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The article explores the unveiling of the desire for cultural Westernization in contemporary Lima, Peru, through the short story "Rizoma" by Carlos Yushimito del Valle. It provides an overview of the plot and characters of the short story. Also discussed is the work's futuristic dystopian story that serves as a sign of the degradation of society caused by the pursuit of entertainment and consumerism.

In the former Soviet Union, one finds a veritable preoccupation with cultural globalization. Many people – like Volkov, the Astrakhan official we met in the Introduction – tend to experience it as Westernization (or, often, as “Americanization”), which is widely understood as conveying a massive pressure for homogeneity. This in turn generates a powerful mix of emotions: excitement, pride, anxiety, and disgust. After all, the perceived trend of homogenization is perceived to carry with it a range of potentially positive and negative effects, both with regard to national integrity and autonomy as well as pedestrian, everyday matters. Left unmediated to intermingle with locally produced ideas and practices, therefore, global influences beckon with opportunity, but also with danger. As a result, strikingly ambivalent attitudes percolate up into social discourse, in the form of an intense engagement with globalization. In a variety of public forums people in all walks of life struggle to come to terms with the influx of foreign ideas, groping for their underlying significance and spinning out narratives of the future, upon which they project their hopes and fears for the nation. And naturally, such hopes and fears are especially vivid where they surface in the discourse of youth culture. Disentangling the strands of social discourse As the following sections describe, what we find in this discourse is a typical pattern of hybridization: selective absorption, rejection, and assertion of national identity constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of hybridization In one sense, “explaining” hybridization is far beyond the scope of this book. After all, even accounting for absorption, rejection, or assertion alone, in an empirically grounded fashion, requires a truly intimidating amount of cross-cultural and comparative research. One might, of course, reduce each strand to a small sub-set of concrete referents in order to simplify the analytical problem, but only at the expense of eliding the interconnectedness among ideas and practices which is so essential to globalization and the social response it engenders. Moreover, as the above discussion suggests and as the remainder of this book will argue in greater detail, the distinct strands of hybridization are best understood as interrelated, meaning that any effort to comprehend each separately is doomed to failure. This, I would suggest, is because there is something truly foundational about the dialectic described by the patterned responses to globalization – which explains why the pattern recurs so widely all over the world. That is, the combination of absorption, rejection, and assertion represents a basic imperative of national identity formation, which consists of becoming an integral part of global society while at the same time remaining unique. And yet, this process operates at such a high level of abstraction that falsification becomes virtually impossible: alternative explanations are not only equally plausible, but are equally supportable in general terms. Attempting to explain the entire pattern of hybridization thus seems bound to lead to rather bland theoretical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter reviews the literature on cultural globalization. My argument is that globalization produces a strikingly similar pattern, virtually wherever it is encountered. First, the combination of seductive content, disparities in power, and the sheer volume of flows comprising globalization produces a homogenizing tendency, to which post-Soviet elites and mass publics alike are highly sensitive. Rather than being perceived in terms of innocuous “flows,” globalization is therefore widely understood as an inundating wave of uniformity that threatens to wash away all cultural difference, undermining the foundation of distinct social and political institutions. Due to the globally dominant discourse of nationalism and the singular legitimacy of the nation-state model, this generates a specific pattern of reaction, marked by desire, anxiety, and the wish to affirm an autonomous (national) self. I illustrate this prevailing response to global cultural flows with examples drawn from a wide variety of countries, and by briefly focusing on the cases of postcolonial India and post-Maoist China. In doing so, I emphasize the deeply ambivalent nature of this process, as well as the abiding ambiguities associated with it. Comparative hybridization Much of the controversy over globalization has focused on its ultimate consequences, including the question of whether national identities are likely to be supplanted by local and/or transnational affiliations. A related question is whether, over the longue durée, the underlying content of national identities will come to mirror each other through the proliferation of international flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Re)constructing African music In the interconnected global ethnoscape of