GLOBAL CULTURE AND NATION-IDENTITY BUILDING

By Rina Marnita

Introduction

The content of this article is highly and truly inspired by the speech of the new Secretary General of ASEAN, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, on the opening ceremony of the CUASEAN Conference on Language, Culture and Literature in ASEAN: Unity in Diversity, from August 4^th to August 5^th , 2008, in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. The conference, which was held in commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the establishment ASEAN, have given me and my colleague, Sukardi Gau, a student of ATMA, from Makasar, a chance to present a paper on Language in relation to nation or community–building relation in ASEAN.

The speech which fosters the existence and roles of ASEAN to its members and the world, as well as its efforts to move from regional cooperation to regional integration with its various community-building activities has absolutely waken up my awareness as an Indonesian and part of the ASEAN communities. Why? Of course this is because the speech by this Harvard graduate, which was brilliantly delivered and inevitably touching, made many of the participants at the conference have to question whether globalization with its global culture undermine or foster cultural diversity.

What is global culture?

The world culture is derived from a Latin word cultural, derived from colere "to cultivate,” Culture is defined differently by different scholars. Anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave 164 definitions for it in 1952. Although there is no standard definition of culture, broadly, culture is social heritage of a group (organized community or society). A definition that incorporates the Boasian postulates is ‘The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning’

There should not then one single definition for global culture. One definition is by Roberston (1992: 8) who defines Globalization as “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole”. It makes the world a single place in terms of thought and action. Globalization involves the crystallization of four main components of the global-human circumstance: societies (or nation-states), the system of societies, individuals (selves), and humankind; this takes the form of processes of, respectively, societalization, internationalization, individuation, and generalization of consciousness about humankind (Robertson 1991: 215-6; 1992: 27). Historically, globalization started in the seventeenth century, with the rising of European expansion and state formation. It went on when ‘international communications, transportation, and conflict dramatically intensified relationships across societal boundaries’ in 1875.

Today, globalization has enabled us to see, eat, and feel what other people in other parts of the world see, eat and feel. We may see people with the same hair style or fashion in Padang city in Sumatra with those who live in Paris. And, we may encounter people in tuk-tuk in Bangkok city or KTM in Kuala Lumpur speaking English as fluently as an American in Manhattan. We can eat Mac Donald french-fries and chicken burgers in Jakarta as other in Kuala Lumpur or New York City We may also sit spending some times in a Star Buck coffee shop in Jakarta as other people in Singapore or on the Mall in Kuala Lumpur.

Globalization is like a two-sided knife. In one side, it may give advantages to people. Indonesia, like many other ASEAN countries, for example, has been directly involved in the development of information technology for several decades through the setting up of multinational corporations for its need for labor in factories, industries, trade, commerce, and tertiary services. Indonesian people, both female and male, get equal opportunity to receive modern education and vocational training which has enabled them to get an access to various information and opportunities to communicate and interact with different people from different places with different cultures. They get involved in various regional and international events, programs or activities. And this is enabled by their ability in communicating in the global language, English.

In the other side, globalization may homogenize values, cultural characteristics, languages and even beliefs or religions people have. People from all over the world connected by modern technology and media, male and female, children and adult, young and old, has been easily influenced by global culture characterized by new trends and fashions, new ethos and outlooks molded by the media. These trends and fashions place a higher value on material culture than spiritual culture. Global culture makes people see their traditional values incongruent with modern living and ‘encourage’ them to shift from "traditionalism" to "modernity" and emphasize "freedom" and "self-autonomy" more than "self-esteem" and "self-worth" in the traditional sense. As stated by social experts, “self-esteem and self-worth, in the eyes of modern capitalist society, is based on the value of human labor measured in terms of its worth in the market-place”.

How does globalization affect our society?

Since globalization may homogenize the world, it would give bad implication to our society, culture, tradition and language. Globalization may make us lose our culture, history, nation states and so on. If we can not manage the advance and development of technology and use of media, we would lose our own identity. We might be swallowed by the global culture which itself has no direction and always changes. We will no longer finding our children, for example, speaking in chromo angel because they parents do not speak in Javanese at home with the family members. We will face the fact that our children will not feel ashamed of asking for our permission to let them go out at night with their male friends or boy friends to watch a music concert. We will see them spending hours standing and waiting for the concert without feeling guilty for ‘sacrificing’ their Maghrib prayer in order to get a strategic place. And, dressing formally without showing belly are ‘kampungan’ or old-fashioned for most girls in big cities including Padang. For most of teenagers now, not knowing any development in music industries or entertainment is shameful.

Malaysia has long realized the effects of global culture to its people. Even though they encourage their young people to study abroad, especially to England, and to always improve their English proficiency, many are questioning the use of English in teaching science and technology at schools. Besides arguments in relation to students’ competency to the material being taught, the strong belief that language reflects the way people think is of main concern in this respect.

This nation has put some serious efforts to face the effects of the global culture. Malaysian intellectuals and artists has brought up the issues to the national level and looked for serious attention from the government. JQAF (Jawi, Qur'an, Arab dan Fardhu A’in) is one program that preparing teachers with Islamic and Malay characters. Malaysian Ministry for Education has selected 3000 applicants from about 140.000 young people who apply for teachers every year. In its third years, Malaysia now has 9000 teacher under JQAF program, who are distributed to public schools in different places in this country. The Malaysian education decision makers place Malay epistemology as the base for the program of Malaysian sister-schools with England, New Zealand and Australia.

In the level of higher education, ATMA , just launched what they called ‘Siri Wacana Pemikiran dan Epistimology Melayu’. ATMA has expanded its role to the nation-identity building by inviting YB Dato’ Hj. Razali Ismail, the Vice Minister for Education, to be one of ATMA’s people. These two institutions have agreed to color national education with the epistemology of Malay which will characterize Malaysia as an Islamic Malay country.

What has Indonesian people, both intellectuals and government, done to face the effect of this global culture? Does our country have an epistemology which has national values and characteristics, and which represent Indonesia as a nation? Have any of us, our Universities, Ministry of Education and people from Higher Education thought of long effects our country may face? Have we thought of efforts or ways of protecting our children or next generation of becoming ‘unidentified person’ with no cultural identity and who are easily thrown away by the wave of global culture? Can we maintain the uniqueness of our culture and language? Can we come to the level of ‘being ourselves’ and free from the greediness, interest to materials? Or, may be most of us do not yet come to realize that we are now living in ‘the age of change’.

To conclude, now, as it was by the end of the twentieth century, ‘globalization had turned world order into a problem’ Everyone must now reflexively respond to the common predicament of living in one world. This provokes the formulation of contending world views’ (Robertson 1991: 215-6; 1992: 27). People have different opinions about the meaning of globalization. In one side, some think that globalization means Coca-Colanization, Cultural imperialism , McDonaldization, and Americanization. To some others, globalization means pluralization, differentiation ,contestation, globalization and institutionalization.


Merdeka!!!!