Castells M. Globalisation and ...

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Manuel Castells
Globalisation
and identity
A comparative perspective
Globalisation and the strengthening of various cultural identities
(religious, national, ethnic, geographic, and gender, among
others) have occurred over the last ifteen years. In my view,
this is no coincidence but rather the product of a systemic
relationship between the two phenomena.
1. TWO SIMULTANEOUS PROCESSES
It is not immediately
 because the idea has taken root that globalisation requires 
a global, cosmopolitan culture. Their are several variations on this theme. Some talk of 
uniication and cultural homogenisation of the world and criticise the process. Others 
consider that globalisation will overcome local and historical identities, supercede some 
ideologies, and produce an undifferentiated universal human culture. I believe that both 
the quest for a new universal cultural to sweep away historical cultures is misguided, 
while fear that “Americanisation” will wipe out historically-based cultural identities is 
unfounded. 
This vision of economic development and globalisation is really no more than an extension 
of the two great rationalist movements providing the cultural and ideological foundations 
of the contemporary world —Liberalism and Marxism. Both schools of thought are based 
on a negation of historical, religious, and ethnic construction of identity, and stress new 
ideals (the Citizen of the World or Soviet Man, respectively). Each of these models has 
its own traits but they both coincide in considering any other distinction as artiicial. I 
emphasise this because at the moment this is the dominant ideology in our society and 
in Europe as a whole. It is the rationalist approach, in both its Liberal and Marxist guises. 
These ideologies consider identities as dangerous and, most likely, fundamentalist, whether 
they be religiously, nationally, or ethnically based. I believe this is an extremely important 
issue because it goes to the root of the problems of the modern world.
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2. THE PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITIES
Let us now examine the reasons for the foregoing situation. In has been empirically 
demonstrated that culturally constructed identities are fundamental to the way people 
think about things. Evidence for this comes from various questionnaires administered in 
universities over a longish period of time. The main source of this data comes from the 
World Values Survey
, the greatest impetus 
for which has come from Prof. Inglehart of  
the University of Michigan. For many 
years, he has demonstrated both the 
persistence and the transformation of 
these identities. In this respect, one should 
also take into account the data analysed 
by Prof. Norris of Harvard University. 
She used the data contained in the 
World
Values Survey
 that compared identities at 
world, national, and regional levels, and 
with Mankind’s cosmopolitan identities 
in general. With regard to data taken from the beginning and the end of the 1990s, 
Prof. Norris calculated that for the world as a whole, 13% of respondents primarily 
considered themselves as “citizens of the world”, 38% put their Nation-State irst, and the 
remainder (i.e. the majority) put local or regional identities irst. One should note that the 
Basque Country and Catalonia appear in this database as regional identities. Moreover, 
a breakdown of world geographical zones reveals that the area where local and regional 
identities are strongest is Southern Europe (61%).
This reveals the need to begin with observations regarding the persistence of these 
identities. Nevertheless, one has to begin with more than just the combination of 
globalisation (i.e. processes producing power, wealth, and information on a worldwide 
scale) and identities drawing on unique cultural and local traits. In recent times, these  
two processes have led to a crisis in the Nation-State, which was invented as an 
institutional tool for managing societies and their problems.
However, the world is facing problems that cannot be managed within the national 
sphere. This creates a crisis of political representation in which the State fails to enshrine 
multiple sources of identity (not least because we live in a multicultural world). It is worth 
briely looking at the trends before dealing with this complex issue in greater depth.
“These two processes
have led to a crisis in
the Nation-State, which
was invented as an
institutional tool for
managing societies”
3. GLOBALISATION AS A STRUCTURAL PROCESS
First, it is worth recalling that globalisation is not an ideology but rather an objective 
process of structuring economy, societies, institutions, cultures, etc. One should also 
remember that 
globalisation
 does not mean a set of undifferentiated processes. For 
example, we speak of globalisation to refer to the kind of economy capable of operating in 
real time at the everyday level. However, one should note here that not all economies can 
be considered global in scope. The world economy operates in accordance with its central 
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Globalisation and identity
A comparative perspective
Manuel Castells
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functions, which span capital and inancial markets. These 
inancial markets are globally interdependent regardless of 
whether they operate in true market economies or in  
Capitalist ones. In both cases, capital is global in nature. 
