Overview

A new economic system is being born that is as different from market capitalism as the latter is different from the mercantilist system that preceded it. We are in the early stages of a great shift from property exchange in geographic markets to access relationships in electronic networks. This transformation is being accompanied by an equally significant shift from industrial to cultural commerce. The new forces of globalization are being met, in turn, by a powerful counter-reaction in the form of a resurgent "cultural politics," with profound implications for the future of society…

"Third way politics" is too narrowly materialist in its orientation to continue to serve as an ideological foundation for the vast changes that will occur in our way of life in the coming century. Its premise, that a robust global economy is a critical prerequisite for healthy local societies needs to be rethought. Both capitalist and socialist theoreticians have traditionally found common ground in the belief that material conditions are primary and give rise to cultural and social structures, forms and values. Certainly, the advocates of globalization would argue that free and open trade and an expansion of commercial relationships and activities of all kinds is the key to a brighter future for all. The flaw in this premise lies in the misguided assumption that commerce conditions culture when, in fact, the exact opposite is more often the case.

There is not an example in history where people first create commercial relations and then establish a culture. Commerce and government are secondary, not primary institutions. They are derivative of the culture, not the progenitors of it. People everywhere first establish agreed upon codes of behavior, social norms, and a shared sense of purpose - to wit, social capital. Only when cultures are well developed is there enough social trust to support commercial and governmental institutions.

Failure to understand that culture always precedes commerce and determines its prospects and possibilities could seriously undermine the process of globalization. Indeed, if the mass migration to cyberspace, a borderless commercial world, and globalization represent one vision of the future, the resurrection of local geography and cultural identity represents the other. Everywhere people are concerned about loss of their cultural identity in an increasingly borderless global economy. The great political struggle in the coming era will be over how to preserve, enrich and nurture cultural identity and the civil society without falling prey to ultra-nationalism, fundamentalist appeals, and xenophobism.

The issue at hand for center-left political leaders is clear: Not to give up the question of cultural identity to the center right. If it does, its fortunes will wane because cultural identity always runs deeper than commercial or political identity, especially in times of turbulent change. A narrow economic vision of the future will simply be too weak to carry the populace into a global society.

A center-left political strategy needs to recognize the primal nature of cultural identity but avoid ultra-nationalist and fundamentalist reaction by continually championing the civil society politics of cultural diversity, cultural fusion and cultural exchange. Every step toward globalization of the economy has to be met with calls for strengthening civil society and authentic local cultural diversity. If that balance is not rigorously maintained, we run the risk of a virulent cultural fundamentalism speeding uncontrollably as people everywhere attempt to recapture their own identities and some measure of control over their lives in a borderless, commercial world.

Unfortunately, the cultural sector has been colonized and largely marginalized in recent years by the commercial and governmental sectors, despite the fact that it is the primal sector and the wellspring of the other two. Many advocates of globalization believe that local cultures are simply outmoded constructs and impediments to global commerce and trade. They assume that commercial relations are sufficient to bind people together. They fail to understand that human beings do not live by bread alone and that intrinsic values, which are reared in culture, are ultimately always more powerful than utility values, which are pursued in the marketplace. The defining context is this: Without culture, commerce cannot exist.

Civil society politics - the politics of local cultures - will play an ever-expanded role in the 21st century. Already civil society organizations (CSOs) have made their voices heard on the streets of Seattle, Washington and Prague, in international development forums and are becoming a recognized player in discussions of globalization. If, in the past, political parties' fortunes rested with their affiliations either with the market or government, in the future the successful political parties will be those whose power emanates from deep inside the cultural sector or civil society. "Cultural politics" will dominate the 21st century while the politics of market on the right and government on the left will become less relevant and more marginal in every country.

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From Markets to Networks

The Dawn of a New Era

The market economy is indisputably the most venerable institution of the modern age. Nation states have been established to protect its workings and wars have been fought to secure its blessings. Now, this pillar of contemporary social life is beginning to crumble. The new threat to its existence however, is neither external nor ideological, but rather, technological and entrepreneurial. Software, telecommunications, the Internet and B2B commerce are coming together to create a rival new economic system that is as different from market capitalism, as the latter is dissimilar from mercantilism. In the new era, markets give way to networks, property rights become secondary to access rights, and the commodification and exchange of goods becomes less important that the commodification of human time and culture.

