unaware of its replacement. But
the growing demands of women and minorities, sexual liberation and post-
coloniality indicated that the world was changing significantly. The growing
importance of the youth as a separate category (between childhood and
adulthood) became an important element of popular culture. The youth
have lost the innocence of childhood but are not yet ready to embrace
the obligations of adult life. They represent a generation in transition best
expressed in popular culture. Many countries now recognize the needs
and interests of the youth—teenagers are an important feature of popular
culture. In the Philippines, this was marked by the visit of the Beatles in
1966 resulting in teenage mania. Eric Gamalinda (1992) vividly describes
this event, based on local media, as one of the largest demonstrations
during the Marcos regime. Ironically, it also marked the public humiliation
of Imelda Marcos by the Beatles’ refusal to perform at Malacañang.
In the second phase of modernity (1970-2017), individual rights
override the family and intimacy dominates everyday life (e.g. a discourse
of the emotions and affect). While globalization was earlier seen mainly in
economic and political terms, it is now primarily cultural (which explains
its current populist rejection). The borders of the nation-state are more
porous as people move in search of new opportunities. International
institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations now shape
national economies and politics. Popular culture permeates all areas of the
world. Rap may have started in the black neighborhoods of New York but is
now found in Kabul and Cubao. In addition, we are becoming increasingly
aware of our own intervention in nature. The Age of Anthropocene locates

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 15

humans as the prime actors in the social and natural worlds (Latour, 2014).

Lower birthrates & women’s emancipation

The first and the second phases of modernities were shaped by demographic
declines: reduced fertility, improved sanitation, and compulsory schooling
(Ochiai & Hosoya, 2012). The first phase produced the rise of child-
centered families with a strong gender division of labor: men went out to
work while women stayed home; housework became unpaid labor (1880-
1940). Marriage and long-term relationships became the norm. The family
and domestic matters were the center of private life, while the state and
civil society attended to collective rights. In Australia, the family wage was
introduced in 1905, and the male wage earner was expected to maintain his
family. Patriarchy became the basis for domestic reproduction.
Post 1970, the second demographic decline produced smaller families.
The increasing use of labor-saving domestic technologies facilitated the
introduction of women into the workforce. Combined with the introduction
of effective contraceptives, women’s bodies became part of the public sphere
where previously they were considered under patriarchal family control.
Divorce weakened the traditional family structure, while the rise of more
liberal sexual norms resulted in the emancipation of the individual from the
control of the patriarchal family. This second phase of modernity came into
full swing between 1970 to 2017 with the communication revolution and
the emergence of the so-called children of the internet.
This second phase is also characterized by the globalization of everyday
life and the transformation of the sphere of intimacy through a discourse
of the emotions or affects (Giddens, 1992). The rapid adoption of mobile
phones and the rise of social media generated a private sphere with open and
direct access to the public sphere. This interaction between private-public
was centered on individuals and networks rather than earlier collectivities
such as the family and locality. The state and civil society encroached on the
private sphere, and the universal declaration of human rights was adopted
across national boundaries, social classes, and gender identities.

The birth of the individual

According to Emiko Ochiai (2012):
In Western Europe and North America, laws and systems
that presume that the individual, not the family, is the unit
of society are being codified; these laws and systems are
based on the idea that individuals should not be treated
differently according to their choices of lifestyles, including

16 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

 the choice whether to have a family or not. (p. 28)
While these changes are not yet fully implemented in the Philippines,
their influence is apparent in the increasing acceptance of the rights of
members of the LGBT community, and their representation in congress.
The media now commonly include examples of unorthodox unions, such
as same gender weddings or the sexual activities of transgendered people
without a whisper of scandal. While these examples mostly involve media
personalities made popular by unconventional attitudes, the examples
reflect significant changes in empowering individuals to pursue alternative
lifestyles. The recent implementation of reproductive rights, over the
objections of the Catholic Church is yet more evidence that we are moving
towards a transformation of intimacy from the private to the public sphere.
New media facilitated the transformation of intimacy from the private to
the public sphere; it is now almost impossible to monitor social media user
experience. Did technology merely facilitate this transformation or did the
technology create the intimacy?
While culture previously provided its members with limited choices,
present-day local and global culture offer a wide choice, involving
combinations of our own making. A recent issue of National Geographic
Magazine (January 2017) offers its readers a choice of seven gender identities
(intersex non-binary, transgender female, bi-gender, transgender male,
androgynous, male, female). These identities involve distinct performances,
affiliations, and orientations. Identities can evolve or revert to earlier forms.
Some involve gender reassignment surgery while others only require a
readjustment in behavior and orientation. We are not only the authors of
our own lives but we are also its designers (Myerhoff, 1978). The range of
choices is bolstered by the availability of consumer products; the diversity
of cultural choice is closely allied to its consumer base. Consumer choice
requires equally wide cultural preferences; therefore culture remains wedded
to its material expressions. In capitalism, culture is a freewheeling set of
signifiers that stimulate consumption. Consumer choice not only involves
material goods but also corresponding cultural identities. Consumption
becomes the main concern of citizenship (Canclini-Garcia, 2001).

