Globalization And Its Impact On Culture Cultural Studies Essay

In today 's universe of interconnection, the construct of independent, consistent, and stable civilizations are going progressively rare. Procedures of globalisation are pulling people from different cultural beginnings into close relationships as can be seen in the unprecedented enlargement of touristry, the flourishing of transnational corporations, the outgrowth of new geographical integrities like the European Community, the Association of Southeast Asiatic Nations, the airing of pop civilization, the increasing flow of migrations, the growing of diasporas, the outgrowth of Internet communities, and the constitution of planetary establishments like the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.

Nevertheless even though civilizations are seen as unstable and altering, this displacement is by and large viewed from a macro position, of the bigger impacting the smaller, the procedure of planetary impacting the local. The alternate i.e. the local set uping the planetary is non paid much attending to in globalisation literature. This characteristic of the emerging universe has been grasped and theorized by what we call glocalization theory today.

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The kernel of the emerging worldwide phenomenon where globalisation and localisation are at the same time transforming the development landscape is captured by Glocalization. The term Glocalization is really similar to the term Globalization and in fact has its roots in it. To understand the kernel of glocalization we need to first expression at what globalisation denotes and the jobs with it which gave rise to the glocal as opposed to the planetary or merely the local. Globalization can be seen as a compaction of the universe as a whole.

But in footings of civilization what has become about platitude is to believe of globalisation as a big graduated table phenomenon that involves the victory of culturally homogenising forces over all others. The 'bigger ' , is progressively seen as 'better ' . This position has been criticized as holding a deficiency of concern with micro sociological or local issues. Sociologist Ronald Robertson who is instrumental in popularising the term shows that there have been efforts to suggest a planetary sociology with ventures to integrate autochthonal sociologies into this wider jussive mood. The procedure of globalisation was being progressively seen as a inclination which overrides the vicinity. Thus the construct of Glocalization as Robertson puts it is was needed, as harmonizing to him universalism was being countrerposed to particularism. Glocalization basically encapsulates the coincident procedures of globalisation and localisation that are taking topographic point in the universe today. The planetary expressed in the local and the local as the particularisation of the planetary.

Globalization

The term has its roots in the Nipponese term dochakuka which foremost appeared in the late eightiess in articles by Nipponese economic experts in the Harvard Business Review. The term originally meant accommodating farming technique to one 's ain local status. The thought was subsequently adopted to mention to global-localization. Harmonizing to the dictionary significance, the term 'glocal ' and the procedure noun 'glocalization ' are `` formed by telescoping planetary and local to do a blend ''[ 1 ]. Glocalization seems to be a debatable term as it is seen as intending different things to different people. Roland Robertson, conceptualized glocalization as, `` the universalization of particularisation and the particularisation of universalism ''[ 2 ]. Khondker expressed it as a procedure uniting the twin processes of macro-localization and micro-globalization. For others globalisation provokes resurgence of local cultural individualities. Therefore in his position 'local ' is the supplier of the response to the forces that are 'global ' .

However what we adhere to in this paper is the Robertsonian position of glocalization which argues that any focal point on the planetary must hold a focal point on the local for the two are reciprocally constituent of each other ; it is non every bit simple as the planetary being proactive and the local being reactive. He attributes this to the arguments focus oning on the relationship between the planetary and the local. The planetary was scripted as being homogenising because of the economic and cultural flows associated with it ( proactive ) and the local being a site of heterogeneousness contending to maintain out globalisation ( reactive ) . Rethinking globalisation in this manner leads to the acknowledgment that it is non a procedure that operates entirely at a planetal graduated table, but is invariably being localized in assorted ways and with different strengths. Forces from above sporadically emerge to disrupt local repose. With local cultural stasis upset by outside forces, a re-stabilization procedure sets in to enable the outgrowth of a new civilization more able to get by with the upset brought on by, in this instance, globalisation

