Cultural Globalization

1) Summarize in your own words of materials you read

  We have to understand definition of culture and globalization in order to know the meaning and character of ‘cultural globalization’.

   Today, every scholar would accept the general proposition that globalization is a multidimensional flow. Globalization is a complex, accelerating, integrating process of global connectivity. The world is rapidly developing and connecting each other in material, social, economic and cultural life.  Globalization would be defined a description of the ‘flows’ around them of everything that characterizes modern life. Dimensions of the ‘flows’ are capital, commodities, people, knowledge, information and ideas, crime, pollution, diseases, fashions and so forth.

   The world has been developed in many dimensions such as technologies but it was bad effect on our modern life. Even though, the world became more globalized.

   Variable dimensions of globalization, ‘culture’ is a significant constituent relatively. In a capitalistic society, global market is increasing rapidly. Global market processes are influenced by people’s cultural experience. So ‘the impact of globalization on culture’ or ‘the cultural consequences of globalization’ mean that globalization is a process which related to culture. Anthony Giddens said that cultural globalization involves the increasing ‘reflexivity’ of modern life: the systemic integration of myriad small individual actions into the workings of the social institutions which appear autonomously to govern our lives.

   The globalization process may lead to a single global culture in future. In fact, we can see the unifying world in the economic sphere recently. In the past, social and economic processes and practices are the ‘independent’ phenomena. But now, the world is considered a ‘single place’. This make many problems. The ‘Third World’ does not partake of the globalized economy or of globalized communications in the same way as the developed world. We have to review the true meaning of globalization by saying that it is an unfair process. We will concern about the exclusive western culture in our world. Making cosmopolitanism work that does not impose any one particular, culturally inflected model is the most immediate challenge that globalization confronts us by.

   ‘Deterritorialization’ is an idea that explains the change of our local life. These days, globalization is changing our experience of locality. Deterritorialization means that the significance of the geographical location of a culture is eroding. According to functionalist tradition, culture is an entity to integrate the ‘society’. But the complex connectivity of globalization undermines such conceptualizations because the multiform interference of localities disrupts this binding of meanings to place.

   The point that deterritorialization gives us to is that the culture produced by locality is no longer the one most important factor in our life. Nowadays, we can choose ‘global foods’ and log on to Google for information.

   ‘Telemediatization’ of culture is a key distinction in twenty first century life. We can use the Internet and watch television without actual physical movement. Telemediatized practices such as watching television or typing, scrolling, clicking and browsing at the computer screen or talking, texting or sending and receiving pictures on a mobile phone should be regarded as unique modes of cultural activity and perception. If technological developments were added more, there emerges a sense of what we could call the increasing ‘immediacy’ of modern global culture. This phenomenon occurs the change in consumption practices, entertainment of the possibility of immediate access to other people.

   But now, we have to concern about the bad effects such as the value of patience. And we think about what all this speed and ‘instant access’ means in the longer term for our emotions, our social relations and our cultural values. Even though, deterritorialization not only disturbs and transforms local experience, it potentially offers people wider cultural horizons.

   Maybe a global culture will be influenced by cosmopolitan cultural politics. this means not endorsing grand projects for ‘global governance’ but trying to clarify, and ultimately to reconcile, the attachments and the values of cultural difference with those of an emergent wider global-human ‘community’. this is a dilemma. On the one hand, they say universalism, human mutuality, human rights and global solidarity. But the others say integrity of local context and practices, cultural autonomy, cultural identity and ‘sovereignty’. We need to know the ‘cultural identity’ to solve this dilemma.

   Globalization and specifically deterritorialization is the destruction of local identities. However, the crucial mistake of those who regard globalization as a threat to cultural identity is to confuse this Western-modern form of cultural imagination with a universal of human experience.

   Humanity is a specific modern identity position which is universal by definition, but which remains compatible with a huge range of cultural variation. The pluralism of identity positions is the key.

Identities we know are constructs not possessions. We need to come up with much more nimble and flexible cultural concepts than we so far possess.

   

2) Mention of any new, interesting, or unusual items learned 

  I learned the concept ‘telemediatization’ this time. In fact, I didn't know the deterritorialization also. After read this article, I thought the culture is the significant factor for globalization. I was surprised that ‘telemediatization’ of culture is a key distinction in twenty first century life. I also use the Internet, watch TV and eat global foods. But I didn't know that this daily life was explained by the concept ‘deterritorialization’. I agreed the concern about the larger cultural question in this article. The question is ‘what all this speed and instant access means in the longer term for our emotions, our social relations and our cultural values, for example, the value of patience’. In my opinion, maybe korean people are relevant to the question.

 

3) Identify at least one question, concern, or discussion angle 

  After read the first article, I wondered ‘Is it possible that the complete cultural globalization exists in the world?’ And now, I realized something. I sympathized with problem about ‘Third World’ in this article. I thought our society need the cultural globalization. We can develop our technology so economy is going well. But I doubt this circumstances is the ‘cultural imperialism’ for developed nations.

   And I wonder ‘how protect and maintain the culture identity in this world?’ I thought the Globalization and especially Cosmopolitanism may become the risk element. I concerned about the unification of variable cultures.