The coming together of sellers and buyers to exchange physical property in geographic based markets is simply too slow a venue in an age where time is measured in nanoseconds and commercial life operates on a 24/7 basis. With a simple click, companies like Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music are able to distribute music to people around the world and exchange whole libraries of songs before a cash register can even ring up the sale for a single CD. Moreover, the new information technologies dramatically reduce transaction costs, virtually eliminating the traditional profit margins on sales related activity. Compare the transaction costs of producing, packaging, inventorying, transporting and merchandising a CD in a market with the cost of producing a single music track and distributing it instantaneously to millions of people, at no appreciable additional cost, in an electronic network. When transaction costs approach zero, market based transactions become an anachronism. That's why in a hyperspeed network economy, there are no sellers and buyers, but only access providers and their users. Indeed, the very idea of negotiating an exchange of property in a market every single time someone needs something is going to seem frustratingly slow in coming years, just as traditional barter came to be viewed as too slow and inconvenient at the beginning of the market era.

This doesn't mean property disappears in the coming Age of Access. Quite the contrary. Property continues to exist, but is far less likely to be exchanged in markets. Instead, suppliers hold onto property in the new economy and lease, rent, charge an admission fee, subscription, or membership dues for its short-term use. The exchange of property between sellers and buyers - the most important feature of the modern market system - gives way to short term access between servers and clients operating in a network relationship. Markets remain but play an increasingly diminished role in human affairs.

The new software technologies allow for a perpetual flow of feedback activity, turning the economy from discrete market transactions to continuous non-stop access in networks. One pays to be always connected to a steady stream of "just in time" experiences. Automobile companies, film companies, music companies, and book publishers no longer just sell the physical product - the car, the film, the video, the CD or the book. Rather, they increasingly turn customers into clients and sell access to the "experience" of driving a car, watching a film, listening to music, or reading a book. If companies like Ford had their way, they would likely never want to sell another automobile again. When Ford sells a car in a market, the only relationship it has with the customer is at the time of the exchange of the property. Ford would much rather lease the car in a network and have the client pay for "the time" it uses the vehicle. Then the client is embedded in the Ford network 24/7 for the two years of the leasing agreement. Ford's renewal rate for leased cars in the U.S. is 54% as compared to less than a 25% renewal rate for customers who purchased an automobile from Ford. Today, nearly 1/3 of all the automobiles and trucks in America are owned by the financial arms of the automobile companies and accessed in the form of leases by millions of American drivers.

Even homes, the quintessential form of property in the market era, are becoming an experience one pays for rather than a piece of property one acquires. Companies like Marriott and Disney are increasingly selling "time shares" and millions of people now pay for the time they experience in a vacation home rather than pay for acquiring the home itself.

In the network economy both physical and intellectual property are more likely to be accessed by businesses rather than exchanged. Ownership of physical capital, however, once the heart of the industrial way of life, becomes increasingly marginal to the economic process. It is more likely to be regarded by companies as a mere expense of operation rather than an asset and something to borrow rather than own. Businesses are already well along the way toward the transition from ownership to access. They are selling off their real estate, shrinking their inventories, leasing their equipment and outsourcing their activities in a life and death race to rid themselves of every conceivable kind of physical property. Intellectual capital, on the other hand, is the driving force of the new era and much coveted. Concepts, ideas and images - not things - are the real items of value in the new economy.

In the new economy, every business wants to be like Nike. This company owns no factories and few physical assets. Its shoes are produced by anonymous subcontractors in South East Asia. Nike is a design studio with a powerful brand and marketing distribution network. While Nike still sells shoes in traditional markets, its internal business operations are organized around B-2-B network relationships with global suppliers. The new software and telecommunications technologies allow companies like Nike to create complex business networks around the world. Meanwhile, Nike's real capital is the image it weaves around its shoes. When a child pays one hundred dollars or more for Nike shoes, he is really paying to "experience" the Nike story.

