Cultural Bias and Globalization: Marco Polo to Appiah

Cultural Lenses and the Framing of the World

The medieval travelogues of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta reveal how profoundly the world is filtered through the lens of one's own culture. Polo, the Venetian trader, emphasizes commerce in his descriptions of the places he visits, while Battuta, the Islamic judge, emphasizes morality in his accounts of those same places. This framing is not a fault of either writer; rather, it lends perspective to our own view of the world — we all see it through a culturally conditioned lens.

Like these two ancient travelers, we tend to characterize the world through juxtapositions: what is similar to what we know and what is different from what we know. In doing so, we create an artificial division between our own culture and all others. The differences and similarities define us. There is nothing inherently wrong with this tendency, but it is important that we always recognize we are subject to this framing and that we can step back from it to view our own positions — and those of others — with greater objectivity.

Appiah, Collectivism, and the Limits of Division

Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses the issue of globalization and its impact on society. As a species, all humans share the world and its finite set of resources, creating what amounts to a zero-sum game. The process of globalization has made the limits of our planet clear while simultaneously granting access to its resources to people across the globe. This immediately frames globalization as a contest of winners and losers.

Appiah's optimism about humanity's capacity to work together despite cultural differences stems from a collectivist perspective — one that recognizes survival as a mutual concern for all people, regardless of cultural framing. We may still conceive of the world as divided among "our" culture and "the others," but Appiah argues that such divisions can be set aside when necessity demands it. Polo would agree: where there was money to be made, he was far less concerned with the religion or morality of his trading partners. He retained a moral framework as a Catholic, but his worldview held that when larger objectives were at stake, cultural divisions could be suspended.

Foer, Politics, and the Arbitrary Nature of Division

Franklin Foer makes the point that the divisions we create can be relatively arbitrary yet ultimately serve a purpose. The divide among Americans regarding soccer, he argues, has less to do with sport than with politics. Politics, of course, is fundamentally about resources — and globalization is also about resources: their exploitation and their distribution. Foer's argument finds a clear parallel in the dynamics of globalization: different cultures are judged by their willingness to participate in the global system. States that do not participate — such as North Korea — are labeled rogue, and states that envision a different kind of globalization are treated as threats.

Globalization is to the world economy today what Islam was to Ibn Battuta's travels — a foundational constant that varied in expression across every location. We view nations resistant to globalization as foolish or dangerous, as recalcitrant or even terrorist. Battuta made the same kinds of divisions during his travels: those who were less pious he considered foolish, and those of other faiths he found repugnant, his judgments colored by his particular school of Islam and other societies measured against it.