C-lobalization
presented at STP&A 2022
"C-lobalization for the cultural governance
in the age of Post-corona & Culture as Algorithm
by De-de-centralization, Arms' length principle, and How-the-many approach"
<Full text file>
presented at STP&A 2022 (17th December 2022)
by Dr. Hae-Bo Kim
Adjunct Professor at Department of Urban Sociology, University of Seoul
Advising Director of Policy & Strategy Division, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
sea@sfac.or.kr
[Abstract]
Cultural policy needs an epistemological shift to go along with the new normals brought by the digital algorithmic civilization as well as by the corona pandemic. Based on the observations of recent cultural changes, this essay proposes “C-lobalization” instead of globalization or g-localization as a new perspective necessary for cultural policy in the age of Post-corona and Culture as Algorithm.
This is a part of the effort to find out the cause of the problems that have been dead-locked in Korea's local culture promotion policy with the goal of cultural governance and de-centralization. And, this is also related to the reflection on failed leadership. The enthusiastic but unsuccessful leadership in a company and the central government's “good culture” delivery service have a similar mechanism in which they are not welcome by people. Those are both the consequences of a global-oriented approach even though they always say that local is important.
Firstly this article examines the failing situation of Korea's cultural policy aimed at the promotion of local culture and the new normal phenomena caused by Corona and AI civilization, in a parallel way. In Korea, decentralization-oriented local culture promotion policies have been implemented for about 20 years since 2000. And as of the year 2022, as the key actors of those policies, 137 Regional Culture Foundations are operating under the so-called “arm’s length principle.” However, the decentralization-oriented cultural policy “led by the central government” resulted in such problematic situations in which local actors have lost their subjectivity while implementing the cultural service delivery system. The local cultural ecosystem has been incorporated into the very centralized governmental administration system in all directions, which is an institutionalization by “coercive isomorphism”. In addition, in the non-cultural competition race where local cities run for the “global culture city” title given by the central government or international organizations. The “cultural diversity” and “diversity of cultural policies” of cities are undermined under the philosophy of cultural de-centralization. While the <Arm’s length principle> and <Cultural De-centralization> have been adhered to like golden rules in cultural policy, they have not been implemented ever. I even argue those concepts could be even inappropriate now in this era of new normals.
The era of new normals of Post-Corona and algorithmic civilization require us to be equipped with a new cognitive frame. According to relevant statistics, during the corona pandemic, social distancing restricted people's mobility to stay at home. But they were even more active not only in online commerce but also in social connection. On the other hand, the importance of local, where people can feel safe for limited offline activities has become more precious and highlighted. The algorithmic civilization not only connects our real lives with the virtual world at a tremendous speed during the corona pandemic but also replicates reality into the virtual world. Now it is changing culture itself into the algorithm. I called it “Culture as Algorithm.” More and more cultural lives are taking place in the digital virtual world, while non-human cultural subjects are very active in producing culture like human beings. The results of human cultural activities are used as data and judging criteria to train the AI more like a human.
And with this change in digital algorithmic civilization, our sense of local and global have changed. Especially when we had to pause, people got to focus more on “Me”, which is most local. I describe the current situation in which both life and culture have changed due to the Corona pandemic along with AI algorithms, as the “Age of My culture”, where everyone wants to speak out their own stories.
I pay attention to the emergence of something ‘C-lobal’, which is close and global at the same time. It is a characteristic of so-called hot or hip things these days. Something very local enjoys global popularity all of sudden through digital platforms and still maintains its locality. I named the phenomenon itself and the mechanism by which such ‘c-lobal’ things become globally popular “C-lobalization”. C-lobalization is globalization that utilizes and maintains the local cultural context and identity. In other words, C-lobalization is both “Cultural-Globalization” and “Contextual-Globalization”.
The cause of this phenomenon is the global digital platform and the change in human perception by using it. As digital technology makes the physical scale of the real world meaningless, people are less inclined to view the center and the margins in a hierarchical relationship. While traveling in the digital world in search of my cultural tribe, the borders of states don’t matter. In such an age of Culture as Algorithm, culture is utilized as “human data” necessary for AI’s training so as to provide hyper-personalized recommendations, that is, the most local service. The irreplaceable individual humanity, the human locality in other words, makes up key factors creating such global popularity on the digital platform operated by the algorithm. So in this era of "my culture", technology and capital are one step ahead of public policy and are attracting humans with the 'C-lobalization' approach, such as Web3, On-device-edge computing, and Metaverse, etc.
