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GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURE
GLOBAL MÉLANGE

FOURTH EDITION

JAN NEDERVEEN PIETERSE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Executive Editor: Susan McEachern
Editorial Assistant: Katelyn Turner
Senior Marketing Manager: Amy Whitaker

Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and
reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate page within the text.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

First Edition 2004. Second Edition 2009. Third Edition 2015.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, author.

Title: Globalization and culture : global mélange / Jan Nederveen Pieterse,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Description: Fourth Edition. | Lanham : ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD, [2019] | Series:
Globalization | “First Edition 2004. Second Edition 2009. Third Edition 2015”—T.p.
verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019007534 (print) | LCCN 2019009135 (ebook) | ISBN
9781538115244 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538115220 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781538115237 (paper : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Globalization. | Globalization—Moral and ethical aspects. |
Globalization—Political aspects. | Acculturation. | Popular culture.
Classification: LCC JZ1318 (ebook) | LCC JZ1318 .N43 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/2
—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007534

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
 CONTENTS

Preface to the Fourth Edition

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 What Is Culture?
Nation and Culture
Culture Sprawl
Disentangling Threads of Culture

2 Globalization: Consensus and Controversies

Consensus
Controversies
Twenty-first-century Globalization

3 Globalization and Human Integration: We Are All

Migrants
Globalization as a Deep Historical Process
Utopian Visions: Human Unity as a Theme
 Uneven Globalization
We Are All Migrants: Migration and Human Integration

4 Globalization and Culture: Three Paradigms

Clash of Civilizations
McDonaldization
Hybridization: Rhizomes of Culture
Futures

5 Globalization as Hybridization
Globalization and Modernity
Structural Hybridization
Global Mélange
Politics of Hybridity
Post-hybridity?
Forward Moves

6 Hybridity, So What? The Anti-hybridity Backlash

Varieties of Hybridity
The Anti-hybridity Backlash
Hybridity and the longue durée
Different Cultural Takes on Hybridity
Patterns of Hybridity
So What?

7 Globalization Is Braided: East-West Osmosis

East-West
Islam-West
Easternization, Westernization, and Back Again

8 Hybrid China
Silk Roads
New Silk Roads
Hybridity with Chinese Characteristics
Globalized, Globalizing

9 Populism, Globalization, and Culture

 Meridians of Populism
Populism and Globalization
Populism and Culture

10 Global Mélange

Bibliography

About the Author

 PREFACE TO THE FOURTH
EDITION

New to this edition are chapter 1 on culture and chapter 9 on

populism. The chapter on culture unbundles culture, teasing out its
various meanings and developments. Since globalization has been
addressed in an opening chapter, culture, too, should be discussed
and problematized. Culture is all pervasive in conversations, in media
and scholarship and runs through all the chapters and arguments in
this book. Lack of clarity about culture is a key problem. I notice it in
teaching too. Simplistic and naïve ideas about culture (often equated
with national cultures) are prevalent. Hence, unpacking culture is
fundamental for a book like this. The book should also address first
principles, the basics and foundations of key problems. Updating in
light of recent developments, chapter 9 on populism combines a
timely and controversial issue with the book’s overarching themes of
globalization and culture. In addition, there are revisions throughout
all chapters. Since the third edition was published, Korean (Seoul,
Ecolivres) and Chinese (Beijing, Chinese Social Sciences Press)
translations of the book have come out.
 Nezar AlSayyad dedicated his volume on Hybrid Urbanism “To the
peoples of hybrid persuasions.” I simply dedicate this book to
everyone, on the assumption that everyone is hybrid.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Among friends and colleagues who commented on earlier editions,

I would like to thank in particular Durre Ahmed in Lahore, Mike
Feather-stone, Sergio Costa, Vittorio Cotesta, Jeroen Dewulf, Sang-
Dawn Lee, Bhikhu Parekh, Amit Prasad, Fazal Rizvi, Livio Sansone,
Chan Kwok-bun, and Daniel Vukovich in Hong Kong, Surichai
Wungaeo in Bangkok, and Ulrike Brunotte and René Gabriels in
Maastricht. At Maastricht University I held a chair on globalization
and culture (2008–2011, honorary professor 2011–2014). My cordial
thanks to Susan McEachern, senior editor of Rowman & Littlefield,
for her consistent support for the book and for inviting me to do a
fourth edition.
 INTRODUCTION

A familiar thesis in media and cultural studies is global cultural

homogenization. Another recurrent theme, in political science and
political journalism, is ethnic politics (ethnic cleansing, new
nationalisms) and religious fundamentalism, which suggests a link
between globalization and local identity politics. In effect, on the one
hand, much literature has been polarized in diagnosing either
growing global cultural uniformity (along the lines of
commodification, consumerism) or, on the other hand, growing
cultural differentiation, a kind of global “Lebanonization” or cultural
fragmentation (as in identity politics and the “clash of civilizations”).
While culture figures in many treatments, it often does so as the
annex of another paradigm or problem. A trend in sociology is to
revisit, through globalization, discussions of modernity, and a trend
in political economy is to revisit, through globalization, debates on
capitalism. The career of globalization coincides then with the career
of modernity (1800 plus) or the career of capitalism (1500 plus).
Other approaches focus on relations between late capitalism and
culture. Both modernity and capitalism are quite pertinent, but if
discussing globalization is another way to continue conversations on
modernity, there is a risk of carrying on an Atlantic conversation
extrapolated to planetary scope. Would it make sense to expect
treatments of globalization to be global in spirit?
Globalization and culture is a live-wire theme in constant flux—in
lifestyles, cross-cultural encounters, migration, global-local relations,
music, media, movies, marketing, fashion, cuisine, and so forth. As
dynamics of globalization change—and in the twenty-first century
they are changing markedly, even dramatically—so do not just the
tides, but also the shorelines of culture. A significant change since
this book was first published (2009) has been the rise of Asia, China,
and the global South as drivers of the world economy and global
transformation. This isn’t new, but its pace has quickened and its
scope widened, with changes in international trade, the rise of
multinational and sovereign wealth funds from the global South,
demand for commodities, and growing South-South relations. This
sea change in globalization is showing in changing cultural styles and
flows. For some two hundred years, since 1800, globalization was
shaped and determined by North-South relations with overwhelming
dominance of the North in economic, political, and cultural spheres.
Eurocentrism, Orientalism, cultural imperialism, and a palette of
western images and prejudices about the global South are familiar
testimonies of this hegemony.
Most globalization literature took shape during 1980–2000 when
neoliberalism and American hegemony were overriding trends. So
keynotes of globalization literature have been critiques of
neoliberalism and of Washington consensus policies of structural
adjustment prescribed for developing countries. During the past two
decades (since 2000), these features have weakened. Neoliberalism
and American hegemony have not left the stage, but they are past
their peak and face mounting problems. A new phase of
globalization has begun in which emerging societies play a greater
role (Nederveen Pieterse 2018a).
This book is distinctive in that it takes a historically deep
approach, problematizes culture, and develops perspectives of global
mélange or hybridization. Hybridity, a theme that is both well
established and controversial, is a leitmotiv that is developed in
several chapters. In developing this perspective, I adopt an analysis
of globalization that is historically deep and geographically wide.
Most globalization studies tend to be confined to a narrow time
frame. Most economists view globalization as a matter of the past
decades. For social movements, the key issue is neoliberal
capitalism, so engagement with globalization becomes a polemic
with neoliberalism. I share this concern, but I also find that
globalization refers to a much wider human rendezvous, which is
particularly relevant in relation to culture. As pressing as current
issues are, there is more to globalization than its current form.
The major thrust of this book is that in cultural terms,
globalization tends toward a global mélange. This is essentially a
book about globalization as hybridization. Chapter 4 introduces this
perspective as one of three paradigms of globalization and culture.
Chapter 5 sets forth the hybridization argument in detail, chapter 6
responds to critics of hybridity or the anti-hybridity backlash, chapter
7 develops it in East-West relations, and chapter 8, in relation to
China.
When some of the material of this book was first written (one
article was originally published in 1994) it was pioneering. At the
time, hybridity was mainly argued in postcolonial studies; in most
social science, the other two paradigms—cultural homogenization
and lasting or growing difference—were more prominent. Over the
past decade or so this has changed radically. Hybridity has become a
regular, almost-ordinary fixture in popular and mainstream culture—
widely recognized as “The Trend to Blend.” The Tiger Woods and
Barack Obama aesthetic and sensibility—pardon the shorthand—
have become standard fixtures in media and marketing. In social
science and cultural studies, hybridity is inching up to become a
leading paradigm with a steadily growing literature. Cultural studies
take hybridity as a point of departure; regional and thematic studies
use hybridity perspectives. Criticisms of hybridity arguments, of the
kind discussed in chapter 6 persist, but the momentum of everyday
and experiential hybridity is unstoppable and outflanks criticisms—
certainly in quantity. The point of most discussion now is not to
argue for or against hybridity but to explore finer points and
meanings of hybridity. Since “everything is hybrid,” discussing
examples of hybridity is like drinking from a fire hydrant. It follows
that only those forms of hybridity are worth discussing that
illuminate the variety, depth, and meanings of hybridity or shed light
on controversies, past or present.
This book probably owes much of its appeal and bite to a
combination of traits. I am originally an anthropologist, and
anthropology is a savvy perspective on culture. I have done
extensive work in history, and globalization is a deeply historical
theme. I have worked on visual cultural studies, which is an
appealing sensibility. I have done work on global political economy
and development studies, which lends the treatment an edge
beyond culture for culture’s sake and embeds globalization and
culture alongside political economy.
While most of my work has been in sociology, development
studies, political economy, and intercultural studies, I’m an
anthropologist by training. At the University of Amsterdam at the
time, cultural anthropology was synonymous with “nonwestern
sociology,” and the line between anthropology and sociology was
thin. My family background from a Dutch East Indies colonial family
also shapes my outlook. Ancestors came to Java, Sulawesi, and
Sumatra in the late 1700s as traders or planters or with the Dutch
East Indies Company (VOC). The family remained in the archipelago
for more than two hundred years, mixed with Javanese, Sulawesi,
Bugis, Portuguese, French, Germans, and others, steeped in Indo-
Dutch mestizo culture (known as “tempo doeloe”).
My father’s line goes back to the East Indies from the early
1800s. The family came to the Netherlands after the Second World
War. I was born in Amsterdam after their arrival, the only member of
the family born outside Indonesia for many generations. We are
Eurasians and hybrid in a genealogical and existential sense. This is
not a matter of choice or preference but a just so circumstance. It
happens to be a matter of reflection because my work is social
science. My family history then is steeped in the history of western
expansion, colonialism, and intercontinental migration. I don’t
mention this because I think it is unusual but rather because I think
it is common; one way or another, we are all migrants. I feel affinity
with the world’s migrants and am inclined to view human history in a
global setting, not merely since the past fifty years or so but for
thousands of years. My choice of studying anthropology reflects this
background. My personal history includes several intercontinental
migrations and has been influenced by many travels and stays
across the world. I have kept the character of this book as a tight
and fluent treatment, concise and focused rather than sprawling and
cumbersome, so it serves not merely scholarly purposes as a critical,
probing treatment of a vital and salient domain of globalization, but
educational purposes as well.
A brief guide to the chapters is as follows. Chapter 1 unpacks
culture as a general problem and reviews notions of culture over
time. The second chapter discusses perspectives of social science
and humanities disciplines on globalization and their widely diverse
views on the fundamentals of globalization. Globalization invites
more controversy than consensus. Late twentieth-century
globalization comes in a package together with informatization and
flexibilization in production and labor, and neoliberal globalization
adds deregulation, financialization, and marketization. Twenty-first-
century trends include the rise of emerging economies.
Chapter 3 asks whether globalization involves a trend toward
human integration and develops a historical perspective on
globalization. Visions of human unity are part of our legacy, but have
been confronted with steep and growing inequality. Globalization is a
long-term, uneven, and paradoxical process in which widening social
cooperation and deepening inequality go together. This perspective
is examined from the point of view of migration and diasporas,
whose role has long been underestimated. Chapters 3 and 7 outline
deep historical approaches to globalization.
Chapter 4 takes us directly into the globalization and culture
debate. This chapter argues that there are three fundamentally
different paradigms of cultural difference: differences are lasting;
they give way to growing homogenization; and they mix and
generate new differences in the process. Thus, according to the
“clash of civilizations” view, cultural difference is enduring and
generates rivalry and conflict. In the second view, global
interconnectedness leads to increasing cultural convergence, as in
the global sweep of consumerism—in short, “Mc-Donaldization.” The
third position holds that what have been taking place are processes
of mixing or hybridization across locations and identities, which is
elaborated in two chapters on global mélange.
Chapter 5 sets forth the thesis of globalization as hybridization.
Globalization is often interpreted as a process of homogenization,
but does this make sense considering there are multiple globalization
processes at work? Globalization is also often tied up with modernity,
but this amounts to a theory of westernization, which is
geographically narrow and historically shallow. This chapter argues
for viewing globalization as hybridization—institutional hybridization
or the emergence of new, mixed forms of social cooperation, and
cultural hybridization, or the development of translocal mélange
cultures. Examining politics of hybridity shows the variety of
hybridities, across a wide spectrum from mimicry to counter-
hegemony. Two distinct concepts of culture are in use—territorial
and translocal, inward and outward looking—that produce divergent
views on cultural relations and globalization. “Hybridization” refers to
opening up inward-looking understandings of culture, in the process
ushering in post-hybridity.
Chapter 6 addresses criticisms of hybridity. According to anti-
hybridity arguments, hybridity is inauthentic and “multiculturalism
lite.” Examining these arguments provides an opportunity to deepen
and fine-tune perspectives. What is missing in the anti-hybridity
arguments is historical depth; this treatment deals with the longue
durée and suggests multiple historical layers of hybridity. The
chapter next turns to the politics of boundaries, for the real problem
is not hybridity, which is commonplace throughout history, but
boundaries and the social proclivity to boundary fetishism. Hybridity
is a problem only from the point of view of essentializing boundaries.
What hybridity means varies not only over time but also in different
cultures, which informs different patterns of hybridity. In the end,
the importance of hybridity is that it problematizes boundaries.
 Chapter 7, on the braiding and interlacing of East-West and
Islam-Europe influences, offers historical elaborations of mélange
perspectives. Chapter 8, on hybrid China, focuses on the key issue of
agency and power in hybridization, which is important in emerging
economies generally, with China as a particularly momentous case.
This chapter draws a key distinction between passive (globalized)
and active (globalizing) forms of globalization and hybridity (being
hybridized and hybridizing). This produces perspectives on hybridity
as selective fusion that are markedly different from most literature.
Chapter 9 analyzes contemporary populism (and anti-globalization)
in relation to the key themes of the book: globalization and culture.
Chapter 10 rounds off with reflections on global mélange.
 CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS CULTURE?

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,

morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired
by man as a member of society.
—Edward Burnett Tylor, anthropologist

Culture is the memory of a people, the collective consciousness, the

continuity of history, the way we think and live.
—Milan Kundera, writer

It is social process that needs to be preserved rather than merely the

items produced, to ensure the continued creation of (a community’s)
valued products.
—Lyndel V. Prott, jurist

Culture is the profound exercise of identity.

—Julio Cortazar, writer
Enter the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Seville, Spain,
and these accounts of culture are on the wall of the entry hall, in
English and Spanish. They are reasonable definitions, though old-
fashioned. The museum opened in 1973 and these ideas reflect
views at the time. The perspectives are from different fields
(anthropology, literature, law), different societies (Britain, Spain,
Yugoslavia), and different periods (from the nineteenth century on).
Edward Tylor’s definition is a classical view of culture in anthropology
(1871). Milan Kundera’s definition speaks of memory and
consciousness (one wonders, does culture also include habits that
are unconscious?). Lyndel Prott refers to preservation, so in this view
culture becomes a matter of cultural heritage. Julio Cortazar, a
novelist well-known for his progressive views on the importance of
Muslim history and culture for Spain, views culture as the “exercise
of identity” and thus views identity not as given, but as something
that involves agency.
Culture is everywhere, at every junction. Culture is the sphinx
one meets at nearly every crossroads of social science and
humanities. The riddle of the sphinx is What is culture? Every
traveler tries a different answer. According to Raymond Williams,
“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the
English language” (1976: 76). Culture is the central focus of
anthropology, which features numerous approaches to and
definitions of culture.
In order to map culture, consider the following options. One is
etymology: looking at the origins of the word and how it has
changed over time. An indispensable guide is Raymond Williams and
his book Keywords. Williams finds that culture derives from Latin and
French words that indicate a range of activities: “inhabit [hence
colony], cultivate [the tending of natural growth], protect, honor
with worship [hence cult].”1 According to Williams, “Culture as an
independent noun, an abstract process or the product of such a
process, is not important before 1C18 [early eighteenth century] and
is not common before mCl9” [mid-nineteenth century] (1976: 78).
Thus, the use of culture as noun is quite recent in European
languages. Raymond Williams’ work concerns the etymology of
culture in European languages. If we consider the origins and
synonyms of “culture” in many other languages (see table 1.1), key
origins are also variants of agriculture and cultivation as well as
education.
 Other guides to how thinking about culture has developed over
time are understandings of culture in anthropology. Studies in
literature and art are sources as well (Williams 1981). A fourth
approach is inductive—how culture is used in everyday,
contemporary language and with what connotations give us a sense
of its sprawling uses and meanings, which is taken up later in this
chapter.
In anthropology, discussions of culture have been extensive and
meandering in various directions over time. Edward Tylor’s definition,
quoted above, has long been the standard. Tylor was the first
anthropologist to hold a chair in anthropology at Oxford University.
Viewing culture as people’s attributes “acquired as a member of
society” is a nineteenth-century theme (which is discussed below).
Culture is often summed up as customs and beliefs that are “learned
and shared”: learned—that is, they are not biological; shared—that
is, they are not acquired individually but as part of a social group.
This overlaps with another classical theme in anthropology: “the
importance of environment over heredity, ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ or
culture over biology” (Erickson and Murphy 1998: 77). This echoes
in a recent definition of “culture” as “the accumulated way of living
created and acquired by people and transmitted from one generation
to another extrasomatically, other than through genes” (Erickson and
Murphy 1998: 35). Thus, cultural evolution differs from biological
evolution. In Alfred Kroeber’s work this leads to a search for cultural
patterns and trends, a search that continues in the psychological
anthropology of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. A related
perspective is cultural evolutionism. In this framework Leslie White
proposes a “layer-cake model of culture” with technology and
economy at the bottom, social and political organization in the
middle, and ideology at the top.
In cognitive anthropology, culture is viewed as “a classificatory
logic that creates meaning. Different cultures have different meaning
systems” (Erickson and Murphy 1998: 115). Clifford Geertz’s semiotic
theory of culture focuses on meaning and on the social circulation
and ritual performance of symbols. For Geertz, the interpretive tool
of “thick description” is the best technique to approach the text of
culture.
Political economy approaches in anthropology (such as Sidney
Mintz, William Roseberry), no longer view culture as a unified whole
but instead problematize culture as a composite of competing forces.
Culture, then, is the product of power struggles. This approach
matches Gramscian views. According to Gramsci (writing between
1929 and 1935), for social revolution to succeed in western
European societies one needs to control not just the state (as in
Russia and in Lenin’s view) but also civil society; achieving this
requires establishing cultural leadership or hegemony. When his
Prison Notebooks came out in English translation (1953; see Gramsci
1971), it exercised wide influence. It became a keynote of English
cultural studies, such as the Birmingham school, which views culture
as a terrain of struggle. Raymond Williams’ work is close to this
approach.
In postmodern approaches, the emphasis shifts to the
subjectivity of experience and culture becomes contingent and
unstable (Monaghan and Just 2000). In the work of Michel Foucault,
discourse is a major tool of power struggles. In Pierre Bourdieu’s
sociology, culture becomes cultural capital, alongside social and
knowledge capital, and a tool to achieve distinction. Thus, in late
twentieth-century perspectives, culture comes to be viewed as a
terrain of contestation—like ideology, an arena of struggle.

NATION AND CULTURE

Flashback to the nineteenth century. Culture in the sense of Tylor
and early anthropology is that which one learns “as a member of
society” and “society” refers to people and nation. An influential
voice early in the nineteenth century was Johann Gottfried Herder, a
German Romantic thinker (1744–1803) whose views influenced
Goethe and many others. According to Herder, language is the
genius of a people. Herder introduced the use of the plural—cultures
—in contrast to the singular—civilization.
The Westphalian state system, introduced by the Treaty of
Munster of 1648, had ended the medieval principle of overlapping
powers and jurisdictions, yet it remained centered on the monarchy.
The religion of the monarch determined the religion of the nation.
This changed when the French Revolution inaugurated the principle
of popular sovereignty. Hence, the new worship of the nation, of
which culture (viewed as national culture) became a cornerstone. In
the wake of the French Revolution popular sovereignty, rather than
royal sovereignty (“divine right”) emerged as a keynote. Hence
ensued the era of “the springtime of peoples,” the emergence of
nations—along with national anthems, national symbols, national
education policies, national monuments. Culture and language
became major strategic properties. Across Europe a major project
became the alignment of people, nation, language, and culture. Of
course, these were not givens, they were constructed and, if
necessary, invented (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). It involved the
alignment of regional cultures and customs with national standards.
“It took two hundred years to make Frenchmen” is a familiar
observation, with education and language policies as keynotes. The
“nationalization of the masses” (Mosse 1975) was a long-term
project.
In nineteenth-century settings of the making of nations, this was
a project, not an existing reality. National institutions, borders, and
border documents emerged gradually over time. Regional cultures
needed to be aligned with national culture, such as in France,
Occitania and the Langue d’Oc, the Provence, the Elzas, Bretagne,
and Normandy. In Spain, Catalonia, Basque country, Galicia, and
Andalusia all had traditions different from the center of Castile and
Madrid, and so forth. In every country, centrally positioned elites felt
that culture should serve as a cement of national cohesion. From
Scotland to Russia, boulevards, streets, parks were (and are) named
after poets, writers, composers, musicians, or thinkers that were
thought to represent national identity.
This understanding of culture was not the description of an
actual existing situation but a project, a normative approach that
was often imposed “from above” on people and from the center on
peripheries. The project had clear political overtones. In post-
revolutionary France the central state needed to be strong to
counter challenges from aristocracies and the Church in the
provinces. The establishment of central power and the national
alignment and standardization of culture were tandem projects.
These transformations were replete with struggles—the resistance of
the old order, the Church, and the provinces. Modern times were in
the making but the passing of the ancien regime, the power of
aristocracy and the Church, took well over a hundred years (Mayer
1981).
 Germany and Italy were outliers to the Westphalian settlements
of 1648. In Germany the princedoms remained intact and in Italy the
city-states remained in power. Both were latecomers to national
unification: Italy, with the establishment of the monarchy in 1861,
and Germany, with the lead of Prussia and Bismarck in 1871. For
years Germany was an arena of Kulturkampf between the state and
the Catholic Church and the papacy on matters of jurisdiction and
education (1872–1887). Tensions between religions (Protestantism
in the north, Catholicism in the south, as in the Netherlands) and
between rural and urban worlds played a part in many societies. The
nineteenth century was also an era of emancipation movements of
Catholics, Jews, the working class, women, slaves, serfs, and anti-
colonial movements, all of which spilled over into cultural terrains.
From the early twentieth century on, the Catholic Church embraced
modernization and began to support political parties and trade
unions. In the 1920s political parties and interest groups began to
mobilize not just newspapers, but also radio, for propaganda. Thus
the sphere of “national culture” also became more cluttered.
Nations and their borders are the outcomes of regional politics,
while culture, language, and customs are outcomes of wider
historical flows. Thus, culture as a deep code, a glue of social
cohesion, and a national project was a tool of social and political
alignment that only slowly inched forward as part of the making of
national institutions—and never without contestation.

CULTURE SPRAWL
According to Williams, the term “culture” is complicated “partly
because of its intricate historical development, in several European
languages, but mainly because it has now come to be used for
important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in
several distinct and incompatible systems of thought” (1976: 76).
Culture looms large in the humanities—in language, literature,
theater, art, music. In social sciences, culture leads in anthropology,
sociology, cultural studies and communication, film and media
studies. In addition, many social sciences include cultural subfields.
In international relations, cultural approaches deal with how
countries’ cultural leanings affect international diplomacy and affairs.
In political science, culture comes up in ethno-politics and
comparative studies of political culture. In economics, cultural
economy (culture and economics) deals with emotive, experiential,
or libidinal dimensions of economics and overlaps with behavioral
economics (Amin and Thrift 2004). In business studies, culture
influences organization studies with work on power distance and
uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede 2005) and it influences
management studies of diversity in personnel and marketing. The
saying “culture eats strategy for breakfast” is attributed to the
management guru Peter Drucker. The point is that whatever
business strategy companies set forth, the culture of the
organization is decisive to what actually happens (cf. Coffman and
Sorensen 2013). A further set of meanings is high culture (as in
Ministry of Culture, Culture big C), low culture, popular culture, pop
culture.
The term “culture” works overtime. Spend a day listening to
radio, watching TV, reading a newspaper or magazine and note how
frequently the word “culture” comes up and in what varied
meanings. A sample of contemporary uses of culture is categorized
in table 1.2.
“Society” was never a homogeneous whole. Learning “as a
member of society” depended all along on whether one was rural or
urban, central or peripheral, provincial, rich or poor, belonging to the
mainstream or to minority religions or subcultures, and so forth. If
the nineteenth century was a time of the centering of nations, which
went on during much of the twentieth century, in the second half of
the twentieth century the decentering of nations went forward under
the headings of regionalism, globalization, migration, and
multiculturalism. The nineteenth-century assumptions no longer
apply, yet the classical ideas live on. The idea of culture as the
culture of a society (Japanese culture, French culture, American
culture) lingers on. Civilizational cohesion, another nineteenth-
century theme—as in Kipling, “East and West, never the twain shall
meet”—lingers as well (Asian culture, Islamic culture, western
culture). A familiar theme of the 1990s was the “clash of
civilizations” (discussed in chapter 4). Culture increasingly turns into
a set of Russian dolls.

