McClenney 1

Sam McClenney

Mr. Arnold

Global Connections

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Cultural Globalization in Fuller

In “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” Alexandra Fuller tells a

tale of change in Africa that occurs over her lifetime. This change

occurs through the form of cultural globalization. However what does

that really mean? Manfred Steger said, “Cultural globalization refers to

the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe.

Obviously, ‘culture’ is a very broad concept; it is frequently used to

describe the whole of human experience”( 71).

Culture covers so many aspects of humanity that it’s hard to

narrow it down to just a few things. However a couple of good

examples of cultural globalization occur early on in the book as African

schools become integrated. There are also examples of White-Africans

trying to slow down globalization to no avail. Through all of these

situations Bobo often has to face tough adjustments. Rosalia Baena

says it best when she said, “Reading autobiographies by British

subjects who spent their childhood in Africa, Egypt, or India, I will

explore the ways these writers expand, modify, reconstruct and

validate a new manner of viewing what it means to be ‘‘English’’. As

British children growing up in colonies, these writers become

 McClenney 2

interpreters of their own ambiguous and ambivalent situation,

identifying simultaneously as both British and native, foreign and

native, colonizers and colonized, ‘‘betrayers and betrayed’’, as Michael

Foss puts it”

(435). Baena say’s that children like Bobo will have a unique

experience because they learn to identify with two different kinds of

people. However as seen by the internal conflict that Bobo sometimes

goes too, this identification process isn’t always easy.

One example of this conflict in the book is during Bobo’s early

years when she is in school. At that time schools were divided up into

A, B, and C level schools. White students attended A schools, black

students attended C schools and biracial and other races attended B

schools. However this all changes when the war is over. After the war

ends, the schools become integrated and Bobo is faced with a tough

situation as she says, “The blacks laugh at me when they see me

stripped naked after swimming or tennis, when my shoulders and arms

are angry sunburnt red”(9). While on the surface this is only a minor

inconvenience to Bobo, deeper down it is a statement about the

direction Africa is heading in. Africa show’s globalization by integrating

their schools and leaving the idea of race based schools. However this

is a change that brings about a tough adjustment for white students

like Bobo. They are no longer in classes with only white students and

are now forced into unknown waters where they are outnumbered
 McClenney 3

greatly by black students. The name-calling specifically makes Bobo

realize just how different she truly is and has her questioning her

identity as a White-African.

Bobo is eventually sent off to boarding school where she

experiences globalization in a similar way. “Chancellor Junior School is

an “A” school, for white children only. This means we have over one

hundred arose of grounds: a ruby filed, a cricket pitch, hockey fields,

tennis courts, a swimming pool, an athletics track, a roller-skating rink.

After independence, the skating rink is turned into a basketball court

and half the athletics track is turned into a soccer pitch. Basketball and

soccer are things white children do not do”(139). Here the reader see’s

that independence alone caused a big change at this school. Like the

school she attended as a kid, this school loses it’s ability to be white

only and adapts by changing the athletics fields so that black kids can

play “their” sports on them. This alone show’s cultural globalization as

independence is causing change among the boarding schools of Africa.

This change is in a direction towards being accessible to all races,

something that Bobo continually has a hard time accepting.

Attempts to slow down globalization are seen as well in the

reaction of many White-Africans to the sound of revolution in Rhodesia.

It becomes common to have walls and fences protecting your homes.

Guard dogs are also a necessity for these types of family’s during this

time. The most extreme change though is the effect that the
 McClenney 4

revolutions have on weapons. Bobo talks about how her mother carries

around an Uzi and her dad goes on patrols with other men like him.

This type of change in society is a direct response to cultural

globalization as these farming families attempt to stop globalization

through force. What’s interesting is how this affects Bobo. She says,

“Vanessa and I, like all kids over the age of five in our valley, have to

learn how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in

the house and ultimately, shoot-to-kill. If we are attacked and Mum and

Dad are injured or killed, Vanessa and will have to know how to defend

ourselves”(74). This matter of fact way of saying things is a true

testament to globalizations affect on society. Kid’s think that it is

normal to be learning how to load and fire guns, because society has

begun to deem it that way during this time.

As a continent like Africa progresses through time, a noticeable

trend that appears is that it can’t help but change towards a more

globally accepting type of place. That is seen through the examples of

the schools becoming more integrated. Another trend with

globalization is that certain people will not want this change to occur

as seen by the White-African farmer’s aggressive response to

revolution. From these two conflicting trends comes this question by

Amy Skonieczny, “The driving question of such research is why the

language of inevitability persists when there are so many examples of

contestation and contingency (made apparent by purposeful agency)

 McClenney 5

in response to globalization, the very question posed at the outset of

this article”(14). While people will put in the effort to stop globalization,

it is two much of a natural force to be hindered by anything.

Globalization is and will continue to happen at a solid rate.

The cultural globalization that takes place during this book is

inevitable because it such a natural process. Bobo’s reaction to these

changes says a lot about how huge they are to African society. From

the identity crisis she get’s from integrated schools, to the odd

normalcy she has with holding and fixing guns, one has to agree that

while globalization might be obvious, it doesn’t make it any more of a

radical change away from society’s norms.

Works Cited

B., Manfred. Globalization: a very short introduction. Oxford University

Press, USA,

2003. Print.

Fuller, Alexandra. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African

 McClenney 6

Childhood. Random

House Inc, 2003. Print.

Baena, Rosalia. "“Not Home but Here”: Rewriting Englishness in

Colonial Childhood

Memoirs." English Studies 90.4 (2009): 435-459. Academic

Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 May 2011.

Skonieczny, Amy. "Interrupting Inevitability: Globalization and

Resistance."

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 35.1 (2010): 1-27. Academic

Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 May 2011.