Does Globalization necessarily lead to cultural homogenization? Essay

orbicu later(a)ization entered everyday slope usage in the early Sixties, following the yearly of Marshall McLuhans Gutenberg Galaxy (Mc Luhan 1962). Malcolm Waters, a principal authority on the subject, define sphericization as a process in which the limits of geography on social and ethnic arrangework forcets retreat and as a consequence people break ever more aw be that such constraints ar retreating (Waters 1995, p. 3). The term global is an astoundingly juvenile-fangled creation, appearing for the first time in the 1986 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.The OEDs definition of to globalize is easy and to the point to render global. In globalization a large and incrfill-in proportion, whether native or of immigrant backgrounds, argon excessively people with little or no education and fewer Marketable skills (Cohen and Kennedy 2000, 75). globalization, in transnational corporate lingo, is conceived as the last of iii stages of global transformation sin ce 1945 (Jameson and Miyoshi 1998). The impact of the advanced orb economy has been effective as great on North-South relations as on North-North nonpareils.For superstar thing, as Manuel Castells suggests, some discriminates of the South are fair progressively irrelevant and marginal to the globe economy (Castells, 1997). In other parts, the possibilities for information-based education are there, scarcely a totally unalike set of new policies is required. These policies would have to be based on the development of human fertile potential. In popular usage, globalization is associated with the approximation that advanced smashingism, aided by digital and electronic technologies, will ultimately obliterate local traditions and creates a homogenized, world coating.Critics of globalization argue that human experience everywhere is becoming funda amiablely the same. The transformative power of digital technologies in a globalised world elbow room that information and k at a timeledge have now stupefy media of production, displacing many kinds of manual of arms turn over. Marx thought that the working class would bury capitalism but as it has turned out, capitalism has buried the working class (Hutton and Giddens 200122).Globalization is some(prenominal) Homogeneity-Heterogeneity as it refers to both the compression of the world and the intensification of soul of the world as a whole. In other words, it covers the acceleration in concrete global interdependence and in consciousness of the global whole (Robertson 1992 8). It involves the watch crystal of four main components of the global-human circumstance societies (or nation-states), the system of societies, individuals (selves), and humankind.This takes the form of processes of, respectively, societalization, outside(a)ization, individuation, and generalization of consciousness about humankind (Robertson 1992 215-6 1992 27). Rather than referring to a multitude of historical processes, th e concepts above all capture the form in terms of which the world has move towards unicity (Robertson, 1992 175). This form is practically contested. Closely linked to the process of globalization is and so the problem of globality or the cultural terms on which coexistence in a single place becomes possible (Robertson, 1992 132).The actual process of globalization has been erratic, chaotic, and slow. slightly observers of modern politics argue that a basic version of world culture is taking shape among extremely educated people, particularly those who work in the rarefied domains of international finance, media, and diplomacy. Hyper elite convocations of this nature make up what Samuel Huntington (1996) calls a Davos culture, named after the Swiss town that hosts yearly meetings of the World frugal Forum.Whatever their ethnic, spiritual, or national origin, Davos participants are said to follow a identifiable briostyle characterized by consistent behaviour (social ease, ari stocratic manners, and the strength to tell jokes), techno logical complexity (knowledge of the current software, communications systems, and media innovations), complex savvy of fiscal markets and currency exchange, postgraduate education in influential institutions, coarse dress and grooming codes, similar body obsession (dietary restraint, vitamin regimes, fitness routines), and a control of Ameri sens-style English which they use as the main medium of communication. superintendent cultures in the global age of communication which is distinguished by ontogeny and complex connectivity (Tomlinson 1999)Davos people, it is asserted, are instantly identifiable and feel more wanton in each others presence than they do amongst less(prenominal) sophisticated compatriots. The World Economic Forum no longer commands the favor it did in the Nineties, but the term Davos has entered world vocabulary as a synonym for late-Twentieth-Century cosmopolitanism. Building on this estimation, the sociologist Peter Berger (1997) argued that the globalization of Euro-American academic agendas and tonestyles has make a worldwide faculty club culture. Since the Sixties, international livelihood agencies have sustained academic exchanges and postgraduate training for scholars in exploitation countries, permitting them to build alliances with Western colleagues.The long-term consequence, Berger argues, is the formation of a global intercommunicate in which similar values, attitudes, and research goals are collective. Network participants have been implemental in encouraging feminism, environmentalism, and human rights as global issues. Berger cites the anti-smoking movement as a case in point the movement began as an elite North American preoccupation in the Seventies and consequently mobilise to other parts of the world following the forms of academes global network. As with Davos sophisticates, members of the international faculty club rely on English to communicate with each other. The anthropologists Ulf Hannerz and Arjun Appadurai have studied similar elites that work on a global scale.Hannerz (1990) believes that a world culture appeared in the late Twentieth Century, stemming from the activities of cosmopolitans who nurtured an intellectual approval for local cultures in the developing world. The new global culture, in this interpretation, is based on the organization of diversity quite an than a replication of uniformity. Cultural globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of cultural flows crosswise the globe. Obviously, culture is a very broad concept it is frequently employ to separate the whole of human experience (Steger 2003 69). By the end of millennium, international elites had organized dozens of NGOs to assist preserve cultural diversity in the developing world.Institutions such as Cultural Survival (located in Cambridge, Massachusetts) now work on a world scale, plungeing attention to autochthonal groups th at expect to see themselves as first peoplesa new, global translation that emphasizes common experiences of utilization. Appadurai (1997) claims that modern diasporas are not simply transnational but post national meaning