the late-twentieth century, the aesthetics of ‘art’ and popular music alike increasingly bore the mark of hybridity and cultural crossover. It is a world in which once-secure musical boundaries became highly porous; in which transnational cultural exchanges produced an array of richly intersecting multicultural musical forms; indeed, a world in which ‘polystylism’ was itself considered a representative hallmark of a post-modern condition that challenged the very concepts of cultural authenticity and artistic originality. Collaborative avant-garde projects, like that between Philip Glass and the West African griot Foday Musa Suso, resulted in music that smoothly overlays discrete musical styles, in this case Glass's distinctively minimalist additive rhythms (already indebted to Indian classical music) with the cyclic patterning of the kora. Elsewhere, European composers with minimalist leanings, like György Ligeti, extended the dense textures created by Central African polyphonic techniques by drawing out acoustically produced ‘inherent rhythms’ in the context of Western musical instruments. Relatedly, American postmodernists, like Mikel Rouse, wrote operas (such as Failing Kansas (1995) and Dennis Cleveland (1996)) that sound like creative transcriptions of the African rhythmic processes found in A. M. Jones's Studies in African Music. Experimentally minded Western musicians are equally indebted to other non-Western influences. On his Rhythmicolor Exotica (1996) percussion virtuoso Glen Velez draws on percussion techniques from around the world (such as the frame drumming from ancient Mesopotamia) to create sound collages that ostensibly articulate the surrounding mythologies associated with these techniques (such as Mayan creation stories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“In response to the new challenges created by the internet and the converging of communications media, the industry is working very hard on systems of encryption and watermarking and collaborates with the government to set up a strong legal framework and to educate the public about the value of music.” Frances Lowe, Director, British Music Rights, The Performing Rights Society “It is sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is.” Lars Ulrich, drummer of heavy metal band Metallica “There was this bloke and there was me and we really got along. Our friendship was founded on our mutual passions for pop music, indolence and substance abuse. We would sit around together, heroically stoned, and play records all day long: punk records, soul records, horny disco records like ‘Hot Stuff’ by Donna Summer . . . ” Dave Hill, music journalist Twentieth-century listening and its spaces Artists, fans, and the music business share an uneasy but symbiotic partnership. Dave Hill's homosocial friendship, exploring music not through performance but through listening to purchased recordings, is a deeply twentieth-century subjectivity, reflecting the basic premise of much musical entertainment since the invention of sound recording. This involves a set of paradoxical relationships. For one thing, ‘music’ is a phenomenon that can and perhaps should be considered and enjoyed in and for itself – but to facilitate this enjoyment it has become a commodity, bought, sold, and consumed, to the regret of many composers and performers such as Lars Ulrich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the big bands Early jazz had taken some years to reach a wide international audience, and the furore caused by the visit of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to London in 1919 was an indication that the new music was destined to become notorious on account of its associations with behaviour both rebellious and, in the case of Prohibition in the United States, illegal. For most of its subsequent history, jazz was tainted by extra-musical associations: although it is often tacitly assumed that this music of African-American origin scandalized a predominantly white audience, the perceived link between jazz and moral decay was fostered as much by those middle-class African Americans for whom the blues – ‘the Devil's music’ – had always been an uncomfortable reminder of the social problems from which they had at least in part managed to escape. The development of diverse jazz styles after the Second World War, and their impact on perceptions of the music as both art and commerce, were significantly affected by the prejudices and partisanship of an earlier generation of commentators and consumers. Even the definition of jazz was contested. A concerted attempt to legitimize swing as ‘jazz’ was made in the pages of the journals Down Beat and Metronome in the early 1940s, in defiance of those purists who looked askance at any jazzy style that downplayed the role of improvisation and other techniques explicitly associated with the music's African-American heritage (such as blues structures, blue notes, and ‘dirty’ timbres). