Contenu du sommaire : Globalisation de la culture

This article provides a theoretical model to grasp the cultural dimensions of globalization, through the lens of the circulation of products from the global cultural industries. It first reviews the main analytical tools of this field, developed since the early 1990s, some of which have been instrumental to the global turn of culture. Three key tensions are thus highlighted in the profound transformations of cultural identities, which are still far from being resolved: between homogenization and heterogenization, between American-Western cultural imperialism and ethno-national resistance, and between promoting local and hybridization. Drawing on this foundational body of work, the article proposes a four-pronged model to analyse the different dimensions of the globalization of culture: (i) the production and distribution of aesthetic commodities (as part of aesthetic capitalism); (ii) political competition for cultural hegemony in the global arena (through the use of soft power); (iii) the construction and promotion of cultural authenticity and difference (through intermediaries); (iv) and the establishment of the distance between what is close and familiar, and what is distant and exotic (by cosmopolitan enthusiasts socialized to cultural difference through their consumption).

This paper presents an overview of six key academic interpretations of glocalization discourse in the English-language literature, found in diverse fields and research programmes. First, the geographical perspective views glocalization as an intermediary level of analysis. In most analyses, the glocal is a layer in a nested spatial hierarchy of levels from local to global. However, this critique does not apply to phenomenological perspectives that refer to social or relative space. Second, in Robertson's theory of cultural globalization, glocalization involves the fusion of local and global into a new whole or “third” level. Third, in Ritzer's approach (or “grobalization” theory), glocalization is seen as a form that capitalism assumes in order to incorporate cultural variation. The glocal is “really” part of the global. Fourth, from within the world society or world polity perspective, glocalization is seen as equivalent to the process of “theorization” (as defined by world society theorists). It offers the means through which it becomes possible to “translate” concepts and practices onto distinct cultural contexts. Fifth, in Beck's cosmopolitanization theory, glocalization is also implicitly present in several of the processes that constitute cosmopolitanization as such. Hence, the notion of glocalization has a distinct affinity to Beck's notion of cosmopolitanization. However, Beck's theory often intertwines normative aspects of cosmopolitan philosophy with sociological descriptions and tends to refer to cultural glocalization as deformed or “banal cosmopolitanism”. Lastly, in Roudometof's interpretation, glocalization is seen as analytically distinct from globalization. Glocalization involves the process of refracting global waves through the local, whereby new glocalities are constructed. In the course of the presentation the advantages and shortcomings of different readings of glocalization are briefly assessed.

The recent spread of VoD platforms, particularly North American ones (Netflix, Amazon Video), has rekindled debates around the forms of hegemony associated with cultural globalization and which are materializing in more complex ways, linked to new industrial and economic issues regarding digital technology, as well as geographical contexts (national, and “Global Souths”). Focusing on the case of India, this article examines the hegemony issues raised by VoD platforms, including their cultural, industrial and technological dimensions. It seeks to better understand how the strategies surrounding the production of cultural content are part of broader industrial and financial issues, involving complex relationships of competition and collaboration between Indian and foreign players. Drawing on field work carried out in India between 2018 and 2020, it also argues that these strategies rely heavily on a set of digital services and infrastructure largely dominated by foreign players.

This article explores cultural globalization through a sociological study of the reception of manga in France, from the 1970s to the 2010s. Based on the analysis of archives and in-depth interviews with actors who contributed to the production, circulation and promotion of manga, it shows how these cultural intermediaries – both enthusiasts and professionals – have shaped (or concealed) the “Japaneseness” of this type of symbolic good, and analyses the diverse uses of the cultural and national “origin” of manga. Two contrasting periods are identified: in the first period, a scholarly approach to “adult” Japanese comic books coexisted with the concealing of markers of national anchorage in animated television series for younger audiences. From the 1990s onwards, by contrast, the “Japaneseness” of manga was strongly emphasized and demonstrated differently, depending on the target audience and the cultural habits of the intermediaries who shaped the manga offer in France, in the form of printed books, digital content and related discourse. The article thus sheds light on the mediations at play in the production and perception of manga in France, and the generational and social differentiation of take up of manga and of Japaneseness.

The globalization of the book market has been largely the work of a specific category of intermediaries: literary agents. Trends towards isomorphism at the most professionalized pole of the global book market stem from imitation by competition and the spread of professional standards. US dominance in the global publishing industry has gone hand in hand with the dominance of English-speaking literary agencies and the rise in the share of translations from English. But the mechanisms leading to isomorphism are countered by differentiation, as our interviews with agents in ten different countries have shown. This homogenization around Anglo-American standards was thus counterbalanced by a hybridization and diversification process, opposing two conceptions of “diversity”: ethnic, and cultural. This multifaceted domination has forced dominated or declining actors to reorient their strategies. State agencies have adapted these standards, as in the case of the Israeli agency and the French Publishers Agency that we discuss alongside two independent agencies, Astier-Pécher and Raya, which are betting on authors located at the periphery of the market.

French companies selling international film rights play a major role in the globalization of world cinema, a category encompassing arthouse films from all countries, generally financed in the context of international co-productions and marketed relying on the prescriptive power of festival selections and prizes. The presence of foreign arthouse films in these companies' catalogues has gone hand in hand with the consolidation of the profession of sales agent and the assertion of its capacity to orchestrate the international circulation of the films represented. My research shows that these professionals are now being forced to adapt to the practices and professional cultures emerging around transnational platforms, and to new forms of intermediation at work on the independent film market. These transformations are increasingly leading sales agents to become involved upstream in the film financing process, and to adopt diversification strategies.

This paper analyses the strategies adopted by French and Spanish publishers since the 1970s, on a national and international scale, to conquer a frontier audience: “teenagers”. It explains the gradual shift, within this specific market, from a regime of international circulation of titles to one of internationalization and then globalization of editorial standards. The article also examines the impact of these changes on publishers' strategies and the constraints that weigh on their production. It explores the emergence of the globalized “young adult-crossover” editorial formula, which emerged in the late 1990s around the Harry Potter phenomenon. To this end, it draws mainly on the serial analysis of the catalogues of French and Spanish publishers targeting teen readers, and on an exhaustive survey of the specialized press.

Based on the data that I collected in my empirical study of the reception of Turkish soap operas by the Greek population, in this paper I test the notion of soft power (Nye, 2004). While Turkish soap operas' appeal among Greek audiences is owed to the cultural proximity between the two countries, this proximity does not cancel out the political disagreements between these neighbouring populations, nor does the Greek population's taste for Turkish soap operas translate into support for the Turkish government. More specifically, my study confirms the role of several factors as third-party mediators in the reception of these serial fictions, such as the public's predisposition, current diplomatic relations between two countries, the audience's worldview, and collective, family and/or personal memory.

This article shows how the perspective and tools of reception studies developed by Cultural Studies can be applied to the analysis of public policies, particularly as regards their production and their appropriation by street-level bureaucrats. This approach, which contributes to the theoretical diversification of the study of the State in action, involves an analysis of the design of policies through the lens of the anticipation of their reception by the agents in charge of applying them, and their implementation throughout the process of decoding the meaning of prescriptions as a symbolic good. I develop this analysis by considering the example of education policies, with the case of the Moral and Civic Education curriculum reform that came into force in September 2015.