Globalization is the trend towards greater interconnectedness between people. Social globalization, in particular, focusses on the process by which people's lifestyles are influenced by global networks. One common effect of globalization is cultural homogenization: the reduction of cultural diversity.
Cultural homogenization is a direct result of globalization and is actually considered one of its main characteristics. When people are exposed to different cultures, they may choose to ignore their own customs and follow the traditions of what they see instead. This creates a single, popular monoculture.
There are differing views as to whether a monoculture is beneficial or harmful. One perspective is that a common global identity should
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Citizens are most likely to choose governments who represent their views or pressure their governments to behave in a way that reflects their point of view. Therefore, when people around the world have the same beliefs and values, the governments around the world have the same beliefs and values. Since all countries will be working towards similar objectives, governments will be more cooperative. They will not work against and undermine each other when they are trying to accomplish the same goals. Governments will be more productive and efficient. International policies, treaties, and agreements will be more easily created because they are a powerful way to attain objectives. The North American Free Trade Agreement, one of the most influential agreements in the last century, was created because countries desired to realize the same aims. Mexico, Canada and the United States of America all wished to improve economic prosperity and were particularly interested in free trade. The similar points of views of these countries made the North American Free Trade Agreement possible. If all countries in the world were to have similar points of views, more of these agreements would occur, making governments further successful in accomplishing what they
Critics of globalization have accused globalization of causing homogeneity thereby threatening cultural diversity. Cultural diversity, by definition, would be said to be a situation whereby each group of people is allowed to retain their cultural practices and beliefs without contamination with other cultural practices and beliefs from other cultures from across the world. Globalization is accused of hindering cultural diversity because it has enabled people from varied cultures across the world to interact thereby contaminating there cultures. For instance, in the case of the people of Kumasi entry by foreigners is accused to have contaminated the culture of the people living in the region.
According to Osterhammel and Petersson, globalization “summarizes a wide spectrum of experiences shared by many people” (2). I agree with this statement and would go on to claim that globalization is a group of processes and events, some beneficial and some harmful, that have resulted in the spread of networks across the world. However, this spread of networks did not happen over night. This is in part because not all interactions are transformed into networks, as these require a certain degree of longevity. In order for interactions to become networks, groups must consider the range between each other and their interactions must be important or impactful, intense, fast, durable, and frequent. For the reason that each of these characteristics must be present in order for networks to form, globalization has been in the works for many centuries and is still at work today. Therefore, while the historical events and processes of past centuries have provided the roots of globalization, the modernization of recent decades has built upon these roots to connect the world in a way
Some argue that globalization will, on the long term, bring all cultures as a unique Western, if not Americanized, culture, while others argue that some cultures will persist in order to keep their own essence and therefore avoid the homogenization of all cultures. Alongside pure tradition, global conflicts, contradictory political regimes and the diversity of economic systems, some cultures are bound to face issues when trying to fully fit in a global western culture, and that is why cultures are adaptable to one another, but with some limits that we will express in this essay.
Even though there are set values that are universally known to the public, people do not always follow those values within their groups. However, these people have to act in conformity and abide by the values in public. Although everyone assumes that “imagined communities” contain a common culture, in reality, they really do not due to the fact that there are many body of ideas and practices that are not shared. Many languages are spoken and countless number of religions are practiced in various countries, so these make the “common culture” idea a misconception among citizens of different countries. For example, people tend to think that America consists of culture that is common, but they do not know if the beliefs, values, and practices are universally shared by all Americans. Nonetheless, there was a time when a dominant culture in the United States actually existed. It was during when the religion of Christianity was prominent and when many countries in Europe spoke the English language. It should be known that black Americans, Chinese-Americans, and white Americans have a common culture because of everything they do and do not share. From the common culture would arise the social identity, which can cause problems in diversity. Diversity can be an issue because of the ignorance of all the contrasting values. These issues arise because racial and ethnic identities are compared to one another and both can also relate to genders and sexualities. Nevermore, distinct genders and sexualities often live together now with the same knowledge and values and can still grow into opposite racial identities. Ethnic identities are so different since they are created in family and community life and people want the solidarity from being unique to one
Globalization is the process by which different societies and cultures integrate through a worldwide network of political ideas through transportation, communication, and trade. Generally, globalization has affected many nations in various ways; economically, politically, and socially. It is a term that refers to the fast integration and interdependence of various nations, which shapes the world affairs on a global level. Simply put; globalization is the world coming together. In this essay I will discuss multiple perspectives on globalization through the analysis of these three sources.
Globalization is the process through which the world is slowly but surely getting interconnected. The relation is as a result of the exchange of cultural
Globalization: The process of social, political, economic, cultural, and technological integration among countries around the world (Luthans & Doh, 2012).
We, as U.S. citizens, have a unique position in the world’s affairs as a developed global power. Despite this, the mindsets held by most modern Americans regarding the rest of the world tend to be shallow or ill-informed. Even further, these beliefs harm the minority communities residing within our own country as well. Monoculturalism refers to the act of encouraging /a national popular culture via the exclusion of outside influences. A monocultural society in today’s day and age can have several negative impacts on our society such as an dismissive, closed off mindset and a shift towards homogenous thinking in the human species.
Globalization can be defined as ‘international integration’, which can be described as the process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and functioning together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, and political forces (dictionary.com).
Frequently, people are unclear of exactly what Globalization means. Globalization is the tendency of the world's economies to act as a single interdependent economy. It can be described as the increased movement of people, knowledge, ideas, goods and money across national borders to make the world more unified in a sense. Globalization is often thought of in economic terms but as we know there are other components with this idea like, economics, and cultures. There is a huge debate of whether or not globalization is positive or negative.
Cultural individuality and distinctiveness is the pride of every nation. All communities rejoice in the richness and exoticness of their own cultural symbols, be it dressing, architecture, language or way-of-life. With the dawn of globalization, however, cultural variety and distinguishing characteristics are vanishing; giving rise to a monoculture common to all. While this may be a harbinger of unity and relatedness among all people of the world, it also damages the unique cultural identities they once took pride in. This paper discusses the effects of globalization on culture, along with its positive and negative effects. Since the effects of globalization on culture are non-exhaustive, it is attempted to incorporate a few of the most
Today more than ever, individuals and societies are built as an integration of different cultures and carry different characteristics that construct their unique identity.
First, we can look at how Steger defines globalization to gain a better understanding of what globalization actually is. In his book “Globalization: A Very Short Introduction,” Manfred B. Steger states, “Globalization refers to the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space” (Steger 2003, 15). To break his definition down further, expansion and intensification of how people react with each other means that more challenges in social interaction with each other
Another possibility is the integration of different cultures, which is a diversified phenomenon by participating fully into the dominant society that may lead to some shared values and features, while keeping their own distinctive cultures (Berry,
Globalization is a major issue in our world today. But it can be seen through many different perspectives, some see it as a negative thing, but some people also see the positives within it and some people have mixed views. Globalization is the spreading of different views, this can political views, social views, and economic views being spread throughout the world where it once wasn’t present. Globalization shapes the way people live and what they do on a day to day basis, or what’s going on around them like technological advancement. Globalization affects everyone, what we do, what we eat all shapes our individual and collective identities.