AMSCO 9.6 Globalized Culture Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 9.6, Globalized Culture (AMSCO p. 679-687), explains how and why culture went global after 1900. The chapter traces three big threads: political and social upheaval that reshaped the arts in the early 20th century, the rise of a worldwide consumer and popular culture (movies, music, sports, social media), and new religious developments sparked by global exchange. This is the cultural side of Unit 9 globalization, sitting between the protest movements in AMSCO 9.5 Calls for Reforms and Responses and the pushback covered in AMSCO 9.7 Resistance to Globalization.

Timeline of global cultural events spanning from 1900 to the present. Image courtesy of Siya.

Political, Social, and Artistic Changes

The chapter opens with a simple cause-and-effect argument: the political and social shocks of the 20th century changed how people thought, and the arts changed to match.

Political changes

• Early 1900s imperialism fueled fierce competition between nations, which exploded into two world wars.
• The Cold War split the world into rival camps, but after it ended, economic and cultural barriers fell.
• Competition gradually gave way to collaboration through regional organizations (the European Union, NAFTA) and global ones (the United Nations for conflict resolution, the World Trade Organization to regulate international trade).

Social changes

• International organizations and collaboration put people of different cultures in closer contact, much like earlier exchange networks had.
• Rights movements, especially civil rights and women's rights, brought formerly marginalized voices into the mainstream.
• Thinkers shook long-held beliefs: Albert Einstein (1879-1955) upended understandings of physical reality, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) probed the human psyche, and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) philosophized that nothing had meaning.
• Technology kept piling on change: horses to cars, telegraph to radio, antibiotics and vaccines.

Artistic changes

Artists responded to a mechanized, urbanized world by breaking the old rules.

• Cubism, the style Picasso used in Guernica, challenged traditional perspective in painting.
• Stream-of-consciousness writers like Marcel Proust (1871-1922) and James Joyce (1882-1941) rebelled against traditional narrative.
• Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) composed atonal music outside familiar tonalities.
• The Harlem Renaissance was a "rebirth" of African American culture that rejected stereotyped portrayals of Black Americans in literature and onstage. Writers, poets, musicians, and activists made Harlem a center of Black artistic expression, and jazz emerged from this era to become an international language.

Together these movements make up modernism, the rejection of tradition in favor of new forms. That's the early-1900s setup; the rest of the chapter shows culture going truly global.

Global Consumer and Popular Culture

After World War II, popular culture (the culture of everyday people rather than the educated elite) and consumer culture spread across national borders. This is the heart of Topic 9.6 for the AP exam.

Mass media builds shared culture

• In the 1920s, radio and motion pictures gave popular culture its first mass platforms. Radio offered comedies and big band music, and during World War II it played a vital role in national defense in most industrialized nations.
• Movies offered relief from the Great Depression while reflecting it. Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" epitomized the down and out.
• Radio and TV ushered in postwar consumer culture: "free" programming carried commercials into millions of homes, and industry pivoted from wartime production to consumer goods.
• In the 1990s, the internet connected people around the globe.

Americanization and its critics

The United States remained the world's most influential culture in the early 21st century. Through Americanization, people worldwide learned more about the U.S. than Americans learned about the rest of the world. That dominance bred resentment among people who felt American pop culture diluted their cultural identity. Critics also labeled American consumer culture a throwaway culture, objecting to the waste and pollution tied to ever newer, cheaper, more disposable products.

English spreads and changes

• Through the British Empire and then American movies, corporations, and scientific research, English became a second language across much of the world. In the early 21st century, about 300 million people in China were learning English, roughly the population of the United States.
• English-speaking corporations moved call centers to India and the Philippines, where fluent English speakers worked for relatively low wages.
• New speakers reshaped the language. Indian English added "prepone," the opposite of postpone.

Global brands and online commerce

• Multinational advertising created global brands like Apple, Nike, and Rolex. Interbrand's 2018 top global companies included Toyota (which sells more cars than any other brand), tech giants Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, plus Coca-Cola, famous for its 1971 multicultural "buy the world a Coke" commercial.
• Online commerce made shopping global: Amazon operates in more than 17 countries, Alibaba mostly in Asia, and eBay in 30 countries. These retailers still pay sales taxes under the laws of each country or state where they sell.

Culture flows both ways

The U.S. exports culture, but it imports plenty too. These are go-to examples for any "globalized culture" question.

• Bollywood, the film industry in Bombay (Mumbai), produces musicals popular worldwide and blends multiple film styles. India makes more films than any other country.
• Anime, Japanese hand-drawn animation, reached America in the 1980s through the movie Akira; late-1990s shows like Pokemon and Dragon Ball brought it mainstream. By 2016, 60 percent of the world's animated TV shows were based on anime.
• Reggae emerged in 1960s Jamaica, blending New Orleans jazz and rhythm and blues with mento (itself a fusion of African rhythms and European elements). It's tied to the Rastafari religion and Pan-Africanism, and Bob Marley's music made it global in the 1970s.
• K-pop artists, singing in a mix of Korean and English, became global stars in the early 21st century. The South Korean government invested in K-pop concerts and tours because the genre boosts other Korean exports. Streaming sites like YouTube and Vimeo spread it worldwide.

Social media and censorship

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other platforms changed communication. They can inspire but also manipulate, a tension noted by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist and youngest Nobel Prize laureate. China banned outside social media but allowed homegrown platforms like WeChat, Weibo, and YuKu, censoring any criticism of the Communist Party on them.

Global culture in sports

• The modern Olympic Games, established in 1896, reflected an early internationalism. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics drew about 3.6 billion viewers. The Games show both nationalism (athletes represent home countries) and internationalism (nearly every country participates). That tension is a classic AP-style point.
• Soccer became the world's most popular sport partly because it requires so little equipment, and the World Cup rivals the Olympics as a global event.
• Basketball went global too. In 2014 the NBA included players from 30 countries or territories, and reporters from 35 countries covered the 2017 NBA Finals. In 2018, 27 percent of major league baseball players were foreign-born, from 21 countries.
• Sports also opened up to women. Some Muslim female athletes competed wearing hijab with adapted athletic wear. Afghan soccer player Hajar Abulfazi said she wore it to "show the next generation and their parents how Afghan women and girls can maintain respect for religion and culture while pursuing sports achievements."

Global Culture and Religion

Globalization also produced new religious movements, often blending traditions across borders.

• In the 1970s, former Beatle George Harrison released a song containing a Hindu mantra, launching the popularity of the Hari Krishna movement (based on traditional Hindu scriptures) in the United States and Europe.
• New Age religions revived and adapted forms of Buddhism, shamanism, Sufism, and other traditions for a largely Western audience.
• In 1990s China, Falun Gong, a movement based on Buddhist and Daoist traditions, gained popularity. The communist government tolerated it at first, then began restricting it in 1999. The suppression sparked international protests against China for human rights abuses.
• Most people worldwide still identified with some religion in the early 21st century, but a growing number of younger people identified as nonbelievers. Most weren't atheists (no belief in any god) or agnostics (believing we may not be able to know if God exists); they simply weren't affiliated with any religious institution.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the 9.6 Globalized Culture after 1900 study guide, which frames the same material the way the AP exam tests it. Then continue through Unit 9 with the rest of the AMSCO notes collection, starting with AMSCO 9.7 Resistance to Globalization.

To check yourself, run through guided MCQ practice on Unit 9, drill definitions in the key terms glossary, or try FRQ practice with instant scoring since globalized culture makes a great body paragraph example for continuity-and-change essays.