National cultures in the Age of Globalization by Rick Salutin

Queen's Quarterly, Summer 1999 v106 i2 p206-15 (English)

National cultures in the age of globalization: the case of Canada. Salutin, Rick.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 Queen's Quarterly

RICK SALUTIN is a freelance writer. He has written plays and novels and is media columnist for The Globe and Mail. This article is adapted from an address to the German Association for Canadian Studies.

Let me begin by explaining what I mean when I use the term "globalization" - and what I do not mean. I do not mean globalization in the sense of the communications revolution, the information highway, the Internet, and other breathless coinages. Every advance in communications technology over the past 200 years has been hailed as unprecedented, transformative, inaugurating a new version of human nature, extending democracy and so forth. During the French Revolution, the introduction of semaphore, for heaven's sake, was hailed in this way. It was going to make the nation state obsolete and lead to the integration of all humanity. Similar claims were made for the telegraph, film, radio, television - and of course the Internet.

THE sense in which I do mean to use globalization refers to the global economic reach and power of corporate capital in our time. In its case, I would also like to enter a routine demur against the claim that it truly counts as globalization in some general and unique sense. It is certainly not the only form of globalization, or even the only form of economic globalization, which could be imagined or achieved. It is capitalist and corporate, it subjugates all human values and social posibilities to economic calculation and the profit advantage of a few huge players - and they are growing ever fewer. In the time it has taken you to read the first few paragraphs of this article, the number of major corporate actors has probably decreased due to mergers and acquisitions. This is concentration of power on a level that makes feudal accumulations of power look shabby and decentralized. It is not globalization in a general sense but in a very limited and particular sense. At most, it is one cramped version of globalization. In this light, the central contradiction of our time is not between global and local realities, but between corporate capital as a centre of power and all other possible sources of power.

Globalization in this sense is a terribly serious threat to the cohesion of societies and the welfare of individuals, one which seems to me comparable to the situation in Europe before the First World War. A savage, destructive global conflict is having massive deleterious effects, and so far we have only seen their beginnings. What little progress was made is being rolled back - in the Third World, in the cities of the First, in the immense and shameful gap between rich and poor everywhere. Globalization in this sense is a global social calamity for the majority, for structures and institutions - from nations to communities - and for the assumptions around which they have often organized their sense of self.

ONE of the most striking phenomena of our times is the increased importance of national cultures in this era of globalization. Given the great disruptions that globalization has occasioned in people's lives everywhere, it is predictable that they should turn to traditional sources of stability and identification. Whatever provides such a resource will be valued, clung to and, if necessary, resuscitated. We see this with the renewed attachment to religion in our time - from Islamic fundamentalism to the born-again Christians of the United States and Latin America. In his series of novels about the end of British rule in India, The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott has a character speculate that the rise of Hindu and Muslim militancy in India during the later years of British rule was due to the "comfort and support" religion provided in the face of British imperialism. "Hit a man in the face long enough," writes Scott, "and he turns to his racial memory and his tribal gods." In other words, modern imperial politics revived religion. In much the same way, you might say that modern global economics has revived national culture and ethnicity, along with religion. What I want to stress, however, is the intimate relationship between economic distress or catastrophe, and cultural response. I'm thinking here of the argument made by economist Karl Polanyi in his book The Great Transformation, published in 1943. Polanyi - a socialist but not a Marxist - wrote:

Actually of course a social calamity is primarily a cultural not an economic phenomenon ... the disintegration of the cultural environment of the victim is then the cause of the degradation. The economic process may, naturally, supply the vehicle of the destruction, and almost invariably economic inferiority will make the weaker yield, but the immediate cause of his undoing is not for that reason economic; it lies in the lethal injury to the institutions in which his social existence is embodied ... Nothing obscures our social vision as effectively as the economistic prejudice ... Yet it is precisely this emphasis put on exploitation which tends to hide from our view the even greater issue of cultural degeneration.

He argued that when people feel great economic pressure, they naturally seek some confirmation that their lives make sense, and they look for this within their families and communities. If they can find such reassurance, they are able to withstand remarkable levels of economic deterioration and catastrophe. It is culture - that which makes sense of people's lives in relation to their community and the history of their community - to which they turn. On the other hand, argued Polanyi, if the sense of culture deteriorates, then even if the economic situation in some respects improves, the human results may well be disastrous. He argued, for instance, that this was the case for many Africans sold into slavery: "... their standard of life, in some artificial sense, may have been improved." But this was far outweighed by the cultural impoverishment the slaves suffered. A similar fate befell American native peoples moved onto reservations; they may have benefitted "individually, according to our financial scale of reckoning. Yet the measure all but destroyed the race in its physical existence." In this light, it seems clear that culture - that which makes sense of our lives - matters to human existence more than purely economic "factors." Thus in an age of severe economic disruption, it is natural for people to turn to their cultures, including national culture, as a resource.

