We examine the contention that global cultural fragmentation persists because it is anchored in increasingly autonomous cultural fields, which produces both challenges to the state and maintains parallel global cultural zones. Instead of a diverse world slowly culturally homogenizing under the onslaught of economic globalization, the emerging autonomous cultural fields creates both intense nationalist struggles over alternative modes of cultural authority, and sustains distinctive worldviews, which are shaped by the cultural heritages of past practices. Economic development appears to push these global zones in a common modernity direction, but rather than converging, they move on parallel path dependent trajectories. This parallelism is maintained by the differing structures of capital, which are embedded in each zone.