Americanization Versus National Culture Essay

Changes atomic number 18 realities of life regardless of ones origin, skin color, beliefs and traditions. These be unavoidable facts that sham all living creatures on earth in both ways-good and bad. Like all other changes, sphericalization is one concept born as proto(prenominal) as 1960s and has rapidly influenced literally all peoples even those at the edge of the reality. In fact, the United Nations Organization (UNO) declared the 1960s as the clear up of global development (Dass, Rakesh 2008).Drivers of globalisation include frugal, political, cultural and hearty factors that eventually led to the spread and elimination of traditions and practices in all aspects of tender-hearted life. The bottom assembly line is that globalization has two faces the beneficial and the devastating one. Ones point of argument provide depend on which side is he in at the moment. Although the reality that globalization has been advantageous in some ways, this paper would try to prove th at globalization has more devastating effects especially on human ending and identity.In particular, this paper would like to point out the multi-faceted risks posed by globalization trend in South East Asian nations. ethnical differences are sacred things that each person is required to respect. It is this goal and tradition that South East Asian nations are rich of and their individual history will prove this argument right. Culture is used by the organizers of society politicians, theologians, academics, and families to impose and ensure order, the rudiments of which change over time as need dictates (Rothkopf, David 1997). It is this coating that identifies Asians from the Americans and the Europeans.The differences should non however be treated as walls that hinder other nation to relate with others because the significance of international relations for national development should to a fault be ac noesisd. It happened however that globalization forced each nation to open not only their doors but also their windows to let the influence of the Western culture peep in and eventually seep deep into its culture and tradition. Globalization and the technological revolution will also expect a significant disturb on the diversity and convergence of cultures (Huntington, Samuel 1993, p. 22). We can take culture in its two meanings.The first meaning encompasses a peoples lifestyle, folkways, traditions, art, literature, dance, music and so on. Culture by this definition has to be preserved, nurtured and enriched. It links people to the origins of whom and what they are. It is what binds them together. It gives them their identity beyond the family. It is the source of their sense of self-worth. It imparts meaning to their lives. The diversity of peoples cultures and the interaction among them enrich the human race. Culture comprehends a peoples set of values and attitudes, their outlook on life, their ways of thinking and working, and their mindsets.It is peoples cultures in this sense that globalization and technology are disrupting. In this sense, cultures have to adjust in order for people and nations and regions to be competitive in the global economic system (Achenbach, Joel 2001, p. 17). If science and technology, especially information and communications technology and biotechnology, are the arena and weapons for global competition, nations and companies have to undertake a massive re-allocation of resources to education, training, research and development, and the infrastructure for the knowledge industries. National and corporate priorities have to be reset.Legal assumptions and institutional arrangements have to be re-examined. Just as importantly, peoples mindsets have to change. They have to pack a scientific bent, develop a certain rigor in their thinking, and cultivate the capacity and inclination to turn knowledge into practical applications. People have to develop the willingness to question knowledge that is hande d down and challenge intellectual authority and be allowed to do so. Personal relationships have to be tempered by the objective application of law and rules in the conduct of government and business.In sum, the proverbial paradigm shift must take place. Language, religion, political and legal systems, and social customs are the legacies of victors and marketers and reflect the judgment of the marketplace of ideas throughout popular history (Rothkopt, David 1997). Rothkopt also stressed that culture is often seen as living artifacts, bits and pieces that are being passed from generation to generation through the processes of indoctrination, popular acceptance, and unthinking adherence to old ways.This way, cultural differences lead one nation to consider globalization a threat to ones culture and eventually to ones identity. Whether it is the rapid proliferation of Starbucks in Tokyo, changing realities of the real estate market in great Vancouver, the recent boom in Korean popula r music and TV dramas in Taipei, or the widespread employment of Filipino maids in Hong Kong, the fabric of effortless life in m some(prenominal) cities in the Asia Pacific region are comprised of increasingly transnational elements.Intensification of foreign direct investment, trade, cross-national corporate alliances and mergers, cultural exchanges, and university tie-ups have beef up world-wide links between people, organizations, regions, and governments of various nation-states. Terms such as global economy, cultural