globalization in culture essay

Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化

Journal of Global Cultural Studies

Accueil Numéros 4 Why do Cultures Change? The Chall...

Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization

This essay explores cultural change in the context of the economic globalization currently underway. It aims at analysing the role that theoretical inventiveness and ethical value play in fashioning broader cultural representation and responsibility, and shall explore issues of cultural disunity and conflict, while assessing the influence that leading intellectuals may have in promoting a finer perception of value worldwide. The role of higher education as an asset in the defence of democracy and individual self-development shall be discussed with a view to evaluating its potential for an altered course of globalization.

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• 1  Ralph Waldo Emerson “Napoleon; or, the man of the world” in Joel Porte, Essays and Lectures , New Y (...)

2  Emerson, p. 731.

1 We are always in need of definitions whenever we want to explore why cultures change. We are pressed to come up with answers as to what culture might be and how the idea of culture might fit into a nutshell. The general applicability of the answer we struggle to devise invites theoretical formulas and abstraction from specific historical developments. It also, as a result, cautions us to choose fields from which to cull situations and conflicts that may help deliver the concepts we want to grasp, and invites to understand the theory of culture as shaped by how events unfold, and how society moves along. In particular, one may have in mind what the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about Napoleon (our favourite dictator, to us French people) in a book he devoted to figures of historical importance ( Representative Men ): “Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born” 1 . This strikes a negative note, as does a quote from Napoleon himself that Emerson has unearthed from the vast body of memoirs the Napoleon era has handed down to us. Emerson is reported to have once declared: “My hand of iron […] was not at the extremity of my arm; it was immediately connected with my head” 2 . The remark and the quote hold a tentative definition of culture. Culture begins when sheer force is mitigated by intellect, intellect itself being shaped by a response to facts, and, we hope, as Emerson hopes, abstracted from fact by ethical imperative. On top of this, we feel Emerson’s attempt at rationality is run through by doubt: what if one might never discriminate between intellect and action? What if one might never grasp how ethics can disengage us from the cogs of history and were incapable of controlling an ongoing process that leads to disaster and apocalypse? Whenever one tries to define culture, culture breaks down into its many components: it splinters into action and responsibility, and we feel there might never be a connection between them. There lies Emerson’s historical pessimism, which it is hard to tone down.

• 3  Hubert Damisch, “A Crisis of Values, or Crisis Value ?”, in Daniel S. Hamilton (ed.), Which Values (...)

2 In recent years, a debate has been brought to the foreground, for reasons that have to do with our increasingly globalized world. Are there any values left? If such a thing as culture exists, then, there might be precise contents of an ethical sort that we want to pin down. Might not this sense of emptiness be the result of a crisis of value, as if the very idea of value had been swept away? This is what the French cultural critic Hubert Damisch thinks has happened, in a recent contribution to a volume aptly titled Which Values for our Time , published by the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon. Damisch rounds up his interrogation as follows: “Crisis of values, or crisis value?” 3 The suggestion is of course that value is no longer visible on the horizon of our history to be, that the trend should be resisted, and that intellectual resistance is what we need. It is by no means new to be aware, among philosophers and cultural critics alike, that values are hard to come by. In Plato’s Republic , book seven, humankind is looking at the walls of a cave, noting the shadows dancing there, and being taught that our poor sight precludes the perception of good and evil, and the difference between them. Now that the walls of the cave have turned into television screens, one image is chased away by the next one, while our sense of global responsibility dissolves into thin air even though all the fields of human action hold perspectives of responsibility within them. Culture, like values, is a plenum and a void, a constant expectation and in the end something impossible when one looks at results and facts.

• 4  Peter Fenves, (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy  ; Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative (...)

3 We should keep in mind Jacques Derrida’s anthropology of culture, and the degree to which it identifies conflict as the prime-mover within our cultural narratives. In a major contribution at a Cerisy conference in Normandy in 1980, titled “On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy” 4 , Jacques Derrida opposes two sets of attitudes: seeking rationality, and seeking mystery. Derrida views culture as the competition between the Aüfklarer and the mystics, and suggests there are possibilities that the two trends in cultural discourse might eventually reach some kind of truce achieved as a result of an interaction between them. No doubt he was trying to hold historical pessimism at a distance by suggesting gain might be reached in the historical development of cultures if rationality were capable of reading through the language of mysticism, and curb the influence of those he chose to call the mystagogues, in whom he saw a danger for democracy and human dignity. Cultures change, and when they do, they are pulled in opposite directions if we abide by Derrida’s critical thinking. They change to eliminate reason, even, as Derrida puts it, to emasculate it, and we must, as a result, apply pressure to preserve amity, and to uphold the values of democracy. To be sure, Derrida’s onslaught upon mystery is no onslaught upon religious values: there are many other targets we might think of in the current context of globalized liberal economies and environmental overuse, such as religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and the emergence of a global self-appointed elite, although Derrida’s inquiry was started some thirty years ago, and he never gets that precise about what should be indicted.

Disaster and Apocalypse

• 5  See in particular Making Globalization Work , New York, Norton, 2007, chapter 7, “The Multinational (...)
• 6  Richard Rorty, “Globalization, the politics of identity and Social Hope” in Philosophy and Social (...)

4 Our globalizing societies offer alternatives to an ideal world. In particular, market mechanisms and the rise of global capital have impoverished some non-European nations, while Europe has, in recent years, worked to thin the immigration flux while downsizing out of their jobs the low-skilled workers of a once predominantly industrial economy that has now turned to services. As a result, local communities have been struck, either in Europe or the United States, by being impoverished within the more glitzy context of affluence. In China as elsewhere, industrial activity has surged, while working conditions have never been worse among the former peasants driven to urban areas. Globalization may well pass for an agenda of disaster and social apocalypse, as Joseph Stiglitz has demonstrated 5 . Welfare and human rights have hardly benefited from the promise economic liberalism keeps harping on, and human development has been restricted to the rising middle-classes of China, or India, if we look at the most significant examples. Richard Rorty, meditating on social hope, has brought home the idea that globalization has been a blow to democracy. He wrote the following in an essay published in 1993: “We now have a global overclass which makes all the major economic decisions, and makes them entirely independently from the legislatures, and a fortiori of the will of the voters, of any given country” 6 . Rorty’s remark comes as an apposite reminder that there is no such thing as a world government, a fact that we all tend to overlook. The ideology of economic growth heralds human development, but delivers little in terms of the strengthening of local communities, both in rising nations as well as in Western ones. Might not this ideology form the most recent embodiment of some pseudo-thinking the mystagogues parade as rationality for us to kneel to?

5 Communities, we hear, have gone global, which means they are now glocal. The portmanteau word means more than it seems to say. On the one hand, the buzzword suggests that local communities may be strengthened by globalization; on the other, it suggests that local communities are shaped, in ways that cannot all be positive, by the advance of global liberalism. However, one of the unsought effects of glocalization may well be that cultural interference with distant or unknown communities might emerge from the pressure of global liberalism, by dissolving national, or even nationalist perspectives, and favouring international contacts. Let us be cautious in this: international interaction, in the context of globalizing economic exchange, may well be no other than buying and selling, and one more version of materialism without national values being cross-fertilized.

• 7  Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s debate , Cambridge, M (...)

6 Globalization cannot control the rise of a new conservatism, in spite of the surge in optimism that comes with it in some areas, if we look at the poor condition of welfare systems across developed countries and elsewhere. As Habermas has pointed out, “modernity sees itself as dependent exclusively upon itself” 7 , and utopian ideals are increasingly wiped out of the Zeitgeist. Globalization is in dire need of strengthening, not exhausting, utopian energies. If it proves incapable of effecting this, renewing utopian energies, the road down globalization may well be what one supposes it to be from recent evidence: a hurdle-race, with one winner, a few good athletes, and vast crowds of anonymous losers. Jacques Derrida has pointed out that we need peace in culture, and that peace can be achieved when the mystagogues accept to interact with rationality. Rationality however, to him, is not an empty bottle, or an instrument by which societies may solve practical questions. Rationality involves moral choice, and one may well suggest that the Habermas notion that utopian ideals have to be upheld is the best way to reorder, and refashion global liberalism. No doubt, the culture wars must go on, to stay the current backlash and its related traumas, terrorism East and West, the political violence within national borders and without, the religious fundamentalism which has found in globalization its ecotope, in Israel, in the Arab world, in the United States, and elsewhere, while environmental disasters from North to South take their toll upon communities. Cultures, as a result of globalization, change, for reasons that have to do with the innate systemic risks that globalization runs through them, risks which are supra-human, but which, for that very reason, have to be identified, deconstructed, and eliminated, although we do know that this process cannot be the work of one sole generation. Indifference as well as naïveté ought to be avoided. If, as Habermas thinks they are, utopian values are used-up, because they are targeted, then, they must be invigorated.

• 8  Emery Roe and Michel J.G. Van Eeten, “Three – Not Two – Major Environmental Counternarratives to G (...)

7 No doubt any such invigoration, if we want it to have pragmatic efficiency, we need specific measures, and precautions. Intellectual clarity can help. And meditation upon what is and what is not scientific can be an asset. It is true odium has been cast on the precautionary principle by some scholars of environmental studies. In a fairly recent issue (2004) of the M.I.T. Press quarterly Global Environmental Politics, scholars Emery Roe and Michel Van Eeten have condemned the precautionary principle in matters of environmental policy on the grounds that scientific evidence is not sufficient, calling for empirical knowledge, supposed to be an index to what is and what is not scientific 8 . Is it that globalization has reshaped the image of science in academia, making us wistful once again, and inviting us to find peace of mind in a belated version of science which is reminiscent of the nineteenth century, when science was largely considered to rely on empirical observation, whatever this might mean? Empiricism and dogmatic thinking are birds of a feather flocking together. More open intellectual attitudes are necessary to face the risks of globalization upon our environment. Doubt, in particular, may be protective, in this respect. Without it, scientific thinking can be stultified. Science cannot be independent of general interest and social respect, and requires critical detachment to shelter us from the systemic dangers inherent in its objects of inquiry and the applicability of its fundamental findings. In scientific knowledge as well, the culture wars loom large, though they tend to be overlooked. These wars may lead both ways: to cultural changes that will crush social hope, and to cultural changes that will uplift a sense of community and cooperation.

The Secularization of Value

9  Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Petite Métaphysique des Tsunamis , Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 85.

8 The values of science, therefore, should be secularized, and scientists should avoid generating systems which hold dangers in them that might express their potential for destruction. The French philosopher and Stanford scholar Jean-Pierre Dupuy has pointed out that the atomic bombing of Japan was the result of systemic danger, in an amazing remark: “Why was the bomb ever used? Because it existed, quite simply” 9 . The implication of what he says is that science too, and what was at one point presented as an advance of the civilized mind, may lead to pragmatic consequences that reshape thinking and emasculate it, if we want to harp on the Derrida proposition that the mystagogues are able to emasculate rationality (let us pardon Derrida’s male chauvinism if we can). Human thinking involves systemic dangers, and one therefore has to rethink thinking in different terms, which has been the task of modern philosophy. Perhaps we might suggest at this point that cultural change involves the thinking of rationality in secularized terms. This means that technology may well lead us astray, tethered as it is to scientific knowledge which we tend to view as total, whereas any inquiry into the results of science tends to demonstrate that science is provisional, and that its propositions will sooner or later be refined, or redefined, and that intellectual inquiry, whatever its field, rarely comes to conclusions that will never be reworded, or revised. Knowledge is an ongoing process, and if we keep this in mind, we secularize science, instead of projecting it onto the higher plane of superior frozen truths. Science, like any other human adventure, unfolds through time, and taking this into consideration helps science respond to social needs.

9 Political scientists are struggling for secular views, as John Rawls has amply demonstrated. Behind his eulogy of democracy as a condition and an effect of economic and political liberalism, one finds an attempt to define the nature of rationality as the mainspring of social hope. It is striking, when reading John Rawls, to realize the extent to which rationality is assessed in conjunction with its effects upon social organization, which yields workable political conceptions of justice. John Rawls, in his second major opus, Political Liberalism , defines political rationality as outcome-centered, and this leads to a list of primary goods, which reads as follows:

basic rights and liberties […];

freedom of movement and free choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities;

powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of responsibility in the political and economic institutions of the basic structure;

income and wealth;

• 10  John Rawls, Political Liberalism , New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 181. Joseph Stigli (...)

and finally, the social bases of self-respect. 10

• 11  Slavoj Zizek, “Le Tibet pris dans le rêve de l’autre”, Le Monde Diplomatique , n° 650, mai 2008, p. (...)