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precursors Jazz has proved to be one of the most significant forms of music to arise in the twentieth century. Aesthetic considerations aside, it has been the source for the two most important forms of popular music in the West, and to a considerable extent elsewhere: the big dance band, which dominated popular music from about 1925 to 1945, and what is loosely called rock, in its various manifestations. Without jazz neither of these forms could have existed. As for ‘classic’ jazz, this term arose in the last twenty years or so of the twentieth century as a catch-all to subsume a variety of forms of music that existed before the arrival of ‘modern’ jazz in about 1945. The word ‘classic’ is a loaded one, chosen for its overtones of prestigious classical music, and reflecting the pressure during this period to assimilate jazz within the academic canon of great music; in this chapter, however, it is employed simply as a convenient term to cover pre-modern jazz, including Dixieland, swing and their variants, all of which share harmonic and rhythmic systems that are significantly different from those of modern jazz. Jazz arose in the United States at the opening of the twentieth century out of a unique set of circumstances: the presence of a concentrated population of blacks and racially mixed ‘Creoles’ in the New Orleans area; rapidly developing systems of mechanical entertainment, including the player piano, sound recording, and radio; a craze for social dancing; and a dramatic shift in American attitudes occurring in about 1910–25. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The theme of this chapter is the encounter with Western musics of other peoples during the past one hundred years. Often only occasional and sporadic at the start of the twentieth century, contact with the music of elsewhere was by the end of that century part of the everyday lives of huge numbers of people worldwide (as much within as outside the Western world). The history of this shift might be written in several ways. From a technological perspective we would discuss the invention of sound recording and broadcasting, for instance, and the dissemination of music notation and certain instruments, including the piano, guitar, accordion, and microphone. As historians of inter-cultural politics, we might instead emphasize the widespread creation through cross-cultural interaction of new genres and ensembles based in some form or other on the emulation of people seen as privileged. An ethnographic approach would look at the changing role of music in the lives of certain individuals, drawing on their own accounts of music-related events as well as on observation of and participation in some of that music-making. Meanwhile, taking the study of social institutions as a starting point, our review of the century would find common ground in the creation in many nations of music-making bodies, including orchestras of revised folk instruments, ministries of culture, competitions and festivals, bodies that regulate copyright, and colleges where music theory and performance are imparted to generations of would-be professionals; from this perspective, a key characteristic of music history in the twentieth century has been the application of similar processes to the organization of music around much of the world, providing, in some cases, pressures that result in the transformation of the musics themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A version of the old fable in which a wolf and a jackal quarrel over the prostrate form of a lamb, while an eagle hovers overhead prepared to pounce down so soon as the combatants have reduced themselves to a state of helplessness, is just now being reproduced in North- Eastern Asia. China and Japan are contending for supremacy in Korea, while … the Russians on the northern frontier are prepared to take part in the fray. The present situation in the Far East is not the result of a gradual chain of events, but of the absolute surprise created by the unexpected results of the Chino-Japanese War. No doubt the collapse of China in 1894 was only the last act in a long drama of decadence, but it revealed to astonished Europe the utter incapacity of China either to reform or to defend herself, a fact for which we were quite unprepared … China had systematically fooled both Governments and public alike, who shared the same illusion as to her power … By dissipating these illusions and exhibiting to the world the truth concerning China's decrepitude, the Japanese victories produced almost the effect of an earthquake. With the Sino-Japanese War, Japan had achieved the key international goal that had precipitated three decades of Meiji reforms: It had acquired the status of an international power. Gone was the era of unequal treaties for Japan – but not for China. Westerners were falling over themselves to applaud Japan's successes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[When Tsesarevich Nicholas] reached his majority …it was decided to send him abroad to round out his political development. At this point Emperor Alexander III had the idea of sending the Tsesarevich to the Far East …In addition to leaving him with a hostile feeling toward the Japanese, the journey produced in him an unreal sense about the East …This journey would put its stamp on Emperor Nicholas II's reign. The political objective of the Russians has always been focused on taking land that belonged to other people. They would seize an opportunity and employ a stratagem, offer a favor and win over the person who was in power, or use whatever other means necessary to place a piece of land, however small, under their influence. They would then establish permanent control over the land. The Western challenge proved highly disruptive not only for China and Korea, but also for Russia and Japan. The