Globalization and Culture

How one analyses and understands the changes associated with globalization are another issue , one that presents a considerably more complex intellectual problem . Does globalization ' writ-large promote greater understanding of cultural similarities and differences , or does it merely diffuse a wider array of simplistic and essentialist stereotypes Does globalization propagate exploitation and income disparity , or does it offer the individual freedom of choice and convenience of standardization ? Do these shifts bring the world closer together consuming the same hamburgers in a new global community , or is this a homogenizing cultural imperialism

, obliterating local cultures in MacWorld synchronicity ? How does the nexus of global and local inform individual and collective identities and cultures

First , the historical context behind globalization needs to be kept in mind . While there are some obvious discontinuities as well as continuities , European expansion , modern colonialism , modernization , and globalization constitute different media for the intensification of global ties . For example , certain clothing practices for men in the Asia Pacific (such as wearing ties in suffocating humid midsummer heat ) were initially disseminated via Western European imperialism and colonialism The use of modern statistical methods to measure economic output is yet another example of a global ' standard originally propagated through the practices of colonial administrations throughout the region . This is not to suggest that the process of globalization can be explained solely by tracing the expansion of European notions of civilization ' and modernity (both terms which need to be examined critically before blind invocation ) or that there is a universal teleology that history must inevitably follow , but to point out that the decoupling of cultural experience from particular geographic locales is not an unprecedented phenomenon

By acknowledging the historical precedents , we may focus our analysis on what might be different or new about the term globalization ' or whether we ought to...