10 Rawls’ agenda relies on the traditions of the common-sense philosophy of the English-speaking world and the theoretical culture of pragmatism, which he found ready for use in his New-England intellectual environment. Nowhere do we find perspectives that would be disconnected from and independent from day-to-day preoccupations. Rawls wants to harness human development to democracy, to wring democracy out of economic growth, while there is an increasing belief, in this century, that our globalized economies hold a promise of democracy as an expectation which will always be contradicted by fact. Just recently, in a major contribution to the debate, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has pointed out that China allies a vicious use of the Asian bludgeon in Tibet with the logics of the European stock-market, and that this betrays the belief that democracy is an obstacle to economic growth. As a result of this, Zizek’s assumption is that our global culture might be brought to understand that democracy is no longer needed to back human development, which might lead global cultural change in the wrong direction 11 . Democracy has to be maintained as a horizon of belief, and as the sole teleology worthy of respect. Rawls helps us understand that teleology should be one version of practicality, though we tend to think that any political teleology is an empty promise. His contribution to political philosophy views rationality not just as a belated version of theology, but as a tool that may help deliver collective results, following in the footsteps of American intellectual traditions which assess value in terms of their pragmatic consequences rather than in terms of otherworldly conceptual exploration.

• 12  Samuel Huntington, “Foreword” in Lawrence E. Harrison & Samuel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: (...)

11 What if, beyond this sound conception of political values, and the organic laws that go to frame them, human culture was unresponsive, thus precluding cultural change, and sustainable development? It is this situation that Samuel Huntington examines, leaving little room for hope, suggesting that cultures cannot change, or will change slowly or with difficulty, on the grounds that society will not change and that there is no connection between assumptions, beliefs, and the economic and political opportunities that the modern liberal state offers if we are willing to grasp them. Huntington’s dream is to get rid of cultural obstacles to economic development, while it is yet unclear whether there is any strong belief in the virtues of democracy in what he has to say. Huntington’s answer does not intend to demonstrate that it is democracy which has to be left out of his global picture. In his case, if progress is not fast enough, it is because those cultures which resist progress as seen from Massachusetts are obstacles which one must remove, but Huntington is no clear analyst of how culture and democracy might hinge. “[…] We define culture, Huntington writes, in purely subjective terms as the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society” 12 . His vision of culture has left one notion unmentioned: what about solidarity, the cornerstone of Richard Rorty’s vision of social hope? It may well be that this is one value that the modern liberal state has eroded, and that solidarity is a basic asset to those communities forming the lesser developed countries of Africa, Latin America and parts of the Asian world, where welfare is weak, and institutionalized education poorly developed, where, for political reasons, states are not ready to reach out to populations and areas left to their own resources and inventiveness in terms of welfare. Huntington’s discourse, as a result, is a perfect illustration of the New Conservatism that Habermas has targeted. Modernity, in Huntington’s world-view, is seen as totally dependent on itself. Beliefs, in particular, are taken to task, in Huntington’s definition of culture. What if beliefs were an adequate instrument of the progress Huntington has in mind, one notion which is empty enough, and which Huntington parades to conceal his conservative views? Inherited ideas and attitudes are more of a survival-kit than an obstacle to social cohesiveness. One hardly knows, when reading Huntington, whether progress, the norm of his perspective, is one serious academic case of mystagogic thinking, or whether it may have practical applicability. It is arguable that progress, with Samuel Huntington, is an abstract notion.

13  Lucian W. Pye, “’Asian Values’: from dynamos to dominoes?”, Culture Matters , p. 249 .  

• 14  On this consider Françoise Lemoine, L’Economie de la Chine , Paris, La Découverte, 2006, esp. pp. 6 (...)

12 Asian culture turns out to be an epistemological obstacle to many political scientists. Once considered incapable of generating economic growth, Asian values are seen as an asset in the ongoing economic race, with growth rates that belittle Europe and the United States alike in some quarters of the Asian world. Can one blame economic stagnation on them yesterday, and now say that some basic values of Asian cultures are the leverage of change helping those so-called miracle economies make some headway? There may well be an emphasis on hard work in Chinese culture, but one cannot see how this is specifically Chinese, or American, or British. Lucian Pye, one prominent M.I.T. scholar in Chinese studies, has suggested that Taoism and the belief in good fortune, supposed to be specific to Chinese culture (although I am aware this might be challenged), has produced outgoing dynamic character in the Chinese people, which makes them ready to grasp any opportunity likely to turn to their advantage. Pye’s view of Chinese culture may easily be taken to task, as he implies that Chinese culture leaves no room for introspection. This is most probably a typical misconception such as New-England protestant culture wants to bring home. Lucian Pye, in particular, writes the following when considering the reasons for China’s rapid expansion: “This stress of the role of fortune makes for an outward-looking and highly reality-oriented approach to life, not an introspective one” 13 . This is, we guess, one academic version of prejudice insisting that the Chinese have no soul, and no interest for an inner life. Economists, on the other hand, go for a more mundane vision of China’s development, insisting on the capacity to attract foreign investors 14 . This is also quite true of many other rising Asian economies besides China.

13 However, these observations lead us to want to extend our definition of culture. Culture is not just simply a cluster of beliefs and attitudes outside the realm of economic and political development. Culture is probably much more than beliefs and attitudes. It encompasses what we might call material culture, in the sense that attitudes matter in economic development, which is no big news, if we refer to Max Weber’s understanding of the ethic of capitalism, shaped as it is by the sense of insecurity that goes with the necessity to devise for oneself advancement in this world, the better to advance in the next one, or the higher or more sophisticated one in the rich oriental spiritual heritage. No wonder then that Derrida should suggest that between rationality and mystery, there is one connection to be established. And, in Derrida’s view of how rationality and mystery interact, one finds an abiding agreement occurring, and this is of course desirable to establish peace in what he calls culture, which to him is more of a socially encompassing substance than a mere individual determinant of behaviour.

15  Pye, “’Asian Values’: from dynamos to dominoes?”, p. 250.

16  Pye, p. 250.

14 Lucian Pye is interesting as an analyst of Chinese social development, not for what certainties he may have in store for us, but for the scepticism which his propositions will cause in most areas of the academic world, and across disciplines. Examining the reasons for China’s economic advance, he writes that “[...] the driving force in Chinese capitalism has always been to find out who needs what and to satisfy that market need” 15 . One might meditate for quite a while to determine whether markets are out there for anyone to grab, or whether one should shape markets, create needs, and respond to one’s ambition to grow by being inventive. Nevertheless, Lucian Pye views Chinese economy as a simplistic answer to world needs, and the capacity to adapt to them, whereas the West is seen as technology-driven, and culturally more sophisticated: “Western firms seek to improve their products, strengthen their organizational structures, and work hard to achieve name recognition” 16 . We wonder whether Chinese firms have not always tried to do precisely this, which can only be generalized with a vast highly educated workforce, which China is trying to obtain by adequate investment in higher education. This path is promising, from what we can judge when considering our Chinese students in our higher learning European institutions.

Cultural Change and Universities

17  Habermas, The New Conservatism , p. 104.

18  Jacques Derrida, L’Université sans condition , Paris, Galilée, 2001, p. 16.

19  See “The Idea of the University”, The New Conservatism , pp. 100-127.

15 If therefore, cultures change, not just private cultures, but also public ones, as we increasingly suspect cultures to be collective assets, university education has a major role to play in this process. We, as academics, either experienced or aspiring ones, must address the issue of what a university education ought to be like. So far in this discussion, we have acknowledged that academics should avoid voicing social prejudice, and this has not always been accomplished, to say the least. Jacques Derrida has meditated extensively on this, with a view to promoting the role education might play in defending the values of democracy, no doubt because Derrida’s understanding of the effects of academic training is combined with the idea of a political education for youth. This may be easily understood when one looks at the moral paralysis of the German university system and its many graduates embracing Nazism and providing the Nazi regime with its most destructive propagandists and functionaries. However, Habermas is clear on this point. German universities cannot be blamed for what befell. Habermas, in particular, points out that the number of students was halved during Nazism in Germany, dropping from 121 000 in 1933 to below 60 000 right before the Second World War 17 . One reason why this happened, although Derrida is not explicit on this point, is that universities tend to over-specialize knowledge. This has caused the decline of humanistic study. Habermas offers similar views, though they are cast in a more sociological mould. To Derrida, higher education should be critical of whatever rationality wants to assess. He calls this “the university without conditions”, which to him involves an ambitious agenda thus defined: “the primal right to say anything, be it in the name of fiction and of knowledge as experiment, and the right to speak publicly, and to publish this” 18 . Habermas offers a more accurate version of what ought to be done, and has been insufficiently accomplished so far: integrating humanistic study and technical expertise to curb the specialization of knowledge 19 .

20  Derrida, L’Université sans condition , p. 69.

16 This may sound vague enough, and we wonder where it might lead, because one doubts whether knowledge, in various disciplines, might efficiently refrain from becoming specialized. This is why Derrida comes up with more practical propositions as to the contents and orientations of higher education in the book he published in 2001, L’Université sans condition . There are seven such propositions, all having to do with what one might call the architecture of knowledge, all answering the need to redefine humanistic study, which should come alongside more specialized training, either in established scholarly disciplines, or the training of students towards professions outside the academic world. The new humanities should, according to Derrida, deal with what he calls “the history of man”, which calls us to devote more attention than has so far been devoted to human rights, be they for men or women. To him, these rights are “legal performatives” 20 , which sounds otherworldly owing to the weight of abstraction in the phrase. However, this might basically mean that these rights are to be upheld because they can be applied to the various fields of human activity. Furthermore we must bear in mind that these so-called “legal performatives” are performatives because they hold within them an applicability that may be constantly expanded, in practical terms, to various areas of cultural practice, among which of course science and business, two areas of higher education that are growing to meet the social needs of human development.

17 The idea of democracy comes second in Derrida’s architecture of the new humanities. It comes second for reasons of clarity in the presentation of the programme he has in mind. Yet the idea of democracy is not a second-thought, because it runs, let us be reminded, through all his oeuvre as a philosopher. Let us note that democracy, as far as what Derrida has to say about it, is not tethered to nationhood. Nationhood is dangerous, and one may easily understand this in the light of European history, and also of Asia. From this, we can easily infer that cultural change in the future should not rely on national traditions, and that, in this respect, globalization offers opportunities for positive cross-fertilization. Derrida’s meditation on this hinges on the concept of sovereignty. While sovereignty is a desirable goal for each and every one of us; the idea is viewed as misleading, as it has often been a concept without practical consequences, while we may still hope that sovereignty will remain a horizon of belief for individuals, and a value that will guide collective decisions. Yet, if Derrida invites us to abide by this concept (sovereignty), he also believes that any collective formalization of the idea of sovereignty should avoid reliance on the nation-state, which may too easily lead to a betrayal of individual dignity.

21  Derrida, p. 72.

18 Derrida then focuses on the necessity to recuperate the authority of teaching, and of literature, whose proposals cannot be easily understood. One suspects, when reading Derrida’s proposals, that teaching as well as literature have to do with amity, a concept that emerges from Derrida’s body of works. This is not a norm, neither is it prescriptive, nor can it be strictly defined as a doctrine or a set of mandatory rules. We gather this is to be understood as an opening to otherness on the part of the teacher, and a eulogy of respect for the other person, which involves inventiveness and the by-passing of any sort of regulation that defines the other person in some way or other that might lead to a position of authority of a colonial or exploitative nature. It certainly is an attitude of respect, which elbows aside the very notion of authority, “routs it”, as Derrida says 21 . Universities, therefore, should constitute an idea that transcends any specialized discourse on the technicalities of education; it consists in letting the other reach out for his or her potential towards self-development. The institutional strength of higher education springs, in Derrida’s view of it, from the interaction of the person who teaches and the one being taught, to live to the full his or her aspirations. Derrida’s ideal is so elevated that it transcends any definition one might come up with. It certainly is a call to confront the normative nature of higher education in order to recuperate a lost sense of human warmth that has been eliminated by the technocratic complexities of institutions seeking intellectual identity in the measurement of student skills and their willingness to comply to them. One also cannot rule out that a backlash has been underway in higher education itself owing to the rising number of first-generation graduates from the less educated groups of our national cultures. This has been more of an opportunity for universities to fulfil their cultural mission from the sixties onwards than a serious obstacle to the growth of higher education, and one can argue that Derrida was balking away from the pessimistic discourse one hears in most academic circles today – ill-grounded as it is on the relative accessibility to higher education.

• 22  On this, consider Daniel Parrochia, La Forme des crises : logique et épistémologie , Seyssel, Champ (...)

