Looking West?: Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures / Edition 1

by Hilary Anne Pilkington, Elena Omel'chenko, Moya Flynn, Uliana Bliudina

Overview

Russian youth culture has been a subject of great interest to researchers since 1991, but most studies to date have failed to consider the global context. Looking West? engages theories of cultural globalization to chart how post-Soviet Russia’s opening up to the West has been reflected in the cultural practices of its young people.

Visitors to Russia’s cities often interpret the presence of designer clothes shops, Internet cafés, and a vibrant club scene as evidence of the "Westernization" of Russian youth. As Looking West? shows, however, the younger generation has adopted a "pick and mix" strategy with regard to Western cultural commodities that reflects a receptiveness to the global alongside a precious guarding of the local. The authors show us how young people perceive Russia to be positioned in current global flows of cultural exchange, what their sense of Russia’s place in the new global order is, and how they manage to "live with the West" on a daily basis.

Looking West? represents an important landmark in Russian-Western collaborative research. Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel’chenko have been at the heart of an eight-year collaboration between the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and Ul’ianovsk State University (Russia). This book was written by Pilkington and Omel’chenko with the team of researchers on the project—Moya Flynn, Ul’iana Bliudina, and Elena Starkova.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271021874
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2003
Series:	Post-Communist Cultural Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Hilary Pilkington is Deputy Director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Elena Omel'chenko is Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre "Region" at Ul'ianovsk State University.

Moya Flynn is ESRC postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham.

Ul'iana Bliudina is research associate of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre "Region" and a doctoral student at the Centre for Social Studies, Central European University, Warsaw.

Elena Starkova is head of the Sociological Laboratory, Ul'ianovsk State University.

Read an Excerpt

Looking West?

Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures

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By Hilary Pilkington Elena Omel'chenko Moya Flynn Ul'iana Bliudina Elena Starkova

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2002 The Pennsylvania State University.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-271-02186-1

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Cultural Globalization

A Peripheral Perspective

Hilary Pilkington and Ul'iana Bliudina

Cultural globalization is not new. Universalizing cultural processes can be traced from the early modern period, if not earlier, being rooted in the spread of world religions and imperial elite culture (Waters 1995; Held et al. 1999). However, cultural globalization is currently at an accelerated stage of development. The intensive development of new communications, media, and information technologies in the second half of the twentieth century has led to the extension, diversification, and acceleration of global cultural flows and an increase in the intensity, volume, and speed of cultural exchange and communication. This process has been accompanied by the emergence of new global infrastructures and the increasing dominance of a small number of multinationals in the sphere of cultural production and distribution of cultural goods; as a result, contemporary global interaction is conducted primarily through the media of Western popular culture and business communication (Held et al. 1999, 341).

The debate on globalization in Western academic writing is also in overdrive. Although the earlier writings ofMcLuhan (1964) lay dormant for a number of years, since the beginning of the 1990s there has been an explosion in writing on theories of economic, political, and cultural globalization. While all academic disciplines have been affected by this debate, it has, nonetheless, developed along a number of more or less disciplinarily bound tracks. Theorists of economic and political globalization have been inclined to build on "world-system" approaches, which overtly recognize the economic and political structures governing global interactions. Cultural globalization, in contrast, has been presented as a series of processes (Lash and Urry 1994, 306; King 1991, 1).

The emphasis on cultural flows in theories of cultural globalization has been driven by the concern not to reduce globalization to "Westernization" or "Americanization" where the latter envisages the "global" not as process but as a cultural content "dumped" upon other countries. While sociologists and cultural theorists alike would agree that cultural globalization cannot be equated to "Americanization" on a grand scale (Jameson 1998, 59), nonetheless, distinct disciplinary territories have emerged. Sociologists have been concerned primarily with the "global" (understanding the origins and forms of cultural flows emanating from the West) while "the local" has been conflated with the experience of nonwestern countries and thus ascribed to anthropology (Fardon 1995, 1-2). The focus on cultural flows also signifies a "postmodern" as opposed to a "modernist" approach—where the former is understood as the privileging of the spatial over the temporal in explaining social and cultural change—and lies within the domain of cultural studies as opposed to sociology (Featherstone and Lash 1995, 1).