I analyzed the meaning and relationship of global and local not only in terms of epistemology but also in policy implementation. The perception that distinguishes between the global and local goes by the relativity of people’s feelings about the dimension and scale of geographic location. At the same time, that is a difference in the epistemological perspectives of understanding our world. It is the difference between the approaches of looking for the very general principle and that of looking at individual cases. This relationship is also applicable to the relationship between institution and actors, and between central and local governments. As a result of such observation, I concluded that Korea's cultural policy is facing those problems by proceeding in the <globalization> or <g-localization> way, even though it says it emphasizes the importance of the local. The phenomenon that local cultural actors are losing their subjectivity due to the severe “institutionalization” in which the central government's administrative guidelines are applied to all local organizations can also be understood as a result of the global-oriented epistemology. On the other hand, C-lobalization is an attitude that pays more attention to the “individual actor’s case” and the context in which it is presented rather than to the “universal principle”. Therefore, I propose this as a new attitude and epistemology for cultural policy more proper in the post-corona era, where governance-type enforcement based on the subjectivity of local actors is more important.
As the conclusion, I propose “C-lobalization” in cultural policy should be implemented through <De-de-centralization> and <De-institutionalization> beyond de-centralization, <Empathy administration> based on <Arms’ length principle> instead of arm’s length, and <How-the-many approach> understanding the value and contextual cause of numbers. First of all, it is necessary to change the worldview, so that we do not recognize the hierarchy between the center and the local. This is what I call <De-de-centralization> which goes beyond the “de-centralization” that is still assuming the center and trying to get out of it. And <Empathy administration> is based on the <Arms' length principle> that recognizes the other actors’ subjectivity and acknowledges their inner systems. In an age where everything is connected, the independence which has been argued with the “Arm’s length principle” no longer exists. Subjectivity should be an issue to consider, instead. Whether it is on the level of leadership of a company or the level of national policy, to change someone, we must first recognize the subjectivity of actors and develop a sensibility to empathize with their own inner system, which is the most local. To this end, the government should not too much emphasize institutionalization by only pursuing the establishment of an efficient delivery system. But it should put more effort into the <De-institutionalization>, which focuses more on the actors. Empathy administration is a reasonable choice that also helps increase the effectiveness of administration in the long run, through changes by the people’s movement.
And the government administration should go away from the <How-many approach> only collecting and aggregating quantitative outputs. Instead, it should focus more on the <How-the-many approach> to understand the meaning of numbers and the context in which the numbers appear. To see the voluminous world full of diverse values of human cultures we need the imagination and interpretation of human beings, not the calculation of AI. This is what we need to prepare for the cultural policy for humans in the age of “culture as algorithm”.
[Contents]
1. Contents and order of discussion
2. Observations and Diagnosis
2-(1) Reflection on failure by the existing framework
2-(1)-1) 20 years of local culture promotion policy in Korea : Efforts toward cultural de-centralization
2-(1)-2) The golden rules of cultural policy that were never implemented: Arm’s length principle, Cultural governance, Cultural diversity
2-(1)-3) Diagnosis of the cause of failure: Lack of empathy and sensitivity to the subjectivity of local actors
2-(2) Observation over the New Normals
2-(2)-1) Corona New Normal : Empathized “Me” is the most important
2-(2)-2) AI New Normal : “Culture as Algorithm”
2-(2)-3) Diagnosis with the common keyword : the Age of “My Culture”
3. New interpretation
3-(1) The meaning of global and local
3-(2) Proposal of a new keyword: C-lobal
3-(3) C-lobalization : already leveraged by the winners in the marketplace
4. Proposal of C-lobalization as a new epistemology
4-(1) C-lobalization in cultural policy
4-(2) Actions for implementation of C-lobalization
4-(2)-1) “De-de-centralization” going beyond de-centralization and for “De-institutionalization”
4-(2)-2) “Empathy administration” based on “Arms’ length principle” instead of Arm’s length
4-(2)-3) “How-the-Many approach” instead of How-Many approach
