GLOBAL REMAKES LOCAL A series of cultural and social phenomena over the last decades allows me to make a quick analysis of the evolution of local cultural phenomena. I note, firstly, the increase in free time on a massive scale, a phenomenon due to changes in the way we work (industrialisation, unionisation, etc.), to increasing life expectancy and to economic imbalances temporarily favouring the populations of certain countries. In parallel with this, there has been a cultural homogenisation due to certain aspects of globalisation: the role of “global educators” quickly attributed to stars promoted by channels like MTV, the impact on the behaviour of young people through fast‐food brands, clothes and other low cost mass produced products of the MacDonald’s variety, the explosion of social networks on the internet, addiction to video games and special effects cinema, etc. The effect of spatial deterritorialization produced by this cultural homogenisation is very well described by Marc Augé in his analyses on the operation and impact of a series of spaces that are identical from one continent to another, spaces that he defines as “non‐places”. This deterritorialization and weakening of local cultures is caused in part by the disappearance of the active role normally held by economic activities in the definition of local identities.1 Through the “renewal” and replacement of vanished local identities, but in fact seeking the commercial potential represented by mass free time, an “ex‐nihilo” industry manufacturing “centres of identity” has appeared. Beginning with the first Disneyland in 1955 and focusing on thrills and on putting on a show, “theme parks” appeared, starting in the United States, a country that had been among the first to enjoy this mass free time and lacking, due to its short history, places and regions with commercialisable cultural identities.2 The sequence of phenomena described above, intimately linked to the unequal relationship between local and global, has now become systemic. Hannah Arendt has stressed, since 1945, the irregular nature of the social and political effects of the crisis of culture: “the leisure industry is faced with gargantuan appetites and, since consumption uses up its merchandise, it must constantly produce new articles. In this situation, those who produce for the mass media are pillaging the entire domain of culture past and present”. And they make this material “so that it is easy to consume”.3
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In this vein, Anne Raulin notes : “following the economic crisis that touched by turns the coal, textile and metallurgy productions that in their time supported a whole culture – middle and working classes – and the pride of a whole region, the necessary redefinition of identities has shone the spotlight on this structure: its depth of heritage favours an exploitation for tourism “, cf. Anne Raulin, Anthropologie urbaine, Armand Colin, 2001, p.146 2 Accelerated by the development of rail networks, mass tourism appeared, beginning in Great Britain and the United States and spreading to all “developed” countries. And, with tourism, the theme park industry was then exported, with Disneyland and other such parks being built in various countries and continents. 3 Hannah Arendt, La crise de la culture, Galimard, 1972 (1954), pp.262‐265
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