Robertson refers to glocalization as the `` interpenetrationA of theA globalA and localA resultingA in uniqueA outcomesA in differentA geographicalA countries ' . At a 1997 conference on `` Globalization and Autochthonal Culture, '' Robertson said that glocalization `` means the simultaneousness - the co-presence - of both universalizing and particularizing inclinations. '' The procedure besides denotes the normally interrelated procedures of homogenisation and heterogenization. Theorists of glocalization typically challenge the premise that globalisation processes ever endanger the local. Rather, glocalization both high spots how local civilizations may critically accommodate or defy 'global ' phenomena, and reveals the manner in which the really creative activity of vicinities is a standard constituent of globalisation. There is now a cosmopolitan standardization of 'locality ' , in the sense that 'local ' civilizations are assumed to originate invariably and specify themselves vis-a-vis other specific civilizations. Some have besides termed this procedure as 'internal globalisation ' i.e. globalisation is seen as non merely a macro construction but to foreground the world of micro globalisation. Internal globalisation means that big Numberss of people around the Earth are now exposed to other civilizations on a day-to-day footing without traversing boundary lines on a regular footing, merely through the assortment of communicating media. Furthermore, they might meet immigrants, refugees, or tourers in their ain vicinity. They might besides meet cultural artifacts and commercial constitutions that conveying other civilizations into close propinquity to their ain. The increasing presence of McDonalds eating houses worldwide is an illustration of globalisation, while the eating house concatenation 's bill of fare alterations in an effort to appeal to local roof of the mouths are an illustration of glocalization. Possibly even more exemplifying of glocalization: For publicities in France, the eating house concatenation late chose to replace its familiar Ronald McDonald mascot with Asterix the Gaul, a popular Gallic sketch character. Merchandises are embedded and so promoted within the local civilization.

Dannie Kjeldgaard and Soren Askegaard analyze the whole glocalization discourse with regard to youth civilization and see them chiefly as consumers. Harmonizing to them youth civilization is an institutionalised aspect of the market, emerging preponderantly from Western cultural currents and spreading globally. Early youth cultural manners diffused chiefly in the West but besides to other parts of the modernizing universe. Youth civilization, like other domains of societal life due to the procedure of glocalization, is progressively shaped by and constitutes planetary cultural flows. They put forth Appadurai 's analysis who analyzes the planetary cultural economic system by utilizing the landscape metaphor to exemplify such flows within five `` flower stalks '' : `` ethnoscapes '' ( the flow of people ) , `` technoscapes '' ( the flow of engineering ) , `` finanscapes '' ( the flow of finance and capital ) , `` mediascapes '' ( the flow of mediated images ) , and `` ideoscapes '' ( the flow of thoughts and political orientations ) . These flows increase the handiness of symbols and significances in consumers ' mundane lives in such a manner that much of what is available in one topographic point is besides available in any other topographic point. The glocalization processes constituted by these flows shape socio-cultural world in dialectical procedures between the local and the planetary. Through these procedures, the manners feature of youth civilization spread globally, inciting the development of local versions of young person civilization through appropriation and creolization. They are chiefly of the sentiment that members of the young person market interpret and rework planetary cultural patterns and significances to suit into their local contexts. Consumption patterns are inscribed in local historically established cultural discourses and in peculiar consumers are reliant on their preponderantly class-based, socio-cultural resources for negociating planetary significances and patterns in their day-to-day lives. Their survey addresses several cognition spreads by demoing that the frequently celebrated homogeneousness of planetary young person ingestion patterns overlooks their deeper structural differences and diverse localised significances. These deeper differences flow from the manifestations of a multinational market political orientation in glocalized signifiers. Identities are rearticulated in local versions, although these appropriative reworkings are ne'er wholly free of ideological influence. The ideological theoretical accounts carry with them preferable readings, which consumers have to negociate.

