The essay tries to demonstrate that the idea — common to postdevelopmentalists and communitarianists — that local cultural communities as such are an efficacious counterweight against the destructive tendencies of capitalist globalization and mass culture, and have, therefore, to be protected as such, is misleading, since it is based on an essentialist and harmonistic concept of culture as well as on a sort of culture-theoretical monism. The former cannot be justified since all cultures are contradictory, hybrid and historical entities, the latter is inadequate since it forgets about the harsh realities of material socio-economic inequality — globally and locally.
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