3.1. Economy, Science, Technology and Communication
 
At root, economy is global in nature. It is interdependent and 
global when it comes to world trade, which increasingly plays 
a decisive role in economies worldwide. It is also  
global with regard to the production of goods and services. 
However, while the economy’s core is global, the rest is not. 
For example, most of the labour force is not global. 
Multinational companies and their ancillary networks only 
provide work for some two hundred million workers. This 
may seem a great many but in fact it is only a drop in the 
ocean compared with a world workforce of three thousand 
million workers. However, these two hundred million 
workers, employed in some ifty three thousand 
multinationals, make up 40% of the world GDP and two thirds 
of world trade. Therefore, what happens in this system of 
production shapes economies as a whole. 
Science and technology, the basis of wealth creation and 
military power, and of States and countries, are global in 
scope and are articulated on a worldwide scale. Science and 
technology networks operate globally and are based on local 
nodes of varying size. 
Communication is also basically global in nature. Financial 
and technological control of communications also operates on 
a world scale. Here, one should note that 50% of the world’s 
audiovisual material and news is controlled by just seven 
communication groups. However, this does not necessarily 
mean that the culture of these media is a globalised one. 
What can be seen is a process of globalisation with regard 
to business and information management but with content 
tailored to local tastes. For example, Murdoch produces 
classic American series for US audiences, while Sky Channel 
in the UK broadcasts British series. Sky Channel in India 
broadcasts in Hindi for Northern India, and in Tamil in 
Madras, using local characters. Broadcasts in Southern China 
are in Cantonese, and the series are locally-based. By contrast, 
broadcasts in Northern China are in Mandarin and series 
employ different storylines. In other words, communication 
strategies are global in business terms but are tailored to 
speciic cultures and identities for marketing reasons. 
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Collage Blau (Blue Collage)
, Antoni Tàpies (2005) paint, pencil and collage on cardboard 50,5 x 67 cm
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Globalisation and identity
A comparative perspective
Manuel Castells
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3.2. Global public goods
The concept of globalisation has gone hand in hand with  
the development of a set of international institutions that are playing an increasingly 
important role in dealing with world problems. The notion of global public goods 
requiring worldwide management is one that continues to gain ground. The environment 
is a case in point, despite the Bush Administration’s refusal to accept overwhelming expert 
consensus on global warming. Human rights are also considered to be universal and fall 
under the aegis of the International Criminal Court. Likewise, health also has a global 
dimension, as shown by the AIDS 
epidemic and SARS (Severe Acute 
Respiratory Syndrome), which 
reveal that disease is catching and 
that the wealthy have a vested 
interest in the health of the poor. 
The policies and workings of the 
United Nations also indicate  
that interdependence goes far 
beyond bilateral relationships 
between countries.
“This globalisation is both
inclusive and exclusive.
It includes everything that
has monetary value and
excludes everything else”
3.3. Infrastructure and causes
Globalisation rests on a technological infrastructure. 
However, this infrastructure is not the cause of globalisation, which is driven by economic 
strategies, cultural developments and markets. Even so, it would not have happened 
without the economic infrastructure. In other words, capital has always been global but 
now thousands of millions of Euros can be shifted from one investment to another in a 
matter of seconds. Today’s globalisation is quite different from that of yesteryear because 
it is based on ICT (Information and Communication Technology), which renders distances 
between countries irrelevant.
Moreover, this globalisation is both inclusive and exclusive. It includes everything that 
has monetary value and excludes everything else. Thus economic globalisation is selective 
by nature. This is why national governments and companies try to position themselves 
in the global network because exclusion from it means no growth, no economic 
development, and no wealth creation. Failure to attract capital and technological 
investment can make economic outcasts of whole countries or sectors of the population. 
Accordingly, it is not so much a question of a “North-South” divide but rather of those 
within the network opposing those outside it. Evidently, a much larger proportion of 
people in the “North” belong to the network compared to those in the “South”. Even 
so, there are groups of population in the South that belong to the network yet remain 
isolated from their host societies.
This kind of exclusion has led to public opinion questioning the beneits of globalisation 
in recent years. Great swathes of society have been left on the fringes by globalisation, 
while its beneiciaries have reaped vast rewards. One cannot see globalisation in black 
and white terms as either “good” or “bad”. It depends on one’s criteria, who is being 
considered and the subject under consideration (for example, globalisation may be 
beneicial in economic terms but harmful in environmental ones). In any case,  
Nation-States are pushing ahead with globalisation in order to shape and beneit from 
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