GlobalMedia: Music, MTV & Global Media: Crothers' Key Concepts (W4-P2) Sp15

Crother's Key Concepts

In Crothers' 2012 book, Globalization and American Popular Culture, the author explores the "ways that American movies, music, and television programs shape and are shaped by contemporary globalization."


It is important for Americans to study this topic because "it is through these artifacts (and many others) that the rest of the world sees American values and lifestyles."  Or put more poetically: "[W]hat people are likely to see of America and what they are likely to know about America will be filtered through the lens of American popular culture."

So, it is through these artifacts that the world understands American culture.  However, this is not the only reason it is important to study this topic.

More importantly, what effect do these American cultural artifacts have on the cultures other countries?

In the book Crothers defines culture as "the root values, ideas, assumptions, behaviors, and attitudes that members of particular communities generally share in an unexamined, automatic way."

"Among the many things that cultures teach their members are normative standards of evaluation—of dress, food, behavior, attitudes, ideas, and many other things."


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Early on in the book Crothers covers some additional key concepts: popular culture, globalization and fragmegration.

Crothers discusses popular culture, but does not give a succinct definition, so we go to another source for our definition here:

pop[ular] culture:  "commercial culture based on popular taste: fashion, music, and the iconography of pop culture offered the perfect medium for profit (Oxford Dictionary).

With this given definition, how would you describe American popular culture?
Make special note of music.


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Similarly, for a succinct definition of globablization, we will need to head to an outside source.

globalization: "the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale" (Oxford Dictionary).

"A combination of economic, political, and cultural factors promote globalization by
(1) making it possible to create new and increased ties among people, social networks, and ideas that span traditional nation-state boundaries;
(2) linking people in new ways, making it possible for work or travel or shopping or other activities to take place twenty-four hours a day around the world;
(3) advancing the speed of communication and the expectation of instantaneous contact, in effect making global events and issues local ones as well; and
(4) shaping and reshaping individuals’ ideas and identities as they are exposed to this increasingly complex world" (Crothers, 2012).

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Crothers draws on James Rosenau's work.

Rosenau coined the term fragmegration "to describe the integration-fragmentation dynamic that shapes globalization today. Fragmentation and integration occur at the same time, profoundly shaping the dynamics of globalization."

At the same time the process of globalization brings the world together and pushes it apart.
Really?  How?  Explain.

How does music fit in here?


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