Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/prin021/2001059166.html
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摘要
摘要
A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity.
Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade.
For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.
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This "economist's eye" view is a welcome addition to the literature on culture policy, although it has both positive and negative sides. The positive is that Cowen (George Mason Univ.) avoids much of the usual negativity often found in the globalization literature. He examines the impacts of open markets and increasing incomes on the production and distribution of cultural goods in a rather breathtakingly extensive array of national, regional, and tribal cultures. Cowen comes down on the side of a rich cosmopolitanism of cultures that evolve, and of tribal cultures that are liberated from the status of "diversity slaves" with their right to evolve similarly recognized. Less satisfactory are his use of the criterion of success being export revenues rather than success in articulating and expressing a distinctive national culture; his glossing over of the differences among high, low, and national culture; and his failure to differentiate between technological advances and the content of those advances. Finally, a definition of the slippery term "cultural imperialism" would have made his analysis a bit sharper. These minor caveats do not detract from this book, which definitely deserves a place on the culture policy shelves. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduate through faculty collections. P. K. Kresl Bucknell University
目录
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
1 Trade between Cultures | p. 1 |
2 Global Culture Ascendant: The Roles of Wealth and Technology | p. 19 |
3 Ethos and the Tragedy of Cultural Loss | p. 47 |
4 Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care | p. 73 |
5 Dumbing Down and the Least Common Denominator | p. 102 |
6 Should National Culture Matter? | p. 128 |
References | p. 153 |
Index | p. 173 |