19 The challenges that higher education has to face, in the context of an ever-increasing cross-fertilization of cultures, points to one underlying question that surfaces from an examination of current economic and social trends. Is what we call culture tethered to social and economic factors? The question is by no means new, and was handed down to us by the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, and by Marxist theory. We now tend to believe that culture is one mode of collective representation that one may disengage from submission to social and economic facts. On this point, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to real structures , that he saw as disconnected from institutions or working facts . 22 There is still much thought to be devoted to whether the degree of autonomy of culture as collective representation involves radical or relative autonomy from economic factors. We are also hard pressed to determine whether, in this framework of analytical thinking, autonomy is or is not hampered by the necessities of those real structures and the institutions that shape them, and even perhaps discreetly justify them. Hence, Stiglitz’s view that one must respond to a democratic deficit, and Derrida’s view that one must face the serious issue of a democratic deficit in higher education. The question is not benign, and it calls forth an autonomy of the mind to bend social realities and economic factors to purposes that do not derive from them.

1  Ralph Waldo Emerson “Napoleon; or, the man of the world” in Joel Porte, Essays and Lectures , New York, The Library of America, 1983, p. 731.

3  Hubert Damisch, “A Crisis of Values, or Crisis Value ?”, in Daniel S. Hamilton (ed.), Which Values for our Time, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Center for Transatlantic Relations, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, p. 57.

4  Peter Fenves, (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy  ; Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida , Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 117-171; French edition : « D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie » in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe et Jean-Luc Nancy (ed.), Les Fins de l’Homme: à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida , Paris, Galilée, 1981, pp. 445-479.

5  See in particular Making Globalization Work , New York, Norton, 2007, chapter 7, “The Multinational Corporation”.

6  Richard Rorty, “Globalization, the politics of identity and Social Hope” in Philosophy and Social Hope , London, Penguin, 1999, p. 233.

7  Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s debate , Cambridge, Mass., The M.I.T. Press, (1989) 1997, p. 48.

8  Emery Roe and Michel J.G. Van Eeten, “Three – Not Two – Major Environmental Counternarratives to Globalization”, Global Environmental Politics , 4:4, November 2004; see in particular pp. 36-39.

10  John Rawls, Political Liberalism , New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 181. Joseph Stiglitz follows suits with a set of more technical criteria in Making Globalization Work; s ee the section“Responding to the Democratic Deficit”, pp. 280-285.

11  Slavoj Zizek, “Le Tibet pris dans le rêve de l’autre”, Le Monde Diplomatique , n° 650, mai 2008, p. 32.

12  Samuel Huntington, “Foreword” in Lawrence E. Harrison & Samuel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress , New York, Basic Books, 2000, XV.

14  On this consider Françoise Lemoine, L’Economie de la Chine , Paris, La Découverte, 2006, esp. pp. 67-68.

22  On this, consider Daniel Parrochia, La Forme des crises : logique et épistémologie , Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2008, esp. pp. 104-128.

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Alain Suberchicot , « Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization » ,  Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 , 4 | 2008, 5-17.

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Alain Suberchicot , « Why do Cultures Change? The Challenges of Globalization » ,  Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 4 | 2008, mis en ligne le 20 septembre 2009 , consulté le 22 août 2024 . URL  : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/237 ; DOI  : https://doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.237

Alain Suberchicot

Professor , American Studies, University of Lyon (Jean-Moulin)

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• 17 | 2022 Im/mobilités cinématographiques et planétarités contemporaines
• 16 | 2021 La liberté académique en contexte global : défis et perspectives
• 15 | 2020 Censure et productions culturelles postcoloniales
• 14 | 2019 Re-thinking Latin America: Challenges and Possibilities
• 13 | 2018 Représentations de la nature à l'âge de l'anthropocène
• 12 | 2017 The Other’s Imagined Diseases. Transcultural Representations of Health
• 11 | 2016 Le genre de la maladie : pratiques, discours, textes et représentations
• 10 | 2015 Manger, Représenter: Approches transculturelles des pratiques alimentaires
• 9 | 2014 Géopolitique de la connaissance et transferts culturels
• 8 | 2013 Genre et filiation : pratiques et représentations
• 7 | 2012 Transcultural Identity and Circulation of Imaginaries
• 6 | 2011 Debating China
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• 4 | 2008 Cultures in Transit
• Hors série | 2008 Poésie et insularité
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Globalization and its Effect on Culture

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• Brian J. Hurn 3 &
• Barry Tomalin 4  

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This chapter looks at the spread of globalization, its effect on culture, society and economic development, and its advantages and disadvantages. It considers the opposition to globalization and whether globalization has an effect on cultural convergence or divergence. The driving forces behind globalization are examined and the future trends in globalization are suggested, particularly with relevance to the BRICs:

Globalization is not incidental to our lives today. It is a shift in our very life circumstance. It’s the way we now live. (Giddens, 1999: 19)

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Globality: Cultural Comparison Between Europe and China

Proglomena: Globalisation, Cultural Identity and Diversity

Globalization: Defining the Terrain

Giddens, A. (1999) Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives (London: Profile Books).

Google Scholar  

Hill, C.W. (2005) International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace , 5th edn (New York: McGraw-Hill).

Huntington, S. (1993) The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Free Press).

Levitt, T. (1983) ‘The Globalization of Markets’, Harvard Business Review 61(3): 92–102.

Mandelson, P. (2012) ‘Foreword’ to Report on Globalization (London: Institute of Public Policy Research).

Rugman, A.M. and Collinson, S. (2006) International Business , 4th edn (Harlow: Pearson Education).

Snyder, D.P. (2004) ‘Five Meta Trends: Changing the World’, Futurist 38(4): 22–7.

Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents (New York: Norton).

Stiglitz, J. (2007) The Times , 19 February.

Wild, J., Wild, K. and Han, J. (2006) International Business: The Challenges of Globalisation (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall).

Further reading

Bartlett, C. and Chosal, S. (1998) Managing Across Borders: The Transnational System (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press).

Brewster, C., Harries, H. and Sparrow, P. (2001) Globalisation and Human Resources (London: Chartered Institute of Personnel Development).

The Economist (2001) ‘A Survey of Globalisation: Globalisation and its Critics’, 29 September.

The Economist (2008) ‘A Bigger World: Special Report on Globalisation’, 20 September.

Forster, N. (2000) ‘The Myth of the International Manager’, International Journal of Human Resource Management 11(1): 126–42.

Article   Google Scholar  

Hobsbawn, E. (2007) Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism (London: Little, Brown).

Rugman, A.M. (2003) ‘Regional Strategy and the Demise of Globalisation’, Journal of International Management 9: 409–17.

Rugman, A.M. (2005) The Regional Multinationals (Cambridge University Press).

Book   Google Scholar  

Shaw, W, and Glennie, A. (2012) Report on Globalization (London: Institute of Public Policy Research).

Stevens, M. and Bird, A. (2004) ‘On the Myth of Believing that Globalization is a Myth’, Journal of International Management 10: 501–10.

Wolf, W. (2004) The Case for the Global Market Economy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

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London Academy of Diplomacy, University of East Anglia, UK

Brian J. Hurn ( Visiting Lecturer )

International House, London, UK

Barry Tomalin ( Visiting Lecturer, Director of Cultural Training )

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© 2013 Brian J. Hurn and Barry Tomalin

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Hurn, B.J., Tomalin, B. (2013). Globalization and its Effect on Culture. In: Cross-Cultural Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391147_11

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The effects of globalization on culture, economy and people

A short essay exploring the effects of globalisation in respect to culture, the economy and the people from a sociological perspective.

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5 (page 80) p. 80 The cultural dimension of globalization

• Published: April 2017
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Cultural globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe. Facilitated by the Internet and our proliferating mobile digital devices, the dominant symbolic systems of meaning of our age—such as individualism, consumerism, and various religious discourses—can be more easily and rapidly transmitted from one place to another, and profoundly impact the way people experience their everyday lives. Cultural practices are acquiring new meanings in interaction with dominant global themes. ‘The cultural dimension of globalization’ focuses on the tension between sameness and difference in the emerging global culture, the crucial role of transnational media corporations in disseminating popular culture, and the globalization of languages.

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Home > Books > Globalization - Approaches to Diversity

Globalization and Culture: The Three H Scenarios

Submitted: 18 December 2011 Published: 22 August 2012

DOI: 10.5772/45655

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Globalization - Approaches to Diversity

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Author Information

Abderrahman hassi.

• School of Business Administration, Al Akhawayn University,, Morocco

Giovanna Storti

• Language Centre, Al Akhawayn University,, Morocco

*Address all correspondence to:

1. Introduction

Transnational flows of people, financial resources, goods, information and culture have recently been increasing in a drastic way and have profoundly transformed the world ( Ritzer and Malone, 2001 ). This phenomenon has been labeled globalization . As a result, a great deal of debate and discussion, even controversy ( Bird and Stevens, 2003 ) has taken place about globalization in various disciplines from different angles. In fact, there seems to be a controversy in regards to globalization and the contradictory meanings associated with it. This controversy refers, among others, to either “a dominant logic of globalization” which postulates that there is a single cause for globalization or to a “phenomenon with a complex set of causes” which argues that there are various causes for globalization ( Beck, 2000 ). In corollary, research has not been successful in grasping the globalization phenomenon in its entirety.

Globalization is a multidimensional phenomenon that encompasses not only economic components but also cultural, ideological, political and similar other facets ( Prasad and Prasad, 2006 ). Consequently, globalization has been addressed from the points of view of economics, social sciences, politics and international relations and has been subject to endless debates in various disciplines. Nonetheless, globalization effects are rarely addressed as a determinant that impacts societies and their cultures. More precisely, the interaction between globalization and culture still remains under-researched ( Prasad and Prasad, 2007 ) and the current globalization debate in this respect is relatively recent ( Acosta and Gonzalez, 2010 ). Along the same lines, the literature has not been able to stress whether concepts such as Americanization and Macdonalization are synonymous with globalization ( Latouche, 1996 ).

In an increasingly borderless world impacted by a globalization of economies, the preservation of cultural diversity feeds contrary and controversial reactions. For instance, Cowen (2002) contends that while changes and potential losses imposed by globalization on local and traditional cultures, including those extending to cultural differences, may be damaging and destructive, they may also lead towards new prospective opportunities.

Given the above context, it is argued that globalization brings about diverse trends, namely cultural differentiation, cultural convergence and cultural hybridization ( Pieterse, 1996 ) and each trend does not preclude the other as cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity are complementary ( Cowen, 2002 ).

The purpose of the following chapter is to provide a lens view of the interactions between globalization and culture as the latter positions itself on the spectrum of a theoretical perspective. To look into the interactions between globalization and culture, a literature review of relevant theoretical contributions has been conducted followed up with a discussion on their main insights. To do so, the key concepts of culture and globalization will be introduced. The following sections will present and discuss the three scenarios of the interaction between globalization and culture, namely heterogenization, homogenization and hybridization. We posit that these scenarios and theoretical perspectives associated with them are capturing the broad contours of the current debate on globalization and culture, despite some overlapping insights among the different viewpoints. We conclude that they are of use and interest for both researchers and practitioners as the subject still remains under-researched across disciplines.

2. Globalization

In the beginning of the late 20 th century, nation-states began opening their borders in efforts to be more globally competitive in international markets. Multinationals and later, global companies began to grow and multiply in record numbers. Due to the generalization of free trade, the market economy of the twentieth century has progressively spread at remarkable proportions around the world. And hence, the recent shift from the international economy to a world economy that supersedes nations, including their regulations. This shift has been labeled globalization with the latter’s extended and evolving history yet to be traced to its origin ( Acosta and Gonzalez, 2010 ). Despite its long history, globalization remains almost constant as its forces continually aim at transcending human differences around the world.

Globalization is one of the most discussed concepts across the disciplines but still remains elusive and confounded. In this respect, the debate taking place in the literature on globalization is two-pronged as the definition of the meaning of globalization is still not consensual and its impacts on local cultures are yet to be circumvented ( Matei, 2006 ). One thing that is definite and sure is that globalization is multidimensional and has economic, cultural, social and political aspects which impact both individuals and societies. More specifically, globalization constitutes a policy and/or system that promotes global interaction interdependence and interconnection among nations through advanced technologies (Jaja, 2010). As is, globalization refers to both the aspiration and determination to make a way of life applicable throughout the world, hence contributing to uniformizing ideas and systems of ideas in every single part of the world (Jaja, 2010). Thus, some commentators contend that globalization emerged with the advent of globalism which is an ideological discourse that constitutes a political belief system ( Steger, 2005 ). It seems that globalization has an ideological basis as it is founded on the capitalist economic tradition with its premises such as the development of free markets, private ownership, open and free decision making, the price mechanism and competition (Jaja, 2010).

