The funny thing about globalization is that while pressure from without, "global culture" if you will, exerts pressure on local customs, those local tidbits have an easier time making themselves known around the world. So it is with two stories in the New York Times this week about local culture mixing and changing into something not traditional and by no means mainstream. Take the story about gender-swapping (not the personal liberation kind, the familial duty kind) Albanian women, for whom sexual equality and modernity have rendered an old practice obsolete:

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority -- including the obligation to avenge her father's death.

Or take the story about the Roots Festival, an indie-rock tribute (no pun intended) held every year in Shillong, India. The place has begun to "own" its distinct type of rock culture. The music that comes out of Shillong is not derivative of Western rock, nor is it Indian folk with a twist. The musicians there have created something new.

Some argue that the area's indigenous Khasi traditions are deeply rooted in song and rhyme. Some credit the 19th-century Christian missionaries who came from Britain and the United States, introduced the English language, hymns and gospel music and in turn made the heart ripe for rock. Some say the northeast, remote and in many pockets, gripped by anti-Indian separatist movements, has not been as saturated by Hindi film music as the rest of India. Others speak of that ephemeral quality of rock 'n' roll, able to seep into young, restless bones anywhere.

Both of these stories interest me because they don't present a binary either/or, accept/reject choice to cultures that become more modern. Creative minds are difficult to pin down. Something for those in the development field to ponder.