Blog II –
Cultural globalization
1. The text
‘The relationship between globalization and culture’ from John Tomlinson
started with the definition of the both terms globalization and culture.
Because we already discussed the term globalization in detail in our first blog,
I just note here that, Tomlinson refers to the definition of Robertson and
White about the growing global connectivity and global consciousness.
Let´s take
a enclose look to his definition of culture: The culture generates a meaning to
our life. It
follows
from
the foregoing
that
the culture has a great impact to our life. But besides the life of each
individual impact the cultural too. Started with the actions with every human
is doing to fulfil its basic human needs. Deep in ourselves every human being
is driven by the need of shelter and sustenance. The more certainty a human
feels about satisfying his basics needs, the more time he spend with aspire for
existential and luxury needs. So, with nearly every action each human has
impact on culture. The animating spirit after the very basic wish to survive
are their self-understanding, plans and hopes. The humans try to express their
selves, this actions which were done towards the self-expression have a huge impact
on cultural development of a society. Despite culture is something that people
can expire or imbibe, but not shape or produce.
Nowadays the culture is impacted by
globalization and the other way around. Through the progress of telemediazation
the culture globalization experiences an acceleration. Due to the new
technologies different cultures get in closer contact. Information between different
cultures were delivered with high speed all round the world. From nature
catastrophic in the news over local hypes getting global through news and social
media. By the daily input of news about international occurrences foreign
cultures integrate more and more into the daily life of people all around the
world. This makes cultures lost the tight connection to one special place. This
phenomenon is described by deterritorialization.
This progress goes hand in hand with
the dominance of capitalism. General it is hard to draw a clear line between
culture and economy. Companies were always affected by the culture of which
they were surrounded. This culture they transport to their international subsidiaries.
For example, companies as Starbucks, KFC or Apple enhance the so-called
westernization. Imported is to distinguish between really practicing a culture
or just transport the spirted of a culture. For global brands the transport of
spirit is valid.
Religion is
an imported part for a lot of cultures. Already in the 13th century
a religious impacted occurrence had an international impact. In this period the
first world map was drawn. The map had a huge influence of the Christian faith.
Since a long time, the Christian religion has had an impact to the world
culture. Later the communistic ideologies of “one world” developed by Kant,
Marx, Engels, etc. influenced huge nations. Theses ideas were based on the
values of the Christian faith, but this faith has the disfavor to exclude
Non-Christian, while all other religions at least tolerate other faiths beside.
That´s lead to narrowminded point of views and can´t be the basement of a
global culture. Until today religious perceptions evoke conflicts. Especially
the Muslims fighting the western impact. The sad climax of this conflict was
the 9/11 so far.
Even though
it is called the globalization not every culture takes part of it. The third
world country were affected by globalization but take barely place in the
process. The biggest impact is not directly affected by the third world countries
themselves, their impact is coursed by the very poor part of population, which
streamed as immigrants to wealthy countries. Especially during the last few years
the immigrants enforce a discussion in the globalized world. The main question
of the discussion is the interpretation of the human rights.
2. First I
was surprised that John Tomlinson, as a sociologic, didn´t draw a clear line
between culture and economic, even though that the both have a big impact to
each other in my option. During the reading I noticed that he needs the
economic part to explain his points. But here I wondered: Hasn´t the political
globalization the same impact towards culture? Or is it that culture impact the
political system? I´m looking forwards to discover the coherences between
political and culture globalization later.
Later in
the text John Tomlinson discuss the religious impact to the cultural globalization.
He focused on the Christian theology and reproach the Christian faith, that it´s
the only faith, which don´t accept other religions besides their own. In this
point I reproach Tomlinson a weak research. The Wahhabism drift of the Islam is
definitively another faith, which don´t accept other religion besides their own.
The newest developments in far east prove it. The Al Kaida as well as the Islamic
state were grown out of the Wahhabism drift of the Islam. Also an enclose look
to the behavior of Israel towards the Palistine foment the doubts of the tolerance
of the Jews.
3. What is
your opinion about the religious impact of globalization? Are religions a
boundary to a global culture or may the moderate parties within each religion
can be a driver to move the cultures closer together?
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