Globalization and

Culture/Cultural Globalization
 What is the cultural dimension of Globalization?

✣ Symbolic construction, articulation, and dissemination of

meaning.
⨳ language, music, and images constitute the major forms of symbolic
expression, they assume special significance in the sphere of culture.
✣ Cultural transmissions in the present and in the past.
✣ Internet and technology
⨳ Individualism, Consumerism and Religion
✣ Cultural practices no longer is limited or trapped within fixed
localities such as town and nation.
✣ They have begun acquiring new meanings in interaction with
dominant global themes.
 Global culture: sameness or difference?

✣ Does globalization make people around the world more alike

or more different?
• Pessimistic hyperglobalizers
• We are not headed towards cultural diversity but we are
witnessing the rise of an increasingly homogenized popular
culture underwritten by a Western 'culture industry'
• Diffusion of values and consumer
• 'Americanization of the world’/ ‘Westernization
• Western norms and lifestyles are overwhelming more vulnerable
cultures.
• Cultures are dominated by outside ones
• 'cultural imperialism’
Cultural Imperialism
✣ Optimistic hyperglobalizers
⨳ Same with pessimistic globalizers but consider the sameness and
uniformity
✣ Americanization of the world with the expansion of
democracy and free markets.
✣ Some representatives of this camp consider themselves
staunch cosmopolitans who celebrate the Internet causing
homogenized 'techno-culture’.
✣ global consumer capitalism.
 McDonaldization

✣ Coined by George Ritzer

⨳ describe the wide-ranging sociocultural processes by which the
principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more
and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world.
✣ Moreover, the impersonal, routine operations of 'rational'
fast-service establishments actually undermine expressions
of forms of cultural diversity. In the long run, the
McDonaldization of the world amounts to the imposition of
uniform standards that eclipse human creativity and
dehumanize social relations.
 McDonaldization

✣ According to Ritzer (1996), Mcdonaldization is the process

by which the principles of fast food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and more sectors of American society as well
as the rest of the world.

✣ Weber’s Iron Cage

✣ Dehumanization
 4 dimensions of McDonaldization

✣ Predictability
✣ Calculability
✣ Efficiency
✣ Control
 Efficiency

✣ Optimal method of finishing a task

✣ Efficiency vs effectiveness
 Predictability

✣ The production process is organized to allow uniform output

and outcome.
✣ People prefer what they are expecting.
✣ Same experiences in different establishments
✣ Rationalization
 Calculability

✣ Quantifiable criteria rather than quality

✣ Quantity over quality
 Control

✣ Substitution of human labor through automated machineries

✣ Consistent and constant output
 Example: Educational Institutions

✣ Efficiency:
⨳ Testing methods using computers
✣ Predictability
⨳ Professors and teaching style of the subject.
✣ Calculability
⨳ Grade focus and number of degrees
✣ Control
⨳ What to teach
Cultural homogenization
 Homogenization vs Diversity

✣ Sociologist Roland Robertson, for example, contends that

global cultural flows often reinvigorate local cultural niches.
✣ Hence, rather than being totally obliterated by the Western
consumerist forces of sameness, local difference and
particularity still play an important role in creating unique
cultural constellations.
✣ 'glocalization’
⨳ - a complex interaction of the global and local characterized by
cultural borrowing. The resulting expressions of cultural 'hybridity'
cannot be reduced to clear-cut manifestations of 'sameness' or
'difference'.
 Cultural Hybridization

✣ The process which cultural element blends into another

culture by modifying the element to fit cultural norms.
 Is coexisting possible?

✣ The contemporary experience of living and acting across

cultural borders means both the loss of traditional meanings
and the creation of new symbolic expressions.
✣ Reconstructed feelings of belonging coexist in uneasy
tension with a sense of placelessness.
✣ Cultural globalization has contributed to a remarkable shift in
people's consciousness.
✣ In fact, it appears that the old structures of modernity are
slowly giving way to a new 'postmodern' framework
characterized by a less stable sense of identity and
knowledge.
Is there such a thing as an authentic or self-
contained culture?
 The role of the media

✣ To a large extent, the global cultural flows of our time are

generated and directed by global media empires that rely on
powerful communication technologies to spread their
message.
✣ Saturating global cultural reality with formulaic TV shows and
mindless advertisements, these corporations increasingly
shape people's identities and the structure of desires around
the world.
 Entertainment and Journalism

✣ Cultural hegemony of popular culture

✣ Transformation of news broadcasts and educational
programs into shallow entertainment shows.
✣ Given that news is less than half as profitable as
entertainment, media firms are increasingly tempted to
pursue higher profits by ignoring journalism's much vaunted
separation of newsroom practices and business decisions.
✣ Partnerships and alliances between news and entertainment
companies are fast becoming the norm, making it more
common for publishing executives to press journalists to
cooperate with their newspapers' business operations.
 The role of the media

