What is 'Culture'



Culture, Cultural Myths, Tradition and Change

One way to discern and see beyond cultural myths or stereotypes is to have a deeper understanding of what "culture" is, so we will explore the concept of culture from many angles and use different metaphors to try to describe the similarities and differences between American and Austrian cultural characteristics. We will look at the forces of change in culture from "above" (globalization, corporate brands, technology and media, etc.) and from "below" (immigration, social mobility, demographic shifts, etc.). We will take a closer look at the ways cultural knowledge and content are transmitted (through experience, the family, the education system, the media, the state) and try to analyze who, if anyone, controls the message.

1. Metaphors for "Culture"

The best way to recognize and break down cultural stereotypes is to expand your understanding of what "culture" is. By doing so, sweeping statements such as "Americans have no culture" or "Austria is (not) a multicultural society" begin to seem simplistic and even a bit ridiculous. Take each metaphor below and try to apply it to both the Austrian and American cultures as you perceive them. (This is an exercise in free association – there are no right or wrong answers here.)

DOLLS and EXOTIC NATIVES

The stock metaphor for culture in popular culture is pictures (usually of women) or of dolls dressed in festive native costume. When we speak of "the Germans" or "the Russians" we call up these visual metaphors which equate culture with national identity, and imply that culture is relatively uniform and unchanging. They are usually cute, young, timeless, unthreatening. (Notice that the National Geographic cover shown here plays with its old reputation by placing a mother/daughter photo on the cover that startles the viewer with changes and contradictions in culture and identity.)

The ICEBERG

The popular iceberg metaphor illustrates overt, visible and taught aspects of culture (above water) and "hidden culture"- the world of assumptions, habits, beliefs that may not be consciously articulated or taught. The metaphor implies danger, the necessity of having a skilled pilot, and that there is much more to culture than meets the eye.

AROUND THE CAMPFIRE: Recounting tribal heroic myths

Deal & Kennedy's landmark Corporate Culture brings classic anthropology terms such as ritual, clan, and tribe into business. The metaphor implies that culture is "primitive", powerful, timeless, and that a strong head man can reshape it. Also important here is the impact of rituals on transmitting or preserving culture. An example of modern rituals is the way we celebrate holidays or major events in a person's life (e.g. the first day of school). Cultural stories, legends, and history that are passed from generation to generation can also be included here.

MELTING POTS & SALAD BOWLS & JELLY BEANS

Popular metaphors for the relationship of immigrant cultures within a larger nation or dominant culture have shifted from the melting pot to the salad bowl. In the latter, immigrant cultures maintain their original integrity in the new national salad. More cynical observers may note that whether it is stew or salad, it all gets eaten and assimilated in the end. Roosevelt Thomas adds another food metaphor with jelly beans: All jelly beans in the organizational jar are "diverse" not just the red ones or purples ones.

MIND MAPS

Two maps here--the geographic one represents the internal maps people have of their cultural terrain, knowing that "the map is NOT the territory" that reality is always vastly more complex than our mental renderings of it. The other is a mind-map, which depicts the network of associative links in our minds--knowledge triggered by a single word, for example, or the feelings and meanings we associate with a particular behavior. These associations are partly personal, partly collective. Culture in this metaphor is the map of a group's shared meanings and connections.

CELEBRATION!

of diversity, multiculturalism. Notice the metaphor and what it unintentionally communicates: we celebrate holidays, occasions, "special" events. This subtly implies that multiculturalism is decorative, fun, but special, not for ordinary "real" days or for "real" work.

ORGANISM

This biological metaphor sees culture as living, organic, in motion. There are boundaries between internal and external; the organism (and culture) survive by controlling that boundary--allowing nutrients and waste to pass the boundaries, but keeping out foreign intrusions. Within a culture there will be different functions and roles, yet there is a common being-ness.

CHAOS!