In markets, the emphasis is on maximizing production and profit is made on the number of units sold. In pure networks, by contrast, the emphasis is on minimizing production, and profit is made by pooling risks and sharing savings. In a market, for example, pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly want to sell as many drugs as they can. But now, Eli Lilly is experimenting with a small "gain savings" program. Lilly's new corporate mission is "disease management." The company handles five major disease categories - central nervous disorders, cancer, strokes, heart attacks and diabetes. Its goal is to get patients well and keep them well. How then does Lilly make money? If patients are well, they may require fewer drugs. Lilly enters into a gain savings network with insurance companies and hospitals. If Lilly can keep the costs of medical care down, the insurance companies and other health providers agree to share the savings with Lilly. In the 21st century, there is often more money to be made in networks by minimizing production and gain savings than in maximizing production and making money on the volume of the sales in markets.
The Age of Access is likely to be as tumultuous and challenging as the industrial era. There will be great benefits and equally grave dangers and dislocations. For example, the shift from markets to networks makes environmental stewardship a bottom like consideration for companies, for the first time, because in networks the property always stays in the hands of producers and is accessed by users. Take Carrier, one of the largest producers of air conditioners in the United States. In a market economy, Carrier wants to sell the customer the largest air conditioner it can. If the air conditioner uses more energy than needed, emits CFCs, depletes the ozone and contributes to increased emissions of carbon dioxide and global warming, its money in the bank for the company. But, now companies like Carrier, faced with lower transaction costs and smaller profit margins, are making the transition from markets to networks. Carrier puts its air conditioners in the client's business or residence free and he or she pays a subscription to experience cool air over time. In the new scheme, Carrier wants to use as little energy as it can to assure quality cool air for its clients, because the more energy it uses to deliver the service, the more money it loses. So the company installs storm windows, special lighting and retrofitting in the client's domicile to save energy use.

Networks also have a janus side. Questions of concentration of power become even more serious than in the era of markets. For example, when Monsanto provides a genetically engineered seed to a farmer, there is no sale of the seed itself as there would be in a market. Instead, Monsanto enters into a network licensing agreement with the farmer, allowing him access to the information coded in the DNA of the seed for one growing season. The seed itself is patented and remains the intellectual property of Monsanto. That means the new seeds at harvest cannot be used by the farmer in the next growing season because they belong to Monsanto. If Monsanto had its way, it would likely never sell another seed again in a market. It would much rather transform its former buyers into clients and have them continuously access Monsanto's patented seeds year in and year out in the Monsanto network. What happens to the independence of farmers around the world if they become increasingly dependent on accessing the right to use seeds from global agricultural life science companies?

The shift from a propertied regime based on the idea of broadly distributed ownership to an access regime based on securing short term limited use of assets controlled by networks of suppliers change fundamentally our notions of how economic power is to be exercised in the years ahead. Because our political institutions and laws are likewise steeped in market based property relations, the shift from ownership to access also portends profound changes in the way we govern ourselves in the new century. Perhaps, even more important, in a world where personal ownership of property has long been regarded as an extension of one's very being and the "measure of a man," its waning significance in commerce suggests a formidable change in the way future generations will perceive of the nature of human nature. A world structured around access relationships is likely to produce a very different kind of human being.

Between Two Worlds

The changes taking place in the structuring of economic relationships are part of an even larger transformation occurring in the nature of the capitalist system. We are making a long-term shift from industrial production to cultural production. More and more cutting edge commerce in the future will involve the marketing of a vast array of cultural experiences rather than just the marketing of traditional industrial based goods and services. Global travel and tourism, theme cities and parks, destination entertainment centers, wellness, fashion and cuisine, professional sports and games, gambling, music, film, television, the virtual worlds of cyberspace, and electronically mediated entertainment of every kind are fast becoming the center of a new hyper-capitalism that trades in access to cultural experiences.

The metamorphosis from industrial production to cultural capitalism is being accompanied by an equally profound shift from the work ethic to the play ethic. While the industrial era was characterized by the commodification of work, the Age of Access is, above all else, about the commodification of play - namely, the marketing of cultural resources including rituals, the arts, festivals, sports, games, social movements, spiritual and fraternal activity and civic engagement in the form of paid for personal entertainment. The struggle between the cultural sphere and the commercial sphere to control both access to and the content of play is one of the defining elements of the coming era.

Transnational media companies with communication networks that span the globe are mining local cultural resources in every part of the world and repackaging them in the form of paid for cultural commodities and entertainments. The top one-fifth of the world's population now spends almost as much of their income accessing cultural experiences as on buying manufactured goods and basic services. We are making the transition into what economists call an "experience economy" - a world in which each person's own life becomes, in effect, a commercial market. In business circles, the new operative term is the life time value (LTV) of the customer - the theoretical measure of how much a human being is worth if every moment of his or her life were to be commodified in one form or another in the commercial sphere. In the new era, people purchase their very existence in small commercial segments.