✣ The TV programs turn into global 'gossip markets',

presenting viewers and readers of all ages with the vacuous
details of the private lives of American celebrities like Britney
Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kobe
Bryant.
 Theory on Media Effects

✣ Agenda setting theory

⨳ focuses on the prioritization and hierarchy of importance of societal
issues. This involves the media to set and condition the individual to
think that this particularly issues is more important than the other one
and immediate attention should cater the primary.
 Theory on Media Effects

✣ Priming theory
⨳ is associated with psychology as it utilizes collective human memory
where a specific object, place or event is associated to another one.
This would eventually impact the decision making of individuals the
more they are exposed to this controlled environment by recalling the
memory it is associated with
 Theory on Media Effects

✣ Framing Theory
⨳ tells you how to think about that issue, namely its importance, how to
resolve them and the origins of this issues.
 Digital Global Culture

✣ The advent of globalization has strengthened the

interconnectedness of the world.
✣ It allows for rapid economic and technological that has
revolutionize cultural interaction and connectedness through
enhance communication among the different nation-states.
✣ Globalization does not replace or substitute the local with the
global but the global interacts and entangles itself with the
local
 Digital Global Culture

✣ The digital world is a venue for this homogenization of

cultures that has changed individual perception by assaulting
ethnic-defined nation-states.
✣ This interconnected cultural connection of globalization has
been upgraded by the individual contribution of users in the
digital era.
✣ The main idea behind digital global culture is that it creates a
digital materialization of culture, a culture reflective of what is
happening yet existent within the digital sphere.
 Digital Global Culture

✣ Culture became digital because information and

communication became digital.
✣ The digitalization of information and communication has
resulted in a convergence of culture.
✣ This convergence materializes in the minds of individuals
and consumers through their interaction with others in this
online landscape.
 Digital Global Culture
✣ Information comes now in bulks due to the accessibility of
online information and consuming this information
individually becomes a difficult task which results in
intelligence gathering becoming communal paving a way to a
concept called “collective intelligence.”
✣ Collective intelligence can be defined to a group or
community that possesses a specific body of knowledge that
would achieve a specific objective.
✣ These groupings however are not required in admission but
are voluntary and temporary in nature where any tactical
affiliations are reaffirmed through common intellectual
enterprises and emotional investments.
 The Globalization of Languages

✣ One direct method of measuring and evaluating cultural

changes brought about by globalization is to study the
shifting global patterns of language use.
✣ The globalization of languages can be viewed as a process
by which some languages are increasingly used in
international communication while others lose their
prominence and even disappear for lack of speakers.
 Five key variables that influence the globalization of
languages

✣ 1. Number of languages:
⨳ The declining number of languages in different parts of the world
points to the strengthening of homogenizing cultural forces.
✣ 2. Movements of people:
⨳ People carry their languages with them when they migrate and travel.
Migration patterns affect the spread of languages.
✣ 3. Foreign language learning and tourism:
⨳ Foreign language learning and tourism facilitate the spread of
languages beyond national or cultural boundaries.
 Five key variables that influence the globalization of
languages

• 4. Internet languages:
• The Internet has become a global medium for instant communication and
quick access to information. Language use on the Internet is a key factor in
the analysis of the dominance and variety of languages in international
communication.
• 5. International scientific publications:
• International scientific publications contain the languages of global
intellectual discourse, thus critically impacting intellectual communities
involved in the production, reproduction, and circulation of knowledge
around the world.
 The decline of languages and rise of English

✣ The number of spoken languages in the world has dropped

from about 14,500 in 1500 to less than 7,000 in 2000.
✣ Given the current rate of decline, some linguists predict that
50-90% of the currently existing languages will have
disappeared by the end of the 21st century.
✣ But the world's languages are not the only entities threatened
with extinction. The spread of consumerist values and
materialist lifestyles has endangered the ecological health of
our planet as well.
 Cultural values and Environnemental Dégradation

✣ How people view their natural environment depends to a

great extent on their cultural milieu.
✣ Religion:
⨳ Taoist, Buddhist, and various animist religions tend to emphasize the
interdependence of all living beings - a perspective that calls for a
delicate balance between human wants and ecological needs.
⨳ Judeo-Christian humanism, on the other hand, contains deeply
dualistic values that put human beings at the centre of the universe.
Nature is considered a 'resource' to be used instrumentally to fulfil
human desires.
✣ Dominant values and belief of Consumerism
 Cultural values and Environnemental Dégradation
✣ 21st century
✣ People become increasingly linked to each other through the air
they breathe, the climate they depend upon, the food they eat, and
the water they drink.
✣ Ecological problems have always been there even in ancient
times.
✣ But only within recent time that environmental decline has reached
unprecedented levels.
✣ Overpopulation = Overconsumption and Lack of resources
✣ Global warming and pollution
✣ Migration