| Research Abstract |
Let me outline how I am envisioning globalization modelling here. I see it in several tiers.
V.General or universal theory of globalization (if there is such)
IV.Specific theory or model of globalization of each globalizing unit
(e.g., Model of Japan's globalization)
III.Category-specific global model
(e.g., global spread of Japan's popular culture)
II.Feature-specific global model
(e.g., Model of global spread of Pokemon)
I.Ethnographic data on globalization of a globalizing unit
(e.g. Pokemon in Indonesia, US, etc.)
My criticism has been that most builders of globalization theory assume that they are engaged in building a general or universal theory (V), when they are actually speculating on Western globalization at level (IV). That is, they think they are proposing a general theory, but in close inspection, you find that their theory is full of assumptions inherent in Western culture, such as equality, humanism, progress, etc., as I argued in a paper I presented at a conference in Bonn on fundamentalism (Befu 1998). Is the West's globalization equivalent to universal globalization? Is the West doing what others will then inevitably follow doing? Doesn't this sound so much like the 19^<th> century theory of cultural evolution, a la Morgan, Tylor et al., that we abandoned for its ethnocentrism a century ago?
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