Cultural production is beginning to eclipse physical production in world commerce and trade. The old giants of the industrial age, Exxon, General Motors, USX and Sears, are giving way to the new giants of cultural capitalism, Viacom, Time-Warner, Disney, Sony, Seagram, Microsoft, News Corporation, General Electric, Bertelsmann, A.G. and PolyGram. These transnational media companies are using the new digital revolution in communications to connect the world and, in the process, pulling the cultural sphere inexorably into the commercial sphere where it is being commodified in the form of customized cultural experiences, mass commercial spectacles and personal entertainment.

In the industrial age, when producing goods was the most important form of economic activity, being propertied was critical to physical survival and success. In the new era, where cultural production is increasingly becoming the dominant form of economic activity, securing access to the many cultural resources and experiences that nurture one's psychological existence becomes just as important as holding onto property.

The commodification of human culture is bringing with it a fundamental change in the nature of employment. In the industrial age human labor was engaged in the production of goods and the performance of basic services. In the Age of Access intelligent machines - in the form of software and wetware - increasingly replace human labor in the agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. Farms, factories and many white-collar service industries are quickly becoming automated. More and more physical and mental labor, from menial repetitive tasks to highly conceptual professional work, will be done by thinking machines in the 21st century. The cheapest workers in the world will likely not be as cheap as the technology coming on line to replace them. By the mid decades of the 21st century, the commercial sphere will have the technological wherewithal and organizational capacity to provide goods and basic services for an expanding human population with a fraction of the workforce presently employed. Perhaps as little as 5% of the adult population will be needed to manage and operate the traditional industrial sphere by the year 2050. Near workerless farms, factories and offices will be the norm in every country. New employment opportunities will exist, for the most part, but in paid cultural work in the commercial arena. As more and more of people's personal lives become a paid for experience, millions of others will become employed in the commercial sphere to service cultural needs and desires.

The capitalist journey, which began with the commodification of space and material, is ending with the commodification of human time and duration. The selling of the culture in the form of more and more "paid for" human activity is quickly leading to a world where pecuniary kinds of human relationships are substituting for traditional social relationships. Imagine a world where virtually every activity outside the confines of family relations is a paid for experience - a world where traditional reciprocal obligations and expectations, mediated by feelings of faith, empathy and solidarity are replaced by contractual relations in the form of paid memberships, subscriptions, admission charges, retainers and fees.

Even in a fully mature market economy, remember, commerce is still periodic. Sellers and buyers come together for a brief moment to negotiate a transfer of goods and services and then go their separate ways. The rest of their time is free of market considerations and commerce. Cultural time - non-commodified time - still exists. In a hyper-capitalist economy, however, steeped in access relationships, virtually all of our time is commodified. For example, when a customer buys a car, the real time relationship with the dealer is short lived. If a client secures access to the same vehicle in the form of a lease, his relationship with the supplier is continuous and uninterrupted for the duration of the agreement. Suppliers say they prefer "commodifing relationships" with their customers because it provides them with an ongoing relationship that is renewable and at least, in theory, perpetual. When everyone is embedded in commercial networks of one sort or another and in continuous association by way of paid leases, partnerships, subscriptions and retainer fees, all time is commercial time. Cultural time wanes. When virtually all of life becomes a "paid for" experience, human culture atrophies and dies leaving humanity with only commercial bonds to hold civilization together. This is the crisis of post-modernity.

In the 1980's and 1990's, deregulation of government functions and services was the rage. In less than twenty years, the global marketplace successfully absorbed large parts of what was formerly the government sphere - including mass transportation, utilities and telecommunications - into the commercial realm. Now, the economy has turned its attention to the last remaining independent sphere of human activity, the culture itself. Cultural rituals, community events, social gatherings, the arts, sports and games, social movements and civic engagements are all being encroached upon by the commercial sphere. The great issue at hand, in the coming years, is whether civilization, can survive with a greatly reduced government and cultural sphere and where only the commercial sphere is left as the primary mediator of human life.