In addition to an openness of diverse economic, political, cultural and social flows in both information and trade and its market-related dimension, globalization also has political features through the so-called notion of global governance . In fact, the involvement of various states and governments in promoting the internationalization of their companies contributes to globalization, particularly through multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund ( Drucker, 1997 ).

Finally, globalization is a natural and inevitable process as no country in the world can avoid or ignore it and failing to embrace it will lead to marginalization (Jaja, 2010). It is noteworthy to mention that globalization does not concern countries at the same level. World nations are not integrated to the same extent in international exchanges. Thus, the concept of world village characterized by the same values and concerns does not hold true. In fact, globalization has not eliminated immense disparities in the ways of life or standards of living between rich and poor nations.

Scholars and researchers do not agree on a general definition of culture with over 150 plausible definitions identified in the 1950s ( Kroeber and Kluckholn, 1952 ). In fact, culture has been studied from various fields such as anthropology, sociology and psychology. Hofstede (1980 :25) defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or society or category or nation from another”. The ‘mind’ refers to thinking, feeling and acting, with consequences for beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. In this regard, values and systems of values constitute a core element of culture. While the concept of ‘culture’ can be applied to any human collectivity, it is often used in the case of societies which refer to nations, ethnic entities or regional groups within or across nations ( Hofstede, 2001 ). As such, culture is concerned with a distinct environment of a community about which members share meaning and values ( House et al., 1999 ). As for Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952 : 181):

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other, as conditioning elements of future action.

In addition, Bennett and Bennett (2004) distinguish between an objective culture, which refers to the institutional aspects of a culture and a subjective culture that focuses on a worldview of a society’s people.

On another note, Cowen (2002 ) contends that culture refers to art products and activities, as well as, other creative products that stimulate and entertain individuals such as music, literature, visual arts and cinema. In this regard, some populations use their culture to create new products making culture a commercial label.

A worthwhile observation is the fact that culture is not rigid. It is a process that gradually builds up through interaction. Culture allows individuals to create human societies by defining the conditions of how people live among each other and together, as well as, by abiding to social and cultural codes that distinguish them from other cultures.

In a nutshell, the concept of culture has two major definitions. On the one hand, culture is an integrated set of values, norms and behaviors acquired by human beings as members of a society. As such, culture constitutes an element of identification within a given group of individuals and an element of differentiation vis-à-vis other groups from an anthropological standpoint. On the other hand, from a sociological stance, culture refers to artistic and symbolic creations, heritage and cultural products. In relation to globalization, these two aspects have important implications with respect to how individuals express their cultural identities, in terms of the future of cultural traditions, and with cultural industries. Therefore, for purposes of the present chapter, the concept of culture refers to the two above-mentioned aspects.

4. Globalization and culture

For millions of years, human groups spanned over immense territories without means of communications other than reliance on their physical body parts such as their eyes, voices, hands and legs. With the advent of the urbanized metropolitan cities dating back to more than 5,000 years ago and the beginning of commercial activities, cultural exchanges have taken place between individuals living among various societies. However, in the past, means of communication and transportation were limited and cultural characteristics did not circulate as rapidly and easily as in modern times.

With the industrial revolutions, societies began to have access to machines which allowed them to create cultural products and export them across borders. By the 18 th century, thinkers had forecasted a non-reversible trend of cultural standardization. However, the predominance of the nation-state and national economic barriers had protected and insulated cultures from external influence. Cultural uniformization based on the European model at the end of 18 th century was prevalent, particularly due to the success of the rational capitalism that characterized Europe and which was the symbol of cultural modernity (Weber, 1905). Additionally, the enlightenment thinkers had forecasted a uniformized and borderless world in the sphere of values. In the 19 th century, cultural industries depended on technical innovations during the first and second industrial revolutions such as, printing in 1860, and electricity and cinema in 1890. Further, cultural miscegenation-related fear dates back to 1853 when Arthur de Gobineau wrote an influential essay on the inequality of human races in France. Marx and Engels noted an intellectual convergence in the literature which was a kind of intellectual globalization of ideas that preceded the materialistic globalization of goods and markets. As for the German intellectual Goethe, he pleaded for a world culture through world literature (Weltlitertur) where everybody would contribute. In the 20 th century, cultural industries appeared as communication technology started to develop and flow seaminglessly across borders.

Interactions between globalization and culture do not seem to be a recent phenomenon. In fact, they constitute, particularly with the influence of globalization on culture, a contention point in the literature as various theoretical standpoints have been developed to examine these interactions. These standpoints will be grouped under three different scenarios and presented in the subsequent sections.

5. Heterogenization scenario

While certain scholars (i.e. Appadurai, 1996 ; Featherstone, 1995 ) admit that globalization for the most part originates from Western cultures, they however reject the idea that this phenomenon constitutes a homogenization of world cultures resulting from one way exchanges among the latter. In fact, this “school of thought” argues that globalization generates rather a state of heterogeneity which refers to a network structure in which nodes tend to connect with each other in regard to certain cultural dimensions ( Matei, 2006 ). Two distinct variants of heterogenization can be distinguished ( Chan, 2011 ). The heterogenization at a local level refers to a situation where the practices of a sphere of life in a specific milieu or locale become more diverse over a period of time. The heterogenization at a trans-local or global level refers to a situation where the practices of a sphere of life in at least two locales become more distinct over a period of time. In short, heterogenization, which has also been labeled differentiation, relates fundamentally to barriers that prevent flows that would contribute to making cultures look alike ( Ritzer, 2010 ). In this perspective, cultures remain different one from another.

Heterogenization represents a process which leads to a more inwardly appearing world due to the intensification of flows across cultures ( Appadurai, 1996 ). Hence, local cultures experience continuous transformation and reinvention due to the influence of global factors and forces. It is important to keep sight of the fact that according to this perspective, cultures do not remain unaffected by global flows and globalization in general, but the actual crux of the culture remains intact and unaffected, as has always been ( Ritzer, 2010 ) with only peripheral surfaces directly impacted.

The convergence thesis advancing that globalization favors homogenization of the world underestimates the global flows of goods, ideas and individuals. In this regard, Robertson (2001) , who is critical of the focus on processes stemming from the United States and its homogenizing impact on the world, advocates the notion of heterogeneity with a focus on diversity, multi-directional global flows and the existence of world processes that are independent and sovereign of other nation-states. These flows do not eradicate local cultures, they only change some of their traits and reinforce others. Along the same line, Wiley (2004 ) contends that national cultures, which are fluid constructs, have become part of a heterogeneous transnational field of culture.

Different cultural groups develop into heterogonous entities due to differences in demands necessitated by their environment in efforts to adapt to the requirements of the latter. And consequently over a period of time, these groups become diversified and very different due to environmental circumstances and pressures. For instance, although the spread of the colonization phenomena yielded a reduction of cultural differentiation, when the colonization movement receded, cultures sprung up and cultural differentiation was favored.

In sum, it has been documented in some instances that foreign cultural practices remain in the margins of local and national cultures resulting in a side-by-side coexistence of distinct and disparate global and local cultures ( Prasad and Prasad, 2006 ). It seems that cultural differentiation will most likely remain strong despite globalization forces. What will probably change are the criteria used by different cultural groups to define their identity and differentiation vis-à-vis other cultures.

6. Homogenization scenario

Are international exchanges and flows of goods, services, capitals, technology transfer and human movements creating a more standardized and unique world culture? Would acculturation, which yields from long and rich contacts between societies of different cultures, result in a universal culture?

The homogenization perspective seems to positively answer these questions as the increased interconnection between countries and cultures contributes to forming a more homogenous world adopting the Western Euro-American model of social organization and life style ( Liebes, 2003 ). In the homogenization view, barriers that prevent flows that would contribute to making cultures look alike are weak and global flows are strong ( Ritzer, 2010 ). In its extreme form, homogenization, which is also known as convergence, advances the possibility that local cultures can be shaped by other more powerful cultures or even a global culture ( Ritzer, 2010 ). This perspective is reflected in several concepts and models such as the Global Culture, Americanization and more importantly the McDonaldization theory.

Across different regions and countries in the world, more and more people seem to watch the same entertainment programs, listen to the same music, consume common global brand products and services, and wear the same or similar clothes ( Prasad and Prasad, 2006 ). These comparable developments in cultural practices are suggestive of the emergence of a “global culture” ( Robertson, 1992 ) or “world culture” (Meyer, Boli, Thomas and Ramirez, 1997) based on the assumption of the demise of the nation-state as a major player on the global stage ( Ritzer, 2010 ). In other terms, globalization contributes in creating a new and identifiable class of individuals who belong to an emergent global culture. According to this concept, the selfsame dynamics of globalization are weakening the connections between geographical places and cultural experiences ( Held and McGrew, 2003 ), and eroding the feeling of spatial distance which tends to reinforce a sense of national separateness ( Prasad and Prasad, 2006 ). Thus, globalization, which is a replication of the American and/or Western cultural tradition ( Beck, 2000 ; Berger, 2002 ), is considered a destructive force, a recipe for cultural disaster (Jaja, 2010) and an assault on local cultures which the latter are not able to withstand or resist ( Berger, 2002 ). This is presumably due to the fact that globalization contributes in atrophying identities and destroying local cultural traditions and practices, diluting, even eliminating the uniqueness of national cultures, and establishing a homogenized world culture.

However, some proponents of the concept of global culture argue that the latter is not cohesive in nature and refers to a set of cultural practices that only bear surface resemblance. Moreover, Smith (2003 ) completely rejects the existence of the notion of global culture whether as a cohesive or discordant concept. Along the same lines, Tomlinson (2003 ) maintains that globalization makes individuals aware of the diverse national cultures in the world which are multiple in numbers and distinct in nature. Hence, globalization strengthens national cultures rather than undermine them.

On another note, Jaja (2010) stresses that the world is presently experiencing Americanization, rather than globalization with the former referring to the global spread of America’s influential dominance and culture through drastic growth of mass communication and penetration of American companies in other countries. As a matter of fact, there seems to be an American hegemony reflected by a domination of the Internet as 85% of web pages originate from the United States and American companies control 75% of the world’s packaged software market (Jaja, 2010). In addition to the latter, there is an American monopoly of the media as seen with popular films, music, and satellite and television stations around the globe. It should be highlighted that the American conception of culture is open and far from the erudite notion of several European countries, for instance. Further, the American way of life does not appear to be elitist and aims at spreading cultural products to the masses which increase economic opportunities. This model is desired by other populations, developed and developing.

Nonetheless, it has been documented that only countries that share values similar to those of the United States are more inclined to adopt products which reflect the American culture and consider them as their own; conversely, cultures with values different than those of the United States are less likely to embrace products typical of the American culture ( Craig, Douglas and Bennett, 2009 ). Therefore, the Americanization phenomena seems to be contingent with the predisposition of local cultures to embrace artifacts reflective of the American culture, rather than with the simple availability of these artifacts.

There is little doubt if any that the McDonaldization theory constitutes an important symbol of the homogenization perspective. It is defined as “the process whereby the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society and the world” (Ritzer, 1993:19). McDonaldization is the idea of a worldwide homogenization of cultures through the effects of multinational corporations. The process involves a formal consistency and logic transferred through corporate rules and regulations. The McDonaldization model refers to the principles that the McDonald’s franchise system has been able to successfully spread across borders and into the global marketplace. These principles embedded within the system are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. In fact, the McDonald formula is a success for the reason that it is efficient, quick and inexpensive, predictable and effective in controlling both labor and its customers.

Most important to the origins of McDonalization is the interaction between culture and economics. Although Ritzer (1993), like Robertson (2001) recognize economic factor as forces of McDonaldization, the authors emphasize the importance to consider cultural factors. For instance, examining the fit between a culture that values efficiency and accepts a McDonalized system is vital for companies planning to take their businesses global.

From a theoretical standpoint, McDonaldization is based on Weber’s (1927/1968) work on formal rationality. In this regard, Weber maintained that the West has been characterized by an increasing tendency towards the predominance of formally rational systems. McDonaldization represents the bureaucracy in Weber’s model of the modern development of rationalization. Further, McDonalization refers to the far-reaching process of social change (Ritzer and Malone, 2000). It impacts social structures and institutions in its country of origin, as well as, in other developed and developing countries around the world. The McDonaldization thesis’ relevance to issues of globalization asserts that social systems in today’s society are becoming increasingly McDonaldized, and more significantly that the fundamental tenets of its principles have been successfully exported from the United States to the rest of the world. Ritzer and Malone (2000) contend that organizations in foreign markets that adopt the basic principles of the model are to an extent undergoing the process of McDonaldization. In other words, the latter is actively exporting the materialization and embodiment of that process.

