Cultural Advantage as a Resistance from Hyperglobalization

Abstract

Despite the economics jargon on ‘rational choice’,  nowadays the entire world has nothing else to choose  except to succumb under the spell of magic words of  modern economics, i.e. ‘neoliberalism’, ‘financial  liberalization’, ‘free market’ (laissez-faire), and  ‘globalization’. All of these can be shown to be part of a  preconception, called “utility maximization” (cf. Milton  Friedmann), i.e. far beyond the ‘neutral’ idea of natural  sciences. In Fritjof Capra’s book ‘Turning Point’ (Bantam  Books, 1982) these phenomena are summarized as  follows: economics thinking have started by assuming  that in economics sciences one can achieve the same  generality and universality that physicists enjoy in doing  Natural Sciences. In other words, economists try through their work to become ‘hard science’ rather than  recognizing that in economics the subject of their study  is human/people which is far from being predictable,  either as individual or as society. As an alternative path  way and in accordance with Edward Said’s “Culture and  Imperialism”, it has become more obvious that culture is  a vehicle of imperialism all over the world through  globalization. In this paper, this writer argues that the  term of Cultural Advantage which I and Prof. Florentin  Smarandache coined back then 2008, can be a  postcolonial resistance, i.e. a method which can be used  by developing and under-developing countries (especially  in Asia) to resist the globalization of culture brought by  the First World Countries. In this paper, this writer will  discuss why Postcolonialism study matters.