The Globalization of Culture (or Cultural Globalization)

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Description:

Globalization refers to the rapidly developing and ever densening network of interconnections and interdependencies that characterize modern social life (Thomlinson [1]. One implication is that people, and also cultures, are being drawn together. Some people think this will lead to a single global culture. However, this process is considered to be uneven: the Western world, and especially America, dominates the global culture. In the last 50 years the US culture has dominated much of the global electronic culture (films, tv). This resulted in a huge impact of the American lifestyle and personal value system on cultures that are both remote from the US geographically and culturally. Consuming the products of this industry results in a consistent change of the indigenous culture’s values, affecting its language, its social structure and even its appearance (from clothes and cars to billboards and advertisements).

The dominant cultural perspective of globalization today is the fear that globalization will bring uniformity and not unity. Western (American) brands like Coca-Cola, Walt Disney and Microsoft might totally dominate global culture at the cost of non-western cultural traditions [2].

The Cold War supplied the US with enough reasons to push its value system using this industry outside the boundaries of the Western World. But now that has turned into Consumerism and Globalization, all following the US dogma, simply because people are being bombarded, in their homes, with images of what they mean the US. That in the end causes indigenous cultures to lose their identity and as a result many countries are doomed to follow Consumerism in the US model, ravaging along the way cultures that are slowly and silently becoming extinct.

Enablers

- Acceptance of cheap entertainment from the US for syndication

- Loosening of old traditions and cultural structures

- High costs for complete local programming

- Internet advertising and information

- Satellite TV

- Advertising of imported products

- Content of TV/films/music that perpetuates further consumption of US products and brands

Inhibitors

- Localized programming

- Limiting syndicated programming

- Creating local brands that celebrate locality instead of globalization

- Education

- Support of indigenous culture by local governments and NGOs

Paradigms

The US creates the entertainment products, sells them abroad, and they perpetuate US-based model for a society. Individuals are self-brainwashed by these to accept this model and further consume that culture’s products.

Experts

Anthropologists

Timing

In 2010 various programming agencies get together to formulate alternatives to US entertainment. By 2015 90% of the programming around the world is originating from the US. Local cinema industries, with few European exceptions along with India and China, are producing a very small percentage of the movies shown in each country. A growing number of languages used around the world is adopting more and more English terms instead of using their own words to describe words that originate in the US.

Web Resources

Globalization of Culture - to what End? A "Marxisit" (i.e. critical) View of the problem

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a private sector coalition formed in 1984 to represent the U.S. copyright-based industries in bilateral and multilateral efforts to improve international protection of copyrighted materials.

[3] To see UNESCO’s view on the subject]

About Indigenous languages under threat