It seems that the McDonalization model has transformed the nature of consumer consumption by encouraging and compelling individuals to consume infinite amounts of goods and services. Due to the fact that McDonaldized systems are robust entities imposing themselves on local markets in other societies, these systems are drastically transforming economies and cultures along the process (Ritzer and Malone, 2000). The model’s blueprint has been put into operation in fields beyond the fast food eatery business reaching out to the domain of higher education with the McUniversity ( Parker and Jary, 1995 ), theme parks as Disneyworld ( Bryman, 1999 ), politics ( Turner, 1999 ; Beilharz, 1999) and the health care sectors. The phenomenon of being McDonaldized has transformed the many aspects of the cultures within those societies, particularly, the way people live in their environments.

Although cultural differences are unchangeable forces that breed conflict and rivalry, growing global interdependence and interconnectedness may lead toward cultural standardization and uniformization as seen with the phenomenon of “McDonaldization” ( Pieterse, 1996 ). It should be noted that while businesses may slightly adapt to local realities, the fact is that the basic items available for customers are generally the same worldwide (Ritzer and Malone, 2000). Even more importantly is the fact that the core operating procedures remain similar in every outlet around the globe. Thus, the most important aspect of the McDonalized systems is in how local and global businesses operate using their standardized principles. What is actually being sold in not as relevant as the activities related to how things are organized, delivered and sold to customers; it is these steps that must abide to similar sets of principles for the business to be successful in its new global context.

Despite the contribution of the McDonaldization theory in explaining implications of globalization, Pieterse (1996 ) stresses that fast food outlets like McDonalds and the sort are not at all culturally homogenized but rather characterized by differences that reflect culturally mixed social forms. In fact, McDonaldized systems have had to adapt in order to succeed overseas. Organizations once imported, serve different social, economic and cultural functions that all need to be custom-tailored to local conditions.

In an ethnographic study of the McDonaldization theory, Talbott (1995 ) examines the fast food technique at the McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Moscow and discerns that the McDonaldization method is not precise and accurate. In fact, every point substantiated by the theory turned out to have different outcomes in Moscow. For instance, the fast food outlet appeared to function inefficiently with customers waiting for hours in extensive long line-ups to get their meals served. The prices of a typical McDonald’s meal costs more than one thirds of a Russian worker’s average daily income. Talbott (1995 ) observed that, in opposition to what the McDonaldization theory holds about predictability, the main attraction for the Russian customer is in the diversified and unique lines of products that the chain offers not the standard menu items that one thinks they may find in Russia. The latter are not even available for the Russian customer. Further, control of the labor force is not as standardized and unvarying as presented by the theory. McDonald’s Moscow offers flexibility to their employees; for instance, the chain encourages competitions among colleagues and has special hours for workers and their families. This flexibility is also extended to Russian customers that spend hours on end socializing and chatting over teas and coffees. This would be unconceivable in a North American fast food outlet as these sorts of customer practices would be strongly discouraged by the business.

Similarly, American adaptations of the fast food principles have been observed in China, south-east Asia and India. In these areas McDonald’s responds to diverse tastes as well as different customer wants and needs than their American counterparts. The Big Mac is most probably not a standard menu item in Delhi. Another important point to mention is the fact that these sorts of fast food outlets in these countries are not considered as junk food eateries but in fact cater to an upper middle class. The latter seek to explore new modern tastes of the fusion of food variations whether it is the mixed tastes of Chinese and American menu items or Japanese and American. These customers are far from adhering to the principle of uniformity. In Yan’s (1997 ) work on McDonald’s in Beijing, the author argues that the local will prevail over McDonaldization, Americanization, and globalization predicting that in the future, Chinese customers will not associate typical standard menu items with America but may in fact get to the point where they consider fries, nuggets and coke as local menu options ( Yan 1997 : 76).

The cases of McDonald in Russia and Asia evidently fall short of being considered as cultural homogenization but should rather be seen as global localization, insiderization , or glocalization , the latter term coined by Sony chairman Akio Morita to indicate the necessity for companies to look in both local and global directions when working in diverse business settings (Ohmae, 1992).

Lastly, Appadurai (1996 ) and Pieterse (2004 ) argue that cultural homogenization is too simplistic as several local cultures have demonstrated their ability to domesticate or resist foreign cultural influences. Therefore, interactions between cultures favor cultural hybridity rather than a monolithic cultural homogenization. In doing so, globalization leads to the creative amalgamations of global and local cultural traits.

7. Hybridization scenario

It is needless to mention that growing awareness of cultural differences and globalization are interdependent as awareness becomes a function of globalization ( Pieterse, 1996 ). In fact, with the advent of international workforce mobility, cross-cultural communications, migration, international trade, tourism, and global investments, awareness of cultural differences is inevitable and of vital necessity in the current global context. In this regard, Featherstone (1990) contends that globalization defines the space in which the world’s cultures merge together while generating innovative and valuable heterogeneous significance as well as culturally compelled global insights.

The process of translocal fusion and cultural mixing or hybridization is another model that touches on interactions between globalization and culture. According to the hybridization view, external and internal flows interact to create a unique cultural hybrid that encompasses components of the two ( Ritzer, 2010 ). Barriers to external flows exist; however, although they are powerful enough to protect local cultures from being overwhelmed by external exchanges, they are not powerful enough to completely block external flows.

The main thesis of cultural hybridization is the continuous process of mixing or blending cultures. The latter resulting from the globalization of ends derived out of the integration of both the global and local ( Cvetkovich and Kellner, 1997 ) and of new, distinctive and hybrid cultures which are fundamentally neither global nor local at their core ( Ritzer, 2010 ). As for Robertson (2001 ), globalization is a complex blend or mixture of homogenization and heterogenization as opposed to a wide-ranging process of homogenization.

Pieterse (1996 ) argues that hybridization is in fact an offspring rooted in the breadth of racism with inferences shedding light on the existence of the métis, half-caste and mixed-breed. The latter standpoint opposes the doctrines of racial purity and integration of the 19 th century because, according to the father of racial demography, de Gobineau, and other scholars, the idea of race-mixing with what they considered lower elements of society would eventually elevate the former in the dominant role. Based on the premise of de Gobineau’s theory of the Arayn master race, it is believed that race created culture and that mixing the white , black and yellow races broke established barriers set in place to avoid states of chaos. Based on these premises, the regions of central Asia, south and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and North African regions are mixed racial demographic areas.

Merging the races would inevitably cast doubt on pillars of the purity creeds, as for instance with those that relate purity with strength and sanctity. Hybridization takes the experiences that are marginalized and considered taboo and merges them with principles of nationalism, challenging the latter by taking matters beyond national borders. Merging cultural and national elements would undermine ethnicity because the very nature of the blending process would innately originate from the experiences spurred and acquired across territorial boundaries ( Pieterse, 1996 ). In this respect, hybridization reflects a postmodern view which curtails boundaries adhering to the merging of diverse cultures. Proponents of the tenets of modernity stand for a culture of order rooted within an unambiguous separation of national boundaries. Modernists would not tolerate that hybridization vanguards effects and experiences of what Foucault (1977 ) termed subjugated knowledge .

On another note, humanity has not been inherently divided in cultural bands as those formed in the past; hence the need for an equidistant position which acknowledges the multifaceted and overwhelming nature of modern technologies while recognizing the contribution that distinctively diverse cultures bring to the new and inventive shared common space ( Pieterse, 1996 ).

Moreover, regarding the mixing and blending of immigrants within their early settler societies, Pieterse (1996 ) alleges that the intermingling of this process engages both peripheral and deeply rooted cultural elements as observed with the case of North America. The author maintains that the appeal of American popular culture is defined by its mixed and nomadic characteristics, its light-hearted resilience, and its disconnection from its unequal and hostile past. Both marginal and peripheral cultural elements intermingled with deeply rooted facets of diverse cultures blending and merging in newly varied intercultural landscapes. This eclectic blending may be the source of the subliminal and subconscious magnetism towards American pop music, film, television, and fashion. It is an effect of the intimate intermingling and collision of different ethnicities, cultures and histories ( Pieterse, 1996 ).

Along the same lines, intercultural mingling is a deeply embedded process which is supported by Hamelink (1983 :4) who remarks that: “the richest cultural traditions emerged at the meeting point of markedly different cultures, such as Sudan, Athens, the Indus Valley and Mexico”. This sheds a different light on the surface/inherent arguments for culture. It appears that some cultures have been fused and united for centuries. And thus, the mixture of cultures should be part of a world narrative.

Pieterse (1996 ) questions whether the distinction between what has been referred to as cultural grammars as a metaphor for inherent and deep-rooted cultural elements and cultural languages which are the peripheral or marginal elements of a culture can be looked at as divergences between surface and depth at all. The author infers that to address the issues raised by the hybridization theory requires a decolonization of the imagination and the need to reassess how we examined culture in terms of territory and space in the past and how we view culture in its varied global landscapes in the present and future.

Hybridization in cultural studies has also been associated with the notions of creolization and glocalization ( Hannerz, 1987 ). The word “Creole” refers to people of mixed race but it has been extended, among each other, to the creolization of culture ( Cohen, 2007 ). Further, glocalization, which is at the heart of hybridization, refers to the interpretation of the global and local producing unique outcomes in different geographic regions ( Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007 ). Glocalization is reflected by the fact that the world is growing pluralistic with individuals and communities becoming innovative agents that have a tremendous power to adapt and innovate within their newly glocalized world ( Robertson, 2001 ).

On another note, in tune with the hybridization view, Appadurai (1990 ) argues that globalization represents a process of both differentiation and interconnection. Therefore, the world should not be labeled as a monolithic network spreading worldwide but, rather, as a collection of partially overlapping socio-techno-cultural landscapes ( Appadurai, 1990 ). The latter can be global and regional in nature, and marked by a particular speed of growth and direction of movement. These landscapes, which serve to examine disjunctures between economy, culture and politics, constitute diverse layers of globalization or dimensions of cultural flows. Mediascapes are about the flows of image and communication. Ethnoscapes are concerned with the flows of individuals around the world. Ideoscapes deal with exchanges of ideas and ideologies. Technoscapes refer to flows of technology and skills to create linkages between organizations around the world. Financescapes relate to the interactions associated with money and capital. These landscapes are independent of any given nation-state and differently affect various territories ( Ritzer, 2010 ).

The process of hybridization is distinguished from the McDonalization theory in part due to the fact that it is not derived from pre-established theorem but has ventured into a divergent unexplored and unmarked path. While homogenization in general and McDonaldization in particular evoke a victorious Americanism, hybridization is indefinite and open-ended in reference to practical experience and from a theoretical perspective ( Pieterse, 1996 ). The theory does not correspond to an established theoretical matrix or paradigm but it conjectures a shift by virtue of its nature. The hybridization thesis stands for cultural convergence and assimilation. The theory advances cultural mixing and integration without the need to give up one’s identity with cohabitation expected in the new cross-cultural prototype of difference ( Pieterse, 1996 ). The McDonaldization thesis may be interpreted as a policy of closure and apartheid ( Pieterse, 1996 ) as outsiders are encouraged to engage in the global arena but are kept at a peripheral distance by the most dominant force in the game.

In terms of limitations, the hybridization thesis may conceal the unevenness in the process of mixing and distinctions need to be made between the different types and styles of mixing as the latter may undergo different evaluation processes in diverse cultural settings ( Pieterse, 1995 ).

As a final thought, it appears that only the superficial elements of a culture are what are actually being mixed together. Conversely, the deeply rooted and inherent aspects of a culture are not subject to the blending and fusion. In fact, only the peripheral elements of culture actually navigate and traverse beyond borders and across national cultures via external and marginal rudiments such as cuisine, fashion styles, shopping habits, crafts, arts and entertainment. Meanwhile deeply rooted underlying assumptions, values and beliefs remain adjacent to their original cultural context.

8. Conclusion

Interactions between globalization and culture, particularly the influence of the former on the latter, constitute a contention point in the literature as various theoretical scenarios have been developed to examine these interactions.

The heterogenization view, which is also labeled differentiation, relates fundamentally to barriers that prevent flows that would contribute to the sameness of cultures. In the homogenization perspective, which is also known as convergence, barriers that prevent flows that would contribute to making cultures look alike are weaker and the global flows are stronger. In its extreme form, there is a possibility that local cultures can be shaped and overwhelmed by other more powerful cultures or even a global culture. According to the hybridization view, external flows interact with internal flows to create a unique cultural hybrid that encompasses components of the two ( Ritzer, 2010 ).