Always connected but alone

According to Zygmunt Bauman (as cited by De Querol, 2016):
The question of identity has changed from being something
you are born with to a task: you have to create your own
community…. The difference between a community and a
network is that you belong to a community, but a network

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 17

 belongs to you. You feel in control. You can add friends if
you wish, you can delete them if you wish. You are in control
of the important people to whom you relate. People feel a
little better as a result, because loneliness, abandonment, is
the great fear in our individualist age. (para. 3)
Is the difference between the first and the second phase of modernity
simply one of emphasis or does it involve a qualitative change? Is the
generation of the 1990’s significantly different from their parents and
grandparents who also experienced disruptive epochs, including the
Japanese occupation (1943-45), the end of colonialism, and the advent
of Philippine independence? Or did these disruptions merely initiate the
transformation from a national to a global condition? The generation before
the children of the internet also experienced the onset of a global age. Mass
media such as television, film, and radio were firmly established and the
exodus of overseas workers had begun. Important political and cultural
events were taking place: the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the assassination
of President Kennedy (1963), the student revolts in Paris (1968), the sexual
revolution, and the ascendance of teenage culture. All pointed to important
social transformations. The highlight was the highly successful visit of
the Beatles to Manila in July 1966 but the band’s refusal to perform in
Malacanang prevented the fusion of high and popular culture.
In contrast, the second phase of modernity involves new economic,
political, and cultural transformations. Markets, politics, and culture
transcend national borders. Globalization creates new structures that cast
the world as a synchronic entity (e.g., digital time). A global consciousness
re-examines local cultures and reveals their flaws and limitations. Culture
itself is seen as contentious, arbitrary, hegemonic, and incomplete. A new
global civil society impinges directly on individuals. This intrusion of the
global into the local often generates a conflict of norms. Filipinos adapted
global standards against cruelty to animals, and demanded an independent
film’s exclusion from a prestigious festival. The controversial scene featured
an inhumane and cruel animal death. On the other hand, dog meat is a
common delicacy and an essential part of ethnic culture in some regions.

Language as a floating signifier

I would therefore claim that we are approaching the dawn
of a new civilization whose explicit aim will be to perfect
collective human intelligence, that is to say, to pursue
indefinitely the process of emancipation into whose path

18 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

 language has thrown us. (Levy, 2011,p. 4)
Pierre Levy (2011) points out the emancipatory potential of language
which hitherto has been constrained by multiple practical, material, and
cultural factors. Women, children, and the poor were silent. Only refined
speech was appropriate in the public sphere, and this was mostly masculine.
President Duterte seems to be able to breach this rule but even he is
constrained when addressing certain audiences (e.g., children or minors).
Culture and language have always been closely connected; one affecting
and being affected by the other. What happens to language when culture
is loosely connected to its previous structures? When detached from
previous cultural constraints, language is free to develop along new lines.
This is what happens with the new media. No longer under the old cultural
constraints, the language of new media takes new forms, often challenging
previous normative boundaries. New media has opened up new avenues
for discourse, allowing us to say the unsayable, think the unthinkable, and
establish heterodox relationships. Not only do we interact with countless
absent others (including robots), but we also interact with the technologies
that make all these activities possible. Their usage also shapes us.
We live in a technologically mediated world in two senses: technology
opens new worlds, and shapes us through our interactions in these
extended worlds. The virtual was earlier seen as an inferior version of the
actual, however, now, the virtual is an indispensable adjunct that constitutes
and enriches the real. Virtual reality is no less real than actual reality. In
some ways, the virtual displaces the actual, replacing it with its simulacrum
(Baudrillard, 1988).
New communications media disrupt earlier perspectives and countless
examples of the disruptive effects of social media—from facilitating the
spread of fake news, encouraging criminal and immoral activities, and
threatening social life—occur frequently. However: new media have
also facilitated and encouraged the democratization of discourse and
information. No longer under the control of traditional gatekeepers such
as the mainstream media and other institutions, new media serve as the
expression of previously silent minority voices.
Culture is now individually generated as people author their lives
according to tastes, desires, and circumstances (Hannerz, 1993). Material
accumulation becomes a major way of self-expression. Consumerism is as
much a process of self-construction as it is public display (Cohen, 2017).
Most of us conduct our lives both online and offline. How do we combine
these two modes without one unduly distorting, dominating, or reproducing
the other? Virtuality is now an aspect of everyday life and we must contend

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 19

with its vagaries (Pertierra, 2018b).