The Clash of Culture and Commerce

We are journeying into a period in which more and more human experience is purchased in the form of access to multifaceted networks operating in cyberspace. These electronic networks, within which an increasing number of people spend much of their day to day experience, are controlled by a few powerful transnational media companies who own the pipelines over which people communicate with one another as well as control much of the cultural content that makes up the "paid for" experiences of a post modern world. There is no precedent in history for this kind of overarching control of human communications. Giant media conglomerates and their content providers become the "gatekeepers" who determine the conditions and terms upon which hundreds of millions of human beings secure access to each other in the coming era. This represents a new form of global commercial monopoly - one exercised over the lived experiences of a large percentage of the human population on earth. In a world in which access to human culture itself is increasingly commodified and mediated by global corporations, questions of institutional power and free will become more salient than ever before.

The absorption of the cultural sphere into the commercial sphere signals a fundamental change in human relationships with troubling consequences for the future of civilization. From the beginning of human civilization to now, culture has always preceded markets. People create communities, construct elaborate codes of social conduct, reproduce shared meaning and values, and build social trust in the form of social capital. Only when social trust and social exchange are well developed do communities engage in commerce and trade. The point is, the commercial sphere is always derivative of and dependent on the cultural sphere. That's because the culture is the wellspring from which agreed upon behavioral norms are generated. It is those behavioral norms, in turn, that create a trusting environment within which commerce and trade can take place. When the commercial sphere begins to devour the cultural sphere it threatens to destroy the very social foundations that give rise to commercial relations.

Western European and American businesses learned this lesson the hard way, in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Empire. Companies rushed into central and eastern Europe to set up shop, anxious to establish trade in the former communist territory. Many of the businesses failed because there was not enough social trust - sometimes referred to as social capital - in place to guarantee trade. The communists had eliminated much of the third sector, the many cultural institutions that create social trust and allow markets to function. The result is that business agreements were difficult and even impossible to arrange and commercial contracts, when they were entered into, were often unenforceable.

Restoring a proper balance between the cultural realm and the commercial realm is likely to be one of the most important challenges of the coming Age of Access. "Cultural resources" risk over exploitation and depletion at the hands of commerce just as natural resources did during the industrial age. Finding a sustainable way to preserve and enhance the rich cultural diversity that is the life-blood of civilization in a global network economy increasingly based on paid access to commodified cultural experiences is one of the primary political tasks of the new century.
Every country focuses much of its public policy on the first sector - the market - and on the second sector - the government - and often take the third sector - the culture - for granted, not realizing the critical role it plays in establishing social trust and making markets and trade possible. The cultural institutions of a society - its churches, secular institutions, civic associations, fraternal organizations, sports clubs, art groups, and non-governmental organizations - are the wellspring of social trust. Because they exist, they make markets possible. In communities and countries that have a strong well-developed third sector, capitalist markets thrive. Where the third sector is weak, capitalist markets are generally more precarious and less successful. Although some neo-liberals and neo-conservatives and most libertarians continue to believe that healthy economies create vibrant communities, in fact, the reverse is more often the case. A strong community is a prerequisite for creating a healthy economy because it alone produces social trust.

Lest there be any doubt on this score, consider what might be the consequences if you were to wake up one day in Austria only to find that the entire culture had disappeared overnight - all of the formal and informal associations and institutions that people engage in that are neither commercial or governmental in nature including church activity, fraternal and civic associations, the arts, amateur sports and game clubs, social justice and environmental activities, neighborhood associations, et al. It is unlikely Austria would survive even a fortnight with only commercial and governmental arrangements in place. But imagine just the opposite. You wake up one day to find that Austria's economy and government had totally collapsed. If the culture was still viable, the Austrian people could rebuild the economy and reestablish government. Culture is indeed the essential sector and the foundation stone for both commerce and government.
The United States boasts more than 1.14 million non-profit third sector organizations with annual revenues of $621 billion. Nearly 7% of the American workforce is now employed in the third sector. In addition, 93 million Americans volunteered some 203 billion hours of their time to the third sector in 1997. The time volunteered is estimated to be worth the equivalent of $201 billion.

While the third sector is well developed in the United States, it is also a formidable force in other countries around the world. In a 22-nation survey conducted in 1998 by the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the third sector was found to be a $1.1 trillion industry that employed more than 19 million full-time equivalent paid workers. Nonprofit expenditures in these 22 countries averages 4.6% of the gross domestic product and accounts for 10% of all service employment. If the third sector in these 22 nations were a separate national economy, it would be the eighth largest country in the world.