There is no doubt that cultures get influenced and shift through contact with other cultures. However, this influence and shift does not mean cultural standardization or convergence towards a world cultural model based on the American or the European one. Some authors have rejected the simplistic idea of homogenization and convergence (see Garrett, 1998 ) as there is empirical evidence that supports the fact that globalization preserves national particularities ( Guillén, 2001 ; Zelizer, 1999 ). In fact, nations will maintain their variety and complexity, and cultural diversity is not endangered as cultural differences between countries are maintained. Nations get involved in cultural integration processes on a regular basis without loosing their cultural peculiarities. They interpret cultural elements in light of theirs in a way that they become compatible with their culture. The adoption of a Western way of life does not mean standardization. Human societies resort to their symbolic fences in order to express their particularity and difference as a set of customs, habits, practices and productions.

To benefit from opportunities, cultures do not shut themselves off from the rest of the world, but rather they open up to other cultures in efforts to improve their social and economic capabilities. Culture openness is a phenomenon that recognizes differences between cultures, does not necessarily standardize or blend cultures and allows cultures to benefit from richness of other cultures. In the old days, individuals were subject to cultural consequences as they had to live with what their environment transmitted to them in addition to their contribution. Culture was part of individuals’ destiny as it shaped their identity and future. Nowadays, individuals have access to an immense ocean of data and information which influence their socialization through acquired behaviors and attitudes. However, these acquired elements do not constitute a source of destruction to the core components of their own native culture.

It is our contention that homogenization and hybridization are concerned with cultural artifacts rather than with cultural values and underlying philosophical assumptions of a given culture. It is noteworthy to mention that the former do not impact the latter. It seems that the superficial elements of cultures such as clothing, fashion, foods, arts, music, movies and crafts are what gets transferred whereas the deeply embedded components of cultures remain contextually bound and culturally specific. Every culture maintains its cultural particularities while absorbing and interpreting cultural characteristics of other societies with which they are in contact. In fact, cultural exchanges among nations are positive as seen with the influences that global trade transactions have exerted on cultural identities. These transactions are not purely and solely destructive and negative for local cultures, they also bring about more possibilities and opportunities. In this regard, cultures are dynamic rather than static and can incorporate foreign contributions into their components without being necessarily subject to cultural domination.

Interactions between globalization and culture hold considerable implications for both societies and organizations. In this respect, economic globalization may exert an influence in reinforcing the ideology of individualism worldwide ( Herriot and Scott-Jackson, 2002 ). As globalization promotes the flow of cultural practices and norms along with cross-border exchanges of products and goods, both societies and organizations need to understand cultural implications of these flows in hopes for better interaction with other cultures and more efficient management of international organizations. In addition, while resorting to standardized practices across cultures, organizations need to adapt these practices in light of local cultural specificities.

© 2012 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Globalization

Essays on Globalization

Hook examples for globalization essays, "the global village" metaphor hook.

"In the age of globalization, our world has transformed into a 'global village.' Explore the implications of this metaphor and how it has reshaped our understanding of interconnectedness and cultural exchange."

The Impact of Digital Connectivity Hook

"In an era where a single tweet can reach millions, digital connectivity has revolutionized globalization. Delve into the profound impact of the internet, social media, and technology on global interactions."

The Paradox of Local vs. Global Hook

"Globalization blurs the lines between local and global identities. Analyze the paradox of preserving cultural heritage while embracing the globalized world and how this tension shapes our societies."

The Global Marketplace Hook

"Globalization has ushered in an era of unprecedented trade and economic interconnectedness. Explore the dynamics of the global marketplace, from multinational corporations to supply chains spanning continents."

Cultural Fusion and Identity Hook

"Globalization has led to a melting pot of cultures, but what happens to cultural identities in the process? Investigate how globalization impacts the preservation and evolution of cultural identities."

The Challenges of Globalization Hook

"While globalization offers numerous benefits, it also presents challenges. Examine issues such as income inequality, cultural homogenization, and environmental concerns that arise in a globalized world."

The Future of Globalization Hook

"As we stand on the brink of a globalized future, what can we expect? Join me in exploring the potential trajectories of globalization, from its impact on politics to the role of emerging technologies."

The Best Globalization Essay Topics

• The Impact of Globalization on Local Cultures: Integration or Erasure?
• The Impact of Globalization on Cultural Identity in Anthropological Studies
• Globalization and Economic Inequality: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor
• The Role of Technology in Advancing Globalization and Its Social Implications
• Environmental Consequences of Globalization: Challenges and Sustainable Solutions
• Analyzing the Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalization
• The Influence of Globalization on Education and Cross-Cultural Exchanges
• Global Political Dynamics: How Globalization Affects Sovereignty and Governance
• Globalization and Health: The Spread of Diseases and Global Health Initiatives
• Consumer Culture and Globalization: The Homogenization of Global Markets

Globalization: a Double-edged Sword

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Globalization's Theories and Effects in The Modern World

The effects of globalization on health and medicine, a study on globalization and its various sides, overview of five articles about globalization, globalization: two sides of the arguments both for and against, globalization and its positive and negative sides for india, the advantages and disadvantages of the globalization process based on real-life examples, criticism and controversial benefits of globalization, globalization: importance of english nowadays, the impact of globalization, nationalism and protectionism on india, an overview of the overall impact of globalization, research of effects of globalization on the media in the world, globalisation as an economical, political and cultural process, pro globalist and anti globalist view from developed country perspective, how global issues impact individual states, electronic commerce in the globalization era, the effect of globalization and americanization on mass media, components of globalization: concept sociocultural and social globalizations, how the impact of globalization on illicit drug trafficking has affected international security, discussion of whether globalization is good or bad for the indian economy.

1. Halliday, T. C., & Osinsky, P. (2006). Globalization of law. Annu. Rev. Sociol., 32, 447-470. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.32.061604.123136) 2. Fischer, S. (2003). Globalization and its challenges. American Economic Review, 93(2), 1-30. (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/000282803321946750) 3. Lang, M. (2006). Globalization and its history. The Journal of Modern History, 78(4), 899-931. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/511251?journalCode=jmh) 4. Spring, J. (2008). Research on globalization and education. Review of educational research, 78(2), 330-363. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654308317846?journalCode=rera) 5. Scott, A., & Storper, M. (2003). Regions, globalization, development. Regional studies, 37(6-7), 579-593. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0034340032000108697a) 6. Jameson, F. (1998). Notes on globalization as a philosophical issue. In The cultures of globalization (pp. 54-78). Duke University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780822378426-005/html?lang=de) 7. Frankel, J. A. (2003). The environment and globalization. (https://www.nber.org/papers/w10090) 8. Teeple, G. (2000). What is globalization?. Globalization and its discontents, 9-23. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780333981610_2)

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Globalization is a complex phenomenon that has a big influence on various fields of human life, including economics, society, and culture. Even though trade between countries has existed since time immemorial, in the 21st-century, globalization has become an integral part of the world’s development. While businesses try to expand on a global scale, and countries’ economies are intertwined in the international network, several outcomes occur out of this process. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate the impact of globalization on the world economy, whether it is good or bad. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive review of the relevant literature will be conducted. The information will be extracted from both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources will include an interview and a chart, while the secondary sources will consist of scholarly articles and books published from the year 2015 forward. The main argument of this research is that even though globalization offers endless business opportunities, it has a number of effects that negatively influence the resources and the economy.

First of all, in order to understand this phenomenon, it is important to define the term “globalization.” Several researchers have conducted a thorough study of this subject. For example, Martell describes globalization as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away” 1 . It is a complex and multidimensional mechanism that allows a local business subdivision to integrate into the global economic system. The biggest companies of the 21st century are no longer limited to one country; they have become more multinational: businesses from several countries exchange resources, money, data, and employees. Nowadays, international relations are becoming more intense not only in politics but in the economy as well. Moreover, globalization has a significant influence on the distribution of not only skilled and unskilled labor but of capital and labor as well, both locally and globally. The tendencies of this process were analyzed by experts, for example, in the research by Chandy and Seidel, where they presented globalization trends in the form of a chart (Figure 1).

The chart above demonstrates how the GDP of the U.S. was changing while the global population was also growing. The diagram includes the analysis of foreign capital stock, merchandise exports, and migrant stock. According to it, it becomes evident that even though the world GDP was high during the 1910s, the global economy is more integrated in the 21st century. However, the researchers also point out that the economy of the U.S. is a relatively closed economy, which is surprising. Nevertheless, the study states that “it accounts for only 11 percent of global trade volumes, which is far below its 24 percent share of global GDP” 2 . In addition, despite the attempts to find evidence of the recession of globalization, Chandy and Seidel did not manage to present any. It means that the trend keeps developing as money, goods, and people continue to move around the world.

It is evident that one cannot talk about globalization without mentioning international companies. Global corporations are defined by the fact that they execute business in at least two countries 3 . They conduct various types of economic activities, for example, foreign investment, managing plants in different countries to avoid transaction costs. An example of an international firm that obtains cost advantages through foreign investments in international plants is Apple Inc.

To understand how companies conduct business internationally, several types of multinational corporations must be indicated: economists usually divide them into four categories. The first type of firm is determined by the fact that it has a strong presence in its home country. Another category is characterized by acquiring cost advantage through the means of buying cheaper resources in other countries, despite being controlled by one central office. The third type is a company that is based on the Research and Development of the parent corporation. The fourth and final category is a transnational business, which includes all features that are peculiar to the corporations that were mentioned above 3 . Since global companies generally combine different approaches to business, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between these four categories. Nestle S.A. may serve as an example of a big transnational corporation that conducts its financial operations in many countries outside of the headquarters.

Since globalization is a complicated phenomenon, many analysts and businessmen have different views on its impact. For instance, the former Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, expressed his point of view in the interview, “Can Europe Civilize Globalization?”. Despite the fact that the concerns about European civilization may recede due to this process, he states that he does not see globalization as a threat. Instead, he sees it as a reality that has to be dealt with in a professional way. Lamy explains his opinion by pointing out the fact that some European countries have managed to gain more benefits than others by means of global trade 4 . As examples, he presents Sweden and Germany, which, during the last decades of the 20th century, conducted structural reforms that allowed them to get profit from international trade.

Moreover, Lamy notes that globalization presents new challenges for businesses. They include promoting “more actively global norms in the environmental and job protection, health protection, than the reduction of trade barriers that have been now largely operated worldwide”4. In other words, the ex-director of WTO believes that this process can have a positive impact on Europe’s economy as it provides opportunities for countries to develop and grow their benefits.

As for other researchers, Burlacu, Gutu, and Matei overview both sides of globalization, pointing out positive and negative impacts. For example, the advantages include reducing the economic isolation of poor countries as they are given the opportunity to sell their goods on the global market and participate in the trade 5 . Moreover, as the economy expands, the information does it as well. It means that access to education becomes more easy and available, which increases the number of professionals who are capable of expanding and developing the business even further. In addition, according to the study, globalization “enhances the speed of commercial, financial, and technological operations”5. It can be seen even nowadays as new products and devices continue to appear on the market every year. Furthermore, globalization ensures the efficiency of the entire economic activity on a global scale.

Other researchers have also pointed out several positive aspects of this process. For example, Parente et al. talk about the sharing economy, which is a new phenomenon. Their study indicated that due to internet globalization, some companies managed to perform business online, which helped them to expand around the world and raise funds 6 . Therefore, globalization allowed firms to achieve worldwide success at an unprecedented pace. Furthermore, Martell et al. elaborated on reasons for how exactly the internalization changed economic activities. The reasons included “the speeding up of global interactions and processes as a result of the development of transport and communications”1. In other words, the spread of resources, ideas, capital, and products accelerated, which allowed businesses to develop quicker.

However, aside from positive results that can come from globalization, researchers also indicate some negative aspects to it. For instance, Burlacu et al. Note that harmful effects include an international security deficit and an increased amount of illegal migrations5. Globalization opened borders for a large number of people to move to other countries illegally. Moreover, it allowed corrupt businessmen to employ these migrants and make them work for a lesser wage, which is a violation of human rights. Moreover, economists believe that nowadays, the export of human resources has risen, which means that some countries have lost intellectual potential5. The other downsides include the deterioration of the environment, which is caused by the rapid growth of the economy.

While rethinking the effects of globalization, Broner and Ventura elaborated on the negative consequences that it can bring to domestic markets. The researchers gathered data from other scholars and concluded that “financial globalization, in addition to providing a new, cheaper source of funding for emerging markets, can have indirect effects by affecting the workings of domestic financial markets” 7 . For example, according to them, with the rise of globalization, the incidence of domestic financial crises also grows. In addition, Mamedov et al. discusses the impact on traditional economies, which, according to the study, will reach a new level of their development 8 . It is difficult to say whether such changes are positive or not since some people may be reluctant to abandon the old economic structures.

