Making up a Balance: Between the Local and the Global in Europe, Asia and Oceania

Abstract

This article presents the most important findings of a research project carried out with fundings from several institutions (Banco Santander, Caja Madrid). It was accomplished in collaboration with universities in Spain, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland and Australia. In order to study the existence of a global youth culture (and a visual culture related), and the survival of the local cultures in the art works of teenagers in different places, about 3000 drawings of children and adolescents of six countries were collected and analyzed. The results showed that there are a variety of combinations and balances between local and global in the cultural contexts that we have investigated. The discovery of the use of the local as a counterbalance of the global is the main contribution of our research: in the drawings we collected appear, together with elements of the global culture, some localisms in the form of direct references to artistic styles and ways of life.