In development studies and policy, “culture” has been used to

explain countries’ progress or stagnation. Politicians, East and West,
have paraded Asian values, the neo-Confucian ethic, or Islamic
values as slogans or barriers. Scholars have tried to use culture as
an independent variable to explain the difference in development
between, for instance, South Korea and Ghana, as in the book
Culture Matters (Harrison and Huntington 2000). According to
Samuel Huntington, we define culture as “the values, attitudes,
beliefs, orientations and underlying assumptions prevalent among
people in a society” (Huntington 2000: xv). Culture as an
independent variable, a cause, is difficult to handle because which
culture or part of culture does it refer to? This premise simply
glosses over culture as diverse and as a terrain of struggle. In
development studies, culture and development has become a wide
theme in which culture is generally understood as a terrain of
diversity (such as by class, status, ethnicity, religion, age, gender)
and contestation (Nederveen Pieterse 2010).
In 2018, I was approached for an “opportunity to speak on
globalization and its impact on culture” at a conference. The
invitation came from someone who works at a major American food
company (General Mills) and takes part in a working group on
“sensing.” I gradually understood that “sensing” refers to
understanding consumer habits and tastes. I was invited to speak,
via e-mail and Skype, on the following topics:
1. Talk about the interaction of food and social connections and
its impact on people’s food choices (i.e., solo consumption vs.
group consumption).
2. What is the purpose of meals in different cultures (i.e.,
primarily fuel, social connections, etc.)?
3. Is measurement within people’s minds the same around the
world or different? Or how does culture impact how people
rate products?
4. What is the impact of digital penetration around the world and
its impact on interconnectedness?
5. How does the amount of energy/effort that goes into
food/water acquisition impact culture?
6. How might one approach studying situations where people use
products very differently or similarly around the world?
Again these questions treat “culture” as if it is a clear-cut unit
that is homogeneous or at least homogeneous enough. What is the
purpose of meals in “different cultures”—among whom? In urban or
rural settings, in small towns or big cities? Among old or young
people? What about ethnicity, religion, gender, and so on? All
cultures are mixed; many are mixed across the measurement criteria
mentioned. Thus most of these questions cannot be practically or
legitimately answered. Answering them would require thick
description.
The problem in this approach is the use of abstract, low-
resolution categories (culture, different cultures) to find answers to
high-resolution questions. In other words, this tries to use “culture”
as a shortcut. Many categories of culture are low-resolution notions:
they apply but apply mostly at a long-distance view. If we try to
answer detailed high-resolution questions at this frequency, they
simply cannot be generated by means of these categories.
Diversity matters and has come to matter more over time. In
political economy, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies,
development studies, and history, “culture” has unraveled and
cultural frictions and wars have come to the foreground. How do we
explain this change in perspective? First, diversity isn’t new.
Societies have been differentiated and segmented all along. This was
plastered over in nineteenth-century evocations of “national culture”
that relied on coopting or sidelining differences of class, region, and
minorities, while at the same time hosting or nurturing stereotypes
of other nations that contributed to chauvinism and to the twentieth-
century world wars. Emancipation movements were part of
nineteenth-century changes and have grown and widened over time.
Population growth and growing population density, urbanization,
print media, mass media and higher education, growing mobility,
and migration have increased communication and interaction. The
scale of culture has expanded along with the increasing reach of
state policies, regionalism (such as the EU), and globalization as well
as the widening scope of public concerns such as labor conditions,
energy, water, environment, animal rights, and so on. Ideologies
have organized the public sphere and have often exaggerated the
capacity of storylines to deliver meaningful social change. Marketing,
a thoroughly cultural toolkit, has achieved “total penetration” in all
spheres. Through all this, culture has been the terrain and the
medium through which social, political, economic, and commercial
tensions are expressed.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century and societies have
changed much more radically, well beyond the idea and the fiction of
“national culture.” And besides the diversity and sprawl of uses of
culture, another option arises: the use of “culture” as a residual or
factor X variable. If we don’t quite understand what is going on, we
call it “cultural.” If other variables don’t deliver or explain, we toss it
in the culture bin.

DISENTANGLING THREADS OF CULTURE

If we review the discussions, key meridians emerge. One is the
fundamental distinction between nature and nurture, between
biology and culture. Here culture is equivalent to general human
software (Banuri 1990: 77), the capacity for language, using
symbols, classification and generating, and communicating meaning
that enable humans to navigate various environments. Culture in this
generic sense is everywhere. Humans do not and cannot function
without culture. We all wear “cultural glasses” of one kind or other.
We can term this generic culture.
At the same time, this software, like any software, does not
operate “in general”; it operates in specific modes and specific
settings of space and time. Just as the capacity for language exists
in general, language in effect exists in the form of languages, in
different forms and for different purposes—vernaculars, dialects,
national languages, contact languages, trade languages, lingua
franca, technical and professional languages, languages of
mathematics, astronomy, law, accounting, engineering,
programming, and so on. Thus, generic human software always
exists and functions as specific software in specific settings, which
we can term culture 1. Culture 1 is embedded in and enabled by
generic culture. These understandings of culture are compatible:
generic culture finds expression in culture 1; cultures are the
vehicles of culture.
 Culture in the sense of a culture, the culture of a society or social
group, was elaborated on in twentieth-century anthropology, as in
cultural relativism and the notion of culture as a whole, a Gestalt, a
configuration. The understanding of culture 1 as national culture
(Japanese culture, French culture, German culture) is a convention
that goes way back and has been influenced by nineteenth-century
projects of aligning people and culture—which implied sidelining,
marginalizing, and suppressing differences in the name of national
ethos, the nature and understanding of which also changed over
time.
Another feature of conventional views of culture is the
assumption that culture stems from learning processes that are, in
the main, territorial and localized in one’s home town, home country,
home region. This overlooks another dimension of culture—that
which one learns as pilgrim, sojourner, seafarer, migrant or traveler:
translocal culture such as Arabic numerals (that are understood
transnationally, yet pronounced differently in each language);
transnational conventions such as time zones; learning in
multinational and transnational corporations in the setting of global
value chains and global supply chains, emoticons, and Internet
codes. Learning is not necessarily localized in that we also learn from
travel, pilgrimage, migration, media, movies, Internet, transnational
sources, and so forth. In past centuries, cultural evolution was often
thought to take place through diffusion from civilizational centers.
Prominent themes in nineteenth-century archeology were
Egyptianization, Hellenization, and Romanization. Thus, culture as
translocal learning has all along been part of theories of evolution
and diffusion. We can term this culture 2.
Culture 2, or translocal culture, is not without place, but where
place comes in it involves an outward-looking sense of place,
whereas culture 1 is based on or is understood as being based on an
inward-looking sense of place. Culture 2 involves what the
geographer Doreen Massey called “a global sense of place”: “the
specificity of place which derives from the fact that each place is the
focus of a distinct mixture of wider and more local social relations”
(1993: 240).
 Understanding culture as human software implies, first, that
culture is a learning process; second, that it is ongoing and open-
ended; third, that it involves agency; and fourth, that it includes
translocal and supra-territorial learning. Learning involves agency in
that we can choose to cultivate, for instance, humanities or science
knowledge, a taste for beer or wine, rice or bread. In sum, we can
distinguish layers of culture—generic culture (such as the capacity
for language), territorial culture such as local and national cultures,
and translocal, transnational culture. A brief overview is in table 1.3.2
In addition, culture is also a medium through which terrains find
expression. These perspectives on culture are developed further in
the chapters that follow. Specifically, culture is taken up in relation to
hybridity in chapters 4, 5, and 6 and in relation to history in chapters
7 and 8. Culture as a terrain of struggle and jostling for hegemony is
taken up in chapter 9 on populism.

NOTES
1. Text in [brackets] are my insertions. “The fw is cultura, L(atin), from rw
[root word] colere, L. Colere had a range of meanings: inhabit, cultivate, protect,
honor with worship. Some of these meanings eventually separated, though still
with occasional overlapping, in the derived nouns. Thus ‘inhabit’ developed
through colonus, L to colony. ‘Honor with worship’ developed through cultus, L to
cult. Cultura took on the main meaning of cultivation or tending, including, as in
Cicero, cultura animi, though with subsidiary medieval meanings of honor and
worship (cf. in English culture as ‘worship’ in Caxton (1483)). The French forms of
cultura were couture, oF, which has since developed its own specialized meaning,
and later culture, which by eC15 had passed into English. The primary meaning
was then in husbandry, the tending of natural growth.” (Williams 1976: 77)
 2. I also discuss layers of culture in Nederveen Pieterse 2007, Conclusion. For
further meanings of culture see, for example, Williams 1981.
 CHAPTER 2
GLOBALIZATION
CONSENSUS AND CONTROVERSIES

“Globalization” is both an historical fact and a political football.

—Stephen Toulmin (1999)

Globalization is like a prism in which major disputes over the

collective human condition are now refracted: questions of
capitalism, inequality, power, development, ecology, culture, gender,
identity, population, all come back in a landscape where
“globalization did it.” Like a flag word, globalization sparks conflict.
Globalization crosses boundaries of government and business, media
and social movements, general and academic interest. As a political
challenge, it crosses the ideological spectrum and engages social
movements and politics at all levels. It involves a paradigm shift
from the era of the nation state and international politics to politics
of planetary scope.
This chapter gives an overview of globalization debates to situate
questions of globalization and culture in a wider context and to show
that major issues come up in other debates as well. Now some
decades into the sprawling globalization debate, the literature is
advanced enough to begin to identify areas of consensus and
controversy. This bird’s-eye overview focuses on the major debates;
within each terrain there are numerous subsidiary debates, but that
kind of treatment would require a book in itself.
Among analysts and policy makers, North and South, there is an
emerging consensus on several features of globalization:
globalization is being shaped by technological changes, involves the
reconfiguration of states, goes together with regionalization, and is
uneven. Another common understanding, that globalization means
time-space compression, may be vague enough not to cause much
stir. It means that globalization involves more intensive interaction
across wider space and in shorter time than before, in other words,
the experience of a shrinking world; yet this may also be too simple
and flat an account. There is ample controversy about what these
features mean, so it’s not easy to draw a line between the consensus
and controversies on globalization. Globalization invites more
controversy than consensus, and the areas of consensus are narrow
by comparison to the controversies. Controversies in relation to
globalization are, in brief: Is globalization a recent or a long-term
phenomenon? What is the definition of globalization? The use and
abuse of the global. Is globalization neoliberal capitalism? And is
globalization manageable? Older controversies, going back to the
1990s, are whether globalization is multidimensional or essentially
economic, and whether globalization actually exists or is globaloney.
These have now faded, but I will review the arguments.
A précis of areas of agreement and dispute is in table 2.1.
Questions of globalization and culture are taken up in other
chapters. The treatment follows this agenda with vignettes under
each of these headings.

