The essays in this volume of Design Issues examine contemporary developments in fashion, architecture, and industrial and graphic design in light of the evolving pressures of globalization. Taking as their starting point diverse examples from Africa, Greece, Barcelona, Shanghai, and British-era Hong Kong, the authors analyze the myriad ways that design cultures negotiate the space between the local and the global. They examine how design can exploit or subvert the commercial allure of the “exotic,” and how it is called upon to reference national identity or recast the vernacular. They address the branding of place as a means of reinforcing cultural identity and expanding opportunities in international trade and tourism. And, finally, they highlight the political and social significance of the varying forms of cultural hybridity that have emerged out of our postcolonial and internationalized capitalist condition, suggesting that local design cultures are both challenged and enabled by the increasing globalization of the marketplace. Ever since Marshall McLuhan published his vision of the “global village” in the 1960s, social and political theorists—mostly coming from a Marxist perspective—have associated globalization with the acceleration of time, the “annihilation” of space, and the expansion of authoritarian control. The priorities of transnational capital, driven by consumerism and neoliberal economic policies, have made the nation-state increasingly irrelevant and state-based democracy more vulnerable. This discourse of cultural imperialism further asserts that the rapidly expanding reach of technology and capitalism is producing a homogenous world culture primarily dominated by America and the West. Indeed, one of the major divides in studies of globalization today is whether increased international trade is imposing cultural homogenization or, in fact, working to enrich and preserve culture through expanded access to the Internet and increased cross-cultural contact. From the perspective of a free-market optimist such as Tyler Cohen, the sharp rise in global trade creates more entrepreneurial opportunities for producers of art and culture by “liberating difference from geography,” making culture less about identifying with a particular region or location. This view entrusts that the consumer-citizen and not the multinational corporation ultimately succeeds in driving
Karen Fiss (Fri,) studied this question.