The Network Structure of the Global Cultural System

• In Event: Political Economy of the World-System Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable I: Class, Culture, and Economic Inequality in the Contemporary World System

Abstract

While globalization research focuses on economic determinants, the role of cultural institutions as drivers of global integration and conduits of inequality remains poorly understood. Just as economic and political institutions diffuse across the global economic and political systems, this analysis identifies how cultural institutions diffuse cultural wealth across the world, creating the global cultural system. Through a network analysis of cultural institutions and using a world polity theoretical lens, I evaluate whether cultural institutions behave as a diffusing mechanism of a global script or rather stratifies nations according to levels of cultural capital. Data are drawn from the Cultural Wealth Index (CWI), a longitudinal dataset of 194 countries from 1980 to 2024, to construct country-institution affiliation networks. Binary, weighted, and normalized matrices are created to evaluate network density, centralization, and core-periphery patterns, to ultimately unveil the general structure of the global cultural system.

Author

• Sara Bruene, University of California-Riverside