CONSENSUS
GLOBALIZATION IS BEING SHAPED BY TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
A thread that runs through all globalization episodes and discourses
is increasing connectivity. The boom in information and
communications technologies (ICT) forms part of the infrastructure
of globalization in finance, capital mobility and export-oriented
business activity, transnational communication, migration, travel, and
civil society interactions.

Information and microelectronics-based computer and

telecommunications technologies since the early 1980s provide the
technical means for financial globalization, such as twenty-four-hour
electronic trading. They create the conditions for global product
information and thus for the globalization of demand. Global
marketing and the attempt to establish global brand names has
made for an increase in global advertising expenditures from $39
billion in 1950 to $256 billion in 1990, growing three times faster
than trade. By facilitating communications within and between firms,
information technologies further enable the globalization of supply.
For firms, the shortening life cycle of products leads to pressure to
expand market shares to amortize growing research and
development (R&D) costs. This prompts the globalization of
competition and corporate tie-ups, mergers, and acquisitions to
handle the cost and risks of R&D and global marketing.
Together the globalization of finance, demand, supply, and
competition forms a series of interlocking flows of global circulation
of information, which is wired in turn to the flexibilization of
production. At issue are not simply the growth of international trade
and the role of transnational corporations, but a new system of
industrial organization, which is variously termed flexible
specialization, flexible accumulation, lean manufacturing, just-in-time
capitalism, or Toyotism. The shift from standardized mass production
to flexible production systems, from Fordism to post-Fordism (D.
Harvey 1989), involves greater flexibility in the organization of
production, labor and enterprises, location, and marketing. These
changes ramify throughout the international division of labor.
Neoliberal trends since the 1980s result in deregulation of economies
and informalization. Further developments include the new economy,
e-commerce, dot-com, and mobile technologies.
At times this is interpreted in the sense that globalization is
driven by technological change. But technology itself is socially
embedded and shaped; technological determinism is not
appropriate. What matters is not technology per se but the way it is
harnessed by economic, political, and social forces. Technological
changes and their ramifications contribute to the impression that
globalization is “inevitable,” “unstoppable.” A reality underlying this is
that globalization is a macroeconomic phenomenon that is also
driven by micro-economic forces, that is, on the level of firms. The
opportunities that new technologies provide apply not merely to
transnational corporations but also to small and medium-size firms.
Globalization is not merely driven by major corporations,
international institutions, and governments but also by social forces,
including consumers and social movements.
Globalization involves major changes in the economic landscape
that are all intertwined: accelerated globalization comes in a package
together with informatization, flexibilization, and deregulation. This
package effect contributes to the dramatic character of the changes
associated with globalization. In effect, globalization serves as the
shorthand description of these changes. Since “globalization” per se
refers to a spatial process, that is, world-scale effects (precisely of
what is not determined), the term itself is inadequate but serves as
a stand-in for or flag word signaling wider changes.

GLOBALIZATION INVOLVES THE RECONFIGURATION OF STATES

Earlier analyses claimed that globalization leads to the retreat and
erosion of states (Strange 1996). According to a radical view,
globalization means the onset of a borderless world (Ohmae 1992),
the end of the nation state and the formation of region states
(Ohmae 1995). Stephen Kobrin notes, “A critical issue raised by
globalization is the lack of meaning of geographically rooted
jurisdictions when markets are constructed in electronic space”
(1998: 362). Thus, a general account of the political implications of
globalization is the erosion of boundaries and the growth of
crossborder and supraterritorial relations (Scholte 2000). These
arguments now come with more nuanced views about the role of
states.
According to sociological perspectives on globalization, the form
of globalization from the nineteenth century onward was the
growing predominance of nation states (Roland Robertson 1992).
Between 1840 and 1960, nation states were the leading format of
political organization worldwide (Harris 1990). From the 1960s,
regionalization has come into the picture as a significant dynamic;
the European Union is the leading example. Over time, state
authority has been leaking upward—in international and
supranational forms of pooling of sovereignty, a process that is also
referred to as the internationalization of states—and leaking
Another random document with
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adressait la parole, il hochait toujours la tête. On se lassait de cette
réponse identique et l’on n’insistait plus.
Percy Smith était petit, mince, très cuit de visage, imberbe, le nez
pointu, la bouche toujours ouverte. Il portait un petit chapeau
marron, et un vêtement de même couleur. Par les temps très froids,
il sortait un très long pardessus vert.
Percy Smith était un habitué du Théâtre-Français.

On ne sait pas au juste pourquoi il y vint la première fois.

Peut-être avait-il simplement passé devant. Peut-être avait-il
appris par un Anglais que c’était le plus fameux théâtre de Paris.
Un soir, il se présenta au guichet, regarda, sans y rien
comprendre, le prix des places, lut tant bien que mal les mots :
avant-scène de balcon. Il les répéta, en les déformant, à la
préposée, et déposa un billet de cent francs sous le guichet. La
buraliste lui rendit trois pièces d’or, lui donna le coupon de l’avant-
scène B, qu’il exhiba sur sa route à quatre ou cinq contrôleurs et
ouvreuses. Il finit par s’installer tout seul dans une des avant-scènes
de droite, qui font face à celle de M. Fallières.
On jouait ce soir-là Jean Baudry, d’Auguste Vacquerie. Percy
Smith suivit la pièce dans le plus profond recueillement et s’en alla à
minuit, très content de sa soirée. Il avait été un peu étonné tout de
même qu’on ne lui eût pas rendu davantage sur son billet de cent
francs.
Il finit par apprendre et par retenir ces mots : meilleur marché,
qu’il prononçait : méa mâtché.
La seconde fois qu’il se rendit au Théâtre-Français, il s’approcha
du premier bureau, et prononça sa phrase : « Méa mâtché. »
Un sergent de ville obligeant le conduisit au deuxième bureau ;
on lui rendit, cette fois, sur son billet de cent francs, une grande
quantité de monnaie d’or et d’argent.
 Quand il parvint tout au haut du théâtre, il s’aperçut qu’il était très
mal placé. Le premier acte du Marquis de Villemer commençait. Il
attendit le baisser du rideau, s’approcha d’une ouvreuse, à qui il
raconta toutes sortes de choses en anglais ; il en raconta encore
davantage à l’inspecteur à qui on le conduisit… Au contrôle, il fut
intarissable. Enfin il remit un billet de cent francs à un monsieur en
habit, qui lui rapporta un coupon de fauteuil d’orchestre, avec une
quantité de monnaie encore très considérable.
Aux fauteuils d’orchestre, Percy Smith se sentit tout malheureux
et égaré. Il passait devant des gens assis en balbutiant : « Sorry,
sorry… » Puis des gens passèrent devant lui, en lui disant :
« Pardon ! pardon !… » ce qui le remplissait de confusion. Un vieux
monsieur, placé à sa droite, se mit à lui parler. Percy Smith le
regarda avec effarement… Il aurait bien voulu s’en aller. Mais la toile
s’était levée sur le second acte, et Percy Smith, contracté
d’attention, essaya de suivre les obscurs démêlés de Mlle de Saint-
Genex, de Diane de Xaintrailles et du brillant duc d’Aléria.
Au baisser du rideau, il n’osa pas quitter sa place, mais pendant
le troisième acte, son voisin de gauche lui ayant adressé la parole, il
décida qu’à l’entr’acte il se rendrait encore au contrôle et tâcherait
de se faire donner l’avant-scène de droite, celle qui n’est pas tout
près de la scène, et qui n’avait pas, ce soir-là, trouvé d’amateur.
Il remit un billet de cent francs au contrôle. Cette fois-ci, on lui
rendit beaucoup moins de monnaie. Et il eut la satisfaction
d’assister, à sa place favorite, à la fin de la pièce.
Il ne manqua pas de retenir la lettre inscrite sur la porte de
l’avant-scène, apprit comme il fallait prononcer B. Désormais, il
demanda au bureau l’avant-scène B. Quand elle n’était pas libre, il
s’en allait. Et il revenait un autre soir, sans jamais, d’ailleurs,
consulter l’affiche.
Au milieu de la soirée, il lui arrivait toujours d’avoir soif. Il n’osait
pas aller au buffet, et aucun des bars qu’il connaissait n’était assez
près du théâtre. Alors, il se rendait sur le terre-plein, près du bureau
des omnibus, et mêlait à un gobelet d’eau de la wallace une petite
topette de brandy, qu’il avait apportée dans sa poche.
 CHAPITRE XXXIX
AUX PIEDS D’OMPHALE