Culture

To understand the impact the procedure of glocalization has on civilization we foremost need to understand what the term civilization denotes. It is in the sphere of civilization that we think, express ourselves joint our aspirations and make up one's mind our manner of life. In general civilization can be said to mention to the societal building, articulation and response of significance. 'Culture can be seen as a lived and originative experience for persons every bit good as a organic structure of artefacts texts and objects. It embraces the specialised and professionalized discourses of the humanistic disciplines, the commodified end product of the cultural industries the self-generated and unorganised cultural looks of mundane life and the complex interactions between all these ' .[ 3 ]The kernel of a civilization is defined by its responses to the ultimate inquiries of human being: decease, hope, calamity, love, trueness, power, the significance and intent of life, and the topographic point of the transcendental in human being. But the responses to these inquiries are different and vary from part to part therefore bring forthing different values to the different elements associating to civilization. The responses to these inquiries are affected by different socio-cultural-political even technological standards therefore holding a whole different mentality to the manner life is lived and perceived. Again Jan Nederveen Pieterse gives us a different categorization of civilization. Harmonizing to him in the context of the planetary there can be two constructs of civilization.[ 4 ]One is civilization as basically territorial i.e. localised civilization of societies and groups. The other he classifies every bit civilization as a general homo package which refers to it as a trans-local acquisition procedure. Culture in the first sense of the term has an inward looking sense of a topographic point while the 2nd is basically in the sense of outward looking. Harmonizing to Pieterse the 2nd finds look in the first. Culture is the medium through which persons and collectivities organize and conceptualize their individualities in clip and infinite. Therefore different positions of or different ways of looking at civilization can hold a immense impact on the influences cultural flows will hold on different societies.

Impact of Glocalization on Culture

The whole procedure of the planetary set uping the local and the local the planetary has branchings in a figure of domains and in a figure of ways. There are fundamentally two contestants in the globalisation argument as Featherstone and Lash note, the homogenizer for whom globalisation is to be seen as a effect of modernness and heterogenizers who consider globalisation as qualifying station modernness.[ 5 ]Homogenizers tend to believe in footings of a universe system that leads them to look chiefly at the presence of universals. Heterogenizers, on the other manus, tend to challenge that a universe system exists and disclaim the cogency of universals. They see the laterality of the West over `` the Rest '' as merely one peculiar system over another system. The glocalization argument does non adhere purely to any of these extremes but shows that the whole procedure is a bipartisan duologue - holding both homogenising and heterogenizing inclinations and attempts to turn to the contradiction between the two. The planetary substructures of civilization and communicating have besides contributed to progressively dense multinational elite and professional civilizations. Others have argued how this procedure of glocalization provides for crisp cultural consciousness.

There are certain impacts that Roland Robertson and Richard Giulianotti point out in their article covering with glocallization. In the article they develop a quadruple typology of glocalization undertakings, with mention to how they affect civilization[ 6 ]. The glocalization undertakings are:

Relativization: here, societal histrions seek to continue their anterior cultural establishments, patterns and significances within a new environment, thereby reflecting a committedness to distinction from the host civilization.

Adjustment: here, societal histrions absorb pragmatically the patterns, establishments and significances associated with other societies, in order to keep cardinal elements of the anterior local civilization.

Hybridization: here, societal histrions synthesise local and other cultural phenomena to bring forth typical, intercrossed cultural patterns, establishments and significances.

Transformation: here, societal histrions come to favor the patterns, establishments or significances associated with other civilizations. Transformation may secure fresh cultural signifiers or, more highly, the forsaking of the local civilization in favor of alternate and/or hegemonic cultural signifiers.

This quadruple typology enumerates how the procedure of glocalization has impacts other than simply homogenising. Further Robertson in his essay 'Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity ' negates the discourse on Cultural imperialism specially by the USA and alternatively advocates a line of idea which recognizes the options. Some of these statements are as follows:

The cultural messages from the West are besides differentially received and interpreted by the different locals. They absorb the communications transmitted in different ways

The major alleged manufacturers of planetary civilization ( CNN, Hollywood ) etc progressively are seen to orient merchandises to distinguish planetary markets

National symbolic resources are progressively available for differentiated planetary reading and ingestion, for illustration dramas of Shakespeare are diversely interpreted today and is non merely viewed from the British angle

