The only thing that remains “unchanged” is the change itself.Change is the infinitely ongoing process with reference of the time. In thismodern era, many things which were not part of our origin or culture have nowbecome essential for us. By the adaptation of habits from other culture, the improvementtakes place and the changes are merged within. Globalization is the main factorwhich has affected most in this never ending process of change.
In easy words, globalization can be define as the transfer ofideas, knowledge, values, emotions, technology, economy and wealth, etc. on theglobal platform in the way of changing or reshaping the cultural boundaries andimprovement for the necessity. For example, when we wake up morning we changeour t-shirt which is made in UK. We than use the Volkswagen car to go to marketthat is made in Germany.
We purchase electronics, spices, books, etc which aremade in South Korea, India and China respectively. It is only possible with thehelp of globalization. Globalization affects on many different parameters likegoods and services, technology, business, financial and economical levels. Onindividual or personal levels, it has affected by changing standard of livingand quality of living. As we all know that globalization has affected useconomically and politically, it has also affected socially on a way more broaderscale. With technology becoming fast and easily portable, people of differentparts of the world are interacting together. Today they can easily know eachother’s culture and tradition. So technology has made this world a smallerplace and makes the people come closer to know each other’s lifestyle andculture.
In general there are number of positive effects of globalizationon culture as not every good practice was born in one culture or civilization.The world in which we live today is a result of several cultures comingtogether. When people of one culture observe the flaws in their particular culture,they start adopting the habits of the other cultures which are more correct orsuitable with the times. Societies have become larger as they have welcomedpeople of other civilizations and backgrounds, creating a whole new culture oftheir own. Traditions, Cooking styles, languages and customs have spread allaround the sphere due to globalization.
The same can be said about movies,musical styles and other art forms which have moved from one country toanother, leaving an impression on a culture which has adopted them. As peoplefrom different cultural backgrounds interact more frequently, their prejudicesabout each other can decrease as they learn from each other. Some argue that globalization is negative as it will forcepoorer countries of the world to do whatever the big and developed countriestell them to do. Another viewpoint is that developed countries are the ones whomay lose out because they are involved in outsourcing many of the manufacturingjobs that used to be done by their own citizens.
Talking at some instance whenmany cultures interact on a regular basis, though, one of the cultures canbecome more dominant or integrated into another’s and threaten the othergroup’s cultural traditions. As immigration from one country to another isincreasingly popular in search of better jobs and lifestyles, people come intocontact with other nationalities and cultural diffusion takes place. However,this may also lead in the loss of the minor cultural values and the injectionof the western concepts into the third world countries and other smallercountries who are not yet willing to embrace their concepts in eithertechnological or social terms. Many developing countries havenot so strict pollution laws than those in the developed countries. Increased industrializationand emission from factories located in the host countries and emissions fromtransportation of goods are increasing pollution to the environment.Agricultural lands are also lost in the process along with wildlife andhabitats. Some refer to globalization as the intensification of globalinterconnectedness, suggesting a world full of movement and mixture, contactand linkages, and persistent cultural interactions and exchange. Thetechnologies of communication and transport have made economy more and moremobile.
Globalization can benefit individuals by allowing them to partake inother, immigrant cultures, which may increase their aspirations. The rapid flowof capital, people, goods and ideologies pulls the world together in a tightnet which may sometimes strangle the individuals it is meant to liberate. Thisinterconnectedness can be traced back to European colonialism, which began theprocess of cultural homogenization across geographical boundaries. Major number of countries has been affected by globalizationup to some extent which is beyond argument whether the countries are developedcountries like USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia or thedeveloping countries like India, Argentina, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, Philippines, Qatar, etc. The Impact of Globalizationhas changed the way of life of people in major parts of Asia by changing theirtraditional habits like food, clothing style, communication methods, rituals,transportation, education standards, etc.
However there is no question that theWest has also benefited from globalization. The United Kingdom and the UnitedStates have seen huge increase in sectors like services, especially infinancial services. However, the accompanying income inequality is of a differenthue than in Asia.
Younger and better educated workers located in cosmopolitanurban centers such as New York and London has seen a phenomenal increase intheir income. On the other hand, older, less educated workers in the rustingindustrial belts of northern England and America have lost their jobs tomanufacturers overseas. Instead of jobs with good growth prospects enjoyed byseveral generations in the past, the quality of jobs has deteriorated and thereis little hope among the rust belt’s working class that this situation can beturned around. Germany has shown the way to creating high-end manufacturing jobs ina rich-country setting. It has a great number of highly skilled work forcesthat produces which are technology-intensive that generate a large trade.
Thereis little support in Germany for reneging on global commitments. Talkingabout the India, since the beginning India is known for diversity and prosperityin its culture. It has one of the oldest civilization and culture in the worldyet Indian culture has the immense power to unite peoples together despite ofsuch diversity.
India is a democratic republic and is divided into 26 states,that each has its own government which is elected by the people living in it.The keyword to describe India is diversity, regarding religion as well as thelanguage(s) and the population. India is a country containing over 1 billioncitizens which obviously involves big differences between people. English isthe major- and administrative language in India but there are 14 officiallanguages and a very large number of other dialects spoken.