As it can be observed, primary sources and secondary sources seem to express various opinions about globalization. First and foremost, most of them seem to agree that this phenomenon is relatively new and only recently began to spread. However, then the standpoints start to differ among experts. While the interview with Lamy demonstrates that the former leader of the World Trade Organization seems optimistic about it, such secondary sources as scholarly articles and books differentiate in positions.

Some researchers identify the internalization of the economy as a beneficial process that can create new opportunities for countries to develop and expand their businesses. However, other studies make a link between globalization and several other problems, such as environmental deterioration, security issues, and the increasing number of domestic crises. The last factor is especially interesting since it contradicts the general assumption that increased international trade opportunities can improve the country’s welfare.

Moreover, the recent events that were caused by the outbreak of coronavirus exposed vulnerabilities in the current globalized economy. Since traveling is restricted, the transportation of resources has become difficult. While big international corporations managed to stay afloat, some local firms were forced to shut down, and the suspension of one company factory can lead to a closing of another. Experts argue that such an intertwined international economic relationship is what caused changes in a global supply chain, and overall, stock declines 9 . The current situation provided proof that globalization may not be that good for the world economy.

While the system offers opportunities for businesses to grow, it also has some loopholes and weak points that seriously damage the economy of not only one country but of the whole world. Moreover, the situation with the pandemic supports the argument made by Broner and Ventura. The outbreak caused domestic market crises in Asian countries, and then in Europe and America, which significantly affected the global economy. Even the help of Widespread Disease Emergency Financing Facility 10 would not be enough to restore all financial damage. As the recession of the international market became apparent, businesses in other countries have also suffered.

In addition, the environmental aspect of globalization is also important since it affects the increasing deficiency of natural resources. While companies are trying to expand their business everywhere, new factories and new plants are built around the world. While new products and new technology continue to appear on the market and the demand grows, more damage is inflicted upon the environment by the constant production.

Moreover, the higher need for transportation means that more fossil fuels are used, causing harm to the climate. There is no doubt that such issues can be resolved with the creation of new technology. However, the process of development is complicated and expensive, which can lead to additional expenditures. It can cause more federal budget deficits and increased government debt; therefore, the economy is also negatively affected by environmental issues of globalization.

For this reason, it can be said that despite all the positive aspects of globalization, it definitely has several downsides. Internationalization brought not only different cultures but the economies of various countries together, allowing businesses to grow and reach financial benefits. Furthermore, it opened opportunities for people to find jobs and expand their profit. Nevertheless, the current system is vulnerable during difficult situations, and if there is a crisis in one country, it tends to spread to others like dominoes, because the economies are deeply connected. Moreover, globalization also causes harm to other fields of human life, which are can also negatively influence not only the financial state of a particular country but the economy of the world as well.

It is evident that more research needs to be conducted as the process of globalization is complex and ongoing. There are several topics that can be further explored while studying the impact of globalization on the world’s economy. For example, one can investigate the methods that can be implemented to minimize the negative consequences of globalization that were described earlier in this paper. In order to obtain the information, one can look through the suggestions of other researchers, analyze them, and select the ones that seem the most effective.

Moreover, as the current situation with the outbreak has a major impact on the international economy, it would be interesting to study the experts’ opinions on how it will affect globalization. A huge amount of relevant information can be gathered from recent interviews, news, and scholarly articles. In conclusion, it would appear that the topic of globalization and its influence is broad and can provide a good starting point for further discussion and analysis.

Chandy, Laurence, and Brina Seidel. “Donald Trump and the future of globalization.” The Brookings Institution , 2016. Web.

Broner, Fernando, and Jaume Ventura. “Rethinking the Effects of Financial Globalization.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131, no. 3 (2016): 1497-1542.

Burlacu, Sorin, Corneliu Gutu, and Florin Octavian Matei. “Globalization – Pros and Cons.” Calitatea 19, no. S1 (2018): 122-125.

Lamy, Pascal. “Interview. Can Europe Civilize Globalization?”, The Federalist Debate 28, no. 1 (2015): 60-63.

Mamedov, Oktay, Irina Movchan, Oksana Ishchenko-Padukova, and Monika Grabowska. “Traditional Economy: Innovations, Efficiency and Globalization.” Economics & Sociology 9, no. 2 (2016): 61.

Martell, Luke. The Sociology of Globalization . John Wiley & Sons, 2016.

Parente, Ronaldo C., José-Mauricio G. Geleilate, and Ke Rong. “The Sharing Economy Globalization Phenomenon: A Research Agenda.” Journal of International Management 24, no. 1 (2018): 52-64.

• Sułkowski, Łukasz. “Covid-19 Pandemic; Recession, Virtual Revolution Leading to De-globalization?”, Journal of Intercultural Management 12, no. 1 (2020): 1-11.
• Luke Martell. The Sociology of Globalization (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 10.
• Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel. “Donald Trump and the future of globalization.” The Brookings Institution , 2016.
• Lecture on Multinational Corporation (MNC)
• Pascal Lamy. “Interview. Can Europe Civilize Globalization?”, The Federalist Debate 28, no. 1 (2015): 60.
• Burlacu, Sorin, Corneliu Gutu, and Florin Octavian Matei. “Globalization – Pros and Cons.” Calitatea 19, no. S1 (2018): 124.
• Parente, Ronaldo C., José-Mauricio G. Geleilate, and Ke Rong. “The Sharing Economy Globalization Phenomenon: A Research Agenda.” Journal of International Management 24, no. 1 (2018): 53.
• Broner, Fernando, and Jaume Ventura. “Rethinking the Effects of Financial Globalization.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131, no. 3 (2016): 1533.
• Mamedov, Oktay, Irina Movchan, Oksana Ishchenko-Padukova, and Monika Grabowska. “Traditional Economy: Innovations, Efficiency, and Globalization.” Economics & Sociology 9, no. 2 (2016): 61.
• Lecture on the World Bank
• COVID-19 and Global Economic Connections
• Changing Global Business Environment
• The Effects of Globalization on the World
• Forms and Effects of Globalization
• Globalization Phenomenon: Development and Social Change
• Guanxi in Chinese Business and Global Economy
• Cross-Cultural Negotiation Analysis
• Intercultural Competencies: Environmental Scan and Analysis
• Uncertainty and Risks Regarding Multinational Corporations’ Functioning
• Multicultural Problems in Organizations
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Globalization Is Over. The Global Culture Wars Have Begun.

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

I’m from a fortunate generation. I can remember a time — about a quarter-century ago — when the world seemed to be coming together. The great Cold War contest between communism and capitalism appeared to be over. Democracy was still spreading. Nations were becoming more economically interdependent. The internet seemed ready to foster worldwide communications. It seemed as if there would be a global convergence around a set of universal values — freedom, equality, personal dignity, pluralism, human rights.

We called this process of convergence globalization. It was, first of all, an economic and a technological process — about growing trade and investment between nations and the spread of technologies that put, say, Wikipedia instantly at our fingertips. But globalization was also a political, social and moral process.

In the 1990s, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens argued that globalization is “a shift in our very life circumstances. It is the way we now live.” It involved “the intensification of worldwide social relations.” Globalization was about the integration of worldviews, products, ideas and culture.

This fit in with an academic theory that had been floating around called Modernization Theory. The idea was that as nations developed, they would become more like us in the West — the ones who had already modernized.

In the wider public conversation, it was sometimes assumed that nations all around the world would admire the success of the Western democracies and seek to imitate us. It was sometimes assumed that as people “modernized,” they would become more bourgeois, consumerist, peaceful — just like us. It was sometimes assumed that as societies modernized, they’d become more secular, just as in Europe and parts of the United States. They’d be more driven by the desire to make money than to conquer others. They’d be more driven by the desire to settle down into suburban homes than by the fanatical ideologies or the sort of hunger for prestige and conquest that had doomed humanity to centuries of war.

This was an optimistic vision of how history would evolve, a vision of progress and convergence. Unfortunately, this vision does not describe the world we live in today. The world is not converging anymore; it’s diverging. The process of globalization has slowed and, in some cases, even kicked into reverse. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights these trends. While Ukraine’s brave fight against authoritarian aggression is an inspiration in the West, much of the world remains unmoved, even sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

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Essay on Globalization Impact On Culture

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100 Words Essay on Globalization Impact On Culture

What is globalization.

Globalization means the way countries and people of the world interact and mix. This happens through trade, technology, and travel. As different parts of the world come closer, they share things like food, music, and products. Imagine your friend from another country showing you a game from their home; that’s a small part of globalization.

Sharing Cultures

When people from different countries meet, they exchange parts of their culture. For example, you might find an Italian pizza place in your city. This mix of cultures can make life more fun and interesting, but it also helps us understand and respect each other better.

Changing Traditions

Sometimes, because of globalization, new ideas or products become so popular that they change old traditions. For instance, in some places, fast food is replacing traditional meals. This can make local cultures less noticeable and can sometimes lead to forgetting old ways of life.

Learning and Growing

Globalization also means we can learn from other cultures. For example, schools might teach languages like Spanish or Chinese, helping students to communicate with more people and understand different ways of thinking. This learning makes everyone smarter and more connected.

Protecting Culture

250 words essay on globalization impact on culture.

Globalization means the way countries and people of the world interact and connect. It is about how businesses, ideas, and lifestyles spread around the planet. For example, we can buy the same big-brand burger in many countries.

Cultures Mixing

Because of globalization, different cultures come together. People learn about new foods, languages, and traditions. This can make our lives more interesting and fun. Imagine enjoying music from a country far away or celebrating a festival from another part of the world.

Some Negative Effects

Sometimes, when big companies from rich countries come to smaller places, they can change the local way of life. Small shops might close because they can’t compete. Also, everyone starting to like the same music or movies can make the world less varied.

Protecting Local Culture

To keep their unique cultures alive, some places make efforts to protect their traditions and languages. This is like saying, “Our way of life is important and we want to keep it.” They might have special events, teach kids about their history, or encourage local businesses.

Globalization brings people and cultures closer. It can be good because it helps us understand each other better. But it’s also important to remember and care for our own traditions. By sharing and respecting different ways of life, we can all enjoy the benefits of a connected world without losing what makes us special.

500 Words Essay on Globalization Impact On Culture

Sharing cultures around the world.

One of the first things we notice about globalization is how it lets us share our cultures. For example, you might eat Italian pizza in New York, watch a Bollywood movie in Australia, or dance to K-pop music in Brazil. This mixing of cultures can help us learn about and enjoy things from different parts of the world.

Learning New Things

With globalization, we get to learn new things from other cultures. Many schools now teach languages like Spanish or Chinese, and students learn about festivals from other countries. This helps us understand people who are different from us and teaches us to respect their ways of life.

Changes in Local Culture

Keeping traditional culture alive.

Even with globalization, it’s important to keep traditional culture alive. Many people still celebrate their local festivals, wear traditional clothes, and cook their family’s recipes. This helps to make sure that the unique parts of every culture don’t disappear.

Understanding and Respect

Globalization can teach us to be more understanding and respectful of each other. When we see that people around the world have different ways of living, we can learn to be kind and open-minded. It’s like making new friends from all over the globe and finding out how much we all have in common.

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✍️Essay on Globalisation: Samples in 100, 150 and 200 Words

• Updated on  
• Oct 25, 2023

Globalisation means the combination of economies and societies with the help of information, ideas, technology, finance, goods, services, and people. It is a process where multinational companies work on their international standing and conduct operations internationally or overseas. Over the years, Globalisation has had a profound impact on various aspects of society. Today we will be discussing what globalisation is and how it came into existence with the essay on globalisation listed below.

Table of Contents

• 1 How Globalisation Came Into Existence?
• 2 Essay on Globalisation in 100 Words
• 3 Essay on Globalisation in 150 Words
• 4 Essay on Globalisation in 200 Words

How Globalisation Came Into Existence?

For all those unaware, the concepts of globalisation first emerged in the 20th century. Here are some of the key events which led to the development of globalisation in today’s digital world.

• The ancient Silk Route as well as the maritime routes led to the exchange of goods, ideas and culture in several countries. Although these were just trade routes, but later became important centres for cultural exchange.
• Other than this, the European colonial expansion which took place from the 15th to the 20th century led to the setting up of global markets where both knowledge and people were transferred to several developing countries. 
• The evolution and exchange of mass media, cinema and the internet further led to the widespread dissemination of cultures and ideas.

Also Read: Essay on the Importance of the English Language for Students

Essay on Globalisation in 100 Words

Globalization, the interconnectedness of nations through trade, technology, and cultural exchange, has reshaped the world. It has enabled the free flow of goods and information, fostering economic growth and cultural diversity. However, it also raises challenges such as income inequality and cultural homogenization. 

In a globalized world, businesses expand internationally, but local industries can suffer. Moreover, while globalization promotes shared knowledge, it can erode local traditions. Striking a balance between the benefits and drawbacks of globalization is essential to ensure a more equitable and culturally diverse global community, where economies thrive without leaving anyone behind.