Our own Canadian culture is particularly threatened in the present age of globalization. The very nature of national culture in Canada (especially in English-speaking Canada) and the special role of institutions in that culture make it vulnerable. I refer both to institutions that are specifically cultural, like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and institutions that are non-cultural, like the health care system. As well, some institutions are both cultural and non-cultural; the railway was originally a means of transportation which effectively created the national reality in the nineteenth century, but which also became a cultural icon described in works of non-fiction, like Pierre Berton's books, and works of art and music, like Gordon Lightfoot's "Railroad Trilogy." I make note of this because the kind of nationhood expressed in Canada has always been simplified; we're a sort of no-frills country, a kind of stripped-down, minimalist nation.

Most other countries have expressed their nationhood in more elaborate, sometimes even murky or mystical ways. You could say we lack the kind of glue which has characterized most national societies and held them together: glue such as a distinct national language, a long history, a deeply embedded culture or folklore, and a national mythology (the "American Dream," nineteenth-century England's "White Man's Burden," the French mission civilisatrice). Nations can survive severe political or economic dislocations when they possess that kind of glue. Harold Innis once pointed out that France puts on and takes off constitutions without the French ever wondering whether la France will cease to be; it is unthinkable. The French nation's language and culture guarantee its survival. Poland didn't exist on a map for 125 years, but its reality for the Polish people remained strong.

It is true that we Canadians (I should repeat here that I am speaking mainly of Canada outside Quebec) have a few symbols: a beaver, a cop on a horse, a game played on ice. But we lack a language that's uniquely our own, a long history, folklore or myths, even a cuisine, which should not be underestimated as a source of national sense of self. I'd say one thing we've counted on in the place of all these is a set of socially constructed institutions: the railroad, the CBC, our network of social programs, maybe the post office. These are real, not mythical, entities, but they serve a reassuring function, like myths and other glues. They not only deliver actual things like TV shows, pension checks, or mail - they give us the sense of a cohesive society.

And this situation accounts for the special role of artists in Canada, and the perpetual anxiety about Canadian culture. Many Canadian writers and artists, when they sit down to produce a work, feel responsible not just for expressing themselves but for proving the country exists. That's not a burden artists feel in France or the US. If we had more culture in the underlying sense, we might put less pressure on our novelists and filmmakers. I think this also accounts for Canadians' readiness to support the CBC even if they don't watch it. There is a witticism which states: Canadians are prepared to support the CBC so long as they don't have to watch it; there is a point here: an institution like the CBC is evidence that we have something to express, therefore that we exist in a collective, national way. Given the fairly mundane nature of the glue we rely on - institutions, individual artists - you can see why this has been a rough period for the Canadian sense of self. There has been a series of bloody assaults on those few national institutions, in the name of fiscal responsibility, privatization, and keeping up with the global economic trends. As for the arts, I'd rather not get into a debate on whether we'd be culturally deprived without our own versions of Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon, which have become typical of our theatre in the last ten years, but they certainly do not provide the kind of national sense that once came from Canadian plays. In addition, the last ten years have seen a series of political sneak attacks on our national sense of confidence. First came free trade: we were told we had to sign on or admit we were afraid to compete. Then Meech Lake: we had to swallow terms we found offensive or the country would disintegrate. The Charlottetown Accord carried the same threat. It's been a decade of nation abuse which I don't think any analogous national society can match.

THIS may sound like the beginning of a big whine, but actually I rather like our difficult, occasionally dire, way of being a country - including our emphasis on institutions as the basis of our national glue and sense of self. For one thing, it makes us unusual and possibly unique. For another, the trouble with basing your country on all that myth is that it's pretty mythical. I wouldn't want to believe, like Americans, that my country was "the greatest country in the history of the world," as President Clinton modestly says every chance he gets. It might make you feel good, but you'd pay the price of sounding stupid and being self-deluded. Personally I prefer things like a railroad or our social programs as the basis for a national sense of self - exactly because they're not mythical; they're concrete, they represent things we've done together, consciously, for and with each other.