These divisions are evident in the almost axiomatic typologies of theorists of cultural globalization as either "homogenizers" or "pluralizers" ("diversifiers"). According to this classification, the "homogenizers," also referred to as the "pessimists," envisage the process of cultural globalization as leading to a "global" homogenized culture as Western popular culture is exported around the world. The "pluralizers"—also known as the "optimists"—see the potential of greater center-periphery interaction to enable peripheral or minority cultural forms to transcend the local (Robertson 1995).

Models of cultural "homogenization" and of "diversification/differentiation" as outcomes of processes of cultural globalization are, of course, little more than ideal types; and theorists of cultural globalization who retain a connection to the field have sought more sensitive ways of conceptualizing the outcome of "one-way" cultural exchange via concepts of cultural "hybridization" (Hall 1990, 234; Bhabha 1990; Clifford and Marcus 1986) and "maturation" or "creolization" (Hannerz 1992, 264). The concepts of creolization and hybridization entail a process whereby the periphery receives but reshapes the metropolitan culture to its own specifications, thereby allowing for a model of cultural exchange in which the periphery shows culturally differentiated responses to the Western version of modernity being exported without ignoring the actuality of the power relations involved in economically driven, cultural globalization. For Held and colleagues this position is already a third pole of the debate—defined as a "transformationalist" position—which describes the "intermingling of cultures and peoples as generating cultural hybrids and new global cultural networks" (Held et al. 1999, 327).

Another way in which the false dichotomy between the positions of "optimists" and "pessimists" concerning the benefits of globalization might be tempered is by reference to the different spheres upon which globalization impacts. In the sphere of ethnicity and nationhood, for example, globalization has been seen to differentiate, or celebrate difference; it has facilitated challenges to the nation state—or supranational state in the case of the USSR—which tends to conceal difference in the creation of an outwardly coherent national identity. In contrast, globalization is seen to homogenize above all in the sphere of popular or consumer culture.

Theorists of cultural globalization rarely confront directly the question of structure. Nonetheless, recognition of the unequal power in the "exchange" of cultural messages is implicit in their employment of the "core-periphery" model of cultural exchange. Such a model, it is suggested here, reflects a "centrist" standpoint that has little resonance with the experience of peoples on "the receiving end" of global trends (Howes 1996, 7). It posits a dominant, self-conscious, and confident core (established nation states of Western and northern Europe, North America, and Japan) as the subject of cultural exchange against an atomized, self-ignorant, and absorbent periphery as the object of that exchange. Taking a perspective from outside the dominant core suggests that processes of cultural exchange take place, in fact, within a complex structure and require the reinstatement of the peripheral subject as an active agent in globalization. Russia, for example, is not newly exposed to cultural globalization but has a long history of complex interaction with Western ideologies and modes of thinking particularly in relation to Western scientific and philosophical paradigms. Thus, while in the West the impacts of globalization may be just beginning to be felt, the West has been present (physically and symbolically) for those outside the core for much longer (King 1995, 123; Morley and Robins 1995, 217-18).

Cultural messages from the West today are neither simply absorbed nor complexly reworked in isolation. Rather, such messages are filtered through state-level ideology and the experiences, memories, imaginations, and fantasies that accumulate individually and collectively. Appadurai makes at least indirect reference to this when he notes that the "scapes" he describes are "deeply perspectival constructs inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of actors: nation-states, multinationals, diasporic communities, sub-national groups, villages and neighbourhoods" (Appadurai 1990, 296). The subjective positioning of a particular nation state within the world order is thus central to making cultural sense of globalization processes. The global mass media—or "global imagination industries"—introduce people across the globe to visions of a greater range of possible lives, thereby bringing individuals' own lives and their imagined "possible lives" into ironical conflict with each other (Beck 2000, 53-54). In the case of Russia this is not just Bauman's "localized poor" confronting a "globalized rich" (Bauman, cited in Beck 2000, 55), however. The subjective positioning of post-Soviet Russia is, rather, highly complex as themes of "catching up" with the West draw on both Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian cultural history but compete with past experience, memories, and imaginations associated with Soviet Russia's cultural isolationism and ideology of social superiority to the West.

