Does Globalisation necessarily lead to cultural homogenisation?

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Does Globalization necessarily lead to cultural homogenization

Globalization entered everyday English usage in the early Sixties following the periodical of Marshall McLuhan 's Gutenberg Galaxy (Mc Luhan 1962 . Malcolm Waters , a principal authority on the subject define globalization as a process in which the limits of geography on social and cultural arrangements retreat and [as a consequence] people become ever more aware that [such constraints] are retreating (Waters 1995 ,

. 3 . The term `global ' is an astoundingly recent creation appearing for the

first time in the 1986 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary . The OED 's definition of `to globalize ' is easy and to the point : to render global

In globalization a large and increasing proportion , whether native or of immigrant backgrounds , are also people with little or no education and few

Marketable skills (Cohen and Kennedy : 2000 , 75

Globalization , in transnational corporate lingo , is conceived as the last of three stages of global transformation since 1945 (Jameson and Miyoshi 1998

The impact of the new world economy has been just as great on North-South relations as on North-North ones . For one thing , as Manuel Castells suggests , some parts of the South are becoming increasingly irrelevant and marginal to the world economy (Castells , 1997 . In other parts , the possibilities for information-based development are there but a would have to be based on the development of human productive potential . In popular usage , globalization is associated with the idea that advanced capitalism , aided by digital and electronic technologies , will ultimately obliterate local traditions and creates a homogenized , world culture . Critics of globalization argue that human experience everywhere is becoming fundamentally the same

The transformative power of digital technologies in a globalised world means that information and knowledge have now become media of production , displacing many kinds of manual work . Marx thought that the working class would bury capitalism but as it has turned out , capitalism has buried the working class (Hutton and Giddens 2001 :22

Globalization is both Homogeneity-Heterogeneity as it "refers to both the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness 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 crystallization 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 , internationalization , individuation , and generalization of consciousness about humankind (Robertson 1992 : 215-6 1992 : 27 Rather than referring to a multitude of historical processes , the concepts above all capture "the form in terms of which the world has moved towards unicity (Robertson , 1992 : 175 . This form is practically contested . Closely linked to the process of globalization is therefore 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 Some observers of modern politics...