On l’appelait le colonel, et chose extraordinaire, il était vraiment

colonel.
Je le vis pour la première fois pendant une des représentations
de ma pièce : Une Famille d’albinos. Il était debout à l’entrée du petit
foyer des artistes. Il tenait son chapeau melon à la main. Il avait un
visage bien rouge, sympathique et un peu vulgaire, une belle
moustache grise, et au revers de son veston de gros drap, une large
rosette de la légion d’honneur.
— Bonjour, notre auteur, me dit une petite femme blonde,
extrêmement digne d’intérêt. (Elle était engagée pour apporter des
lettres sur des plateaux, aux appointements de cent cinquante francs
par mois, sur lesquels il lui fallait prélever l’entretien de sa vieille
mère, de deux petits enfants et d’une auto de 45 chevaux.)
— Quel est ce monsieur ?
— Vous ne l’avez jamais vu ? C’est le colonel… l’ami de
Tavillon…
Octavie Tavillon jouait dans ma pièce un gentil petit rôle bien
placé, avec quelques aimables répliques à chaque acte.
— Elle est en scène pour le moment ?
 — Oui, et le colonel attend qu’elle soit sortie ; il remontera avec
elle dans sa loge, et il redescendra tout à l’heure pour son entrée du
deux. D’habitude, il se tient derrière le décor ; il regarde Tavillon par
une petite rainure, entre deux châssis. Aujourd’hui il n’ose pas,
parce que le patron est là. L’autre jour, figurez-vous qu’il était en
train de regarder comme ça sur la scène, quand le patron est arrivé.
Le colonel a eu l’air encore plus rouge qu’à son ordinaire. Il a dit tout
de suite bonjour au patron, et lui a fait toutes sortes de compliments,
en lui disant ceci et cela : « Ah ! Monsieur ! que vous avez un beau
théâtre !… Et que la pièce fait d’effet ce soir !… » Vous ne pouvez
pas vous imaginer ce qu’il est poli avec l’un et avec l’autre ! Et
complimenteur ! Il félicite tout le monde, le régisseur, les
machinistes, les accessoiristes. Il n’y a qu’avec les artistes, les
dames du moins, qu’il se montre un peu froid. Je sais pourquoi.
C’est que Tavillon l’a à l’œil, et pas qu’un peu ! Ainsi je m’en suis
bien aperçue l’autre jour… Il me rencontre dans l’escalier et me
demande comment ça va, me sert un petit compliment. Mais Tavillon
est arrivée sur le palier de l’escalier ; mon colonel m’a quittée tout de
suite sans me dire au revoir ni bonsoir… Allez donc ce soir dans la
loge de Tavillon. Elle va vous présenter tous les deux. Vous verrez
comme il est avec elle…
Je déteste avoir, ou avouer, ces petites curiosités. Et si j’entrai à
l’entr’acte suivant dans la loge d’Octavie Tavillon, ce fut simplement
parce que je passais devant. Le colonel était assis en face d’elle. Il
tenait dans chaque main un chichi qu’Octavie faisait bouffer. Il se
leva pour la cérémonie de la présentation. Il voulut à toute force me
donner sa chaise, les autres sièges étant encombrés de diverses
robes. Puis il me fit des compliments sur ma pièce… J’appris
d’ailleurs plus tard qu’il ne l’avait jamais vue. Octavie ne tolérait pas
qu’il allât dans la salle. Mais il connaissait par cœur les scènes de
son amie, qu’il lui avait fait répéter d’abord, et qu’il suivait chaque
soir de l’extérieur du décor.
La conversation languissait un peu entre nous. Heureusement on
vint annoncer que le trois allait commencer. Octavie et le colonel
descendirent ensemble. Quelques instants plus tard, je le retrouvai,
lui, à l’entrée du foyer, bousculé par les accessoiristes et les
machinistes.
Octavie sortait de scène pour y revenir l’instant d’après. Elle eut
le temps d’aller jusqu’au colonel et de lui donner un ordre bref. Le
colonel partit rapidement.
Et comme dix minutes après je descendais moi-même l’escalier
pour sortir du théâtre, je rencontrai l’officier supérieur qui remontait,
tenant d’une main un petit pot de lait et de l’autre main un verre et
une cuiller… Il parut un peu embarrassé en me voyant…
— Oui, me dit-il, le directeur ne veut plus voir circuler de garçon
de café dans les couloirs des loges. Mais comme cette jeune femme
a soif et qu’elle ne peut pas attendre la sortie du théâtre… Alors,
n’est-ce pas ? Il faut bien lui chercher de temps en temps un grog ou
une orangeade…
A quelque temps de là, je déjeunai avec un de mes bons
camarades, un capitaine d’infanterie, en garnison dans une ville de
l’Est. C’est un garçon fort intelligent, et j’ai dans son jugement une
très grande confiance.
Je regardai sur son col de tunique le numéro de son régiment.
N’était-ce pas le régiment du colonel en question ? Hé ! oui ; c’était
bien cela…
— Ton colonel, lui dis-je, c’est bien, monsieur…
Il me le nomma.
— Tu le connais ? me demanda-t-il.
— Oui, un peu… vaguement… Et toi, qu’est-ce que tu penses de
lui ?
— C’est un homme tout à fait remarquable, d’une grande
science, d’une grande intelligence qui a une tenue parfaite,
d’excellentes idées sur la discipline, qui conduit admirablement son
régiment… Ah ! il n’y a pas à dire, c’est quelqu’un… C’est un
homme !
Et satisfait de cette phrase, qui, pour moi, du moins, n’était certes
pas dénuée de quelque autre sens, il répéta à plusieurs reprises :
— C’est un homme… C’est un homme…
 CHAPITRE XL
LE SERVANT DU DRAME EN VERS

Le garçon ouvrit une porte à tambour, et je me trouvai en

présence du directeur de la Scène-Moderne, le nouveau théâtre de
deux mille places que l’on venait d’édifier. En apercevant à son
bureau celui que les communiqués appelaient M. de Nathaniel, je
poussai un cri de surprise. Car j’avais devant moi un de mes
camarades de jeunesse, Paul Pierre, le courtier en vins. Nous nous
étions connus dans la ville de province où j’habitais. Paul Pierre, qui
n’était pas du pays, mais qui y venait très souvent pour ses affaires,
s’était fait admettre au Club Athlétique, dont je faisais partie. Ce Club
Athlétique, très prospère, comprenait en plus d’une douzaine de
canotiers et de gymnastes, trois ou quatre cents fonctionnaires et
négociants de la ville, que réunissait une commune horreur des
exercices violents.
C’est là que nous procédions chaque jour à deux parties de
whist, celle du pousse-café, de une heure à trois heures, et celle de
l’apéritif de cinq heures et demie à sept heures. Chaque équipe de
whist comprenait un négociant et deux fonctionnaires, ou bien un
fonctionnaire et deux négociants. De cette façon, les fonctionnaires,
qui devaient se rendre à leur bureau à deux heures, sacrifiaient une
heure de travail aux négociants, qui, en retour expédiaient leurs
affaires à la fin de la journée, pour ne pas manquer la deuxième
partie. Toutes ces concessions s’accompagnaient de petits remords
agréables.
Paul Pierre était un garçon de large carrure et de belle faconde,
que j’aimais assez, parce qu’il avait pour moi une certaine
déférence, due à ce fait que je préparais à ce moment un examen à
la Faculté. Car cet homme d’attaque, qui aurait tapé sur le ventre du
pape, et regardé l’Empereur allemand dans le blanc des yeux, avait
le plus humble respect des titres universitaires.
… Je le retrouvais très semblable à l’ancien lui-même,
simplement poudré de gris, par les quinze ou vingt années qui
s’étaient écoulées. Il était peut-être un peu moins sonore qu’au
temps jadis. Mais il paraissait, par contre, encore plus « assis », plus
sûr de lui.
— Vous ne vous attendiez guère à me voir dans ce cabinet, et
sous le nom de M. de Nathaniel ? Baron de Nathaniel, s’il vous plaît !
C’est le titre d’un de mes oncles d’Autriche, qui me l’a légué avec sa
fortune. Une fortune pas colossale, et assez difficile à réaliser, mais
quelque chose de gentil tout de même… Enfin, je vous raconterai ça
un autre jour. Ce que je veux vous dire aujourd’hui, c’est que je
compte bien sur une pièce de vous pour la Scène-Moderne… Oui,
une comédie très facile à monter pour le début de la prochaine
saison…
— Je croyais que votre théâtre était consacré corps et âme au
drame lyrique, à grande mise en scène ?
— Oui, mon cher, et nous en montons un de votre confrère
Enguerrand Durand. C’est un très beau drame. Vous savez que j’ai
toujours été un passionné de poésie. Et ma première idée, quand un
groupe d’amis est venu me proposer la Scène-Moderne, mon idée
immédiate a été de monter un drame en vers. Ah ! mon vieux ! je ne
savais pas dans quoi je m’embarquais ! Certes la pièce
d’Enguerrand Durand est une très belle œuvre, pour laquelle j’ai eu,
un moment, une grande admiration. Je commence à m’y habituer
maintenant, parce qu’à force de travailler après ça, de lire et de relire
le manuscrit, je vois tout de même à peu près comment c’est fait…
 … Mon ami ! je savais que ça coûtait quelque chose pour monter
une pièce convenablement, et j’étais prêt à tous les sacrifices. Mais
je suis tombé sur le poète le plus cher de l’époque ! Vous n’avez
aucune idée du prix auquel ressortent, l’un dans l’autre, cent vers de
M. Enguerrand Durand…
… D’abord, c’est un gaillard qui tient à rimer richement. Et, quand
il lui faut une rime riche, il va la chercher n’importe où. Dans la scène
de réception du duc de Florence, comme il lui fallait une rime à
« rite », il a fait venir un « archimandrite », que l’on salue à la fin d’un
vers. Je ne sais pas ce que cet archimandrite vient faire là. Il passe
dans le fond du théâtre, et on ne le revoit plus… le temps de montrer
son costume, un costume de quatre cent vingt francs.
… Au deuxième acte, la scène se passe chez un bourgeois
vénitien parvenu. Mon cher, vous me croirez si vous voulez, mais le
parvenu, avec sa manie d’éblouir, le parvenu est horriblement cher
pour les directeurs. A la rigueur, un prince, un archiduc peut se loger
simplement, avec une noble simplicité. Tandis que, dans notre pièce,
le parvenu « vit dans un faste étincelant ». C’est ce que l’auteur a
écrit froidement dans ses indications de scène. Il le fait manger dans
de la vaisselle plate. Ça, je m’en fiche, parce qu’au théâtre la
vaisselle plate n’a pas besoin d’être en or poinçonné ; mais, comme
il lui fallait une rime à « vaisselle plate », il s’est appuyé un tapis de
velours écarlate. Et pour ça, il n’y a pas moyen de tricher. A Paris,
quand on parle de velours, il faut que ça soit du velours. J’ajoute que
ce tapis a quelque chose comme dimensions, car Enguerrand ayant
besoin d’une rime à « bénitiers », m’a collé une table où l’on sert des
« bœufs entiers ».
… C’est un bonhomme que j’admire, c’est entendu. Mais je
trouve qu’il se laisse entraîner un peu loin par la rime. Et si ce n’était
encore que par la rime !
… Au premier acte, il est question d’un prince qui s’amène avec
ses valets. Je n’ai rien à dire à ça. Un prince qui entrerait tout seul,
ce serait un peu miteux. Mais, on lui aurait donné quatre valets,
mettons six valets, c’était déjà assez confortable. Savez-vous
combien Enguerrand lui en a collé ? Quatorze, pas un de moins ! Et
tout ça parce qu’il fait dire à un personnage :

