Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures - Couverture rigide

Cowen, Tyler

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691090165 ISBN 13 : 9780691090160

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 2002

Synopsis

A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his 54th birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this treatment of the issue, Tyler Cowen makes a case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. The book brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity. Through an array of colourful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever - thanks largely to cross-cultural trade. For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Tyler Cowen is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, where he directs the Mercatus Center and the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy. His books include What Price Fame?, In Praise of Commercial Culture, and Risk and Business Cycles.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691090165
• ISBN 13: 9780691090160
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 192
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible