Globalization and Culture

Why has globalization become so wide spread?

Introduction

Globalization is nowadays one of the most popular words. It is present everywhere in public discourse. We can hear it on TV news, in parliament debates; we can read it in journals. In every single instance the world globalization seems to have a different meaning in a different situation. I think that everyone will agree with the claim that globalization is a huge, complex process that changes world in front of our eyes. It affects every sphere of our life- economical, political and social.

Discussion

Globalization

The term is in common usage since '80. By some, it is enthusiastic considered as an inevitable process - a key to economic development and integration. Others regard it with fear believing that it will increase a gap between poor and rich countries.

Globalization has economic and political roots and effects but except them it has also put into a spotlight the power of culture in a new global environment. Globalization lies at the heart of modern culture; cultural practices lie in the heart of globalization (Barber, pp 121-189).

Culture

The total pattern of human behavior and its products embodied in speech, action, and artifacts and dependent upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. It can be also understood as the order of life in which people construct meaning through practices of symbolic representation. Language, religion, political and legal system, social customs are the most important components of cultural identity. They are considered as the rudiments of people's identity (Breidenbach, pp 34-135).

Globalization and Culture

The best way to relate Globalization and Culture is to see it as a one of the dimension of this multidimensional process. Culture matters for globalization in the obvious way- it is the core of whole idea of complex connectivity. We can even try to consider it as constitutive aspects of it. The argument, justifying so priority to culture, that symbolic exchanges are now not limited because of the 'stretching' relations and the world, is only scarcely convincing(Barber, pp 121-189). The real problem lies in the way we conceive of culture as having consequences. People do not produce meaning by themselves. It is the cultural signification and interpretation that constantly orientates them, as well in the individual as in the collective aspect. Because of the connectivity local lifestyles have become global consequential. Moreover, local individual actions are connected with the 'global social world'. And why does globalization matter for culture? First of all, it promotes physical mobility stronger than ever before. (Huntington, pp 121-18).

As a result of increasing cultural contact a number of traditional practices disappear. But at the same time the globalization of culture leads to emergence of new cultural forms. Pointing this out, everywhere the cultural diffusion creates new practices, worldviews, and expressions. In the shadow of this, new transnational communities come into being. They are more bound together by common interest, social and cultural similarities than by geographical closeness. Both processes confirm conceiving of the ...