THECAUSESOFCULTURALCONFLICTANINSTITUTIONALAPPROACH.docVIP

Globalization and Cultural Conflict: An Institutional Approach Beverly Crawford Introduction What is the impact of globalization on social cohesion and political integration? Does globalization nourish social and political integration and tear down cultural barriers that divide people? Does it signal a ‘vital step toward both a more stable world and better lives for the people in it’(Rothkop, 1997)? Or does it hasten social disintegration and exacerbate social conflict? Is there really a link between globalization and cultural conflict or harmony? If so, what is it? Migratory flows, the tidal wave of global information, and the imperatives of economic liberalization and fiscal reform—the markers of globalization—have reshuffled social relations all over the world. As the flood of immigrants to the industrial West has given birth to a nascent multiculturalism in previously homogeneous societies, social pressures and plummeting income levels accompany it. In some European countries, a spike in hate crimes against foreigners seems to correspond to the influx of immigrants. And people have watched in horror, as a few Islamic radicals have committed brutal acts of violence, justified as revenge against cultural oppression. Although globalization has been called an integrating force, cultural conflict has became the most rampant form of international violence as globalization has accelerated. Of the 36 violent conflicts raging around the world in 2003, the Iraq invasion was the sole international war. The remaining 35 were internal wars within the territory of 28 countries, and all but four of these were communal conflicts, inspired by ethnic, sectarian, or religious grievances (Marshall 2005). Nonetheless, the number of those conflicts has begun to decline, and many have ended. Indeed, in vast areas of the world, conflicts are resolved peacefully, and different cultures live together or side by side without hostility or prolonged violent conflict. But as so