02-15-2005, 04:02 AM
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/arti...019977.cms
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Is Valentine's Day part of globalization: Sadanand Menon
Social anthropology acknowledges a phenomenon described as âtravelling cultureâ. Habits, semantic codes, food, dress, social behaviour â all have a way of leaping across space and getting transplanted in soils other than of their birth.
The long continuity of Indian history in particular accounts for the abundance of residual cultures that enriches everyday life.
Several things not indigenous to this environment and which were introduced here from other shores have today become firmly established as markers of âIndian cultureâ. From green chillies to coffee, from âbatataâ to a birthday cake.
The Argentine philosopher, Enrique Dussel, has suggested that there have been at least three stages of globalisation in the âmodern eraâ when âcentresâ and âperipheriesâ shifted.
From a time when India was the centre of the modern map and Europe and China its peripheries, to when Europe became centre with America and India as peripheries, to now when America has become centre.
Each time the âmovement of cultureâ was rapid from centre to periphery with some slower reverse movement in the opposite direction too.
t is a historic process of economic domination at the centre and cultural imitation at the peripheries that ânaturalisesâ patterns of behaviour which enable elites at the peripheries to pretend their parity with the dominant classes at the centre.
The entry of Valentineâs Day âcelebrationsâ in India is simply a minor occurrence of this nature in the Indian landscape where the rapidly commodititised economy also seeks to milk ordinary human emotions like âloveâ at the market place.
In India, however, Valentineâs Day is, merely an advertisement-driven, severely isolated, fringe behaviour. It is a cynical attempt to cash in on the fact that today over 60% of Indians are below 25 years old.
Yet, it is mere fantasy to imagine Valentineâs Day as being the location of some national threat â as the loony fringe would have us make-believe.
They will need to learn that in a âspectacle economyâ, everything including private emotions, will get routed through the currency of the âimageâ. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Is Valentine's Day part of globalization: Sadanand Menon
Social anthropology acknowledges a phenomenon described as âtravelling cultureâ. Habits, semantic codes, food, dress, social behaviour â all have a way of leaping across space and getting transplanted in soils other than of their birth.
The long continuity of Indian history in particular accounts for the abundance of residual cultures that enriches everyday life.
Several things not indigenous to this environment and which were introduced here from other shores have today become firmly established as markers of âIndian cultureâ. From green chillies to coffee, from âbatataâ to a birthday cake.
The Argentine philosopher, Enrique Dussel, has suggested that there have been at least three stages of globalisation in the âmodern eraâ when âcentresâ and âperipheriesâ shifted.
From a time when India was the centre of the modern map and Europe and China its peripheries, to when Europe became centre with America and India as peripheries, to now when America has become centre.
Each time the âmovement of cultureâ was rapid from centre to periphery with some slower reverse movement in the opposite direction too.
t is a historic process of economic domination at the centre and cultural imitation at the peripheries that ânaturalisesâ patterns of behaviour which enable elites at the peripheries to pretend their parity with the dominant classes at the centre.
The entry of Valentineâs Day âcelebrationsâ in India is simply a minor occurrence of this nature in the Indian landscape where the rapidly commodititised economy also seeks to milk ordinary human emotions like âloveâ at the market place.
In India, however, Valentineâs Day is, merely an advertisement-driven, severely isolated, fringe behaviour. It is a cynical attempt to cash in on the fact that today over 60% of Indians are below 25 years old.
Yet, it is mere fantasy to imagine Valentineâs Day as being the location of some national threat â as the loony fringe would have us make-believe.
They will need to learn that in a âspectacle economyâ, everything including private emotions, will get routed through the currency of the âimageâ. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->