Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer

of nonmaterial culture—values, norms, and symbolic culture—is somewhat more problematic.

      The Globalization of Values

      We have already discussed how values differ, sometimes greatly, from one society to another. How, then, can we discuss global values—values shared throughout the world? Some scholars argue that global values exist because all people share a biological structure that produces universal tendencies, including common values. Others contend that while particular values vary from country to country, the underlying structure of values is much the same across societies. However, the most persuasive argument for the existence of global values is traceable to the process of globalization. Global flows of all sorts of things—information, ideas, products, and people—produce realities in most parts of the world more similar than ever before. If these realities are increasingly similar, it seems likely that what people value will come to be increasingly similar throughout the world.

      Cultural Imperialism

      Many have the strong view that what affects global culture most of all is cultural imperialism, or the imposition of at least aspects of one dominant culture on other cultures (Inglis 2017; Tomlinson 1999). Cultural imperialism tends to undermine, even destroy, local cultures. For example, there is a long tradition in India of professional letter writers, men who place themselves in prominent locations (e.g., near train stations) and offer their services writing letters for poor, illiterate migrants. Many of these letter writers are able to survive on the pittance they are paid for each letter. However, the adoption of elements of Western culture—the cell phone, texting, and so on—is rendering the professional letter writers, and the cultural traditions associated with them, obsolete.

      There is certainly a great deal of cultural imperialism in the world today, much of it associated with the United States (Crothers 2018; Kuisel 1993). The process of Americanization includes the importation by other countries of a variety of cultural elements—products, images, technologies, practices, norms, values, and behaviors—closely associated with the United States. One example is the American movie industry: The popularity of American movies around the world has decimated the film industries of many countries, including Great Britain and France. (India is one exception, with its thriving Bollywood productions, including the 2009 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire [Rizvi 2012].) Another successful U.S. cultural export is Americans’ taste for food, especially fast food and the way in which it is eaten (quickly, with one’s hands, standing up or in the car). McDonald’s is a prime example, but another of note is Starbucks (Simon 2009), which has been surprisingly successful in exporting its model of large, slowly consumed cups of coffee. In contrast, in France and Italy and other countries, the historic preference has been for tiny cups of espresso quickly consumed (although the first Starbucks opened in Italy in 2018). There are now more than 28,000 Starbucks stores located around the world, in more than 70 countries.

      Cultural imperialism certainly exists, but it would be wrong to overestimate its power. Local cultures can be quite resilient. Not all cultures suffer the fate of French movie producers and Indian sari makers and letter writers. Consider the following:

       The powerful process of Americanization is often countered by anti-Americanism, which is an aversion to the United States in general, as well as to the influence of its culture abroad (Huntington 1996; O’Connor and Griffiths 2005).

       Many cultures—Chinese and Islamic cultures, for example—have long, even ancient, histories. These cultures have resisted at least some impositions from other cultures for centuries. They are likely to continue to resist changes that threaten their basic values and beliefs.

       Local cultures modify inputs and impositions from other cultures by integrating them with local realities and in the process produce cultural hybrids that combine elements of both (Nederveen Pieterse 2015). Hybridization occurs when, for instance, British people watch Asian rap performed by a South American in a London club owned by a Saudi Arabian; another example is the Dutch watching Moroccan women engage in Thai boxing. In the fast-food realm, McDonald’s sells such hybrid foods as McChicken Korma Naan, which caters to those in Great Britain who have developed a taste for Indian food (including the many Indians who live there); McLaks, a grilled salmon sandwich served in Norway; and McHuevos, a hamburger with a poached egg served in Uruguay.

      Thus, cultural imperialism needs to be examined in the context of the counterreactions to it, counterflows from elsewhere in the world, and the combination of global and local influences to produce unique cultural elements.

      Consumer Culture

      Consumption is clearly highly valued in the United States (and elsewhere; see Nwachukwu and Dant 2014). That makes American culture a consumer culture, one in which the core ideas and material objects relate to consumption and in which consumption is a primary source of meaning in life (Berger 2015; Slater 2015; Wiedenhoft Murphy 2017b). In a consumer culture, meaning may be found in the goods and services you buy, in the process of buying them (in shopping malls, cybermalls, and so on), in the social aspects of consumption (shopping with your friends or family), and even in the settings in which consumption takes place (e.g., the Venetian or some other Las Vegas hotel-casino, eBay; Ritzer, Goodman, and Wiedenhoft 2001). There are norms for the consumption process as well. For example, customers should wait patiently in the queue for the cashier, gamblers at a Las Vegas casino should not flaunt their winnings in front of other gamblers and should tip dealers, and so on.

      Contemporary consumer culture is unique (Trentman 2016). In the past, culture has generally focused on some other aspect of social life, such as religion, warfare, citizenship, or work. In fact, in the not-too-distant past in the United States and other developed countries, the core ideas and material objects of culture related to work and production. People were thought to derive their greatest meaning from their work. This was true from the Industrial Revolution until approximately 1970, when observers began to realize that developed societies, especially the United States, were beginning to derive more meaning from consumption (Baudrillard [1970] 1998). Of course, work continues to be important, as do religion, warfare, and citizenship, but many people in the world now live in a culture dominated by consumption.

      It could be said that the rise of consumer culture was linked to the rise of the modern world in the West (Campbell 1987). Today, of course, consumer culture has arguably become the culture of the modern West and, indeed, of modernity in general. But consumer culture has also been globalized to a great degree. It has become firmly entrenched in such non-Western places as Singapore (see the excesses of consumption there as depicted in the 2018 movie Crazy Rich Asians), Hong Kong, and Dubai. Japan has been called the premier consumer culture. Even in today’s China, known for its production-oriented culture, a billion-plus citizens are becoming more and more consumption oriented. Shanghai is already studded with huge modern shopping malls, and a Disney theme park opened there in 2016.

      Children in a Consumer Culture

      The most controversial aspect of consumer culture may be the involvement of children (Sparman 2015). In a consumer culture, it is important that children be socialized into, and become actively involved in, consuming (Cook 2004; Pilcher 2013). Consumption by children has not always been valued, however. In fact, there were once strong norms against it. Children were not considered to be able to make informed choices about consumption and were therefore seen as even more susceptible than adults to exploitation by advertisers and marketers.

      An important change began to take place in the mid-nineteenth century with the advent of department stores. Some stores offered supervised play areas so that parents could shop more easily. A key development by the mid-twentieth century was children’s sections in department stores; they were eventually subdivided into shops for babies, children, and teens. Also during this period, radio programs, movies, and TV shows were increasingly directed at children. Disney was a leader in this trend. TV shows of the 1950s, such as the Davy Crockett series (King of the Wild Frontier), prompted the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars’