One World, One Culture?

“Can I have your name, please?” The barista at Starbucks asks as you order your caramel macchiato, which you wouldn’t have been able to drink if the Arabica beans grown in Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-pacific regions hadn’t been exported to your hometown. This is the effect of globalization. Globalization describes the interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, as a result of transnational trade, technology, investment, and travel. While it may seem like a positive thing on the surface, globalization today is the result of a Capitalist endeavor to expand through the integration of local and national economies into a global, unregulated market economy. This integration of economy might be harmless if all economies had an equal chance at being players in the market, but the reality is far from that.

Your Starbucks coffee is an example of how some economies have the upper hand in this “free-market”. As most of us know, the most influential corporations in the world are Western. Their possession of most of the wealth relative to other economies gives them the power not just to trade their goods, but also to shape our societies as a whole, since, as we know, with money comes power and influence. Thus, when you have only one particular type of strategy (Western, neoliberal) dominating the global economy, you cease to have real diversity, and the most prevalent products across the world belong to only a single type: that of the economically dominant. Unlike in pre-modern days when international trade meant selling coffee from Ethiopia as raw Ethiopian coffee, rather than under the guise of an American chain, today, Western multinational chains swallow up resources from all over the world and regurgitate them with Western labels, thus losing any trace of the culture from the resources’ countries of origin. You most certainly do not think of Ethiopia when you’re drinking your coffee at Starbucks, and Ethiopia most certainly does not have the money nor the power to market its beans worldwide.

Clearly, globalization is multidimensional; it is economic, political, and cultural. The cultural facet of globalization will be the focus of the coming paragraphs. Britannica.com defines cultural globalization as “a phenomenon by which the experience of everyday life, as influenced by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, reflects a standardization of cultural expressions around the world.” So making Nescafé when you wake up is a part of your daily routine that is shared by many others around the world. Your social media browsing session, and the memes you see while drinking that coffee, are forms of cultural globalization in action. There is no denying that internet culture helped expand cross-cultural understanding; it’s much easier today to relate to someone from Chile, for example, than it was fifty years ago. The problematic aspect of cultural globalization arises when giant multinational corporations aim to enforce their own agendas, therefore creating a sort of homogenized world that shares the same values, ideas, and lifestyles, which tend to be Western Euro-American. This is known as cultural homogenization. The increasing interconnectedness of the world and ease of trade makes it easy for Disney to broadcast its shows in Saudi Arabia and Norway alike. Major multinational corporations breed this homogeneity for their own benefit, as it is a form of cultural imperialism. When you have everyone adopting the ideas and lifestyles you promote, you’ll eventually establish your dominance, cultural or otherwise. This is somewhat reminiscent of the French colonial project’s civilising mission (mission civilisatrice) which was built on the premise that it was Europe’s duty to civilize “primitive” people. Although the current endeavors towards Western cultural domination aren’t as extreme as the mission civilisatrice, nor do they particularly assume ignorance on the part of the colonized, they represent a more subtle way of doing what the French did in North Africa by imposing their language on the whole region to propagate French culture, eventually superseding their mother tongue. Colonialism paved the way for cultural globalization by leaving the colonized in a state of cultural disorientation, making them prone to further cultural invasions. A few decades ago, the White man had to raid your country to ‘educate’ you; today, all he has to do is ask you to subscribe.

Whether cultural homogenization is intentional or merely a byproduct of globalization, its end goal remains to create a uniform global culture so that the Western way of life becomes the dominant one. Indeed this can be seen when many of us shop at H&M and rant about Game of Thrones. We are all doing and thinking similar things regardless of where we are on the planet. The most obvious outcome of this is a loss of uniqueness. Cultures start to lose what made them distinctive, be it their various artforms, history, or a sense of national identity, which is disturbing to imagine, since culture is as old as human civilization. You recognize various peoples, modern and ancient, from their cultural paraphernalia. When you see a woman wearing a Sari you get a clear image of an aspect of India that wouldn’t be elicited had she been wearing jeans. Your awareness of one of the most integral parts of human civilization starts to fade, and your appreciation for the roles different countries play in the world wanes. India gives us almost the richest variety of spices; paper was invented in China; and the printing press in Germany, to name a few. This process reduces non-Western nations’ sense of sovereignty as they are compelled to view their culture as inferior, and are susceptible to being shaped or even taken over by other cultures, thus losing their identity. This is already happening, and diversity is on the decline.

Another troublesome outcome of cultural homogenization is the commercialization of culture. Cultural goods and services have become commodities. Art, sports, music, youth, masculinity, and femininity have all been commodified. What is typically a part of someone’s personal life has been transformed into something that can be marketed bought and consumed. Additionally, this valuation of cultural elements primarily in neoliberal terms risks the loss of existent culture as people are constantly bombarded with new values, music, clothes, and the old is to be discarded since it is no longer profitable.

We are at a point in time where we’re casually watching the dissolution of the cultural diversity that has defined humanity since the beginning of civilization. We’re not noticing this as it happens because of how fast-paced everything is. This fast-paced progression of life and constant change is itself a product of the neoliberal system that breeds cultural homogenization. We definitely can’t boycott international products, but what we can do as individuals is to preserve the cultural traditions that were passed down to us from our families to keep our cultures alive. It could be as simple as humming a folk song or cooking a local dish. After all, no country has the ability nor the resources to create everything. Diversity is needed to maintain creativity and innovation. True innovation stems from different soils, not the stock market.