As globalization expands human connections, it enables more people to envision or adopt different identities. For example, women from Nepal or India, venturing far from home, may seek to fulfill aspirations unfamiliar to their ancestors. Taking advantage of global resources, African musicians craft a new identity as they mix aesthetic styles. Globalization also offers new arenas for expressing identities – quite literally in the case of international sports tournaments like soccer’s World Cup, where national teams represent their countries’ special virtues, at least in the eyes of their passionate fans. At the same time, globalization raises uncomfortable questions about identity, notably about where individuals and groups stand in a world that envelops them ever more tightly. For instance, women’s participation in “global” practices, as in the case of Indian professionals, may loosen the hold of “local” family culture; national communities seeking to develop new symbols of identity, such as tequila in the case of Mexico, must at the same time contend with transnational business practices. While much of the “identity work” people do in response to globalization consists of variations on older themes, for at least some groups globalization itself can be a new source of identity, in the form of cosmopolitan appreciation of cultural difference or even an explicit commitment to “world citizenship” as a way to promote some universal goals. Our purpose in this section is to illustrate explicitly some of these ways in which globalization affects identity.
The issues addressed here have come up implicitly in several other sections. Exposed to new food, games, or health issues, people experience globalization in ways that may shake settled identities. Global media show the interplay between transnational content and national/local adaptation, often creating tensions in national culture industries. Many religious adherents articulate their faith differently as they grapple with globalization, whether to embrace or oppose it. Many NGO, environmental, or global justice activists in effect derive new identities from their critical involvement in globalization. In short, who‐am‐I and who‐are‐we questions often lurk close to the surface of even seemingly mundane and material global processes. By making that point explicit, this section aims to stimulate further thought about the various forms the global redefinition of identity may take.
In drawing attention to the identity issues at stake in globalization, we do not suggest that most people create their identities by being involved in global processes or that globalization inexorably molds all individual or collective identities. Yet as relations across larger distances, backed by transnational power and ideas, create a world society of sorts, comprehending the place of self or community in that wider context becomes a more pressing concern for ever more people. Globalization touches people’s self‐understanding, at times in very concrete, routine ways, as when teenagers identify with foreign pop stars or soccer fans identify with foreign teams. We cannot fully inventory the forms in which this plays out, but our selections in this section suggest that dualistic effects are evident: in some cases, globalization empowers people with new opportunities, while in other instances people confront it as an alien constraint. The identity work that globalization fosters therefore also raises profound questions about the merits of globalization, for example whether we should view it as beneficial or harmful, liberating or intrusive, enriching or unjust.
In the first selection, anthropologist Ernestine McHugh shows how one Nepalese woman, Sumitra, developed a very different sense of self than women of prior generations in her family. Whereas her parents came from a small, tight‐knit village with communal houses, Sumitra grew up mainly in a bustling neighborhood in a larger town, in a house with a room of her own. Although aware of many things that proper Nepalese girls still “must not do,” Sumitra was allowed to decorate her private space, had a voice in choosing her spouse, gleaned new ideas from foreign movies, and traveled alone to join her husband abroad. Her father’s and husband’s service in the British army connected her to the wider world, but in a way that enabled her to return comfortably to her family and community in Nepal. McHugh presents Sumitra as empowered rather than burdened by globalization.
Young Indian women who work in the country’s information technology (IT) industry, studied by American sociologist Smitha Radhakrishnan, perhaps feel the impact of globalization even more deeply. Speaking for many, one of her interviewees traces many of her attitudes and interests to the fact that “I’m global.” “Global” here entails both exposure to things that are non‐Indian and immersion in a streamlined corporate culture. Some women IT workers experience that culture as uniform and confining, while others view it as a path to an independent sense of self, sometimes aided by stints abroad. All of them must undertake their “navigations of identity,” as Radhakrishnan puts it, to balance their class status, family background, and new gender norms.
In the next selection, ethnomusicologist Timothy D. Taylor describes how one musician has created a new artistic identity through his version of “global pop.” Youssou N’Dour, a world music star from Senegal, has brought a mixture of commercialized African music styles to Western audiences while also reaching African audiences as a traditional praise‐singer. Musicians like N’Dour, Taylor argues, are not interested in preserving an artificial authenticity expected by outsiders; rather, they strive to be “global citizens” by creatively blending the many sounds they hear.
In many countries, sports play a great role in expressing national identities. The Dutch men’s national soccer team, discussed by Frank J. Lechner in the next selection, is a case in point: its successes and failures helped form a collective national memory in the Netherlands, its supposedly special style reflected national virtues in the eyes of passionate fans, and its participation in international tournaments served to define the country’s place in the world. In the Netherlands, as in many other places, the quintessential global game also affords new opportunities for national identification, though in Lechner’s view that collective identity represents only one layer among others.
In Ulf Hannerz’s analysis, globalization has brought about a new world culture that connects diverse local cultures more closely as part of a single whole. In this context, at least some people craft a more “cosmopolitan” identity as they eagerly find their way into other cultures while becoming somewhat detached from their original homes and the “locals” who stayed there. While becoming cosmopolitan takes some skill, Hannerz notes that it is also increasingly difficult to remain purely local, within a culture closed off to the outside. He argues that locals and cosmopolitans need each other, as they play different roles in cultivating the diversity in world culture that they value from different standpoints.
To conclude this section, C. Martin Centner argues, perhaps somewhat optimistically, that globalization may also foster cosmopolitan identities. Social media, English as a common language, and intergovernmental organizations create ties that make people more aware of the equal worth of individuals. The old idea that all humans are our fellow citizens becomes more tangible when a common human heritage is brought home to us and we devise new types of communication to bridge cultural differences. Cosmopolitans, Centner argues, accept cultural difference but do not value it as such. They view everyone’s particular heritage as mixed and fluid, celebrating not ethnically pure but “mongrel selves.” Citing the philosopher Anthony Appiah to the effect that, from a cosmopolitan standpoint, “human variety matters because people are entitled to the options they need to shape their lives in partnership with others,” Centner raises the question whether in a diverse, cosmopolitan world people could abide by a common norm of ethical humanism.