Calling up culture: Information spaces and information flows as the virtual dynamics of inclusion and exclusion

Both critics and proponents of globalisation tend to assume that it is a uniform process leading to a flattening of the cultural terrain. In contrast, this paper, using examples from Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and Canada, demonstrates a more complex interaction between traditional cultural practices and modern communication forms. The new information technologies enable universal access to authentic local voice. Archiving social and cultural practices has historically been the business of museums, universities, and indeed oral traditions of song and poetry. New information technologies provide for cultural continuities and reflexivities: they enable the routine archiving of social and cultural practice at a minimal cost through hypertext, Web pages and universal access. The “globalisation of culture”, so often discussed, needs to be reframed with reference to this highly overlooked indigenous capability to archive own culture. This paper attempts to provide such a reframing.