“The Case for Contamination� Intercultural Communications April 2, 2010 Christina Bauer Craig Kingsbury
What is Globalization? â—?
An ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globespanning network of communication and trade.
â—?
Can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture through acculturation.
Education and Technology What role do you think the internet plays in cultural globalization? ● Western cultures influence on importance of education: Closing the gap ● Do parents have a right to keep their children from participating in Globalization, in order to preserve their own culture? ● Ex. Family farm vs. Higher education ●
Tradition vs. Normalization ●
Respect for elders ●
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Family Home vs. Nursing home
Dating ●
What age is “appropriate”? ●
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15 vs. 20
Dress ●
Muslim women vs. Western Women
Western Culture ●
In a remote village in Ghana: “Even here, the villagers will have radios; you will be able to get a discussion going about Mike Tyson or Tupac; and you will probably be able to find a bottle of Guinness or Coca-Cola.”
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Is it ok for large corporations (ex. McDonalds, Starbucks, Coca Cola) to be EVERYWHERE in the world? Has that become the norm? Does it truly influence a culture?
Can a culture be completely separate? “Cultures are made of continuities and changes, and the identity of a society can survive through these changes. Societies without change aren’t authentic; they’re just dead” ● Can a culture be truly isolated? Can it survive? ● Do we know of any cultures that are truly unaffected by globalization? ●
Globalization killing Native Cultures? “The fear is that the values and images of Western mass culture, like some invasive weed, are threatening to choke out the world's native flora.” ● Do you feel this way? ● Is Globalization spreading and threatening native culture? ●
Is Globalization “good” or “bad”? ●
“More of them (villages) have access to effective medicines. More of them have access to clean drinking water, and more of them have schools.”
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Is the impact of “western culture” impacting native cultures positively?
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Increase in quality of life?
International “Beauty” ●
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Views on “beauty” is changing due to global views. Example- Women in China binding feet used to be beautiful. In the early 1900s, there was an antifoot-binding campaign, and “what had been beautiful became ugly; ornamentation became disfigurement.”
Universal way of thinking? ● ●
How do you decide what values and ideals a global community should accept? Is there a universal code of ethics? ● ● ●
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Human Rights Slavery Labor Laws
“There are many values worth living by and that you cannot live by all of them… (cosmopolitans) hope and expect that different people and different societies will embody different values.”
“The case for contamination” ●
“Living cultures do not, in any case, evolve from purity into contamination; change is more a gradual transformation from one mixture to a new mixture, a process that usually takes place at some distance from rules and rulers, in the conversations that occur across cultural boundaries.”