Peter Senge, organizational systems theory. Culture is too complex to "manage", should be looked at with awe. One can strive to understand main loops of cause and effect, but realize that you are only capturing a simple version of the mathematically chaotic whole, and that one cannot predict all the effects your actions will create throughout the system.

SOFTWARE OF THE MIND

Geert Hofstede's book of that title uses the primary metaphor of the decade as the boundary between what is human and what is machine is increasingly hard to maintain: the brain as the computer's CPU (=nature, hardwiring) and the mind's culture/knowledge as software. Software is based on algorithms--recipes of sorts--designed by humans for human purposes, then edited and elaborated by future users and programmers.

ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystems and cultures are always dynamic, and contain a vast network of interdependent but diverse elements and none of them an individual culture. Press one spot and the movement is felt throughout the system; the system presses back. New species to the new ecosystem will either die away, adapt, or invade and crowd out "native" species". "Outsiders" to a culture may not last long, may adapt, or may take over--those risks can make both sides nervous.

CULTURE AS A TOOLBOX

Every situation, every person is different. For culture to endure, it must be flexible enough to accommodate many different circumstances. One useful metaphor for culture is the toolbox--one that comes with a stack of reference manuals. Instead of saying "in this culture we make tables THAT way, we raise children or cook a meal THIS way", we acknowledge that culture gives us a set of tools for the task, along with a guide book that suggests how we might use those tools and what the results should look like. Cultural "tools" for making dinner would include heat source and cooking vessels, knowledge of food stuffs, recipes, knives, rules for what items are served at which time of day to which kinds of guests.

BOUNDARIES AS CULTURAL CONTAINERS

We know that change and instability in cultures is a given. Institutions and group membership change over time. The beliefs and practices of your grandmother's ethnic group 75 years ago do not look like the beliefs and practices you follow in your own life. Is a group "ethnic" if its fundamental characteristics change? (This generational question has been an ongoing tension for immigrant groups, and is a hot issue in litigation around Native American tribal rights. Is ethnicity a matter of blood, of particular cultural practices--as defined by whom?, a matter of personal assertion, of nationality, or determined by the formal or informal decisions of your ethnic group about who belongs?)

One way to understand culture is to look past the particular characteristics of cultural practice or bloodlines, and pay attention to a culture's boundaries. This metaphor says the box is more significant than its current content. Cultures are ephemeral results of group experience, not the definition of that group.

Rather it is the boundary between one group and another, the dichotomy, the comparison, that produces cultural patterns. Anthropologist Frederick Barth sees cultural meanings and patterns as forming on each side of a barrier like morning frost. Without walls the meaning does not crystalize. Boundaries are reinforced by stereotyping, and by each group occupying particular niches in the larger culture (a parallel is how siblings will often develop different strengths and roles within a family).

In this situation, even though blue and yellow live close enough to have a large green area of overlap, the historical boundary between them remains strong. Although they will continue to share and adapt and negotiate in the green area, a limited number of differences come to have high emotional and political charge. People may be willing to die for these boundary markers, which come to represent a group's identity. These may be internally chosen (Jerusalem for the Israelis and Palestinians, Cyrillic vs Roman alphabet in the Balkans) or externally imposed (The Nazi use of pink triangles and yellow stars, for example, or dark skin and African features which are boundary markers for US racial groups.).

Adapted from: "What is 'Culture'?", Culture at Work, URL: , accessed May 2010

2. Culture as Knowledge / Mind-mapping exercise

"Anthropologist James Spradley gives an elegantly succinct definition of culture, in which every word is carefully chosen:

Culture is the acquired knowledge people use

to interpret experience and generate behavior."

Source:

Create a mind map of all the concepts, words, ideas, associations, etc. that come to your mind when you hear the word "Culture". So that the results are not too wildly different, use the central framework shown below as your starting point.

