Saturday 25 June 2016

Globalization and a little bit of westernization impact on lifestyles around the world today, we need to admit

The intensification of global interconnectedness, means a world full of movement and mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange is to their advantage. The quick flows of capital, people, goods, images and ideas across the globe. The increased communication, transportation and technology, intensification of the links, modes of interaction and flows that interconnect the world. Interdependency of the global and the local landscape such that, while everyone might continue to live their local lives, their actions made in their local environment have become global events that come back to have an impact on local spaces. The transfer of skills and simple technologies that can be localized and made appropriate make localization a pursuit and hobby. It means that people can enjoy their local villages however remote they may be as long as they are connected and can make cappuccino or engage with friends via twitter or facebook. 


Today, western culture is mentioned in the same breath as say, Asian or African cultures. The frameworks of superiority or inferiority are now incorrect.  It used to be that all values, goods, and cultures came from the United States and European countries and were then passed to everyone else. Now values, goods, and cultures come from all over the world and are shared to any number of countries across the globe. There is an anti-Eurocentric movement from the practices that take European or Western values, concerns, good and culture and place them on other countries located around the globe. “Westernization” does not occur, in the sense that people absorb ideas, values and lifestyles from Western Civilization. People now customize their own ideas, values and lifestyles. The US has China-towns, Japan-towns, St. Patrick’s day, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King Day, Shabbat, Hanukah (Jewish Holidays and Festivals), to name but a few. Immigrants or other cultures in United States try their best  to assimilate with the American lifestyle in order to provide a better opportunity for their families but for the most part they make their own way of life too as part of self-determination (China Public Holiday Schedule 2016/2017/2018.) .

Globalization has brought a “time-space compression”, meaning the transition between moments and distances between spaces are being shortened and reduced. It currently takes much less time to get tasks done than ever before and geographic distance is no longer an obstacle that must be overcome. Next is, “deterritorialization”, meaning that physical locations no longer matter with respect to cultures and people. Different cultures can now communicate and connect with each other from all different parts of the world like never before. From a social standpoint these two factors contribute to the largest and most important effects of globalization. 

Globalization has completely altered the way in which the world operates. The barriers that once hindered our ability to communicate and interact with people across the world have diminished. Globalization has become ingrained in all fields: business, government, economic, social. equity and extermination of poverty, financial institutions become spokespersons of the financial community. globalization has also opened windows into how hypocritical and inconsiderate some ways of life of the haves are experienced. Through the social media, we have glimpsed into the lives of how the very rich live and how the poor keep on getting poorer. Attempts to explain that inequality and inequity is made in the Globalization and Its Discontents published in 2002 by the 2001 Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz (Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2002). He maintains that the procedures and rhetoric of financial institutions widen the gap between developed and developing, which resulted from undemocratic paternalism and lack of accountability, transparency. Undemocratic paternalism is inflicted through ideology, assuming the model IMF presents is universally applicable. Moreover lack of accountability and transparency is pronounced in unfair trade agenda. The criticism against Stiglitz is that government failures should not necessarily be equated to market failures. Companies with good management have stood longer than some governments. In other words, governments cane challenged or even outcompeted by well managed companies or organizations. Some organizations have incomes far more than the GDPs of certain countries. Wal-Mart Stores. Wal-Mart began as a small discount store in Arkansas in 1962 and in forty-five years the company has grown to the world’s largest retailer and second largest company. It seems almost unfathomable that, in less than fifty years a home-town company could become the world’s second largest corporation only behind Exxon-Mobil.


Millions of people travel internationally (John Yunker. 2014). Europe and Asia represent the largest destination markets overall. Domestic travel is also surging around the world — with more than five million domestic travelers per year.The first things that come to our mind when we think about travelling is relaxing, getting to know other countries and cultures, maybe spending some quality time with our family and friends and escape from our daily life. Due to globalisation travel has changed tremendously over the number of years and created a lot of opportunities and different ways of travelling. Globalisation has impacted travel in such a way that almost everyone in the world is now capable of having differently packaged holidays at least once a year. The packages include: exotic safaris or internal travel to interesting places or community events. Travel  has created a dichotomy of the well traveled and the less traveled. Unfortunately, it tends to relate with the privileged and less privileged. Why it is unfortunate is that such words like primitive are bundled in explanations of certain cultures or people who are different from us. 

The increasing usage of the internet has given us the opportunity to access information much more easily than previous generations. Whilst sources of knowledge were hardly reachable back then, the internet enables fast and easy access to education. Another kind of travelling which gets more and more popular, especially among younger people, is “Adventure Travel”. It includes physical activities, such as biking tours, motor cycling as well as near-natural activities like fishing and snorkelling. Furthermore, adventure vacations may contain cultural shocks, as the so-called “Ghetto Tourism” gets more and more popular. These are trips to impoverished regions where you get to know the downside of the large disparity between rich and poor. We can order for food or sex or book a hotel room using of mobile devices. customers in more developed markets often interact with companies via PC-based websites, customers in emerging markets are more likely to interact via cellular devices. The way data is streaming is making it possible for many to pay what they can afford and in turn there is an increasing likelihood to use mobile apps or websites that stream images or videos. This has also created  a culture of writing about experiences in form of blogs and the accompanying pictures have made some blogs gain bigger readership, likes and follows. 


References: 


China Public Holiday Schedule 2016/2017/2018. Retrieved from: http://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/china-public-holiday.htm, Retrieved on: June 25th 2016.

Jewish Holidays and Festivals. Retrieved from: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/default_cdo/jewish/holidays.htm. Retrieved on: June 25th 2016.


John Yunker. 2014. Globalization Lessons from the Travel Industry. Retrieved from: http://content.lionbridge.com/globalization-lessons-travel-industry-2/. Retrieved on: June 25th 2016.



Joseph E. Stiglitz . 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents. W. W. Norton & Company

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