One day the god Shiva teased his wife, the goddess Parvati, about her dark skin; he called her ‘Kali’ and said that her dark body against his white body was like a black snake coiled around a pale sandalwood tree. When she responded angrily, they began to argue and to hurl insults at one another. Furious, she went away to generate inner heat in order to obtain a fair, golden, skin.’ -Padma Purana, Hindu religious text*(1) ‘Wanted: fair, young bride for eligible Brahmin boy.’ -A matrimonial advertisement from a popular newspaper Do you see any commonality between the aforementioned statements? If you read them once again, you will realize that these are evidences of the deep rooted cultural hegemony in India. This ‘hegemonic whiteness’ has not only invaded our caste system and our concept of beauty, but we see that it stems all the way back from our predominant religious faith i.e. Hinduism. Anybody who reads this will be influenced and imagine the impact it would have had on devotees in India. Further I will elaborate on more such reasons why even educated people are still drowned in their safe haven of white superiority and the way it has spread in India through media. Many scholars have written about this ‘white superiority and how India is still a growing market for fairness products.’ Let us compare the previous literature on this topic and see if we can derive any concrete results or solutions to remedy this highly unethical mindset that has eluded the dark skinned
The Smolinski family in Bread Givers was a typical immigrant family who faced struggles during the assimilation process. By looking at Sara and her father¡¯s perspectives that there is a gap of cultural differences and generational differences separated between them, where most immigrants¡¯ family faces. As a child of immigrant Sara was bound by her native culture, but she unlike her other sisters took the courage and effort by abandoning her own culture to assimilate the dominant American culture. She also have sacrificed her family separation, her youth and experiencing hardship in order to pursuit her dream.
Dina Gerdeman’s article discusses how the cosmetic industry in India has created a stereotype in which individuals with lighter skin tones are more acceptable and successful in comparison to those with darker skin tones. The media has portrayed this image persistently despite social activists arguing against the implications. Even though many campaigns have been created to combat this stereotype, the March 2016 case author of “Fair & Lovely vs. Dark is Beautiful,” Rohit Deshpande says, “…if you look at whether it’s done anything to affect the sales of the product category, the answer is no. This is a big market by any standards, and it’s growing exponentially” (para. 12). By the cosmetic industry’s perspective, “The government
1. Ben Franklin, pointing to the sun carved on the back of the presiding officer's chair, remarked; "Throughout the days we have been laboring here, I have observed that sun, and wondered whether it was a rising sun or a setting sun. Now I know it was a rising sun."1 Throughout our lives we have been told of how our country was formed. I am here to tell you about the things the history books and teachers don’t tell you about the freemasons and there shaping of the United States of America. We will start with freemasons an agency that has been shaping history since the building of King Solomon’s temple.
According to Gary Colombo “Beginning college can be disconcerting experience.” (Gary Colombo, p. 1). Colombo also writes about how it might be stressful for students being it’s their first time away from home and has to deal with the stress from the real world and having independence. Colombo also explains that students will have to use their brains when thinking Critically and thinking outside the box. Colombo mentions that “Culture shapes the way we think; it tells us what “makes sense” “(Colombo, p. 3).
Through stories like Blaxicans, Of Plymouth Plantation, and Mother Tongue, the element of immigration is shown strongly throughout. The encounters of immigration are in America with other cultures and each culture deals with different encounters followed by different struggles. These encounters affected the people coming to america and the people already in America but overall it changed America as a whole nation. Immigration changed America and the lives of those who settled here through widespreads of cultural diffusion.
For centuries, racism has become the universal epitome of culture, despite the efforts of various civilizations, such as the Western and European to combat these indifferences among people. A race is specific social group that can be differentiated through various ways, from facial features and hair textures, to social norms and habits that constitutes to that group. These differences contribute to our uniqueness and humanity. Because people can be grouped by any number of differences, Man, lead by his ignorance, perpetuated the issue once social-hierarchies began to develop, splitting society to its various groups. As a result, social disparity from one’s upbringing became the common tendency to look down, or look up at people of other
acceptable within the Mexican culture and conforms to their local norms and practices. I have travelled
Part time emphasizes half,somewhat legal alien,outsider, and not committed. It represents something that is not fully developed/part of something.