Third sector organizations are serving millions of human beings in neighborhoods and communities around the world. They are the institutions most responsible for preserving and enhancing all of the various dimensions of local cultures. The reach and scope of their activities often eclipse that of both the government and commercial sectors. Third sector organizations carry on many of the most basic functions necessary for the maintenance of democratic societies. They are the lightning rods for challenging institutional abuses of power and for articulating social grievances. They provide a helping hand to newly arrived immigrants and to the nation's poor. Nonprofit organizations preserve the history and cultural traditions of a people by operating museums and libraries. They are the institutions where people first learn how to practice civic values and exercise democratic skills. Third sector religious and therapeutic organizations provide a refuge where people can explore the spiritual dimensions of their lives, independent of the pull of the market and government. Equally important, the third sector is where people relax and play, seek companionship, make friendships and experience the joys of life and nature. In short, the third sector is where people create and practice the shared values they choose to live by as a people. It is the playing field where the culture, in all of its richness, is maintained.

Interestingly, international lending institutions like the World Bank are just beginning to understand the relationship between culture and commerce. For decades, these institutions have funded expensive economic development projects in emerging countries in the belief that by creating a strong economy, they could help foster social development. After years of only mixed success and many failed attempts, they have begun to shift their priorities to funding social development projects first, understanding that strong communities - a robust culture - are a prerequisite for economic development, not a beneficiary of it.

If the capitalist system continues to absorb large parts of the cultural realm into its sphere in the form of commodified cultural products, productions and experiences, the risk is very real that the culture will atrophy to the point where it can no longer produce enough social capital and thus support an economy. The delicate balance between culture and commerce will have been shattered because social capital, which is produced exclusively by the culture, but serves as the lubricant for commercial operations, will have dried up.

The 1998 World Culture Report of UNESCO categorizes the increasing tension between culture and commerce in stark terms. The UN agency argues:

The cultural values which identify and link local, regional or national communities seem in danger of being overwhelmed by the relentless forces of the global marketplace. In these circumstances, questions are raised as to how societies can manage the impacts of globalization such that local or national cultures, and the creativity that sustains them, are not damaged but rather are preserved or enhanced.

The growing animosity between global commerce and local culture has been particularly acute, of late, around questions of food and cuisine. Transnational franchises like McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Dunkin Donuts are quickly expanding their retail outlets in Europe, Asia and Latin America. In Europe, only 16% of food distribution is franchised, compared to more than 50% in the United States. Realizing that they are reaching saturation in the North American Market, U.S. franchisers are looking eagerly to other parts of the world for new opportunities to place their outlets. In Italy, for example, there are approximately 180,000 small independently owned coffee bars, many of whom are in precarious financial straights and vulnerable to a major challenge by Starbucks and other U.S. coffee franchises.

American tourists were surprised in the summer of 1999 to see Dunkin Donuts just a few yards away from the famed Trevi Fountain in Rome. Dunkin Donuts, like other transnational franchises, is mounting a major push into the European market with plans to open up 110 more stores in Italy and Germany in the next few years.

In Europe, especially, where cuisine and culture are tightly linked, the introduction of global fast food franchises and more recently American grown genetically modified foods are meeting with stiff resistance. A McDonalds' outlet in southwestern France was recently ransacked and Monsanto's genetically engineered food crops were torn up and destroyed in the English countryside in 1999. French political analyst Alain Duhamel says that "behind all this lies a rejection of cultural and culinary dispossession."

Food and cuisine is currently the most visible arena where the growing war between culture and commerce is being fought out. European and other nationals from around the world fear what they call the "Hollywoodization" of food and cuisine, the attempt to impose an homogenized global standard on the type of food crops grown in the fields, the kind of foods processed for the supermarkets and the nature of the cuisine prepared in the restaurants. "Culinary sovereignty is imperative" warns Patrice Vidieu, the secretary general of the Peasant Confederation of France. Vidieu says that an increasing number of Europeans "reject the idea that the power of the marketplace becomes the dominant force in all societies, and …multinationals like McDonalds and Monsanto come to impose the foods we eat and the seeds we plant."

Bringing culture and commerce back into a balanced ecology, then, is likely to be one of the most important political tasks of the coming age. Assuring a proper balance requires that equal attention be placed on revitalizing local cultures as on securing access to cultural commodities in the marketplace.

