World Cities again

Thinking again about Mike Featherstone’s comments on the fact that multiculturalism developed first in Southern Hemisphere cities (quoted in a post from September 2006), it strikes me that one of the dynamics of the current global situation is a reversal of colonialism. That’s true in the sense that Featherstone notes – that urban social forms that first existed in South America, Asia, or Africa are becoming characteristic of Western cities. It’s also evident in the reversal of missionary activity – with Africans now eager to evangelize Western Europe and North America. It’s also evident, though less strongly, in the availability of “world music” in the Northern Hemisphere, in the adoption of “primitivist” styles in modernist painting and sculpture, or the popularity of Eastern religions. This is not just a matter of Africans and Asians finding a place in the pluralism of the Northern; more than that, Southern or Eastern cultural, social, and religious forms exercise an influence on the mainstream of American and European culture.