Reading2) “What is the relation between culture and globalization?”

 [Summary]

Globalization is a network of interconnectedness and interdependencies that define the material, social, economic, and cultural life of modern society. Also, globalization develops and changes very rapidly. The connectivity of globalization affects our lives. It affects not only the city we live in, livelihood, food we eat, but also the cultural factors such as music, movies, television, and travel. It affects not only positive but also negative factors. For example, problems such as terrorism, global warming, infectious diseases, taxes, etc. We live in an unprecedentedly connected world and through globalization cultural elements are interconnected and interdependent.

 

One of the reasons why it seems natural to mention the relationship between culture and globalization is that it is easy to understand that global consumption of goods has a potential impact on people's cultural experiences. This view interprets cultural globalization from the perspective of 'cultural imperialism', 'Americanization', 'Western Europeanization' or 'the spread of global capitalism-consumer unification'. Also, the above view has received a lot of criticism.

 

One useful way to think about the consequences of culture for globalization is to figure out how much culturally known "local" behavior can bring about globalization results. To find out, the author likens it to a shopping process for young people. he is trying to find out by asking, "What cultural image do you want us to buy jeans, training shoes, or cell phones?" So in response, he said, consumer activity constitutes the entire complex network of global market connections, resulting in the consequences (extinction) of global ecological fate, not only in the employment of workers in remote regions of the world, but also in the industrial processes involved in the natural resources and production consumed.

 

One of the common assumptions about the globalization process is that the process of globalization will lead to a way of achieving a global culture. If the integration effect occurs in the economic sector with global franchise companies at the center, it can become a global culture. As mentioned above, some assume that cultural globalization implies a form of cultural imperialism. As the Western capitalist culture represented by the U.S. spreads to various parts of the world, it can form a global culture and further lose the tradition of non-Western culture. In particular, it is assumed that Western iconic brands such as Disney, Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Microsoft, Google, McDonald's, CNN, Nike, and Starbucks dominate global culture as they actively enter the global market.

 

Subsequently, the author begins to look at contemporary globalization from much longer history, rather than the recent trend. The first context he looked at was Europe in the 13th century. He looked at religious culture and globalization through a typical world map made in the 13th century. In the 13th century, Jerusalem was located in the center of the map, strengthening the myth of the origin of Christianity, and thus expressing the world as a unified Christian world. It also criticizes the exclusive nature of Christianity.

 

The author also looks at modern globalization in post-Kant's "Cosmopolitan" thinkers in Europe. In his paper, Kant argued that the European continent would enact laws governing the world. After Kant, Marx appeared. Marx's claim to the communist world is a world with universal language, world literature and integrated cultural tastes in culture. Marx was optimistic about the prospects of globalization, but in fact, it was something that could not thrive in today's intellectual culture.

 

Following Marx, the author mentions telemedia as a major task in global cultural analysis. With the advancement of communication technology, we are experiencing de-territorialization, which provides a wider cultural horizon for people. In various ways, such as the experience of globalized media, people easily embrace the culture of distant countries, which is increasingly affecting our lives.

 

Finally, the author mentioned that globalization creates an institutionalized form of cultural affiliation, spreading the institutional characteristics of modernity across all cultures. he says that globalization has played the most important role in creating and spreading cultural identity. Every culture forms meaning through the practice of collective symbolism, which we refer to as the cultural universality we can obtain.

 

However, he notes that not all historical cultures have established an identity in the institutional form of the modern West. He looks at this from the perspective of internationalism, in which globalization creates a flexible category that belongs to internationalism without relying officially, skillfully, and on certain cultural traditions by securing the plurality of identity locations. In doing so, he concluded that we urgently need to come up with more agile and flexible cultural concepts than we have so far.

 

[Interesting Point]

What was new and interesting when I read this article was that I could see globalization through the process of creating a world map in Europe in the 13th century. The same was true of the cultural modernity mentioned by Kant and Marx. For me, globalization was just a result of global enterprises entering the global market. However, after reading this article, we could look at globalization from a new perspective.

 

[Discussion]

what I want to discuss after reading is the fact that the Western culture represented by the United States through globalization is powerful and influential, but I think there will be times when the culture of non-permanent rights is not sufficiently dominated and fused. For example, this is the case in Hong Kong. In the case of Hong Kong, I thought I wanted to talk about what cultural perspective we should analyze globalization.