Assaid, many different religions are present in India. The dominant one isHinduism (82% of the population). Besides this, 6 other religions arerepresented in Indian society. However, the focus would be on Hinduism in thisparagraph because of the fact that the legacy of Hinduism is very clear inIndia..Today Indians are moving to other parts of the world for highereducation and learning better technology.
A girl is no more restricted to home,and a woman to a housewife. Girls are also getting opportunities for theirbetter education and lifestyle, same as the boys. Old traditions and rituals arechanging every year. These changes are the roots for the better society where thewomen have the same right as the men have. Talkingabout the marriages, the changes are visible. Now younger generation has libertyto choose their life partner themselves unlikely traditionally their parentsused to find a marriage partner for them.
Today if parents choose a lifepartner for them then they allow their children to spend time with their lifepartner for understanding each other and then perform the marriage ceremony ifboth are comfortable and agree to do so. By doing this they gave their childrena better chance to have a better future. Younger generation now have the freedomof choice in contrast with the old culture of Indian society where parents weresolely responsible for choosing life partner for their children and lessinterferences were allowed. Indian food, clothing and languages are varied withrespect to different states.
Thefood varies in its taste, but every food has its own nutrient value and everyregion is specified and rich in its medicinal preparations with the homeremedies. Even the clothing varies in different states which is very muchparticular in maintaining the dignity of woman. The varies cuisines from allover the world though have different flavors to add, still the food ingredientsthat have inflicted with much popularity are the junk food items which areadopted from western culture. Globalization helped to adopt the dressing likethe suiting for the even though it is an inappropriate match for the Indiantype of climate.
As thechange is the law of nature, more or less like two faces of a coin, the changehas both the positive and the negative impacts on Indian culture. The dimension,individualism and collectivism, has been influenced by globalization. n. TheIndian youth is far more individualistic than before. Now a day the youth donot focus on the goals of their family or an organization, for instance. On thecontrary, they seem to focus more on their own goals. The traditional Indianfamily is a so-called joint family where three generations live together andthe grandparents took care of the children during the day.
This is still thecase – however, mostly in rural India. As a negative impact of globalizationand increasing mobility of the Indians, a better infrastructure and workingwomen, a nuclear family pattern seems to secure a foothold in contemporaryIndia. This can be one of the reasons why the youth in India has a changinggroup mentality. The traditional values have changed in time. India has becomea consumer culture and materialism is becoming more evident. To sum up, it isalso seen that Indians change their view upon caste and equality. In the urbanareas it seems to be the case that caste is being replaced by a class society.Status is connected with materialism and consumerism.
Another visible changein India culture today can be found in Indian cinemas or films. Mumbai is likeIndia’s Los Angeles or Hollywood of India. It’s the junction for production ofmany famous Indian Bollywood Movies. These films are an expression of Indian art and are filledwith great music, amazing dancing, and Indian celebrities. In the past,Bollywood films were pretty conservative in regards to the amount of skin theywould reveal and the body language that dance scenes displayed. However, in thelast decades, the dancing in Bollywood Films has become much more provocative andthe clothing has become much racier than in films of the past. Anotherfactor for changes to Indian culture today is the influence of western culture.
Many young men and women are sent to the United States, or other countries, tostudy and to acquire jobs. While away from India, they experience new rights ofpassage, independence and accept new cultural ideas. Plus, the internet hasallowed people from different countries and cultural backgrounds to connectwith one another, and to keep up on global events. It’s nearly impossible foranyone to be kept in the dark about other cultures or what’s going on in theworld, given current technologies.
In a nutshell we cansay that India culture today is different from what it used to be, but India’score traditions and cultural values mostly remain undamaged. Most important,the Indian culture today is still rich, beautiful and accepting of othercultural beliefs. Taking the tour to Egypt,Egypt is exemplary for a country that has experienced fundamental economic andpolitical changes in the last decades. These changes were not only triggered bythe Arab Spring, but also by the process of liberalization which began in the1970s. This involves opening the national market to products from all over theworld, and also the privatization of all various sectors, including the bankingand health sector. The Egyptian society has become a society of twospeeds. One part of the society lives with structures that were developed inthe 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and have worsened.
The other part moves in aglobalized world economy that lives with the acquisitions of the 21st century. Egypt, as one of the cradles of civilization, and long-timeleader of the Arab world, provides a strong narrative highlighting thechallenges and successes of globalization. On the one hand, the country hastransformed itself economically, from a centrally administered economy to afree-market economy, through the intervention of the IMF and World Bank. Thistransition was difficult and many felt left behind when government serviceswere cut and the prices of everyday goods and services rose. Thereligious/secular divide and the young/old divide are apparent in conversationsthroughout the Egyptian blogosphere about religion and politics, and especiallyabout the use of language. The Internet is changing how young Egyptians expressthemselves, often merging Egyptian Arabic with English, with new slang terms toboot.