To summarize, the relatively unique case of Canadian culture (not including, or in contrast to, Quebec and other cultures) makes it apt and particularly interesting as a case study for the postmodern, globalized world. But, at the same time, it follows that Canadian culture is particularly threatened by globalization: this is so because of the absence of traditional cultural "glues," and because in their place we have publicly supported - both financially and morally - institutions.

I'd like to be clear that I do not believe nations need to live forever, nor institutions. All of these come and go and justify themselves during their lifetimes, not by being eternal. At the same time, living in the aftershadow of free trade and NAFTA has given me new respect for what Canadians accomplished in the past by keeping this rather self-effacing little country going. I used to have much less respect for their achievement, but I can now see it was no mean feat. As to the current threats to our nationhood, I don't know what the outcome will be; I think that in this decade - when the Soviet Union disappeared and Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa - attempts at prediction are utterly stupid. But I can see certain reasons for optimism, or at least a certain wary hopefulness.

For one thing, the sad procession toward political, economic, and social demise can lead to cultural success. This is because the prospect of death concentrates the creative mind, in a way that leads to a deeper sense of the richness and meaning of life - individual or collective. I'm thinking here of the flowering of culture and the arts in Poland or in Ireland under severe conditions of political and/or economic disintegration.

In a cheerier vein, I would point to some of the rather surprising areas of current Canadian cultural success. I'm not referring to the altogether respectable Canadian showings lately in the respectable cultural realm of literature and the novel. I'm thinking instead of popular music and also of satire, especially television satire. In fact there's an impressive marshalling of the evidence for the vigour of a Canadian popular culture in Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond's Mondo Canuck. What is this success really about? It seems to me it has to do with the prevalence of American popular culture on a global scale, in the era of globalization. It becomes the content everyone has to stand up to and define themselves against - as the French and others discovered during the last round of world trade negotiations. Well, to the extent that taking the measure of - and the piss out of - American popular culture has become a universal experience, we in Canada are way ahead of the rest of the world, and we always will be. Think of The Band, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen: these are cases of globally significant artists who were shaped by the encounter with American popular culture. Young and Cohen may have lived in the United States for decades, but they are, in my opinion, clearly Canadian in their sensibility. When Leonard Cohen, for instance, sings, "Democracy is coming ... to the U.S.A.," this has an ironic detachment which I don't believe Americans are generally capable of with regard to their own mythologies. Americans tend to be too identified with those mythologies; when they critique them, they tend to express themselves with deep anger, as in the case of Bruce Springsteen. A satirical or ironic mode is largely beyond them; virtually the entire corpus of political and social satire in the American media in the past 25 years has been produced by Canadians. Finally, in an era which is apparently inevitably characterized as one of information and communications, Canadians may be especially well equipped. Throughout its history, this country has been about communications: from the far-flung connections of the fur trade, through the meshing role of the railroad, to the broadcast system and the odd attachment Canadians have to it - and then further, into the contributions Canadians have made to the theory of communications itself. This is a field more or less invented by Harold Innis, and developed subsequently by Innis's successor, Marshall McLuhan.

IN everything I have ever written about or based in Canada, I've faced the problem of the ending: this is the challenge of how to be honest about how dire things are, yet not cause your audience or readers to despair. For, if that's your effect, then why write at all? So, for instance, I've ended a play about the failed Canadian revolution of 1837 with one character, about to be hanged, saying to another, "We lost." And the other replies, "No, we just haven't won yet." I even ended a play with the line, "Cheer up, there's no hope." I feel there is cause for cautious enthusiasm in our current national and cultural struggles. I'm thinking especially of the way in which there is room and even need for creativity in these efforts, in a way that may be unique in the current century. This has to do with the demise of all the hoary old shibboleths of the left, and what I'm convinced will be the imminent demise of those of the right. This vacuum of shibboleths and nostrums creates an opportunity and even a need for creativity.

My most recent novel takes place in the near future in Canada, and centres on an actor who in his youth has worked primarily in the theatre of improvisation and of collective creation, though later in his career he becomes a famous and successful film and television actor. But he looks around and sees the country in a mess, while all the old political scripts, those of the left and those of the right, are not usable any more. There is therefore no alternative in the political realm except to improvise - collectively. So he goes into politics himself, eventually becomes prime minister and ... but let me end here.