diversity, and global environment have wended their way into the lexicons of major business schools, age at the same time, a constellation of demonstrations and discontents have been stuffed into the category of the anti-globalization movement. Observing these trends and changes is an easy enough task, requiring little more than a walk along any(prenominal) major commercial street in any major city, or a casual perusal of university course catalogues. How one a nalyses and understands the changes associated with globalization are some other issue, one that presents a considerably more complex intellectual problem. Does globalization writ-large promote greater understanding of cultural similarities and differences, or does it merely diffuse a wider array of simplistic and essentialist stereotypes?Does globalization propagate exploitation and income disparity, or does it offer the individual freedom of choice and convenience of standardization? Do these shifts bring the world closer together, consuming the same hamburgers in a new global community, or is this a homogenizing cultural imperialism, obliterating local anesthetic cultures in MacWorld synchronicity? How does the nexus of global and local inform individual and collective identities and cultures? First, the historical context behind globalization needs to be kept in mind.While there are some obvious discontinuities as well as continuities, European expansion, ripe colonialism, mod ernization, and globalization constitute different media for the intensification of global ties. For example, certain clothing practices for men in the Asia Pacific (such as wearing ties in suffocating humid midsummer heat) were initially disseminated via Western European imperialism and colonialism. The use of modern statistical methods to measure economic output is yet another example of a global standard originally propagated through the practices of colonial administrations throughout the region.This is not to suggest that the process of globalization can be explained solely by tracing the expansion of European notions of civilization and modernity (both terms which need to be examined critically before silver screen invocation) or that there is a universal teleology that history must inevitably follow, but to point out that the decoupling of cultural experience from particular geographic locales is not an unprecedented phenomenon.By acknowledging the historical precedents, we may focus our analysis on what might be different or new about the term globalization or whether we ought to discard the term entirely due to the absence of any meaningful conceptual or descriptive value-added. For example, some scholars have argued, however vaguely, that the speed, scale, and grasp of these changes and flows have accelerated over the last fifty years. The oft-cited acceleration in the development and diffusion of communication technologies has facilitated the dissemination of information and intensified financial transactions.Thus, period commodity trade may be less global than in pre-1945 years, the amount of money traded in foreign currency exchange dealings or the capital flows through various investments is more intense now than before. Second, it is important to examine the underlying assumptions and operating definitions undergirding much of the debate. The ways concepts such as culture or global or local are defined invariably affect the analytical approac h taken. For example, culture is a frequently contested term. umpteen disciplines such as anthropology, having devoted considerable efforts to grappling with the concept, consider it a underlying analytical issue. Conversely, some approaches in other disciplines might exclude it from analysis, effect that culture is too vague a black box to constitute a meaningful independent variable. If one takes the former view, cultural industries and exchanges are central to any understanding of any economic, political, social, and technological change.If one adheres to the latter approach, then it makes sense to distinguish between globalization, confined to economic activities, and internationalization, applied to cultural interactions. In another example, some scholars invoke Manichean contrasts between an idealized local or traditional culture and a menacing global or modern culture. If one associates local with sites of national purity and resistance to rising tide of global capitalists, local culture should presumably be protected and maintained.If one defines local culture as reactionary, ignorant, and parochial, than one would presumably wish that global culture enlightens local culture. Such latent normative values need to be fore-grounded for any meaningful discussion to occur. Further complicating the issue is the fact that there are increasingly fewer pockets of isolated, undiluted fonts of local identity left, at least in the major urban centers. For example, some commentators in Korea assert that McDonalds is undermining traditional Korean culinary culture, and promoting obesity in young Korean children.However, the employees and managers of McDonalds in Korea are Korean, as are its customers (Choe, Yong-shik. 2001). For better or for worse, the reality is that to make it more essential the visions of good local and traditional cultures elide the fact that cultures at the global, national, regional, local, and individual levels change over time, and are often retroactively reconstituted to serve political interests of a particular moment, place, or institution.