3. The Allegory of the Cave

The last metaphor in the Point #3 above emphasizes the boundaries of a culture and implies that one can be "trapped" inside, or in other words, a person can not escape their cultural conditioning. This is a dark view of culture. A slightly more positive perspective is to conceive of culture as a cave – with an opening that lets in light and allows for "escape" and to a higher knowledge. This idea has been around since the times of the earliest philosophers. The most famous example comes from Plato (427-347 B.C.). Read the short excerpts from the "Allegory of the Cave" (part of The Republic, Book VII) and answer the questions. (If you are interested, the entire Allegory can be found on the homepage under "Extra Materials".)

[Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

[Glaucon] I see.

[Socrates] And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

[Glaucon] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

[Socrates] Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

[Glaucon] True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

[Socrates] And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

[Glaucon] Yes, he said.

[Socrates] And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

[Glaucon] Very true.

[Socrates] And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

[Glaucon] No question, he replied.

[Socrates] To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

Later, Plato goes on to his ideas about the ideal rulers of the state – the Philosopher-Kings:

[Socrates] Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.

[Glaucon] Very true, he replied.

[Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.

[Glaucon] What do you mean?

[Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.

[Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?

[Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.

[Glaucon] True, he said, I had forgotten.

[Socrates] Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

[Glaucon] Quite true, he replied.

(While looking for a "Philospoher-King" graphic in the internet, I came across this bizarre website called "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?" Here's the link: ).

Questions

Take the various elements from the picture of the cave and provide a 21st century equivalent. For example, what is the fire today? What casts the shadows on the wall that people take for reality?

The term "island of the blessed" is used in this text and also (often sarcastically) to describe Austria. Explain this term and say whether you think there it is a valid description of Austrians.

Plato's ideal ruler is the enlightened philosopher-king who rules out of a sense of social obligation, not thirst for power. Do you know of any leader like that?

In modern terms, Plato's ideal state is a strange mixture of elitism (different classes of people) and social welfare/unity. What is it that makes a person "elite" in his State? What is this person obligated to do?

Plato contrasts his Republic to "other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power". Is this a fair description of nations today in your opinion? Is it a fair description of modern corporations?

4. (Corporate) Controllers of the Message

One of the questions above asked you to identify modern examples of the fire in Plato's cave – who shines the light and creates the shadows that we take for reality? There are many ways to answer this, but clearly this is where the role of business in society becomes an issue. Below are just two examples of the increasing power of large companies in shaping the way we experience and perceive the world. Read them and answer the questions following the text.

a) "Marketing the World" by David Korten (When Corporations Rule the World)

Marketing the World

taken from David Korten's When Corporations Rule the World, Chapter 11

Whoever has the power to project a vision of the good life and make it prevail has the most decisive power of all . . . American business, after 1890, acquired such power and . . . in league with key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition, with more goods this year than last, more next year than this.

-- William Leach

Corporate executives dream of a global market made up of people with homogenized tastes and needs . . . Logos on bottles, boxes, and labels are global banners, instantly recognizable by millions who could not tell you the color of the U.N. flag.

-- Richard J. Barnett and John Cavanaugh

In modern societies, television has arguably become our most important institution of cultural reproduction. Our schools are probably the second most important. Television has already been wholly colonized by corporate interests, which are now laying claim to our schools. The goal is not simply to sell products and strengthen the consumer culture. It is also to create a political culture that equates the corporate interest with the human interest in the public mind. In the words of Paul Hawken, "Our minds are being addressed by addictive media serving corporate sponsors whose purposed is to rearrange reality so that viewers forget the world around them."

The rearrangement of reality begins with the claim that in a market economy, the consumer decides and the market responds. In a world of small buyers and sellers, this may have been true. No individual seller could expect to create a new culture conducive to spurring consumption expenditures and advancing corporate political interests. As corporate demand has grown for supporting services in advertising, graphics, media, creative production, consumer research, marketing education, and countless others, whole industries have emerged to help corporations create insatiable desires for the things they sell and cultivate political values aligned with the corporate interest.

