The Cultural World-System

Despite much talk of “soft power”, the fact is that whichever way you slice it, Indian culture fares poorly at seeking or exercising it

- Makarand R Paranjape

THERE IS HARDLY any doubt that a cultural world-system exists. It is related, but not identical, to a world economic or political system. How to decode and understand its mechanisms, especially its impact on India? Few critics or commentators have ventured to do this. In this series of articles, that is what I propose to do.

The only notable attempt till date has been Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) edited by Anthony D King, but it hardly refers to India. I became interested in world-systems theory around the same time, especially in India’s position. Some of these views were first presented at the 11th ACLALS Triennial Conference, 16 December 1998, Kaula Lumpur, appearing in the proceedings later.

The question to be answered is not so much whether worldwide economic and political ideologies and institutions influence — even control — cultural production in societies such as ours. Evidently, they do. But more vital to our interests is to expose the systemic nature of such determination. A concomitant question might be how our own culture, in turn, impinges upon the cultural world-system. In other words, have we participated in the cultural world-system to our benefit or advantage?

Such questions may have common sense responses, but require deeper, trans-disciplinary studies for more thorough or deeper comprehension. To start with, a quick, if obvious admission: traditionally, we have not paid too much attention to, let alone tried to understand, the cultural world-system. Despite much talk of “soft power”, the fact is that whichever way you slice it, Indian culture, especially Hindu culture, fares poorly at seeking or exercising it.