Jihad vs. McWorld
by Benjamin R. Barber · Benjamin Barber
Benjamin Barber's account of two forces pulling against democracy: consumer capitalism flattening the world into homogenized markets, and tribal and religious reaction fragmenting it. The 2003 edition adds a preface on terrorism's challenge to democratic institutions.
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More resources on Globalization & Culture
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
UNESCO's portal for the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention: browsable inscriptions of living traditions, music, craft and ritual by country, plus safeguarding policy documents. Shows how states define and protect practices under pressure from migration and global markets.
Britannica: Cultural Globalization
Encyclopaedia Britannica's reference entry on how goods, media, and migration spread cultural forms worldwide. Covers the emergence of a global subculture, resistance and hybridization, and the debate over whether contact homogenizes local traditions or reshapes them.
The Cultural Frontline
BBC World Service programme reporting on artists, filmmakers and writers responding to conflict, migration and political change around the world. Episodes give listeners concrete case studies of culture as a site of contest rather than theoretical frameworks.
Globalization and Culture
John Tomlinson's 1999 Polity study of how global connectivity detaches cultural experience from place. Argues for deterritorialization rather than cultural imperialism, and examines hybridization, media technologies, and the uneven way global modernity is lived across rich and poor societies.
unesco.org/culture
UNESCO Culture is the hub for UNESCO’s work on culture and cultural policy worldwide. It offers resources on heritage safeguarding (tangible and intangible), World Heritage, creative industries, and policy guidance, along with publications, data, and news related to culture as a driver of development.
The Global Transformations Reader
Anthology edited by David Held and Anthony McGrew collecting the main positions in the globalization debate, with globalists and sceptics arguing across economics, politics, culture and governance. Useful for seeing how the evidence is contested rather than settled.