Re: WS work on responses to cultural hegemony?

<<I am working on a paper in which the main focus is placing the events of 
Sept. 11 (and terrorism in general) in the WS context, a task that is proving 
difficult as I have not yet found much material that addresses reactions to 
cultural impositions. I have a lot on the response to the economic effects of 
globalization, yet since whoever is behind Sept. 11 obviously has access to 
economic resources, I don't feel this quite gets to the heart of the matter. 
Does anyone have suggestions as far as books, articles, or other resources that 
may provide information on this in a substantial manner?>>

I'm not sure economic considerations are irrelevant because some of the actors 
against the US have access to monetary resources. There is also the concern 
with geopolitics in the Middle East, which isn't exactly the same as economics 
and yet is not exactly 'cultural'.  Its been pointed out that Bin Laden does 
not talk as much about either religion or US culture as he does about US policy 
in the Middle East.

As for your question--Wallerstein has written a lot about the culture of the 
modern world system.  His argument is usually that a 'liberal' culture 
characterized by an emphasis on equality, technology, progress, etc dominated 
and typically absorbed anti-systemic challenges until it began to decline in 
1968.  He doesn't have a great deal to say about the specifics of post-liberal 
culture, however.

Benjamin Barber (in Jihad vs. McWorld) argues that 'jihads' (a term he does NOT 
use to refer exclusively to Muslim forces) have emerged which value the defense 
of narrowly-defined imagined communities against McWorld (i.e. McDonalds, 
Microsoft, etc).  For him, both jihad and McWorld erode the possibilities of 
democratic, nation-state based politics. Barber ignores progressive forces, 
which, in what I would describe as Neo-Ghandian mode, tend to retain (a 
narrowly defined) universalism and equality as values while jettisoning the 
faith in technology that dominated the twentieth century lefts.  But its still 
a useful work.  Arjun Appadurai's "Dead Certainies" says similar things to 
Barber, using a more postcolonial language.


Aihwa Ong, in her book about the Chinese diasporic community (Transnational 
Citizenship (? something like that)) argues that some Chinese have embraced 
Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis to legitimize their disagreements 
with the dominant global/western cultures emphasis on individualism.

There is also a good deal of anthropological work on the practice of veiling as 
a response to the global culture.

For more historical work, there is Michael Adas' book on anti-colonial revolts 
in the nineteenth century, which unlike the more politically successful revolts 
of the twentieth, did not tend to embrace the dominant values of the geoculture.

Hope this helps

Steven Sherman