Globalization and culture

Today we discussed in the class that 'globalization' forces people to go back to their roots, which I mean is culture. John Sinclair says that globalization experts like Arjun Appadurai and others give different theories of globalization. However, Colin Sparks says that theories of globalization are basically aspects of capitalist development, "and in particular the imperialist phase of capitalist development, than as the products of some new and distinct social phenomenon called 'globalization'."

However, this is a fact that globalization is the compression of time and space. Globalization as a phenomenon is not something new. It has been there even when there was no information technology. The advent of information technology spurred the pace of globalization, with some saying that the world has become a global village.

This has prompted intellectuals, especially cultural experts, that globalization is homogenizing cultures. But the fact is that culture per se is a multi-layered phenomenon and globalization just adds another layer to the multiple cultural identities. Globalization sets the arena for the different cultures to come in contact with each other. And this coming into contact, instead of leveling, sharpens individual differences of the these cultures. This is so because we become aware of our culture only when we step out of it and come in contact with another. Otherwise we take our culture for granted; without knowing or even realizing it.

At the top, globalization creates sort of homogeneity, but at the base they resist each other.