Originally appeared July 25, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.
NO ONE DOUBTS that "globalization" is having marked effects worldwide on how people think about themselves and how they live their lives, not least on how they think about and conduct the sexual aspects of their lives.
Australian sociologist Dennis Altman's new book "Global Sex" (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001) is a useful attempt to show how extensive the influence of globalization is and to separate out its strands and trace the ways each influences people's sexual lives, gays and lesbians as well as heterosexuals.
To begin with, when they say "globalization," people generally mean the decreasing importance of national borders and their growing porousness to technological innovation, to new concepts and ideas, to investment capital and the movement of people themselves.
Perhaps the most obvious aspect of globalization is the increasingly rapid communication of information and ideas by new technologies of personal and mass communication.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out recently that "globalization is largely driven by technology-from the Internet to satellites to cell phones to PC's." And Altman quotes one writer describing globalization as "the chronic intensification of patterns of interconnectedness." A fine phrase.
Even strongly authoritarian regimes from Iran and Afghanistan to China are not able totally to prohibit satellite dishes, prevent private computer ownership, block Internet access or censor all domestic websites.
A second aspect of globalization following immediately upon this is the rapid spread of the language and concepts of human rights, personal liberty and autonomy, and the right to individual self-expression.
To some extent these are promoted by a number of international organizations but even more they are transmitted by American popular culture from Oprah, to Hollywood films to MTV, all emphasizing the importance of the personal, of psychological self-awareness and the value of emotional fulfillment.
In many traditional cultures these are shocking new ideas but they provide encouragement and a justification for resistance as people become aware of how much they have been repressed by governments, religious authorities, or pervasive social pressures.
One important consequence of all this is the spread of the concept of gay and lesbian identities and the legitimacy of that self-understanding in contrast either to native denials that gays and lesbians can exist, or else their repression into various intersexual or cross-gender categories.
A third aspect of globalization is the expansion of free trade and the market economy, permitting industrialization and economic development, what Altman calls "an enormous expansion of the reach of capitalism."
The new industry in developing countries, again facilitated by new technology, creates new jobs that enable many people to rise above subsistence level for the first time and fosters the creation of a middle class with disposable income and an expanded range of lifestyle choices.
New jobs also enable young people in many cultures to move away from home and develop their own lives, exploring their sexuality free of family and community pressures to marry and conform to social expectations. How important this is for gays and lesbians hardly needs emphasizing.
Altman says that in Indonesia, "I was struck by the large number of teenagers flocking to discos, teenagers who had moved away from their villages and families because of the opportunity for work in new factories."
A fourth aspect is the enormous increase in the movement of people. These include travelers and tourists and the influx of Western business managers, all of whom who exemplify new modes of self-presentation and suggest new ways of self-understanding.
But it also includes the migration of guest workers and refugees many of whom remain in contact with their home countries and who transmit or take back home what they see and learn in more industrialized and secularized countries.
As Altman says, "Never underestimate the impact of the 747 on rapid population movements." And he quotes economist Lester Thurow who comments, "The global economy has become physically embodied in our ports, airports, and telecommunications systems...."
Ironically, AIDS, itself spread by global travel, is also prompting a more open discussion of sex including gay sex. Many governments feel forced to raise, often for the first time, issues connected with sex as they try to educate their people about risks from the disease.
For instance, according to one HIV prevention program in El Salvador, "The project built self-esteem within the ... gay community, 'changing their self-destructive image into a constructive one.' For the first time a positive self-identified gay community was established in El Salvador."
This is not Altman's best book. The material seems incompletely digested and there are far too many quotations of vaporous post-modern theorizing strung together in place of cogent analysis. The organization is often unclear and the prose, unusual for Altman, sometimes seems to go slack.
Nevertheless, the schematic above omits a number of interesting points and cautionary comments and it is possible to learn a good deal from the book. Taken with its natural advantage of brevity (170 pages of text) it deserves a wide if critical readership.