The Cultural globalization Is the unification of diverse customs belonging to different communities. The term refers to the modifications experienced by different forms of lives of different peoples.
Due to cultural globalization, the customs, traditions and artistic expressions of different parts of the world have been adapted to the changes that have emerged from it.
The basis of this phenomenon is associated with the media, through which the cultures and customs of several countries merge.
In this line, thanks to globalization and the mass media, different societies come to interconnect, either by creating links and giving rise to a unity between them, or by emphasizing their diversity.
Cultural globalization implies the unification of diverse cultural identities, tending to the achievement of a homogeneity and being its main content underlying the cultural identity itself.
This internalization includes the connection between territories, nations and continents, and fuses the elements of the past and the present. From it the values of the universal culture are socialized through the insertion of the global in the local.
What should I know about Cultural Globalization?
In order to understand cultural globalization, it is necessary to understand the relationship between globalization and culture.
On the one hand, globalization is a dynamic process where the economy, technology, politics, culture, social characteristics and ideological thoughts corresponding to each region, are interrelated at a universal level.
Historically, since the expansion of capitalism, globalization has produced major transformations worldwide.
Taking as central axes, to modernity and to the notion of progress, globalization is interpreted as a totalizing vision of reality, where there are tendencies towards the global development of society.
In this sense, the relationship between social and cultural, inherent in this dynamic process, is closely linked with capitalist relations of production.
From this capitalist perspective of globalization, from this one interconnects the social relations of production throughout the world-wide framework; Linking regional diversities in a heterogeneous world.
In this way, globalization can be understood as a commercial dependency between countries. They are in close relationship for the convenience of integrating their economies.
At the same time, it must be taken into account that globalization encompasses not only the economic. But it also produces a strong modification in all the everyday aspects of the life of a nation. As well as its environmental, political, social, etc. This is why globalization has its own global culture and politics.
Culture
It is the result of a conjunction of forms and expressions characteristic of a given society.
In it are embedded beliefs, codes, rules, rituals and common practices, predominant in people belonging to a society.
In this way, culture is the form of expression that individuals have of their own traditions.
In this way, culture encompasses the distinctive, affective, spiritual, material and intellectual traits that identify and characterize a society.
And it includes the ways of life, value systems, beliefs, rights and traditions of a specific population in a given period.
Through culture, the subject becomes aware of himself and the world around him, allowing man to find a way of expression to create works that transcend.
Cultural globalization is, therefore, a tendency towards homogeneity. A phenomenon that reflects a normalization of cultural expressions around the world. Implicit in it, the socialization of the values of universal culture.
Influence of globalization on culture
With the advent of new customs and new ideas from different parts of the world, the characteristic culture of a region is influenced.
In this way, regional cultures begin to adopt cultural and consumer practices that are corresponding to other nations and generally of a capitalist nature.
It appears then in the regional customs the consumption of marks, of means, of symbols that are taken like representative icons of a society. Emerging in this way, a culture of a global nature.
As a result of the combination of different elements of different cultures, the expansion of cultural models corresponding to capitalist societies.
Thanks to mass media, countries are increasingly connected, from the economic, the technological and the cultural; Resembling each other more and more.
In this way the gap that differentiates the various cultures inherent in each society becomes increasingly close. However, there is a predominance of the cultures of the most economically powerful countries. As a consequence, cultural diversity is becoming smaller as a result of cultural globalization.
At the same time and as a consequence, certain social groups that have been excluded from the globalized world, unify to react against globalization. In order to reemerge the inherent values inherent to local cultures, with the aim of revalorizing their own.
Influence of the media on globalization
Cultural globalization arises as a consequence of the process of communication between different parts of the world, and thanks to the different means of communication that exist today the different countries can communicate with each other.
As a result, different regions are able to link through a variety of global exchange networks. In this way, the contact and the relationship between different societies, with their peculiar cultural characteristics, are produced.
In this way, the media begin to play an important role in the development of cultural globalization.
Audiovisual media, for example, begin to be an important source of creation and transformation, becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the daily lives of people in general.
Thus, popular culture was born, which spread throughout the world, becoming like the dominant culture. From this, social groups identify with all those products present at the global level, enriching a collective imagination.
In this sense, the media is a tool to homogenize the global culture.
Cultural Globalization Today
At present, world society is immersed in a new cultural context, where globalization as a dynamic and continuous process has influenced culture in most of its aspects.
Cultural globalization has been and is a phenomenon that inevitably influences the different domains of daily life of the subjects living in a nation, presenting favorable and unfavorable effects.
The detractors of the process believe that there is an important difference between the rapid growth of some countries, with respect to the few or almost no others, implying a certain loss of sovereignty for the latter.
A priori, cultural globalization appears as a phenomenon that no society can escape since the mass media are present everywhere, as well as the stereotypes that can enrich, the styles of fashion that they spread, among others.
At present, all the countries of the world are immersed in all these global processes. But from an optimistic look, the world can be increased in all kinds of exchanges, capitals, goods and services, technologies, information and cultural guidelines.
However, the question of the concentration of wealth and social marginalization or the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries and how the process of cultural globalization affects the environment could open up.
References
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- Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture.
- Tomlinson, J. (2013). Globalization and Culture. John Wiley & Sons.
- Watson, J.L. (2016, Jan 8). Cultural globalization. Retrieved from Britannica: britannica.com.
- Wise, J. M. (2010). Cultural Globalization: A User's Guide. John Wiley & Sons.