In the novel, What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera, the main protagonist Ganga has always been one of the lightest skinned children in her part of Sri Lanka, people often called her white girl and she was very content with her life thinking she looked like the white people that everyone wanted to be. This dream of hers was crushed when she moved to the United states after her father’s death. She soon realized that she was very dark compared the girls in the united states and she had no idea how to adjust and feel. This new world was a shock for her and what she was used to in Sri Lanka, her hair, face, and clothes were nothing like those of the white girls. Ganga’s emotions towards being the pale one, and then being the dark one can be considered to be part of “intra-racial racism” which means in the simplest of terms, racism inside a community (Tyson 346).
Globalization is far reaching in this day and age. Globalization is the worldwide flow of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture. It leads to a greater interdependence and mutual awareness among the people of the world (Tischler, 2011, 2007, p. 430). One non-Western culture that has been impacted by globalization is China. An example of the impact of globalization on China is their economy. Since joining the World Trade Organization, China has transformed from a culture that relied on economic self-sufficiency and shunned the thought of globalization to an economy that is progressively more open to trade and foreign investment.
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
Understanding the facts that are presented by Gramsci, Raymond and Althusser, regarding the growth of the theory of cultural hegemony that is typically originated from Marxist ideas and the post colonial theory, it is indispensable to apply this to the novels of Doris Lessing. The novels of Lessing are written mostly about women who lived in the colonial countries and have experienced the problems of the colonizer and repercussion of colonization. The novels chosen for this research are The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Children of Violence series. The projected thesis aims to study the hidden injuries of a class which is hurt by the so called rulers. It is the aim of the scholar to bring out the elements which reveal the dignity of the oppressed, and the economism and politics of the author as externalized in the selected novels. The main aim is to study the elements hegemony in these novels. There is great evidence that can be culled from these novels about the fragmented societies where gender, race and class determine the destiny of people. The author uses a conventional tone in her
If we look at the world today, there are millions of cultures centered everywhere. With this much cultures in the world, everyone is bound to believe that they’re all different. Even though they are different in some aspects, all of them are similar to each other in some way. So if this is the case, do we as human beings have the right to judge these cultures as ethically wrong or just a cultural difference? Cultural Relativism is the belief that we cannot judge the cultural practices of other societies and that we should let them do as they please. But if we cannot judge them, does it make it right when they threaten the lives of others? Through the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we begin to have a deeper insight this idea of
After World War II, some ambitious leaders advocated the establishment of an effective mechanism to stabilize the world order. One of the ways to maintain the international order is to prevent the disintegration of the world economy (Seitz, 1995, p. 26). Under such a background, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded, and then accelerated the development of economic globalization. As there is an inseparable relationship between economy and culture, the more the trend of economic globalization accelerates, the faster the trend of various culture globalization blends (Seitz, 1995, p. 27). Collisions between various cultures may have different consequences. Some scholars think that the long-term results of culture clash might lead to
Globalisation is the process of interconnectedness and the integration of national and regional culture, economies, and society through the global network of communication, immigration, transportation and trade (Financial Times Lexicon, 2017). According to Reiche (2014), globalisation did not mean much in the past fifty years. It could be primarily focused on the trade and also foreign direct investment which are the economic side of the world but it has been expanded to a broader range which including media, culture, technology, trades and political factors nowadays. Although globalisation is considered as a wide range nowadays, it still can be classified as four main characteristics which are stretched social relations, intensification of flows, increasing interpenetration, and global infrastructure (Held, 2004). However, cultural imperialism has the most typical impacts on globalisation. This essay will define and explain cultural imperialism and its impact from the pessimistic globalist and transformationalist perspective.