Globalization and Adorno's Industrialization of Culture

Abstract

With the arrival of the last quarter of the twentieth century, the rapid and pervasive changes that occurred in almost all aspects of life including but not limited to art, philosophy, architecture, and literature removed the international borders. The world gradually became homogenized. This new epoch emerged under the name of globalization in the contexts such as new world order and postmodernity. With globalization, subjects eating the same food, drinking the same beverages, listening to the same music, and watching the same things also began to think and feel the same way. The liveliness created by different cultures was replaced with the mass culture, mixing everything together and making them homogenized and universalized. What makes all of these possible is the Culture Industry. Believing that the Marxist critical social theory was no longer adequate, Adorno developed a new critical social theory against this new order based on the Frankfurt School of critical theory and predicated upon a critique of mass culture. In his theory, he used the concept of industry. He chosed the term culture industry” instead of “mass culture” and saw as a product systematically produced and disseminated by the industry, instead of something that was born out of the mass itself.