Politicizing the Third Sector

Today, the cultural sector exists in a kind of neo-colonial limbo between the market and government sectors, despite the fact that it is the wellspring of the other two spheres. It has been stripped of much of its separate identity and made dependent on the other two sectors for its survival. Cultural institutions have lost much of their former independence and self-sufficiency and become beholden to political and commercial institutions for their very sustenance. Their dependency takes many forms including the extension of government contracts and grants in return for the performance of service and commercial philanthropy, often extended with the expectation of receiving some kind of marketing or promotional benefit in return.

Contemporary politics generally divides along a polar spectrum with the economy on one end and government on the other. The culture or third sector, if considered at all, is usually an afterthought. With rare exemptions it is relegated to the sidelines where it plays, at best, a marginal role in the heady decisions that affect the life of the community. That's about to change. To begin with, government, at every level, is pairing down its historic role. Many of its functions have been de-regulated and turned over to the market place. Other functions have been cut - although some would argue they've been reconfigured and streamlined. Either way, governments are playing less of a role in managing the day-to-day affairs of local communities. At the same time, businesses are becoming less local and more global in their activities and operations. Many are migrating from geography to cyberspace and, in the process, loosening or even severing their traditional ties to geography. Like government, they are becoming less involved in local affairs. The steady disengagement of government and commerce from communities around the world is leaving an ever-widening institutional vacuum. That vacuum is being filled in some cases by a rejuvenated third sector and, in other instances, by an emboldened fourth sector made up of the informal economy, the black market and criminal culture. The real race, in every geographic region of the world, in the coming years, will be between the institutions of the third sector and the fourth sector for control over local geography, in the wake of its partial abandonment by government and business.

For the third sector to prevail, it will have to politicize itself by bringing its various institutions, activities, and interests together in a shared sense of common mission. For that to happen there will have to be recognition of the importance of geography in establishing a common ground.
If the workings of global networks, cyberspace commerce and cultural production represents one side of the new politics of power in the coming century, then the re-establishment of deep social exchange, the recreation of social trust and social capital and the restoration of strong geographic communities represents the other side. The contrarian rallying cry, in an era increasingly given over to short lived facile connections, virtual realities, and commodified experiences, is geography counts! Culture matters!

Only by making local culture a coherent self-aware political force will it be possible to re-establish its critical role in the scheme of human society. Tens of thousands of strong geographic based human communities, knit together internally by embedded social relationships and connected with each other externally by a shared sense of the importance of sustaining cultural diversity, represent a powerful social vision as well as an antidote to the politics of global commercial networks operating in cyberspace.

While conventional politics has long been perceived as a polar spectrum running from market on the right to government on the left, we need to understand that in reality politics has always been more of a three legged stool with the culture - the civil society - as the center leg, anchoring both the commercial and governmental legs. The civil society - the cultural institutions and affiliations - need to be revitalized, politicized, re-empowered, strengthened and made an equal partner, once again, with commerce and government. A world increasingly characterized by global cultural commerce and fewer borders requires the re-emergence of powerful civil societies at the local level if people are to maintain some sense of identity and not be swallowed up by the forces of change.

Preserving biodiversity and cultural diversity are the two great social movements of the 21st Century. The two forces are intimately linked. All cultures share common roots in nature. Cultures arise out of an intimate connection to the earth. Music, song, dance, storytelling, the arts, rituals and festivals are deeply tied to the rhythms and realities of the natural world. Plants, animals, landscapes, the circadian reference, and the changing seasons have all served as inspiration and metaphor for the shaping of cultural forms and expressions. Cultures are born out of an abiding respect for and devotion to the wellsprings of life that make up the natural world. Our many contemporary cultural expressions all trace their lineage back to our first cultural connections to the earth itself. Cultural practices and institutions are all life affirming forces. They speak to our indebted relationship to nature and wed us to the larger life forces of which we are apart. The reaffirmation of life is at the heart of what intrinsic value is all about. Culture, then, exists in sharp contrast to the commercial sphere where all phenomena are reduced to utility and expropriation and expediency become the accepted behavioral norms.
The biodiversity and cultural diversity movements are beginning to work side by side on a wide range of issues including opposition to the introduction of genetically engineered foods crops, challenges to provisions of regional and world trade agreements that threaten both the environment and cultural identity, and support for indigenous cultures efforts to create sustainable farming practices in order to preserve local ecosystems. The fact that the biodiversity and cultural diversity movements are just beginning to come together into a single powerful political union is a recognition that our ancient social roots are anchored in the natural world. The extent to which these two defining movements are able to find common cause will help shape much of the political activism in the new century.

