Globalization, Electronic Empire, and the Virtual Geography of Korea’s Information and Telecommunications Infrastructure

The present study focuses on the electronic infrastructural condition for current global capitalism. This study briefly surveys the genealogy of globalization theories, focusing especially on Marxist interpretations of capital accumulation on a global scale. The study situates the historical- geographical condition of South Korea’s informatization in relation to the new world system which Hardt and Negri have described as ‘empire’, the replacement for classical imperialism. Based on this concept of ‘empire’, the article explores how Korea has been rapidly and successfully incorporated into the imperial network by mobilizing its citizens toward high-speed telecom mobility and connectivity across the country. It concludes, however, that behind Korea’s public image as a global IT leader, the other, darker side of Korea’s informatization is composed of the complex and intricate traits of the local, exhibited under extreme state interventionism and uneven geographies of central- ity and marginality

Transformations of taste: Americanisation, generational change and Australian cultural consumption

Researchers within the field of cultural imperialism as well as the more recently developed globalisation paradigm have tended to dwell upon the economic or corporate dimensions of global cultural flows and have been largely indifferent to the domain of the everyday cultural tastes and forms of cultural consumption that exist in particular national contexts. This article seeks to redress this focus through an examination of one particular instance of cultural imperialism, the widely held belief in ?he Americanisation of Australian society. Using data from a major research project inquiring into Australian everyday culture the article focuses on the changes in cultural tastes and preferences that are evident in three generational cohorts: contemporary young adults, a segment of the 'baby-boom' generation now in middle age, and a group of older Australians born in the years following World War I and the 1920s. The article documents a trend in which overseas influences, particularly those originating from America, appear to be increasingly shaping Australians' tastes in a wide range of cultural domains. Nevertheless, despite these changes in cultural taste Australians of ail ages retain a strong sense of a distinctive national identity. Such findings have implications for an understanding of cultural globalisation as a process of hybridisation and intermixing