WHAT IS CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION? - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The cultural globalization is the unification of diverse customs belonging to different communities. The term refers to the modifications experienced by different ways of life of different peoples.

Due to cultural globalization, the customs, traditions and artistic expressions from different parts of the world have been adapting to the changes that have arisen from it. The basis of this phenomenon is associated with the media, through which the cultures and customs of various countries merge.

Along these lines, thanks to globalization and the massiveness of the media, different societies become interconnected, either by generating links and giving rise to a unity between them, or by underlining their diversity.

Cultural globalization implies the unification of diverse cultural identities, tending to achieve homogeneity and its main underlying content being its own cultural identity.

This internalization includes the connection between territories, nations and continents and, fuses the elements of the past and the present. From it the values ​​of universal culture are socialized by inserting the global into the local.

What should I know about cultural globalization?

In order to understand cultural globalization, it is necessary to understand the relationship between globalization and culture.

On the one hand, globalization is a dynamic process where the economy, technology, politics, culture, social characteristics and ideological thoughts corresponding to each region are interrelated on a universal level.

Historically, from the expansion of capitalism, globalization produces important transformations worldwide.

Taking as central axes, modernity and the notion of progress, globalization is interpreted as a totalizing vision of reality, where there are tendencies towards the global development of society.

In this sense, the existing relationship between the social and the cultural, inherent in this dynamic process, is closely linked to the capitalist relations of production.

From this capitalist perspective of globalization, from it the social relations of production are interconnected throughout the world framework; linking regional diversities in a heterogeneous world.

In this way, globalization can be understood as a commercial dependence between countries. Which are in a close relationship for the convenience of the integration of their economies.

At the same time, it must be taken into account that globalization not only encompasses the economic, but also produces a strong modification in all the daily aspects of the life of a nation. As well as its environmental, political, social elements, etc. That is why globalization has its own global culture and politics.

Culture

It is the result of a conjunction of forms and expressions characteristic of a certain society.

In it are embedded the beliefs, codes, rules, rituals and common practices, predominant in people belonging to a society.

In this way, culture is the form of expression that individuals have of their own traditions.

In this way, culture encompasses the distinctive, affective, spiritual, material and intellectual traits that identify and characterize a society.

And it in turn includes the ways of life, value systems, beliefs, rights and traditions of a specific population, in a given period.

Through culture, the subject becomes aware of himself and the world that surrounds him, allowing man to find a way of expression to create works that transcend.

Cultural globalization is, therefore, a trend towards homogeneity. A phenomenon that reflects a normalization of cultural expressions around the world. Being implicit in it, the socialization of the values ​​of universal culture.

Influence of globalization on culture

As new customs and new ideas come from different parts of the world, the characteristic culture of a region is influenced. In this way, regional cultures begin to adopt cultural and consumer practices that are corresponding to other nations and generally capitalist in nature.

The consumption of brands, media, symbols that are taken as representative icons of a society then appears in regional customs. Emerging in this way, a culture of a global nature.

Taking as a result of the conjunction of different elements typical of different cultures, the expansion of cultural models corresponding to capitalist societies.

Thanks to the mass media, countries are increasingly connected, from the economic, technological and cultural aspects; resembling each other more and more.

In this way, the gap that differentiates the diverse cultures inherent in each society becomes ever narrower. However, there is a predominance of the cultures of the most economically powerful countries. As a consequence, cultural diversity is decreasing as a consequence of cultural globalization.

At the same time and as a consequence of this, certain social groups that have been excluded from the globalized world are uniting to react against globalization. In order to revive the own values ​​inherent to local cultures, with the aim of revaluing their own.

Influence of the media on globalization

Cultural globalization arises as a consequence of the communication process between different parts of the world, and thanks to the different means of communication that exist today, different countries can communicate with each other.

As a result, the different regions manage to link up through various exchange networks worldwide. Producing in this way, the contact and the relationship between different societies, with their peculiar cultural characteristics.

In this way, the media begin to play an important role in the development of cultural globalization.

The audiovisual media, for example, are beginning to be an important source of creation and transformation, becoming more and more omnipresent in the daily lives of people in general.

Thus, popular culture was born, which spread throughout the planet, becoming the dominant culture. Based on this, social groups identify with all those products present on a world level, enriching a collective imagination.

In this sense, the media are a tool for homogenizing global culture.

Cultural globalization today

At present, world society appears immersed in a new cultural context, where globalization as a dynamic and continuous process has influenced culture in most of its aspects.

Cultural globalization has been and is a phenomenon that inevitably influences the different areas of daily life of the inhabitants of a nation, presenting both favorable and unfavorable effects.

The detractors of the process believe that there is an important difference between the rapid growth of some countries, with respect to the little or almost zero of others, implying a certain loss of sovereignty for the latter.

A priori, cultural globalization appears as a phenomenon from which no society can escape since the mass media are present everywhere, as well as the stereotypes that can enrich, the fashion styles that they spread, among others.

At present, all the countries of the world are immersed in all these global processes. But from an optimistic point of view, the world can see itself increased in exchanges of all kinds, capital, goods and services, technologies, information and cultural patterns.

However, the question could be raised about the concentration of wealth and social marginalization or the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries and how the process of cultural globalization affects the environment.

References

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