Interestingly, politicized local cultures are, at one and the same time, both a countervailing force to a global network based economy as well as a necessary pre-condition for its continued existence. Weaken or eliminate cultural diversity and capitalist markets will eventually tumble because, as already mentioned, social trust and social capital will dry up and no longer be available as a foundation for building and maintaining commerce and trade. If that were to happen, what's left of the capitalist system would find its way to the fourth sector, as is occurring now in Russia, where it would exist largely as an informal or black market economy in an outlaw culture. The pre-requisite, then, for securing access to a global cyberspace economy is re-securing access to and rebuilding diversified local cultures.

A word of caution, however, is in order. Restoring culture can just as easily lead to a new and virulent form of fundamentalism as to a revival of cultural diversity. All around the world today political and religious fundamentalist movements are on the rise. Ultra nationalist political parties, separatist groups, ethnic cleansing movements and religious revivals represent an extreme counter-reaction to the forces of globalization and post- modernization. Fundamentalist movements are an attempt to close off communication with a world thought to be sick and sinful. They seek to purge local culture of contaminating influences from the outside world. At the core of all of these fundamentalist movements is a siege mentality characterized by a frenzied effort to defend the truth faith - be it ideological, theological or ethnic - against traitors, infidels and other poisonous influences.

Fundamentalist movements are always deeply tied to geography. Indeed, defense of territory is the common thread that runs through virtually every fundamentalist credo. Defending ancestral ground, the Holy Land or the motherland unites people in a life and death struggle against satanic forces. Behind every one of these movements is the idea of restoring order in a chaotic world by re-establishing borders. They represent the ultimate reaction to a boundaryless world made up of global networks and communication flows. They seek constancy in a world of continuous change and attempt to keep the world at bay by resacralizing territory. In an increasingly temporal world, they remain fiercely loyal to place. They are exclusionary in nature and view any form of access as a corrupting influence.

The sensibilities of fundamentalist movements puts them at odds with most civil society organizations (CSOs) who also favor restoration of local culture but are sensitive to and respectful of the rights of other cultures to exist in a culturally diverse world. The adage "think globally, act locally," while a bit of a cliché after so many years of overuse, still reflects the thinking of third sector organizations all over the world. Like the fundamentalists, CSOs have deep roots in geography and are wedded to local culture but they also believe that all of the diverse cultures together make up a shared ecology of human existence. Maintaining ones own unique cultural identity, while championing a culturally diverse world, becomes the defining characteristic of the burgeoning CSO movement.

Many observers are worried that a resurgent interest in local cultures must inevitably lead to xenophobia and ultra-nationalist sentiment. That doesn't have to be so. If people everywhere come to think of their own cultural resources and the cultural resources of others as gifts to exchange with one another, the great migrations of the 21st century might help re-pollinate human society and prepare the world for a true period of globalization.
Enriching cultural diversity, in all of its positive forms, is more essential now than ever before in history if we are to advance the interests of global commerce and trade. What, therefore, might be the appropriate rules of thumb for reestablishing cultural diversity as the legitimate center of human life, whether it be in Austria, the United States, or any other country?
First, cultures are alive. They need continuous nurturement by way of infusions of ideas from the outside if they are to flourish. That is why immigration is such a vital and necessary force. Immigration provides the raw resources for the growth of cultural diversity. Without the steady flow of new blood, cultures eventually shrivel and atrophy.

Second, culture is not something one possesses. It's not an acquisition to hold onto. Rather, culture is where people play, where we experience joy and discover our humanity by reveling in deep participation with our fellow human beings. It is the highest form of human interaction and something to be "celebrated" rather than defended and "shared" rather than imposed.
Mahatma Gandhi perhaps best expressed the sentiment of many of today's CSOs when he said, "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any." Assuring open access to each other's culture, while preserving the unique features and qualities of ones own culture, is what separates the CSO movement from the various fundamentalist movements. Whichever force succeeds in mobilizing and politicizing local culture around the world will determine much of the politics and geo-politics of the coming age.
The ability of center-left political parties, in turn, to both identify with and promote the interests of the civil society and cultural diversity will be critical in ensuring their relevance and viability in the coming century.

(1) Jeremy Rifkin is the author of Access: Das Verschwinden des Eigentums: Campus Verlag, (The Age of Access: Tarcher/Putnam), and a fellow at the Wharton School in the United States. He is also president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.