First America, Then the World

There was a day when the prevailing American culture was the mass marketer's worst nightmare. Frugality and thrift were central to the famed "Puritan ethic" that the early Puritan settlers brought with them to America. The Puritans believed in hard work, participation in community, temperate living, and devotion to a spiritual life. Their basic rule of living was that one should not desire more material things than could be used effectively. They taught their children, "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without."

The Quakers also had a strong influence on early American and, although more tolerant and egalitarian, shared with the Puritans the values of hard work and frugality as important to one's spiritual development. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both important early American writers, viewed simplicity as a path to experiencing the divine.

The consumer culture emerged largely as a consequence of concerted efforts by retailing giants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to create an ever-growing demand for the goods they offered for sale. American historian William Leach has documented in Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culure how they successfully turned a spiritually oriented culture of frugality and thrift into a material culture of self-indulgence. Leach finds the claim that the market simply responds to consumer desires to be nothing more than a self-serving fabrication of those who make their living manipulating reality to convince consumers to buy what corporations find it profitable to sell:

Indeed, the culture of consumer capitalism may have been among the most nonconsensual public cultures ever created, and it was nonconsensual for two reasons. First, it was not produced by "the people" but by commercial groups in cooperation with other elites comfortable with and committed to making profits and to accumulating capital on an ever-ascending scale. Second, it was nonconsensual because, in its mere day-to-day conduct (but not in any conspiratorial way), it raised to the fore only one vision of the good life and pushed out all others. In this way, it diminished American public life, denying the American people access to insight into other ways of organizing and conceiving life, insight that might have endowed their consent to the dominant culture (if such consent were to be given at all) with real democracy.

The populist cultures that grew out of the hearts and aspirations of ordinary people in America stressed the democratization of property and the virtues of a republic based on independent families owning their own land and tools, producing for themselves much of what they consumed, and participating in communities of sharing. Theirs was the model of a strong social economy, supplemented by involvement in the money economy at the margin of their lives.

The shift from a social economy of household and community production to a primarily monetized economy took place in America in the mid-1800s, during the period in which the large corporations became increasingly skillful in creating desire for their products. Eventually, marketing was born as a management specialty, and the early business schools began offering courses to meet the demand. As more people became dependent on wage employment in the factories, governments gained a stake in promoting consumerism as a wa of maintaining employment.

Business became skilled in using colors, glass, and light to create exciting images of a this-world paradise conveyed by elegant models and fashion shows. Museums offered displays depicting the excitement of the new culture. Gradually, the individual was surrounded by messages reinforcing the culture of desire. Advertisements, department store show windows, electric signs, fashion shows, the sumptuous environments of the leading hotels, and billboards all conveyed artfully crafted images of the good life. Credit programs made is seem effortless to buy that life. According to Leach:

The United States was the first country in the world to have an economy devoted to mass production and it was the first to create the mass consumer institutions and the mass consumer enticements that rose up in tandem to market and sell the mass-produced goods. More effectively and pervasively than any other nation, America . . . forged a unique bond among different institutions that served to realize business aims.

Today, television is the primary medium through which corporations shape the culture and behavior of Americans. The statistics are chilling. The average American child between the ages of two and five watches three and a half hours of television a day; the average adult, nearly five hours. Only work and sleep occupy more of the average adult's life – with television effectively replacing community and family life, cultural pursuits. At this rate, the average American adult is seeing approximately 21,000 commercials a year, most of which carry an identical message: "Buy something – do it now!" The 100 largest corporations in America pay for roughly 75 percent of commercial television time and 50 percent of public television time. With a half minute of prime-time network advertising selling for between $200,000 and $300,000, only the largest corporations can afford it. Although there may be no overt control over program content, television producers are hired to produce television programming that advertisers will buy and necessarily have these corporations and their views of proper programming content constantly in mind.