Voici le prince, avec ses quatorze valets

et le vers n’aurait plus marché s’il y en avait eu moins. Il ne s’en est

pas caché… Il me fallait, m’a-t-il dit, le chiffre de quatorze ; c’est le
plus petit chiffre de trois syllabes que j’ai pu trouver. J’aurais pu
mettre : vingt-quatre, qui faisait mieux… mais j’ai voulu aller à
l’économie.
Quatorze valets à deux francs pièce par soirée, ce n’est pas ça
qui me chiffonne. Ça remplit la scène. Mais c’est quatorze costumes
en drap bleu ciel qu’il a décrits avec soin, et il ne nous fait pas grâce
d’un galon.
… Enfin, mon vieux, qu’est-ce que vous voulez ? Je suis un
passionné du lyrisme, c’est entendu. Je suis le servant des poètes.
Mais qu’ils y mettent un peu du leur. Qu’ils se donnent un peu de
coton pour serrer leurs vers, et ne pas me coller des chevilles, qui,
au bas mot, l’une dans l’autre, me reviennent à quinze ou vingt
louis. »
 CHAPITRE XLI
DU DRAME EN VERS…

J’ai lu, me dit Gédéon, ton article de l’autre jour sur le drame en
vers. Et ce directeur qui se plaignait de payer si cher les réalisations
de rimes riches, je ne l’ai pas trouvé si ridicule…
… Moi qui suis un vieux vaudevilliste, j’aime un beau poème au
delà de toute expression. Je trouve qu’il n’y a rien au monde de plus
admirable qu’une belle idée, exprimée d’une façon nouvelle et sur un
rythme imprévu… Oui, l’accouplement, le mariage parfait d’une idée
et d’un verbe, au son d’une musique spéciale…
… Hélas ! dans combien de poèmes trouve-t-on ces conditions
réunies ! Il y a des poètes qui expriment leurs idées avec de jolies
images. Mais la musique qu’ils nous font entendre n’est pas
précisément nouvelle. Ce sont des réminiscences inconscientes
d’autres poètes. D’ailleurs le public goûte avec plus de plaisir ces
sensations retrouvées. Et les écrivains qui recherchent avant tout le
succès immédiat n’ont qu’à se laisser aller à leur penchant : de
même que les auteurs de revues écrivent leurs couplets sur des airs
connus, ces lyriques adroits font de la poésie sur timbres. Leurs
couplets ressemblent aux feux d’artifice de fêtes nationales. On voit
une fusée lumineuse qui monte, qui monte… on guette
impatiemment l’instant où elle éclatera… Elle éclate en un vers
sonore, comme en une gerbe épanouie. Applaudissements.
Enthousiasme. Les spectateurs soulagent leurs nerfs tendus. La fin
du couplet est une glorieuse délivrance.
… Il est bien difficile, pour un poète digne de ce nom, pour un
créateur, de faire accepter tout de suite par le public un rythme
nouveau. Quand on pense que Verlaine, un des sept ou huit poètes
de notre littérature, n’a été compris que fort tard par des lyriques
exercés. On l’a traité de poeta minor. Attends un peu. Je ne vends
pas de pronostics. Mais, pour aujourd’hui, je tiens celui-ci à ta
disposition : Verlaine fera partie de l’équipe première, à côté du père
Hugo, de Lamartine, de Vigny, de La Fontaine, de Malherbe et de
Ronsard. Relis les Chansons pour elle, et Sagesse, et Les Fêtes
galantes, et tout…
… Et ce n’est pas un poète à côté, un poète en marge. Il est
dans les traditions… Seulement, on ne s’en est pas aperçu tout de
suite. La tradition, nous la voyons bien dans le passé, mais nous ne
l’apercevons pas dans le présent. Où faut-il se mettre pour être dans
la tradition ? Ça ne consiste pas à imiter les autres, mais comme on
l’a dit, à les continuer. Pour les continuer, il faut sans doute ne pas
s’occuper d’eux et faire de son mieux. Il y a, à toutes les époques,
un certain nombre d’écrivains qui font de leur mieux. Chacun d’eux
« installe » ses chefs-d’œuvre. Mais on ne sait à quel moment
passera le jury.
… Aussi, au lieu d’attendre ces jurys futurs, si incertains et si
insaisissables, des poètes de talent préfèrent-ils travailler pour les
juges actuels. Ceux-là, ils savent comment les prendre.
… On a parlé assez dédaigneusement de nos trucs, à nous
autres vaudevillistes. Certains poètes sont aussi ficelles que nous.
Le piège lyrique prend délicieusement les âmes, par des moyens
mécaniques assez vulgaires, avec des répétitions de mots, avec des
changements de mètres. Quand on est un peu fatigué des
alexandrins, un petit poème en petits vers est le bienvenu, quoi qu’il
vienne raconter.
… Et puis un langage harmonieux satisfait tellement le public, si
désireux d’être charmé, et qui a tant besoin de ne pas écouter !
Qu’un beau gentilhomme soit en présence d’une jolie dame, et qu’ils
se disent des vers… L’auteur habile n’a à se soucier que de la
longueur de la scène. Il faut en envoyer une certaine mesure, ni trop,
ni trop peu.
… Le metteur en scène intelligent, lui non plus, ne doit pas se
préoccuper du sens des paroles, mais du temps qu’elles durent. J’ai
vu, il y a une dizaine d’années, un drame en vers, à l’Odéon, où
« les passades » étaient réglées comme les « passades »
d’arroseurs. Quand, dans une tirade, le protagoniste avait répandu
sur la gauche du parterre une trentaine d’alexandrins, il venait
arroser la droite de la salle d’une quantité de poésie à peu près
égale.
… Comment voulez-vous régler d’autre façon les monologues de
grands politiques ? Que dis-tu des monologues de grands politiques
dans les drames en vers ? Moi, c’est ce qui me stupéfie le plus.
… Quand je pense que l’ordre des idées de ces hommes d’état
considérables est régi par des assonances, je suis plein
d’étonnement ! Car il est si difficile déjà de penser juste… Or, non
seulement les Richelieu et les William Pitt lyriques nous émerveillent
par la belle ordonnance logique de leurs pensées, mais ils trouvent
moyen en même temps de faire entendre toutes les douze syllabes
des sons qui se répondent… Quand le mot : étoile, se présente dans
leur développement, il faut de toute nécessité qu’ils parlent ensuite
de toile ou de voile. Il me semble voir le ministre des finances à la
tribune nous sortir un discours substantiel sur les impôts, tout en
jonglant avec des billes de billard et des poignards japonais.
… Lorsque c’est le vieux Corneille ou un Jean Racine qui s’en
mêle, on ne pense pas à ça. On se trouve en présence d’un miracle ;
il n’y a qu’à admirer… C’est parce que des miracles de cette sorte se
produisent de temps en temps dans le drame lyrique que nous
mettons avec justice ce genre littéraire bien au-dessus de tous les
autres. Mais c’est pour cette même raison que je suis un sale public
pour beaucoup de drames en vers. Je suis venu là pour assister à
un miracle. Il me faut mon miracle ou je ne marche pas… Pas de
miracle tout le temps, bien entendu. Mais, au cours de la soirée, un
coup d’émotion bien sérieux, et pas du chiqué. Il y a certains
ouvrages qu’on n’a pas encore assez louangés : je te citerai Kaatje,
que l’on a joué, il y a quelques mois au théâtre des Arts, et
l’Embarquement pour Cythère, de ce pauvre Veyrin.
… Quand un poète sait être humain et vrai, sa vérité est plus
belle que toutes les autres…
… Voilà pourquoi, termina Gédéon, on peut toujours « m’avoir » à
un drame en vers. Et voilà pourquoi, ajouta-t-il encore, on m’y a bien
rarement… »
 CHAPITRE XLII
UN AMI VÉRITABLE