Industrial Revolution was an epochal change in human history. Prior to it, economies were comparatively static: They did not grow much, if at all. In the first half of the eighteenth century, English industry grew at only 0.7 percent per annum. Per capita standards of living did not change much either. Similarly, technological change was minimal. This meant that people's lives varied little from generation to generation. Once the Industrial Revolution hit, England started to grow at about 3 percent per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean rulers, under whatever impulse they act, seem determined to create causes of international friction; petty causes, it is true, but these littles may make a mickle one fine day. Korea seems a very poor place to fight for. Its people are plunged in the most miserable poverty of any in the poverty-stricken East …. Japan, in spite of all her mistakes, stands for light and civilization; her institutions are enlightened; her laws, drawn up by European justice, are equal to the best we know, and they are justly administered; her punishments are humane; her scientific and sociological ideals are our own. China stands for darkness and savagery. Her science is ludicrous superstition, her law is barbarous, her punishments are awful, her politics are corruption, her ideals are isolation and stagnation. In 1894, the great Pullman Railway Strike paralyzed the economy of the Western half of the United States; the muckraking journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd published his expose of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company; and the United States remained in the throes of the Depression of 1893. In France, 1894 marked the beginning of the long, drawn-out Dreyfus affair, when anti-Semitism led to the court-martial and imprisonment on Devil's Island of an innocent Jewish officer. There were headlines concerning the assassinations of President Carnot of France and the Bulgarian nationalist, Stefan Stambulov. Tsar Alexander HI of Russia unexpectedly died, leaving the throne to his unprepared and panic-stricken twenty-six-year-old son, Nicholas II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘MODERNITY’: CONTEXTUALIZING THE JAPANESE CASE Every analysis of specific patterns and results of modernization presupposes an implicit or explicit theory of modernity. With regard to the specific approach on which the following discussion is based, it should be noted that I prefer not to define modernity as a cultural project which has so far had only a limited and one-sided impact on social structures (Habermas) or as a socio-economic system that has gradually expanded around the globe and repeatedly shifted its centre of gravity, but functioned according to the same basic mechanisms from the beginning (Wallerstein). In view of the complexity and variability of the underlying pattern, the notion of a configuration or a constellation would seem more appropriate than that of a project or a system. In more detailed terms, the phenomenon in question is a combination of heterogeneous elements and divergent lines of development that are only partly subsumed under a common denominator or coordinated within a coherent framework. The interconnected structures of a capitalist and industrial mode of production, a system of nation-states and an international market constitute dominant components of the modern configuration and a formative framework of modernizing processes. In the historical context they are inseparable from a cultural and political transformation that creates both preconditions for their development and premises for alternative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JAPAN AND MODERNIZATION THEORY Historians, sociologists, and political scientists continue to debate the fine points of what it means for a society to ‘modernize’, even as they agree that the so-called advanced countries have now completed the process and begun to move into the even more unknown territory ‘beyond modernization’. Western social science theory for long understood ‘modernization’ as a basically unilinear process of transformation of the world which stretched from the cultural and intellectual world of seventeenth-century Europe to the post-1945 United States; the Japanese experience was never easily incorporated within such a model, and the emergence of Japan as an economic superpower calls the whole theory in question. Likewise the theoretical extension of the ‘modern’ trajectory into the ‘post-modern’ will remain unsatisfactory so long as such theorization remains exclusively Euro-American oriented. As the first society outside the Western cultural tradition to achieve a high level of industrialization Japan was, and still is, the crucial case for the debate over whether industrialized societies have a tendency to become increasingly alike in structure and values – the socalled convergence debate. In the context of Japanese studies, there are two further interrelated problems. Is modernity to be defined by Western, Japanese or universal (and somehow culturally neutral) standards? And however the concept is defined, does Japan qualify as ‘modern’? As Japan develops into an economic superpower, whose trade performance appears to threaten other industrialized societies, it has become common to suggest that it is the country which others must emulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]