Jerry Mander explains why television is a nearly ideal communications medium for serving the corporate purpose:

By its ability to implant identical images into the minds of millions of people, TV can homogenize perspectives, knowledge, tastes, and desires, to make them resemble the tastes and interests of the people who transmit the imagery. In our world, the transmitters of the images are corporations whole ideal of life is technologically oriented, commodity oriented, materialistic, and hostile to nature. And satellite communications is the mechanism by which television is delivered into parts of the planet that have, until recently, been spared this assault.

As global corporations reach out to the four corners of the earth, they bring with them not only established products and brand names, but also their favored media and the sophisticated marketing methods by which they colonize every culture they touch. (. . . )

[pic] [pic]

The One World of MTV Knows – "Coke is Best"

In his Atlantic Monthly article in praise of economic integration, Akio Morita identified distinctive local cultures as a trade barrier. The need to respect local tastes and cultural differences as a condition of gaining consumer acceptance greatly complicates global marketing campaigns. The dream of global marketers is a globalized consumer culture united around brand-name loyalties that will allow a company to sell its products with the same advertising copy in Bangkok as in Paris or New York. It is happening. In the words of Robert C. Goizueta, chairman of Coca-cola Company, "people around the world are today connected by brand name consumer products as much as by anything else." Coca-cola's success in making itself a global symbol has served as an inspiration for corporate executives everywhere.

Few media provide greater potential for realizing this advertisers' dream than MTV, the rock music television channel. Its near universal appeal to teenagers and preteens around the world makes it an ideal instrument for the globalization of consumer culture.

( . . .)

Sarah Ferguson believes that the commercialization of youth culture, especially the music that was once a primary instrument of expressive rebellion for adolescents, keeps youth from owning even their own rebellion and actively inhibits the development of a counter-culture. She writes, "The loop taken by a new musical style from the underground to the mainstream is now so compressed that there's no moment of freedom and chaos when a counterculture can take root." ( . . . )

Corporations in the Classroom

Corporations are now moving aggressively to colonize the second major institution of cultural reproduction, the schools. According to Consumers Union, 20 million U.S. schoolchildren used some form of corporate-sponsored teaching materials in their classrooms in 1990. Some of theses are straightforward promotions of junk food, clothing, and personal-care items . . .

Corporations have also been aggressive in getting their junk foods into school vending machines and school lunch programs . . .

Other messages seek to indoctrinate young minds in the beliefs and values of corporate liberalism . . .

Faced with the inevitability of an environmentally aware public, corporations have responded by painting themselves green and seeking to define the problem and its solutions in ways that support corporate objectives . . .

Mobil and other corporations actively support the National Council on Economic Education, whose mission is to promote the teaching of economics in elementary and high schools. A paid Mobil op-ed piece in the New York Times lamented the fact that high school seniors were able to five correct answers to only 35 percent of questions on a national economic literacy survey. Obviously, Mobil has its own idea of what a correct answer is. The op-ed piece notes:

When it comes to domestic issues, it helps to understand the impact that raising or cutting taxes will have on job security and standard of living. And when it comes to environmental policy and regulations, it's necessary to comprehend basic economic principles such as supply and demand, cost versus benefit and a company's need for profits.

( . . .)

Channel One, an advertiser-sponsored school television program, beams its news and ads for candy bars, fast food and sneakers directly into the classroom for twelve minutes a day in more than 12,000 schools. In exchange for a satellite dish and video equipment for each classroom, the school must agree that Channel One will be shown on at least 90 percent of school days to 90 percent of the children . . .

Other corporations are proposing to operate the public schools on a for-profit basis. The possibilities for profiting by turning classrooms into new mass media outlets for corporate marketing, image building, and ideological molding pitched to young and malleable minds are staggering – and frightening.

The World of 1984

Corporations spend money on advertising, lobbying, advocacy, and public relations, whether in schools or the mass media, to encourage individual and public actions that support and advance corporate interests using whatever methods will elicit the desire consumer response. ( . . . )

Tobacco companies spend millions to convince the public that there is no scientific basis for claims that smoking is harmful to their health; auto manufacturers fight emissions standards; gun manufacturers fight gun controls; chemical companies illegally dump their toxic wastes; and drug companies engage in monopoly pricing. It happens every day. For all the corporate claims to the contrary, Business Week itself said it well: "Modern multinationals are not social institutions. They will play governments off one another, shift pricing to minimize taxes, seek to sway opinion, export jobs, or withhold technology to maintain a competitive edge."

