- Define and explain Globalisation and Hybridity in your own words
- Use key terms such as Globalisation accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Globalisation and Hybridity: see how world cultures mix, blend and borrow from each other.
See how world cultures mix, blend and borrow from each other.
Key ideas
The culture industry
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) that mass-produced entertainment forms a culture industry: films, pop songs and magazines are standardised products that keep audiences passive and distracted from inequality. This is a critical Marxist view, and it is contested: others argue audiences actively interpret and resist media messages rather than simply absorbing them.
Deviance is a label
Howard Becker argued in Outsiders (1963) that deviance is not a quality of an act but the result of social groups making rules and applying them: a person becomes deviant by being successfully labelled as such. His labelling theory, building on Chicago School studies of urban life, shows how being called a criminal or a troublemaker can push people towards the very behaviour condemned. The theory's power is showing that reactions create deviance; its limit is saying less about why some acts are harmful in the first place.
Key term — Globalisation: The growing interconnectedness of the world through trade, travel, migration and media, which brings different cultures into constant contact.
Give one real example of cultural hybridity and explain the mix.
Any accurate example, e.g. bhangra music blending Punjabi folk traditions with Western pop and hip-hop in Britain.
Answer: Any accurate example, e.g. bhangra music blending Punjabi folk traditions with Western pop and hip-hop in Britain.
- Thinking globalisation makes everyone the same Global contact produces hybridity, new mixed cultures, and people also actively resist and adapt global influences rather than just copying them.
- Assuming subcultures are criminal gangs Most subcultures are harmless style or interest groups; researchers study them for what they reveal about mainstream values, not because members are criminals.
Practice
A subculture has distinct values or styles within mainstream culture, while a counterculture deliberately rejects mainstream values, as the hippies did.
Adorno argued that mass entertainment is standardised by profit-driven industries, keeping audiences passive, conformist and distracted from real inequality.
It challenges Adorno's culture industry view, supporting the argument that audiences actively interpret, adapt and resist media rather than absorbing it passively.
Deviance is created when social groups make rules and successfully label rule-breakers as outsiders.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "Globalisation"?
Using Goffman's dramaturgy, explain why you might act differently in a job interview and at home with friends.
- Globalisation and Hybridity: see how world cultures mix, blend and borrow from each other.
- The culture industry: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) that mass-produced entertainment forms a culture industry: films, pop songs and magazines are standardised products that keep audiences passive and distracted from inequality.
- Cultural hybridity: The blending of different cultural traditions to create new mixed forms, such as British Asian bhangra music or sushi burritos.
- Watch out for: thinking globalisation makes everyone the same