Globalization

I saw an interesting article in the NYT today about how globalization is and is not affecting cultural differentiation.
The author, Michael Kimmelman, who has moved from New York to Berlin just like yours truly, writes, "far from succumbing to some devouring juggernaut, culture — and Europe, with its different communities and nations living cheek by jowl, is a Petri dish to prove the point — has only atomized lately as a consequence of the very same globalizing forces that purportedly threaten to homogenize everything."
I was just talking the other day about globalization and how regrettable it is that American models of consumerism are steadily creeping into Europe. But Kimmelman would seem to disagree:
"Nationalism, regionalism and tribalism are all on the rise. Societies are splitting even as they share more common goods and attributes than ever before. Culture is increasingly an instrument to divide and differentiate communities. And the leveling pressures of globalization have at the same time provided more and more people with the technological resources to decide for themselves, culturally speaking, who they are and how they choose to be known, seen, distinguished from others...Culture means many things in this context, but at heart it is a suite of traits we inherit and also choose to disavow or to stress...Anyone may now pick through the marketplace of global culture."
Essentially he argues that the more there is a common denominator in society, the more people will try to distinguish themselves from it, to attach themselves to different "tribal" identities.
Discussing particularly his transition from New York to Berlin, he mentions that one of the first things he noticed was the proliferation of bookstores in Berlin, more than he had been used to noticing in other cities. This, he discovered, stemmed from a conscious effort in Germany to restore "civilization" after the war by supporting an "ecosystem" of small publishers and booksellers. Regarding this episode, he concludes:
"So what was to me as a clueless foreigner an urban curiosity, noticeable just because it wasn’t my usual experience — it was for me a cultural rift or rupture — ended up suggesting some larger truth about the country’s history and ambition. Culture is something we propagate but also something naturally there, existing in and around us, which makes us who we are but which may rise to the level of our consciousness only when one of those ruptures or rifts appear — when some little psychic clash happens between it and our more or less unconscious sense of the everyday world."
Very interesting thoughts. For all that I complain about "globalization" meaning there's a McDonald's on every corner, that doesn't change the fact that while I might call it 'Mickey D's', my Australian flatmate calls it 'Mackers' or that the concept of McCafé, a classier coffeeshop-style McDonald's, is way more popular in Europe than in the US. Even the universal symbol of globalization, McDonald's, is differentiated culturally, so we shouldn't lose hope in cultural differentiation. While the internet and multinational corporations may have changed the scope of cultural identity, they have not by any means obliterated it. Thus I am able to write mildly amusing blogposts about the many subtle (and not so subtle) cultural differences between the US and Germany!
Bis bald,
D.