Flow of thoughts and patterns from the 3rd universe to dominant societies should non be underestimated

Jan Nederveen Pieterse on the other manus positions the whole procedure of globalisation itself as a procedure of hybridisation giving rise to a planetary melange.[ 7 ]He defines hybridisation as ways in which forms become separated from bing patterns and recombine with new signifiers in new patterns. The phenomenon of hybridisation fundamentally undermines the thought of civilizations as internally homogeneous and externally distinguishable. He views individuality forms as going more complex as people want to asseverate local truenesss but want to portion planetary values and life styles. All this finally point to the fact that cultural experiences are non traveling in a way of cultural uniformity and standardisation. If this was the instance there would be no infinite for cross-over civilizations or 3rd civilizations for illustration music today. He gives illustrations to demo what the procedure of hybridisation creates multiple individualities such as Mexican schoolgirls dressed in Greek togas dance in the manner of Isadora Duncan, a London male child of Asiatic beginning playing for a local Bengali cricket squad and at the same clip back uping the Arsenal football nine, Thai pugilism by Maroc misss in Amsterdam, and Native Americans observing Mardi Gras in the United States. He farther points out that the civilizations exported by the West are themselves assorted civilizations when the line of descent of the civilizations is examined. Thus the whole procedure of glocalization has made possible what we know as creolization of planetary civilization or even orientalization of the universe today which all point in the opposite way to that of homogenisation. The glocally-mediated, normalized cultural loanblend is here to remain till other new forces emerge which can free them and possibly maneuver the class towards homogenisation once more or its utmost opposite heterogeneousness. Sociological glocalization 's focal point on how local civilizations are modified along planetary lines indicates the demand to take more earnestly how histrions redefine themselves when frameworks become dislodged from their societal foundations.

Hubert J. M. Hermans and Harry J. G. Kempen on the other manus analyze the impact by disputing the academic mainstream constructs which continues to work in a tradition of cultural dualities ( e.g. , individualistic vs. collectivized, independent vs. interdependent ) formulated as contrasts between western and non-western civilizations. Three developments are presented that challenge this attack:

the increasing cultural connexions with the phenomenon of hybridisation as a effect

the outgrowth of a universe system that implies an interpenetration of the planetary and the local

the hypertrophied cultural complexness as a consequence of large-scale distribution of cultural significances and patterns

Therefore we see how through the procedures of intermixing and hybridisation the procedure of glocalization is at work whereby non merely the planetary is seen to consequence the local but there exists a reciprocality by which local civilizations have an influence on the planetary giving rise to what is known as planetary mass civilization[ 8 ]impregnated with thoughts, manners and genres refering faith, music, art, cookery and so on. Nevertheless a treatment on the whole procedure of globalisation vis-a-vis glocalization remains unfinished without a treatment on the histrions advancing globalisation. These histrions have a immense function to play in the procedure of complecting the universe. They besides realize the bounds of homogenizing and are seen to accommodate to local conditions as put Forth by the glocalists. Enumerating the function of the histrions besides brings in the issue of power kineticss in the procedure of glocalization.

Actors

Another really of import facet when we talk of the transmittal of civilization is the function played by the assorted histrions who play a portion in the transmittal whether from the planetary to the local or from the local to the planetary. Among them is a group of 20-30 really big Multi National Corporations who dominate planetary markets for amusement, intelligence, telecasting etc. and these have acquired a really important cultural presence in about every continent. They are Time-Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corporation, Sony, Universal, TCI, Philips etc to call a few. More of import is that all these have their place base in OECD states and the bulk being in the USA. Three peculiar cultural markets are music film and telecasting. It has created multinational corporations bring forthing and selling records, specially import and export of musical merchandises and the incursion of national markets by foreign creative persons and music. Further this is based on a broader transportation of manners that are rooted mostly in American young person civilization. Under the protections of the planetary music industry local musical traditions excessively have an audience outside their fatherland under the streamer of so called universe music. Due to globalisation there is besides a diffusion of film-making capacities and organisations around the universe. Besides co-production has been really prevailing that is the development of the movie is funded by organisations in more than one state. Again telecasting excessively has become an industry every bit good as a medium of globalisation. Tourism is besides an of import method of advancing civilization, but once more the bulk of travel motions have been within North America and Western Europe. Apart from these a figure of organisations and international bureaus such as the UNESCO, WTO etc have become involved in the planetary communications and civilization or the issue of cultural protectionism etc.

