Most people who examine the effects of globalization recognize that it is having both cultural and economic impacts everywhere its forces are manifested (Appiah 379). In fact, as Franklin Foer (124) has suggested, even within the world of sports one finds that globalization confers both advantages and disadvantages, shrinking and then expanding the world as disparate cultures come into contact with one another. Yet another voice speaking to the question of culture is heard in an article by Robert Lieber and Ruth Weisberg (273) who argue that until very recently, "analyses of globalization have emphasized economics and politics rather than culture." While no one denies the significance of economic globalization impacts, it may well be that the cultural effects of this process ultimately exert a far greater impact on the world.
Lieber and Weisberg (274) seek to probe "the intersection of culture and politics" by looking at both folk and high culture as well as popular culture. It is their belief, contrary to Samuel Huntigton, that "the ultimate clash is less between civilizations than within them" (Lieber and Weisberg 274). This is a position with which Appiah (379-380) would undoubtedly agree, particularly in light of his own recognition that within the culture of his home country of Ghana, many different cultural values and norms separate people who otherwise have much in common.
Whether one considers this to be a conflict between high, low, popular, and folk culture, the reality is that Lieber and Weisberg (275) are correct that culture is a pivotal arena of conflict "because it has become so bound up with the most fundamental questions of human identity in its many dimensions: personal, ethnic, religious, social, and national." In this general context, Foer (20-22) notes that the game of soccer, understood as a metaphor for globalization, is an international game and one that evokes a wide range and variety of res...