Also Read: Essay on Save Environment: Samples in 100, 200, 300 Words

Essay on Globalisation in 150 Words

Globalization is the process of increasing interconnectedness and interdependence among countries, economies, and cultures. It has transformed the world in various ways.

Economically, globalization has facilitated the flow of goods, services, and capital across borders. This has boosted economic growth and reduced poverty in many developing nations. However, it has also led to income inequality and job displacement in some regions.

Culturally, globalization has resulted in the spread of ideas, values, and cultural products worldwide. While this fosters cultural exchange and diversity, it also raises concerns about cultural homogenization.

Technologically, globalization has been driven by advances in communication and transportation. The internet and smartphones have connected people across the globe, allowing for rapid information dissemination and collaboration.

In conclusion, globalization is a complex phenomenon with both benefits and challenges. It has reshaped the world, bringing people closer together, but also highlighting the need for responsible governance and policies to address its downsides.

Also Read: Essay on Unity in Diversity in 100 to 200 Words

Essay on Globalisation in 200 Words

Globalization, a multifaceted phenomenon, has reshaped the world over the past few decades. It involves the interconnectedness of economies, cultures, and societies across the globe. In this essay, we will briefly discuss its key aspects and impacts.

Economically, globalization has led to increased international trade and investment. It has allowed companies to expand operations globally, leading to economic growth in many countries. However, it has also resulted in income inequality and job displacement in some regions.

Culturally, globalization has facilitated the exchange of ideas, values, and traditions. This has led to a more diverse and interconnected world where cultures blend, but it can also challenge local traditions and languages.

Socially, globalization has improved access to information and technology. It has connected people across borders, enabling global activism and awareness of worldwide issues. Nonetheless, it has also created challenges like cybercrime and privacy concerns.

In conclusion, globalization is a double-edged sword. It offers economic opportunities, cultural exchange, and global connectivity, but it also brings about disparities, cultural tensions, and new global challenges. To navigate this complex landscape, the world must strive for responsible globalization that balances the interests of all stakeholders and promotes inclusivity and sustainability.

Related Articles

The movement of goods, technologies, information, and jobs between countries is referred to as globalisation. 

Globalization as a phenomenon began with the earliest human migratory routes, or with Genghis Khan’s invasions, or travel across the Silk Road.

Globalisation allows wealthy nations to access cheaper labour and resources, while also providing opportunity for developing and underdeveloped nations with the jobs and investment capital they require.

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay-writing page and follow Leverage Edu ! 

Malvika Chawla

Malvika is a content writer cum news freak who comes with a strong background in Journalism and has worked with renowned news websites such as News 9 and The Financial Express to name a few. When not writing, she can be found bringing life to the canvasses by painting on them.

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Cultural globalization: short essay on cultural globalization.

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Cultural Globalization: Short Essay on Cultural Globalization!

Nowadays, there is much talk and discussion about cultural globalization, i.e., a common culture is developing across the globe. To some extent, it is true despite some resistance from national culture, as both are developing side by side. Generally, the word ‘culture’ is used to mean ‘the total way of life’ to include economic, political and social norms, values and behaviour.

Globalization is seen as the intermixing of people, cultures, economies and technologies. Modem cultural globalization is a new phenomenon. It started with economic global­ization—spread of transnational corporations and global commodities, especially food and drinks items like pizza and coke, and dress material such as Levi jeans, Reebok and Nike shoes, etc.

In this way, we are all sharing in a common transna­tional form of consumption. This developing consumerism has encouraged mass common consumer culture which reflects a powerful grip on societies throughout the world. As consumerism spreads, changes are visible in lifestyles, cultural tastes, food habits, dress patterns and in modes of entertainment also.

As an example, gastroenteritis—a disease associated with eating habits—reflects the impact of globalization. The rise of eating disorder, use of more and more fast foods and irregularity in eating have contributed much to the disease of gastric disorder.

Neo-Marxist sociologists argue that the process of globalization is not only limited to consumer articles, but it is also accompanied by ideas and more generally ideologies which sustain the consumer culture. Changes even in norms and values are quite striking. Globalization encourages a growing integration and convergence of cultural relations.

The concept of cultural globalization is closely linked with economic globalization. Mike Featherstone (1990) argued that as a result of the devel­opment of financial markets, the main actors share many business and lifestyles norms and values.

As an example, he cited that there is a close relationship between leisure activities and work. Other scholars have stressed on the emergence of global patterns of consumption and consumerism, the cultivation of cosmopolitan lifestyles, and the spread of popular culture (e.g., Madonna or Michael Jackson’s latest songs) as the basis of the development of cultural globalization.

Thus, increased economic linkages led to cultural influences across countries. The key agents of globalization of culture are transnational corporations, cultural and media agencies that go beyond the nation-state.

In spreading cultural globalization, technology has played a crucial role. Technology, in reality, has shrunk the world in our palm. Revolutions in electronic communication (such as radio, TV, cinema, telephone, mobile, fax, Internet, etc.) and rapid means of transportation have produced an indelible impact on local, regional and national cultures because these means can now reach swiftly even the remotest corner of any country.

As a result, the world is slowly and slowly becoming as one place. Both the media and geographical mobility feed this perception. Giddens (1997) has called this phenomenon as ‘time-space distantiation’ meaning separation of time and space brought about by modern communication.

Problems, like floods in Thailand or Indonesia, famine in Ethiopia, tsunami in Japan and events like World Football Compe­tition or Olympics in China or England have a global dimension. Similarly, creations of international economic, political, social and other agencies like UNO, WHO, UNESCO, UNDP, IMF, World Bank, human rights organizations, and the complex interchange between world systems, have contributed to a large extent global cultural homogeneity.

Over and above, science and secularization of thought are the main factors in developing the critical and innovative character of the modern outlook and this in turn has helped in spreading cultural globalization. People no longer assume that customs or habits are acceptable merely because they have the age-old authority of tradition.

On the contrary, our ways of life have increas­ingly based on rationality. In addition to how we think, the content of ideas has also changed. Ideals of self-betterment, freedom, equality and democratic participation are largely creations of the past two or three centuries. Such ideals have served to mobilize the process of globalization of culture.

Globalization has affected cultures in two ways: Firstly, it has tried to homogenize the cultures. We can see this in dress pattern such as pent and shirt and to some extent in food recipes—pizza, Chinese noodles, etc. On the other hand, globalization has helped in the resurgence of local culture. This we can observe in the revival of traditional cultures and reforming of the identity.

Cultural globalization is also marked with some new trends in human relations. Recognition of a worldwide ecological crisis, the development of worldwide concern about health problems such as AIDS and other diseases, extension of the concept of human rights and the creation of global democratic movements are a few examples of integration that is taking place between different nation-states.

Related Articles:

• Essay on Globalization and Popular Culture
• Globalization: Short paragraph on Globalization

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Impact of globalization on Indian culture | Sociology Optional for UPSC Civil Services Examination | Triumph IAS

Table of Contents

IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON INDIAN CULTURE

Relevant for ups-cse general studies paper 1 (impact of globalization of indian society).

GLOBALIZATION ON INDIAN CULTURE

Globalization is a process of increasing interdependence, interconnectedness and integration of economies and societies to such an extent that an event in one part of the globe affects people in other parts of world.

The effect of globalization is far reaching. It affects us all but affects us differently. Thus, while for some it may mean new opportunities, for others the loss of livelihood. Women silk spinners and twisters of Bihar lost their jobs once the Chinese and Korean silk yarn entered the market. Weavers and consumers prefer this yarn as it is somewhat cheaper and has a shine.

Similar displacements have come with the entry of large fishing vessels into Indian waters. These vessels take away the fish that used to be earlier collected by Indian fishing vessels. The livelihood of women fish sorters, dryers, vendors and net makers thereby get affected. In Gujarat, women gum collectors, who were picking from the ‘julifera’ (Baval trees), lost their employment due to the import of cheaper gum from Sudan. In almost all cities of India, the rag pickers lost some of their employment due to import of waste paper from developed countries.

It is obvious that globalization is of great social significance. But its impact on different sections of society is very different. There are, therefore, sharply divided views about the impact of globalization regarding its effect. Some believe that it is necessary to herald a better world.

Impact of Globalization on Indian Culture

• There are many ways that globalization affects culture. Over the ages India has had an open approach to cultural influences and has been enriched because of this. The last few decades have seen major cultural changes leading to fears that our local cultures would be overtaken. Thus there are heated debates in our society not just about political and economic issues but also about changes in clothes, styles, music, films, languages, body language. The debate is not new and 19th century reformers and early nationalists also debated on culture and tradition. The issues today are in some ways the same, in some ways different. What is perhaps different is the scale and intensity of change.
• A central contention is that all cultures will become similar, that is homogeneous. Others argue that there is an increasing tendency towards globalization of culture. Globalization refers to the mixing of the global with the local. It is not entirely spontaneous. Nor is it entirely delinked from the commercial interests of globalization. It is a strategy often adopted by foreign firms while dealing with local traditions in order to enhance their marketability. In India, we find that all the foreign television channels like Star, MTV, Channel V and Cartoon Network use Indian languages. Even McDonald sells only vegetarian and chicken products in India and not its beef products, which are popular abroad. McDonald’s goes vegetarian during the Navaratri festival . In the field of music, one can see the growth of popularity of ‘ Bhangra pop ’, ‘Indi pop’, fusion music and even remixes.
• Joint family has been adversely affected due to globalization. There has been an increase in nuclear families. This can be clearly manifested in the increasing number of old age homes that are present now. The diversity in family forms has given way to a dominance of nuclear family in the globalized India
• Due to opening up of food joints like McDonalds, KFC across the country, there has been a homogenization of food available across the country, but there has also been heterogenization in food. Old restaurants are now replaced by Mc. Donalds . Fast food and Chinese dishes have replaced juice corners and Parathas.
• Borrowing of money has become more acceptable now as compared to the past. Taking loans is very common due to increasing access to financial institutions
• In place of old cinema halls, multiplex theatres are coming up.
• Use of English has increased manifold in urban areas, this has led to a homogenization in language across the country, but the rural areas have been less affected by it.

Globalization  of Culture

• India has its unique cuisine, but the cuisines of foreign countries have become more easily available, they are modified to suit the taste buds of Indians (like Paneer Tikka Burger in McDonalds) . This has led to a wide variety of food being available, leading to heterogenization French, German and Spanish are taught to students right from school level along with indigenous languages, this is an exemplification of hybridization of culture
• Popularity of foreign movies has increased, Hollywood, Chinese, French and Korean movies are quite popular among the urban youth. Along with this, dubbing of these foreign movies in local languages is testimony of increased glocalization. Festivals: celebrations of Valentines’ day, Friendship day are examples of change in cultural values related to festival. However, along with these new days, traditional festivals are celebrated with equal enthusiasm.
• Importance of marriage is decreasing, there has been an increase in divorce, increase in live-in relationships, and single parenting is increasing. Marriage used to be considered as bonding of the souls; but today marriage is becoming professional and contractual. However, despite change in forms of marriage, it has not declined as an institution.

Revival of Culture

• Revival of Yoga in the country as well as in the international level. This can be seen in the popularity of the ‘Art of Living’ course by Ravi Shankar, or the celebration of International Yoga day across the world
• There has been a revival of ayurvedic medicines in the country as well as outside it.
• Due to increasing uncertainty by inter-linkage with the outside world, there has been religious revivalism. This can be manifested in the use of religion to attract voters, or mobilizing people on the basis of religion.
• Increasing demand for local handicraft products in global market, such as Chikenkari or bandhani.
• Due to increasing global tourism, locals are making efforts to preserve their diversity and revive their traditions.

All these changes have led to drastic changes to Indian culture, though most of these changes are confined to the urban areas, but the rural areas are fast catching up. We can see that the western culture is influencing the Indian culture, but it is not replacing it, rather there is a mixture of both cultures. It is to be noted that culture cannot be seen as an unchanging fixed entity that can either collapse or remain the same when faced with social change. What is more likely even today is that globalization will lead to the creation of not just new local traditions but global ones too.

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Impact of Globalization, Indian Culture, Social Significance, Globalization of Culture, Revival of Culture, Nuclear Families, Revival, Social Structures, Chikenkari or bandhani

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One comment

Hey there! Your essay was rather eye-opening, but I couldn’t help but notice that you, in your admirable attempt to convey the widespread effects of globalisation in our country, may have conveyed what can be best described as unsubstantiated hearsay and anecdotal evidence as proof of your claims. I would love to see some data regarding the various points you’ve gone over in your essay. Cheers.

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