In what way has the globalisation of advertising affected national and local cultures and identities‪?‬

It has been argued that individual and national identities are becoming increasingly fragmented under conditions of globalisation, that with accelerated global flows of commodities, culture and people, we become increasingly disembedded and rootless. It is argued here that amid this increasing fragmentation, or perhaps in reaction to it, certain narratives work to anchor national identities and local culture in what is perceived to be tradition. This paper examines the relationship between globalisation and the construction of national and local identities in the advertisements of several Western and non-Western countries, like Canada and Germany and Malaysia, Thailand and Ladakh in the western Himalayas. In this paper advertising is being seen as a part of the culture industries, which play an important role in the creation of community. In many scholarly accounts it has been asserted that globalisation and the spread of multinational corporations and their products and services are leading to a homogenisation of cultural diversity and to an increasing uniformity of tastes, fashions and thoughts around the world. The globalisation of advertising, which we are going to look at in the following pages, however, produces different outcomes for national and local cultures and identities in many cases.