Cambridge Common

Now as regards soccer and cricket, two sports that have spread around the globe, the distinction becomes even clearer. Both are British “inventions,” but, according to Hobsbawm, whereas soccer is a good illustration of globalization working parallel to, or even disconnected from, cultural imperialism, cricket is an example of culture being cemented through colonialism. First soccer. Would you consider a World Cup match played in Japan between Latvia and Uruguay a good example of “British cultural hegemony”? My best guess is that you wouldn’t because you know that soccer spread because people thought it was cool, and that’s that. The British navy did not besiege all countries that would rather play local sports, nor did Queen Victoria mandate that every man, woman and child in the colonies buy a football. But cricket did not spread in quite the same way. The one thing that all the places where cricket is played have in common having British soldiers stationed there for decades. (Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking on cricket, which I am sure some people enjoy… I am not sure why). Both sports are fun, fulfilling, group-building, etc., but the way they became globalized demonstrates the meandering, problematic nature of cultural globalization.

A few more words on soccer: Though it might seem obvious at first, we can learn a lot from disentangling why soccer doesn’t strike us as particularly oppressive. I would posit that there are two fairly simple reasons why we don’t consider soccer a “weapon of subjugation.” First, we all can testify that the people we’ve seen play soccer—unless obligated by obsessive parents—actually enjoy it. This is especially true for those of us who have lived in the Third World: people there don’t just love soccer, they live for soccer. So there is a sense of personal fulfillment derived from adopted the cultural act that makes it not quite as oppressive. Second, people would argue that soccer is no longer a British thing. People have claimed their stake in this cultural act, they have adapted it to make sense in their own lives, imbuing the sport with a thousand different nuances,bringing to the field as much if not more than what they take from the tradition of soccer. We can speak today of soccer clubs as a combination of “the cynical, defensive-minded Italian style livened by an infusion of freewheeling Dutchmen and Brazilians; the English stiff-upper-lip style tempered by a bit of continental flair, brought across the Channel in the form of French strikers.” (The quote is from Franklin Foer’s “How Soccer Explains the World.” Great book, and more on that later). We can sum up this second dimension of “non-oppressiveness” in terms of so to speak indigenous reclaiming of globalized practices. Ten year olds playing soccer with paper mache balls in the steep crooked streets of Bogota have, in this framework, a great amount of agency and power over what they do about globalization.

But this is all up in the air: I am arguing that cultural agency local appropriation far outweigh the homogenizing forces of globalization. Even Macdonald’s and Coca-Cola know this, and they won’t advertise the same way or sell the same product in any two places (Colombian Coca Cola is much superior). But if this variance exists at the most abstract, large scale level of a few global actors all subjected to the same economic system, it is all the more crucial and true of the millions of daily interactions and individual experiences of globalization. We can claim that globalization flattens out culture because it makes everyone subjected to the same cultural influences, but there is not much to learn by looking at what’s constant across geography. The heart of the issue lies in how individuals integrate globalization in their daily lives, the different meanings they give to the same cultural practice in opposite sides of the world. To assume homogenization is to ignore, and even deny, people’s agency.