While the older generations are caught up in debates aboutwhether globalization is conflicting with our culture, it is the youngergeneration that is reinventing the language, embracing the phenomenon of newlingo and bringing about a revolution of ideas and trends into the country. Thisinternationalism is the trend of the modern jargon the youth developed tobetter express themselves and their lifestyle. Growing up in a conservativeculture run by centuries-old traditions and customs while watching Friends andchatting on MSN, young people have combined both worlds in the way they speak.New Arabized-English words are coined every day.Critics have described today’s youth as oppressed and blindlyadopting Western values. The young generation has also been blamed forobliterating the Arabic language and Egyptian identity, replacing it with aglobalized modern identity that goes against our morals. But there is alwaysthe possibility that they are simply spicing upthe language to better suit the new technology and global trends.
In fact last year a book was released by Kenouz, a local publishing house,exclusively discussing the new lingo of Egyptian youth. The 273-page book iscalled “Qamous Rewesh Tahn,” or “An Extremely Cool Dictionary,” written byjournalist Yasser Hemaya…In the book, Hemaya compiles around 500 words and expressionsused nowadays by young people, in addition to other sections about linguistictopics such as the language of online chatting and the language oftaxi-drivers.There have also been innovations made in order to make the defaultwritten language, which is English, for computers and mobile phones moreconvenient. The biggest influence of globalization to Egypt is”Americanization”.
It means that some famous US companies likeMcDonald’s and Starbucks has spread all over the world and they have broughtsome bad effects to each nations’ industries and eating habits. Some foodindustries in Egypt have trouble to compete with such US fast food shopsbecause they are so popular among people who like to buy their foods so fastand low price. And Egyptian people often assault with such US companies andshops owing to religious problems. In addition, increasing the number of immigrants from Egypt is alsoserious problem which was caused by globalization. In 2011, Egyptian revolutionwas happened and many people in Egypt were running away for safety place.
Theytried to flee from their own countries and it produced some the problem ofincreasing the number of immigrants above all in many of the Europeancountries. Furthermore, globalization brought environmental destroy andinternational terrorism because it has become easier to move around in theworld than before. The most important point of globalization in Egypt isthe growing economy because of free trading in the international society.
Egypthas continued to sell their natural resources like oils natural gas and minerals. Above all, the tariff is the most beneficial thing for making much moneyby carrying out the international trading with foreign countries. The effectsof tariff are so big that some nations tried to discuss and adjust the price oftariff for peaceful and efficient trading. China is one of those civilizations which is very rich in itscultural heritage since the very day of its existence. The highlights of Chineseculture include particular festivals, dresses, food, music etc. This country ishaving may be the fastest economic growth in the world today. Asfar as International Relations is concerned, this form of globalizationmay help the countries to have a better understanding of each other and moretolerance towards each other.
One major impact which has been felt by the Chinese nation isthat people are adopting western culture as their own and are more tending towardswestern cultural heritage. The education is also a part of the culture and theeducation system of china is also being affected by inclusion of new coursesand curriculums which have taken the place of traditional Chinese curriculum.Clothing, which is also considered as an integral part of a culture, is alsobeing changed as people now prefer clothes like jeans and t-shirts, while theoriginal culture of china lays stress on wearing cheongsams and coats etc.Another major affect is that on the food of china. Chinese people have theirown taste of food and eatables but the aspect of globalization has developed ataste for cheese as many global fast food restaurants are taking place oftraditional Chinese restaurants.
?Before western and Chinese civilization came into closecontact, Chinese people had always longed for a life depicted in traditionalChinese paintings. Those paintings present a harmonious coexistence of peopleand other life forms. Regarded as the essence of ancient Chinese philosophies,harmony has been deeply-rooted in the minds of the Chinese people. On the onehand, it has contributed to the unique continuity of Chinese civilization. Onthe other, Chinese people became too much contented with their achievements todesire any further changes. As globalization deepens, it is bound to affect ourideal of harmony. It has created a challenge in China to thinkcritically about globalization as now it is the last remaining socialistcountry.
It is imperative that the question of alternatives and other potentialitiesand possibilities be raised in any attempt at theorizingor conceptualizing the process of globalization. Globalization isgenerally perceived as the result of the collapse of Soviet style socialism, aswell as the unprecedented expansion of transnational capitalism. While avowedlyEurocentric in its hegemonic formations, globalization also sets up an indispensablestructural context for analyzing what happens in today’s world. A term which is gaining popularity all around the world inrecent time is global culture. Many writers suggest that cultural globalizationis a long-term historical process of bringing different cultures intointerrelation. Cultural globalization involves human integration andhybridization, arguing that it is possible to detect cultural mixing acrosscontinents and regions going back many centuries they refer, for example,to the movement of religious practices, language and culture brought by Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Indianexperience, to take another example, reveals both the integration of the impactof cultural globalization and its long-term history. The work of such culturalhistorians qualifies the lineage of writers predominantly economists andsociologists who trace the origins of globalization to recent capitalism.
The topic of Global culture good or bad has always been adebatable one.