The reluctance of Russia to act out the new peripheral role apparently assigned it by the West is evident in Russian debates on cultural exchange between the West and Russia that barely interact with Western-centric theories of globalization. The latter, like the transnational, Western-based companies they so often critique, project their ideas as global when in fact they are local and specific. Russian debates, in contrast, have little space for globalization, but focus rather on Russia's place in the new world order, weighing up the legacies of past isolation alongside the potential benefits of forging a positive Russian national identity to combat the otherwise pervasive cultural presence of the West. Considering the debate on cultural globalization as it appears from the vantage point of an Eastern periphery, therefore, is the first step in restoring Russia's subjectivity in processes of cultural globalization. To take this debate seriously is to acknowledge that an exclusive focus on process to the detriment of structure in debates on cultural globalization seriously undermines the ability of globalization theories to understand and explain real cultural processes outside the Western world.

Power, the New World Order, and Cultural Exchange: Russian Debates

When globalization is addressed directly in Russian academic writing, it appears not as a social or cultural process but as a political project "initiated and led by the West" (Simoniia 1996, 6). The formation of a global community is not understood as a consequence of, still less a condition for, modernity, but perceived to be rather a Western idea: "World culture means above all the Americanization of the cultures of the peoples of this planet, foisting on them Western-oriented culture" (Zinov'ev 1995, 414).

Globalization in economics and politics is portrayed as a means of subordinating Russia (and the East) to the interests of the West, and above all the United States. This process preserves an asymmetrical integration into the world economy whereby all countries outside the West—referred to as the "non-West"—are drawn into the international division of labor in a neocolonial manner (Simoniia 1996, 6; Solonitskii 1996, 11). The argument that the West consciously seeks to "reinforce backwardness and dependence" (Khoros 1995, 123) among peripheral societies and is disinclined, therefore, to assist Russia in retaining its status and power, is commonplace (see, for example, D. Evstaf'ev 1997; Maksimychev 1997; Utkin 1995, 13; Khoros 1995, 123; Shliapentokh 1994; and Gubman 1994, 12). This is expressed starkly by Iusupovskii:

Why help Russian capitalism get off the ground, why create a partner-competitor for yourself ...? Supposedly [you don't help] because of concerns about eradicating socialism, guaranteeing democracy, and preventing any possible return to totalitarianism.... But surely it is not difficult to discern a thinly concealed desire to deprive Russia of the sources of its own development, to curtail the opportunity for the country to make its own choices, to determine its own fate? (Iusupovskii 1997, 22)

In the economic sphere, therefore, "globality" (global'nost') is perceived to be maintained in the interests of the United States alone, since "global" financial and stock markets are tied to the U.S. dollar. The common portrayal of globalization as a "universal process" gradually incorporating the periphery into the global space is thus exposed as an "idealtype" that fails to take into account the specifics of climate, demography, and human capital of different nations (Volodin and Shirokov 1999, 92). Thus economic globalization is characterized as "an uncontrollable accumulation of transnational short-term capital whose speculative character exacerbates the scale of market swings provoking national and regional financial crises and destabilizing political systems" (Volodin and Shirokov 1999, 84).

Occasional voices recognize the opportunities, as well as the threats, presented by economic globalization and call for Russia to work globalizing processes to the country's advantage (Mikheev 1999, 11). Even these voices, however, suggest that this more positive approach might be the most effective way to "counter American influence in the world economy and polity" (ibid.).

In political terms, the United States is characterized as seeking to isolate Russia while using the country as a buffer, separating China and the Muslim world from the West (D. Evstaf'ev 1997, 75; Brutents 1998, 62). Russia's "right" to act as "broker" in the post-Soviet space is contested by the West, it is argued, in order to prevent any potential challenge to American global hegemony (Brutents 1998, 60) based on America's role as "gendarme of the world," policing and securing interregional shipments (primarily of oil). At the same time, it is suggested, Western politicians exploit Russia's own sense of having a "unique path" as an argument for keeping Russia out of Europe (Maksimychev 1997, 86).