The impression of glocality is meant to exceed the binary resistance between the 'global ' and the 'local ' and to supply an accurate lingual representation of their

intermixing in existent life. But in world when cultures meet there is besides a political relations. Cultures may hold assymetrical information emanating from the unequal distribution of wealth and political power. The planetary imperialism of the western states from 16th -20th century provided the substructure for infliction and diffusion of western thoughts, values and cultural establishments and patterns across the universe. Since the coming of European modernness cultural flows have been chiefly from the West to the E following lines of imperial control. Flows are reversed chiefly through migration but besides through other cultural signifiers such as music, nutrient, thought beliefs etc. But the cultural political relations of colonialism still prevails to a big extent. Due to the presence of the historical and economic contexts prevailing in the universe the grade to which the local, chiefly of the fringes, affect the dominant societies, chiefly the West, is far less than the influence of Westernization and Americanization. All the manners of cultural globalisation the stretching and deepening of relationships, the motion of marks, objects and people, cultural diffusion and emulation and the constitution of substructure and establishments involve distinguishable forms of stratification, of hierarchy and variability. This is chiefly because of the manner people have learned history, that there exists an entity called the West and that one can believe of this West as a society independent of and in resistance to other. This independency though has been challenged, and is right to a big extent, by the glocalist, the greater influence still is directed from the West to the east - a fact that can non be denied. This can be clearly shown when we see the function of the histrions involved in the procedure of airing of information and therefore altering civilizations. The American movie industry is reasonably independent and does non depend on co-sponsors therefore avoiding any dictates sing the substance and character of the movie. Besides the major MNC 's have their place bases in the western states chiefly the USA and advance their ain civilizations through their communicating channels. Even the international establishments are majorly dominated by the western powers. Therefore, though glocalization is taking topographic point, the influence of the planetary on the local still remains far greater than the influence of the local on the planetary.

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Decision

Therefore we end on a note where we accept the glocalist place of the procedure of global-localization. The presumed internal homogeneousness of civilizations and their construct as externally typical are called into inquiry. Different vicinities today are construing the planetary cultural flows differentially as has been enumerated in the paper so far. It is non simply a procedure of arbitrary acceptance but is synthesized harmonizing to the beliefs and imposts predominating in the local civilizations. For illustration though modern adult male in western society now seems to be progressively unwilling to populate for good in a wholly secularised universe ( an illustration of east set uping the West ) , it is instead improbable that in parts of the Third World where the traditional societal systems have been mostly shaped by faith, we will see the same grade of secularization which has characterised Western modernisation. Thus the procedure of filtering of influxs is really important. But glocalization theory besides emphasizes the influence of the local on the planetary i.e. the planetary as receiving systems of civilizations excessively from the local and non simply vise versa. Though this is true to some extent from the grounds available from the publicity of planetary mass civilization etc - the grade of influence of the local on the planetary can be challenged to a big extent. The whole procedure of colonialism has played a really important function in this unequal distribution of resources and power. Autochthonal peoples though have a sense of their traditional civilizations and imposts, the impact of a colonial yesteryear has left its grade in their cultural behaviour whether it be the dressing sense, the nutrient wonts or even the linguistic communication spoken. In these countries the western influence becomes really vivid and blunt. Therefore though glocalization as a theory has its virtues it is non excluded from unfavorable judgments. Overall it is a utile theory to convey out the drawbacks of the globalisation procedure as homogenizing and overarching and it besides brings out the importance of contexts and analysis at the micro-level.