Globalization and Its Impact

Many observers recognize that globalization is a multidimensional process, taking place concurrently within the domains of the economy, politics, the environment, the institutionalization of technologies, and culture. Therefore, it might appear a comparatively straightforward task to explain globalization as a discrete section of social life. Nevertheless, this relatively simple set of distinctions turns out to more complicated once we come to explore it in detail, and particularly when it comes to the dimension of culture. To comprehend these intricacies, it is fundamentally essential to ponder what culture is composed of. This is by no means a straightforward concern since culture is a complicated notion and has constantly created controversies among intellectuals, as well as a wider part of the population.

One of the primary issues of this controversy is the extent to which the notion of culture is represented. One view suggests that culture regards everything that forms up the livelihood of a group of people – the belief, inherited from early reports of anthropology, of culture as a “compact unity,” the absolute “way of life” of people. On a much closer interpretation, culture indicates a limited set of social customs – the generation of literature, music, art, film, and others – which are non-instrumental, in other words, perceived as conclusions in themselves. Both these propositions apprehend something of the rather obscure idea of culture, but both also suffer from problems, both intrinsically and in relation to the process of globalization.

Culture can be subdivided into two categories: material culture and its counteragent, non-material culture. The former regards to the entities or belongings of a particular society, such as are cars, markets, clothes, cuisine and the special buildings where these groups pray and worship. Non-material culture, in comparison, embodies the beliefs, perspectives, philosophies, and worldviews of a group of people. These two features of culture are deeply connected, and materials usually represent cultural ideas.

Cultural globalization alludes to the transference of beliefs, ideas, and values all around the globe to increase and strengthen social connections. The aforementioned process is characterized as the usual expansion of cultures that have been dispersed by the Internet, international travel, and mass media. These modern-day means contribute to the centuries-old process of colonization that has been resulting in the diffusion of different cultures for many years. The flow of cultures among different parts of the world allows people to participate in widespread cultural relations that travel across political, territorial, and geographical borders without any difficulty. The formation and development of such social and cultural relations are not only witnessed on a material level but rather it involves so much more than that.

Cultural globalization results in the establishment of shared standards, knowledge and consciousness with which people of many cultures and nations link their personal and mutual cultural identities. It causes growing interconnectedness amongst different populations and cultures. Globalization has caused an expansion in recreational activities by advertising global pop culture, especially with the help of the Internet and television. I believe you can remember at least one moment in your life when you turned the TV on and some Hollywood movie or a song was being broadcasted at that moment. These all were and are a part of the globalization process. Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural details such as beliefs, technologies, habits, religions, manners, languages, and others.

Although globalization has enhanced cross-cultural communications, it has led to a weakening of the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of many cultures.

Religion is the pioneering cultural element to globalize, being spread by its followers with force, migration, and trade.Imperialism. The world’s most-followed and oldest religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and more newly founded sects such as Mormonism have taken root and impacted many isolated cultures in regions notably far away from their origins.

Globalization has heavily affected sports. For instance, professional athletes from more than 200 countries compete in different competitions in the contemporary Olympic Games. The FIFA World Cup is the most broadly watched and attended sporting competition in the world, surpassing even the Olympic Games, almost every kid in the world would know who you are talking about when you mention either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi.

The term globalization indicates either partial or complete transformation. Cultural traditions such as traditional music or folklore can be lost or turned into a mixture of many cultures once globalization “hits” that particular culture. Globalization can generate an emergency situation for many culture-states for the preservation of their traditional musical heritage. Archivists strive to assemble, document and transcribe collections before songs and tunes are absorbed and transformed into globalized pop culture, while local artists strive for originality and to preserve and protect local musical traditions. Globalization motivates musicians to discard traditional instruments for the sake of better economic and financial endeavors. They fuse local tones with modern-day global music and as a result, local music heritage gets lots along the way.

The upside of globalization is that it helps the music to become a significant player in economic and cultural advancement. For example, music genres such as jazz began locally in their early years and shifted into worldwide phenomena later on through the globalization process. Globalization aided global music phenomenons by enabling music from developing nations to spread into broad circles around the globe, thus promoting their products.

Some criticize globalization for harming the diversity of cultures. As a dominating nation’s culture is introduced into different others through the process of globalization, it can threaten the heterogeneity of local culture. Some people claim that globalization may conclusively guide towards Westernization or Americanization of cultures, where the hegemon cultural notions of economically and politically vigorous Western nations expand and weaken local cultures.

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