Corporate efforts to shape our culture and our politics through control of television bring to mind George Orwell's 1984 and his images of an authoritarian society ruled by ever-present television monitors that manipulate citizens' perceptions of the world. Our reality is more subtle and the techniques more sophisticated than Orwell anticipated. And the strings are pulled by corporations rather than governments. We are ruled by an oppressive market, not an oppressive state.

The techniques have an elegant simplicity. They center on manipulating the cultural symbols in which our individual identities and values are anchored. Before mass media, these symbols were collective creations of people relating to one another and expressing their inner feelings through artistic media. They represented our collective sense of who we are. The more time we spend immersed in the corporate-controlled and –packaged world of television, the less time we have for the direct human exchanges through which cultural identity and values were traditionally expressed, reinforced, and updated. Increasingly, those who control mass media control the core culture.

The architects of the corporate global vision seek a world in which universalized symbols created and owned by the world's most powerful corporations replace the distinctive cultural symbols that link people to particular places, values and human communities. Our cultural symbols provide an important source of identity and meaning; they affirm our worth, our place in society. They arouse our loyalty to and sense of responsibility for the health and well-being of our community and its distinctive ecosystem. When control of our cultural symbols passes to corporations, we are essentially yielding to them the power to define who we are. Instead of being Americans, Norwegians, Egyptians, Filipinos, or Mexicans, we become simply members of the "Pepsi generation," detached from place and any meaning other than those a corporation finds it profitable to confer on us. Market tyranny may be more subtle than state tyranny, but it is no less effective in enslaving the many to the interests of the few.

b) Media Concentration in the US

Not only have corporations made use of the media to push their interests, the media itself has increasingly become the domain of fewer and fewer extremely large firms.

In 2004, Ben Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

(Source: Media Reform Information Center ( ) For a more recent and detailed overview that includes internet see the files called "And then there were eight" and "Media Moguls" under "Extra Materials"

Questions

According to Korten, who controls the contents of television and what functions should television serve?

What industries / fields have arisen to increase consumer demand?

What is the corporate view of culture in Korten's opinion?

Korten depicts globalization as "economic colonization". What arguments does he make to support this and do you agree or disagree with him? If this is true, who are the colonizers?

According to Korten, corporations have succeeded in making the general public believe what he calls "economic myths" designed to facilitate their own interests. Here are a few of them – decide whether you think these statements are fact or myth:

"In a market economy, consumers decide and producers respond."

"When the economy does well, people do well."

"Economic growth is always a good thing."

"Government is a necessary evil" and "Big government is a bad thing."

"Technology's purpose and effect is to improve the quality of people's lives."

"Globalization is a natural development."

Consider now the culture you live in – the things you do every day, the things you value, the things you believe, how you interact with others. How is it different from the culture your parents or grandparents grew up in? How is it different from that of an American student of similar age?

After all of this, think again about the statement "Austria is a multicultural society." It is very likely that your first association was with "foreigners" and the impact of immigration on Austrian society. Cultural and economic fears abound here: that the Austrian way-of-life will be affected, that foreigners will take jobs away from Austrians, etc. etc. This is what I referred to as pressure from "below" in the introduction. Compare the potential impact of immigration versus globalization (in the sense of corporate power) on Austrian culture.

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Qualities of Culture

(Other ideas)

Transmitters of Culture

Contents of Culture

"Culture"

Things your

(grand-) parents didn't do at your age:

log on, email, chat, surf, channel surf, tivo, google, text, tweet, blog, post, upload, download, stream, ping, copy, paste, delete, link in, fileshare . . .

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