In the cultural sphere, Western "expansionism" is primarily attributed to America, in particular American pop culture (Solonitskii 1996, 11). The objection voiced is not to an "alien" culture invading Russian cultural space, but the "crude" form and ideological content of the cultural products produced by the West. While Zinov'ev's nostalgia for the Soviet era may be peculiarly strong, the sentiment concerning Western cultural inferiority is not: "Now you yourselves can go round the kiosks and see what a stinking flood, what a veritable cesspool of Western art has descended upon, has been directed toward, Russia.... The more genuinely talented the writer, the more difficult it is for him to emerge out of the cesspool. Phenomena like Maiakovskii or Sholokhov are just not possible there [in the West]" (Zinov'ev 1998, 20).

Global information networks are also envisaged as driven by Western countries and saturated by American culture (Zinov'ev 1995, 414). The head of Glasnet—one of Russia's primary internet service providers—is even reported as envisaging the World Wide Web as "the ultimate act of intellectual colonialism" (Anatolii Voronov, cited in Ellis 1999, 162). While Voronov is essentially referring to the English language medium of the Web, others root this new mechanism of cultural imperialism in the Internet's provision of yet another medium for the dissemination of American cultural influence: "It is not difficult to discern, behind the advertising and propaganda pressure of the Internet, the unerring efforts of the United States, not only to ensure its own superiority in the most important fields of basic and applied science and technology, but also to make it possible to dictate ideologically and to spread the United States's political and spiritual influence via modern telecommunications networks and systems" (Smolian et al. 1997, 44).

The current academic debate on globalization in Russia thus hinges less on charting the technological and economic forces driving global processes, or the social and cultural consequences of them, than upon the philosophical and historical aspects of geopolitical shifts. In contrast to Western debates, it follows, issues of structure and power are central to the discussion of globalization in Russia. The "global society" is considered to be a myth constructed in order to conceal the real relations of world power: "Global society is portrayed as consisting of tens of thousands of states—friendly, sovereign—sharing obligations ... and struggling together against crime and so on. It is absolute nonsense. A real global society exists, but not in the form of a brotherhood of such states. Rather, as a multilayered vertical structure which has the whole planet caught in its tentacles" (Zinov'ev 1998, 26).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Looking West? by Hilary Pilkington Elena Omel'chenko Moya Flynn Ul'iana Bliudina Elena Starkova. Copyright © 2002 by The Pennsylvania State University. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Hilary Pilkington

1. Cultural Globalization: A Peripheral Perspective

Hilary Pilkington and Uliana Bliudina

2. On the Outside Looking In? The Place of Youth in Russia’s New Media and Information Space

Elena Omel’chenko and Ul’iana Bliudina

3. Talking Global? Images of the West in the Youth Media

Moya Flynn and Elena Starkova

4. Through Their Own Eyes: Young People’s Images of "the West"

Elena Omel’chenko and Moya Flynn

5. "Progressives" and "Normals": Strategies for Glocal Living

Hilary Pilkington (with Elena Starkova)

6. The Dark Side of the Moon? Global and Local Horizons

Hilary Pilkington

7. Reconfiguring "the West": Style and Music in Russian Youth Cultural Practice

Hilary Pilkington

8. Living with the West

Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel’chenko

Conclusion

Hilary Pilkington

Appendix

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

Looking West? is timely, well conceived, and an excellent amalgam of original sociological research, social and cultural theory, and comparative analysis. Hilary Pilkington and her colleagues have produced a work that will surely become the standard source on the topic for years to come.”

—Thomas Cushman, Wellesley College

“In this excellent book, five authors look at post-Soviet youth culture, and in particular at how Russian youth perceive ‘the West.’ By juxtaposing western products, music, and lifestyles with local youth cultural practices in a discursive and methodological fashion, the researchers manage to paint a vivid picture of Russian youth scenes.”

—Cordula Gdaniec, H-Net Book Reviews

“In this excellent book, five authors look at post-Soviet youth culture, and in particular at how Russian youth perceive ‘the West’.”

—Cordula Gdaniec, H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences

“Though these are important omissions, it is hard to ask more from a volume that already does so much. Ultimately, the authors promote a rethinking of how cultural globalization is studied and framed.

But through this dedicated collaborative effort—a model of international co-authorship that itself constitutes an important contribution to the literature—the authors throw into question some of the central premises of globalization talk, including the experiential validity of the term periphery and the assumption that national cultures are in decline.”

—Naomi Roslyn Galtz, Social Forces

From the Publisher