The ontology of media & representations

Increasingly, media become invisibly incorporated into our lives. Life outside
media is now impossible. But life in media means that social reality is always
under construction, revision, and rejection. Identifying who participates in
this process of social construction is one of the most contested issues. Is
Wikipedia a reliable source of knowledge or should only the experts dictate
what we can know?
Individuals and institutions look at social reality as under permanent
construction—as something to intervene in, redirect, manipulate, and
transmutate at the level of genetic modification. The remixabilty of the
real has become a property of lived experience, and questioning reality is
the first and most fundamental step towards changing it (Deuze, 2012b).
This understanding of culture as under permanent construction is what
makes modernities essentially unstable even as it also provides the basis for
ensuring their continuity (Luhmann, 1998).

Final comments & summaries

Culture, however flawed, inconsistent or problematic, remains an essential
element of modernities. Anthropologists studied culture in societies where
beliefs, norms, and practices were closely intertwined. Culture, arising from
common material factors, defined a way of life shared by all its members.
In complex societies, this unity between cultural practices and life-worlds
or lifestyles began to diverge. Complex societies consist of a plurality
of orientations and discourses, which enjoy partial autonomy from one
another. The nation-state managed to coalesce many of these divergences
by imposing rigid conditions for their expression. National culture was an
imagined reality imposed by organs of the state. The nation-state is the first
virtual society based on an imagined territorial culture. Globality seems to
have disengaged culture from its local and national roots, and locate itself
in complex networks. Many of these networks are spatially dispersed but
intimately connected, overlapping with local and national cultures.
Another feature of culture in modernities is the search for exemplarity
or coextensiveness. Cultural expertise is found in all societies including
pre-modern ones such as the T’boli (Jimenez, 2016). This expertise plays
a formative role in the constitution of national cultures (Sabangan, 2016)
where both exemplarity and coextensiveness are achieved through new
communications technology like radio and music recordings.
Cultures continue to thrive under diverse conditions. The world of

20 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World

representations, however linked to its material foundations, finds ways of
reproducing itself. As Luhmann (1998) argued, culture is autopoesic—it
reproduces itself through internal mechanisms as well as through its
connections with its external world. The evolution and expansion of
social life enables cultures to establish new environmental linkages. As a
consequence, contemporary life has taken many forms to generate cultures
in modernities.
High culture is often linked to structures of the State and its notion
of power, exemplarity, and excellence. Physical structures indicate the
State’s authority, as well as shaping its urban lifestyles. Baron Haussmann’s
(1850) reconstruction of Paris in the 19th century is a prime example of
designing urban landscape to reflect governmentality. An aspect of this
governmentality is the need for consumption, a role required of citizenship.
Citizens must be active producers and insatiable consumers. The trinity
of power, myth, and the state is meant to constitute a common culture,
but the replacement of high culture by popular culture prevents their
harmonious integration. Hence, the practical anchorages of meaning have
been disengaged from everyday life, creating a surplus of meaning but a
lack of sense. The rise and significance of virtuality, fake news, post-truths,
and hyper reality are a consequence of the disengagement of meaning and
sense. Culture perpetuates but is unable to bridge this discontinuity; culture
is the consequence as well as the cause of the crisis of modernity.

Pertierra • Vol. 16 No. 1 • January - June 2019 21

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Raul Pertierra is a visiting professor at Ateneo De Manila University as well as Philippine Women’s
University. Pertierra mainly teaches graduate courses in anthropology/sociology at the Ateneo and
supervises ethnomusicology majors at Philippine Women’s University. He has published extensively
in foreign as well as local journals on topics such as social theory, culture and politics. Before his
retirement in the Philippines,he held professorships in Australia, Singapore,TheNetherlands and Finland.
(corresponding author: rpertier@mozcom.com)

24 Pertierra • The Cultures of a Globalized World