Product Description

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 fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction 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 in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity.

Through an array of colorful 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. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81110 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Alan Clardy, Personnel Psychology
"He provides an important counterbalance to knee-jerk reactions against globalization".

Review
Mr. Cowen's point, argued neatly in Creative Destruction, is that the invasion works both ways. Indeed, it has for such a long time that it is hard to say exactly where one culture begins and another ends. Wherever people are, almost all the cultural products that they think of as indigenous owe their existence to the cultural exchange brought about by trade.
(David R. Henderson Wall Street Journal )

A short but rich study. . . . The book's basic point is that cultural globalization can increase the diversity of choices for the individual while reducing the diversity between societies across the globe. . . . Mr. Cowen underscores that cultural globalization is and always has been a dynamic process. . . . It can be an unsettling, disruptive process, but Mr. Cowen's book argues persuasively that it is a more creative way to go than the misguided cultural nostalgia peddled by the anti-globalization crowd.
(David R. Sands The Washington Times )

Cowen has created a text at once impressively academic and thoroughly accessible.
(Library Journal )

Cowen's thesis is that diversity within society is heightened by globalization, at the same time that diversity across societies, as he puts it, is diminished. . . . His book is an attempt to take a realistic look at the changes wrought by today's market-driven, free trade-oriented world.
(Philip Marchand The Toronto Star )

Cowen argues that global trade and communication are enriching all the world's cultures and that there's no such thing as cultural authenticity. . . . In fact, Cowen believes that commerce and art are allies. And he contends that because commerce is driving technology, ideas, goods, services and people across borders more freely than ever before, we are in the midst of an unprecedented boom in creativity all over the world. The quality, quantity and variety of cultural output is greater than ever; if there is more dreck, there is also more genius. And more people have more access to it than ever, at lower prices, regardless of where they live.
(Daniel Akst Los Angeles Times )

Review
Creative Destruction is a brilliant book--by far the most original and sophisticated analysis of the place of art in the global market economy that I have seen. It is also extraordinarily readable. In clear and energetic prose, Tyler Cowen provides an economic analysis of a breathtaking variety of artistic cultures--from the restaurants of Paris to the soapstone carvings of the Inuit, from Nbebele bead art of South Africa to Tuvan throat singers in Mongolia.
(John Tomasi, Brown University, author of "Liberalism Beyond Justice" )

Customer Reviews

Interesting Book
This book is about how globalization is *changing* world cultures, for better or for worse. One of Cowen's central arguments is that globalization creates less diversity between cultures but more between individuals. So should we be pro individualism or pro collectivism?

His last three chapters on Hollywood, Dumbing Down, and National Culture are the most memorable, and persuasive. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Hollywood. His explanation of how modern cinema is what it is was enlightening.

Overall Cowen does what he set out to do; explained how globalization has changed world cultures. More often than not Cowen thinks this has had a net positive effect, but he does argue the other side of the coin. In my opinion Cowen contributes to the globalization vs. anti-globalization debate arguing that it's really one of collectivist culture vs. individual culture.

Change is Constant
Tyler Cowen very adeptly reminds the reader that the world's regional cultures have never been static. What we think of as "native" art is really a product of global influence on a local population. So of course it seems silly to decry globalization as homogenizing cultures, when we understand that cultures have always interacted with each other. Indeed, what we are seeing with globalization is the increasing heterogenizing of cultures. Sure you see McDonalds almost everywhere, but you also see indigenous art from Central America, music from the Congo, movies from France, and food from India.

Tyler Cowen does not dismiss the degredation of certain cultural aspects, but he matter-of-factly points out that the alternative, protectionism, is more destructive in the long run, since creativity is stifled.

Camouflage for Corporatism
What happens when an economist steps outside of his field to don the hat of an armchair cultural anthropologist? Tyler Cowen's "Creative Destruction" is the result - a book that ignores global corporatism and the roles that states and their creations - i.e. corporations have played in corrupting free enterprise and free markets not only by attacking, usurping, and infiltrating the cultural programming centers of target nations: sport; entertainment including music, cinema, and televison; books and magazines; fashion including cosmetics, clothes and accessories; school and university textbooks, but by attacking, usurping, and infiltrating the cultural programming avenues of America itself.

"Ethos makes globalization a nontrivial problem for culture"(p50) writes Cowen, "By ethos I mean the special feel or flavor of a culture" (p48). Cowen maintains that "There is little danger that economic growth, international trade, and the spread of technical knowledge will bring inferior quality hammers, refrigerators, or vacuum cleaners either to the United States or to lesser developed nations" (p50). It would appear that the last time Cowen walked into a Wal-mart, K-mart, or other department store was to purchase a new pair of shoes for his high school graduation - nearly every item for sale in department stores today is produced by slaves in Communist China. Prior to Clinton's late 1990s trip to Communist China, `Made in China' meant Free China - the Republic of China on the Island of Taiwan. How it became legal for Communist slave-produced goods to be sold in the United States is a question that boggles the American mind! When did America ever allow Soviet goods to be sold in America? Never, to my knowledge. But today slave-produced goods from Communist China are everywhere.

Not only that, the quality of these slave-produced goods is greatly inferior to the quality of goods produced by free workers (workers who may safely say to their employer - "Take this job and shove it, I ain't workin' here no more!"). For example, the Delphi spindle bearing plant in Communist China that is supposed to be a reflection of the Delphi spindle bearing plant in Ohio cannot make bearings that will last through the 50,000-mile new vehicle warranty, whereas the U.S. Delphi bearings last 400,000 miles. Pontiac Aztecs and Buick Rendezvous have Communist Chinese bearings on the front wheels and U.S. bearings on the rear wheels. When Delphi was spun-off from General Motors in 1999, the plan was for the Chinese plant to replace the U.S. plant by 2006 because the Chinese government charges Delphi far less a month for a slave worker than an employee demands in the United States through union negotiation. Now Delphi is stuck with a U.S. plant it doesn't want because General Motors needs the bearings but the Chinese duplicate cannot produce the quality to meet even minimum standards. Delphi, and Cowen, should know that slaves have no incentive to do a good job. Only freedom creates incentives.

Cowen's six chapters in his 179-paged book are 1. Trade Between Cultures 2. Global Culture Ascendant: The Roles of Wealth and Technology 3. Ethos and the Tragedy of Cultural Loss 4. Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care 5. Dumbing Down and the Least Common Denominator , and 6. Should National Culture Matter? These chapters are followed by a section labeled References followed by an Index.

Cowen sidesteps the issue of the role states play in cultural planning and their relationship to corporations, which are nothing less than creations of the state themselves. Cowen's book is short on cultural theory, cultural policy and planning, the political framework, national identities, and statist cultural planning to include arts administration and practice, tourism, media, the sports industry, or even urban and regional planning. He never mentions the statist UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the ways that governments use cultural resources to integrate development of towns, regions, and countries. And he is silent on the role of the soldier in globalization. Cowen's book is simply the mixing of apples and oranges, of the theoretical free market and today's global corporatism, with the effect of providing camouflage for what is really happening - i.e. economic fascism on a global scale, as uninformed anthropologically as it is mistaken. This is all a shame because Cowen's prose is quite artful and could have been a delight to read.

A book that does a much better job introducing readers to the processes of globalization is Tony Spybey's "Globalization and World Society" (1996), which should sit on one's bookshelf next to a copy of Paul H. Weaver's "The Suicidal Corporation" (1988).