Vous étiez à la répétition des couturiers de Léopold ?

— Oui, j’y étais hier soir. Léopold est mon ami le meilleur. Depuis
qu’il fait du théâtre, je n’ai jamais manqué d’assister à ses dernières
répétitions. Et il vient toujours à mes « couturiers ».
— Et sa pièce est bien ?
— Mon vieux, j’ai un principe. Chaque fois que je suis invité à
une répétition privée, je me considère comme lié par une discrétion
absolue. Et je dis toujours que c’est bien.
— Bon ! Alors je suis fixé !
— … Mais pas du tout. Vous n’avez pas à être fixé. Cette fois-ci,
je vous réponds que c’est bien, parce que c’est vraiment bien.
— Ah ! Ah ! Gros succès alors ?
— … On ne peut pas répondre de ces choses-là. Moi, je crois
que ça ira bien… Certainement… ça ira bien. Cependant il faut
toujours compter avec l’aléa du théâtre.
— Je vous entends. Mais, en somme pour Léopold, l’aventure
sera bonne ? Cette pièce lui fera honneur ?
 — Mais oui !
— Vous la préférez à sa dernière de l’Odéon ?
— Je ne dis pas ça. Sa dernière de l’Odéon était peut-être sa
meilleure pièce, vous savez ?
— Elle n’a pas marché.
— Elle n’a pas marché ; mais je trouve qu’elle était pleine de
qualités sérieuses. Elle était en tout cas bien supérieure à sa pièce
du Vaudeville, qui s’est jouée cent fois.
— Comment ? cent fois ? Cent quatre-vingts fois au moins.
— Voyez-vous !
— Mais enfin, pour revenir à sa pièce d’hier, ce n’est pas une
pièce qui indique un déclin ?
— Comment l’entendez-vous ?
— Vous ne la jugez pas inférieure à ce qu’il a fait de vraiment
bon ?
— Employons d’autres termes. On ne peut jamais dire en parlant
de Léopold : Il a fait quelque chose de vraiment bon. Il faut porter sur
lui un autre jugement… peut-être plus flatteur. C’est un homme
inégal. Il vous fait entrevoir de très belles choses… On le suit…
Puis, il vous déçoit tout à coup, si bien qu’on reste à se demander :
Est-ce qu’il a vraiment vu lui-même les belles choses que j’ai
aperçues ?… Dans sa pièce d’hier… — je vous dis ça entre nous,
mon vieux, et il est bien entendu que ça ne sortira pas de nous deux
— dans sa pièce d’hier il y a quelques petits « lapins » de ce genre.
Notez que cette critique-là ne vise que la valeur d’art de la pièce.
Vous la ferez sans doute comme, moi, je l’ai faite. Mais ce sont des
choses qui échappent au public, et il se peut que ça marche très
bien.
— En somme, vous n’êtes pas sûr que ça marche ?
— Rien n’est sûr, je vous le répète…
— Mais encore ?
 — Écoutez, puisque j’ai commencé à vous dire un petit peu de
mon impression, je veux vous la dévoiler entière. Mais, n’est-ce
pas ? ça ne doit pas sortir d’entre nous ?
— Vous pensez !…
— Hé bien ! j’ai été déçu, très déçu… Pour tout dire, ça n’est pas
du bon Léopold. Je dis : du bon Léopold, parce qu’il y a des
personnes qui ont adopté cette expression. Elles prétendent que tout
ce qu’il écrit est très « signé… » Ce n’est pas mon avis… Je trouve
au contraire que Léopold a d’autres qualités, mais qu’il ne faut pas
dire de lui avant tout qu’il est personnel et original. Par exemple, le
bougre ! il a tout le talent que peut avoir un homme sans
personnalité. Il a fait un petit acte… je ne sais pas si vous le
connaissez… un petit acte qui a été joué dans un cercle… C’est
certainement ce qu’il a écrit de meilleur. C’est dosé, c’est équilibré.
C’est d’une économie parfaite… Ah ! si la pièce d’hier était du
tonneau de cet acte ! Mais précisément, je n’y retrouve pas ces
qualités d’éclat, de brillant, qui ont ébloui certaines gens, et leur ont
fait croire à de la personnalité chez Léopold. Il semble qu’il y ait dans
cette dernière pièce comme un parti pris de dialogue terne. Il avait
sans doute ses raisons pour cela… Je ne crois pas que ce soit par
impuissance… Il est possible qu’il ait voulu donner plus de valeur à
ses coups de théâtre… Je comprends cela, mais à condition que les
coups de théâtre en question produisent leur plein effet… Et ce n’est
peut-être pas ce qui se passera…
— Alors ce serait… la fâcheuse aventure ?
— Elle est toujours à craindre. Mais ce qui me rassure un peu,
c’est le crédit énorme que Léopold a chez le public, et chez le public
de la générale. Je ne sais pas… mais il exerce sur eux une sorte de
fascination… C’est pour ça que sa nouvelle pièce peut marcher.
Bien que, cette fois-ci, il leur en demande un peu trop… Ah ! si c’était
la pièce d’un autre, ce ne serait pas le même tabac… Je serais à
peu près sûr du four.
— C’est vraiment si mauvais que cela ?
 — … Vous allez tout de suite aux extrêmes. Ce n’est pas
mauvais. C’est terne. Moi, ça ne m’ennuie pas ; mais il y a des gens
qui trouveront la chose un peu sévère… Quant aux scènes à effet de
la pièce, il se peut qu’elles portent… C’est la bouteille à l’encre. Je
n’ai pu en juger, moi, dans une salle aux trois quarts vide, où
quelques amis applaudissaient bruyamment…
— En somme, le résultat est très incertain ?
— C’est incertain. Et je me priverais bien d’y aller demain soir !
Mais c’est un devoir d’amitié. La pièce a besoin, fichtre ! d’être
soutenue ! Et Léopold compte sur moi… Il court un grand péril. Si ça
ne marche pas, ce sera très grave pour lui… A demain ! Et surtout,
n’est-ce pas ? je n’ai pas besoin de vous demander le silence sur ce
que je vous ai dit… C’est sacré…
— Soyez tranquille. D’ailleurs, j’étais un peu au courant. Vous
avez rencontré Christophe ce matin, et il m’a dit sous le sceau du
secret ce que vous lui aviez raconté…
— … Il vous a dit ?… Oui, je lui avais donné mon impression…
Mais Christophe est un homme sûr, aussi sûr que vous. A demain !

II

— Hé bien ! Vous êtes content ? Votre ami Léopold a eu un

triomphe ?
— Croyez-vous ! C’est extraordinaire ! Je n’ai jamais vu une salle
aussi affolée ! Ah ! je suis bien content !… C’est-à-dire que j’en suis
bien content pour le moment. Mais j’y ai réfléchi depuis hier. Et je me
demande si ça n’est pas un peu dangereux pour Léopold. Il aurait
tout de même eu besoin, je ne dis pas d’un insuccès, mais d’une
petite résistance, qui lui aurait fait dresser l’oreille. Au lieu de ça, on
lui passe tout ! Ah ! l’état d’âme de ce public ! Je suis content que ce
soit un ami qui en profite… Mais c’est une chose bien funeste aux
auteurs, et bien néfaste pour les progrès de notre théâtre ! Je vous
avoue que, pour ma part, je me sens un peu découragé. A quoi bon
faire un effort d’art ! La question n’est pas là : ils vous encaisseront
ou ne vous encaisseront pas… Allons, ne pensons plus à cela !
Disons-nous que c’est le printemps, et que la pluie va cesser. Et il
fera bon au Bois cet après-midi. Peut-être même irai-je passer
quelques jours à la campagne. Je me sens claqué… J’ai besoin de
repos, d’air pur… Et surtout je veux fuir Paris… Au revoir !
— Au revoir !