that people who work in these spheres are unaware of national borders and socialize in a social world that has several home bases. Fundamental to these elite visions of globalism is a disinclination to describe exactly what is meant by culture. This is not unexpected, given that the idea of culture has become one of the most contentious issues in contemporary social sciences. end-to-end most of the Twentieth Century, anthropologists defined culture as a overlap set of beliefs, customs, and ideas that held people together in identifiable, self-identified groups. Scholars in several disciplines challenged the idea of cultural coherence as it became obvious that members of close-knit groups held fundamentally different visions of their social worlds. Culture is no l onger professed as a pre-programmed mental library, a knowledge system inherited from ancestors. Modern anthropologists, sociologists, and media specialists treat culture as a set of ideas, aspects, and expectations that are continually changing as people respond to changing circumstances.This logical development reflects communal life at the turn of the Twenty-First Century the disintegration of Soviet socialist economy and the rise of cyber capitalism , both of which have increased the perceived cannonball along of societal change everywhere. Globalization empowers the hybridization of nations and communities to fight cultural imperialism or chauvinism by helping them to describe who they are, where they come from, and where they are going. Globalization and technology assist communities to develop cultural networks, free from state or hierarchical controls, regulations, or limitations. It also helps to demystify cultural differences by easing intercultural connectedness, interac tions and hybridization. thitherfore, while properly managed, globalization can be good for cultural inspiration, diversity and development.There is a new cosmopolitanism in the air as, by means of criticism, the concept has been rediscovered and reinvented. As the late Nineties there was a sharp increase in literature that attempted to relate the discourse on globalization (in cultural and political terms) to a redefinition of cosmopolitanism for the global age. The new cosmopolitanism is the exemption of wealthy, self-serving, anational agents of capital on the one hand and, on the other, international moralists. Nussbaum, 1996, 5. For this fence it is worth pointing out that etymologically, cosmopolitan is a blend of cosmos and polis. gum olibanum cosmopolitanism, captivatingly enough, relates to a pre-modern ambivalence towards a dual identity and a dual devotion.Every human beingness is rooted (beheimatet) by assume in two worlds, in two communities in the cosmos (namel y, nature) and in the polis (namely, the city/state). More exactly, every individual is rooted in one cosmos, but concurrently in different cities, territories, ethnicities, hierarchies, nations, religions, and so on. This is not an elite but rather an inclusive plural membership (Heimaten). Being part of the cosmos nature, all men (and even all women) are impact yet being part of diverse states organized into territorial units (polis), men are different (bearing in mind that women and slaves are expelled from the polis). Leaving parenthesis for one moment the issue of women and slaves, cosmopolitanism at its root includes what was separated by the logic of barring later on.Cosmopolitan ignores the either/or doctrine and symbolizes Sowohl-alsauch thinking, the this-as-well-as-that principle. This is an ancient hybrid, melange, scape, flow idea that is even more structured than the new offshoots of globalization discourse. Thus cosmopolitanism generates logic of non-exclusive ohm ic resistances, making patriots of two worlds that are concurrently equal and different. The anti-globalization label became preponderating after the Seattle demonstration, apparently a coinage of the US media (Graeber 200263). However, it is significant to translate that the term is strongly contested amongst activists and that many, if not most, reject the label anti-globalization entirely. So what is it, exactly, that activists oppose?Although there has been significant attention paid lately to militarism in the context of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems to me that most activist accounts in recent old age have focused more centrally on phenomena linked with economical globalization the increasing power of corporations, the growing role of international financial institutions, and the neoliberal policies of trade liberalization and privatization propounded by the latter and from which the former benefit. These are seen to produce economic inequality, social and env ironmental destruction, and cultural homogenization. They are also accused of leaching power and autonomy away from people and governments of being anti-democratic. such(prenominal) an understanding of the enemy chimes with many commentaries on the movement (Starr 2000 Danaher and Burbach 2000). It can also be discerned on activist web poses.The Charter of Principles of the World favorable Forum (2002) declares participant groups opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism. The statement of principles on the Globalize Resistance site (2002a) indicates that it is primarily against the extension of corporate power over peoples lives under the heavy hand of international financial institutions similar to the WTO and IMF. The groups newsletters then target the exploitative practices of particular multinational corporations and draw attention to problems of debt and financial restructuring. Lastly, the Peoples Global Action manifesto ( 1998) articulated opposition to the expansion of the role of capital, through the help of international agencies and trade agreements.There are significant resonances here with academic depictions of globalization. I have argued elsewhere that an economic-homogenization model of globalization is becoming increasingly dominant in both academic and popular usage, which focuses attention on the improved combination of the global economy and its homogenizing effect on state policy and culture (Eschle 2004). Such a model is prevalent in International Relations (IR). It is feature of liberal IR approaches that support globalization that skeptical refutations of globalization are described as exaggerated and ideological and critical IR theories blame globalization as profoundly damaging.It is with this last, critical, approach in IR that we let the strongest resonance with activist discourses. Both activist and academic critics share the premiss that globalization equates with the neo- liberal economic developments described above. Then, in an extremely significant move, these developments cogency be linked to the underlying structures of the economy and globalization reinterpreted as the latest stage of capitalism. According to Klein, the critique of capitalism just saw a comeback of Santana like proportions (200212). The global culture is usually used in contemporary academic discourse to distinguish the experience of everyday life in specific, exclusive localities.