From Local Village to Global Village, A media perspective*

By: Sultan Ahmed

Old societies of remote regions that have existed without change for centuries like the Gilgit- Baltistan and which have suddenly been exposed to shocking views of life through the electronic media and the computer are struggling to come to terms with the transformation to their values and mores of living.

Sociologists have noted three different kinds of responses that this exposure is encountering: the creative response of the young educated people who would find their way to swim with the tide; the traditionalist response of rejection based on the fear the new world would swallow up their values and traditions and the response of those who have accepted change as life’s principle and believe change would revitalize their stagnating cultures.

Take my case. I was born in a small village in Gilgit Baltistan of Pakistan, where we had few contacts with the outer world. My parents, like other villagers, were associated with farming and livestock. The whole population was illiterate, except our teachers in the small village school. TV, VCR, telephones and computers were unknown. Few people had radio sets. People gathered to listen to news broadcasts at community places. It was in 1989 when I moved to Karachi for further studies that I saw a computer for the first time. I was 14 years old.

When after ten years, I went back to my birth place I found things had changed dramatically. I saw satellite dishes all around, and realized that the people in my village were no longer limited; rather they had become part of the larger village that Marshal McLuhan calls “the global village”. Today, in my village, people are able to see what is happening around the world. This is an amazing revolution that has brought new dimensions to the lives and thought patterns of people. For instance, in a stage show by local school children in 2006, the students showed comparison of two groups of women discussing matters of mutual interest. The older group (of 1980s and before) was shown discussing village issues like agriculture and livestock and petty village politics. The second group of women (influenced by media) was shown discussing Indian dramas, movies as well as political issues ranging from Pakistan to the whole world and, of course, cricket.

The emerging situation is proving difficult for locals of my village to understand. People find themselves exposed to the dilemmas, hopes, despair and struggles of a much larger world than they have known. Some people believe this development to be very positive, while others would argue that it is eradicating our cultural value systems. Annabelle Sreberny (Media and Cultural Studies, Key Works p. 621) has developed a tool to examine this kind of issue from different angles.

The first category, according to Sreberny is a “happy post-modernist” approach, which involves integrating cultural texts into lives in creative ways. In the context of Northern Pakistan, an example would be the educated youth who see an opportunity in the media for the purpose of development and prosperity as I did in getting admission to a Canadian University on-line.

The second category Sreberny discusses is the “melancholy political economist” who is suspicious of the onslaught of western or modern culture industries. This is a major group that believes foreign media is capable of eliminating cultural and religious values. The people in this school of thought are mostly illiterate about internet and its use. They have heard some stories and instances of how internet has been misused in certain contexts. They have never been oriented to the wealth of knowledge that can be accessed through internet. They are also worried about the various channels and cable. This group is of the view that media stand for nothing but vulgarity.

The third category, according to Sreberny, is the “cautiously optimistic Fourth-Worldler”, who sees the possibility of revitalization of local identities through media. This category also stands true in many cases where the differences of language and ethnicity come into play. In case of the Northern Pakistan, some people live extremely remote and media like radio gave them a sense of connection. One of the languages spoken in the region is actually spoken on the highlands of three other neighbouring countries. These people had no way of conversation and were confined within their own national boundaries; they had a feeling of suppression and sense of exclusion. Luckily, a radio programme was initiated in the same language and people on all the four borders managed to connect as one community through this medium.

To conclude, in the case of a small, remote village, which was largely deprived of communication in the past, mass media has offered inclusion in the international community. On the other hand, there is always a danger that people in such remote areas may become unaware of their indigenous culture and become overwhelmed by the media power, as, according to McLuhan, “media is so powerful that it can impose its assumptions on the unwary”. So, those villagers, like many other marginalized communities, have neither the choice to shun the electronic media, nor the well developed discernment to be wary of what emerges from that. In such a situation, the civil society, academia and youth have responsibility to understand the nuances of electronic media; so that besides development, the indigenous cultural heritage and values are able to survive in this journey from local to global village.

Originally published in the online journal “the Karakoram Knowledge Highway” in 2008