The Concept of Global Culture - Essay Example

As the paper outlines, the explosion in the world of communication and technology brought about the advent of the internet revolution and social networking, which brought the whole world together on one screen. Besides, the advent of cable TV also contributed to this process of emergence of what is nowadays called the ‘global village.’ This global village has brought all nations, creeds, ethnicities, castes, and races together, binding them with the force of information sharing and mutual relationships.

This massive interaction amongst people of all kinds and locations leads to an amalgamation of cultures, values, traditions, and lifestyles, which leads to the emergence of a mega-culture and decomposition of the diversity. This has been referred to now and again as globalization. African tribesmen watching CNN, Hindu priests preaching in Middle America and Germans learning English language, are all benchmarks of how much globalization has affected our lives, businesses, and value systems (Berger, 1997).

However, this globalization is not just restricted to economies or state. In fact, an integral fraction of globalization is cultural globalization. Thus was born a ‘global culture,’ which everyone followed and which overtook the world’s economy and erased the boundaries of differences and individuality. Culture is an umbrella term used to explain a society’s attributions like language, costumes, beliefs, rituals, and entertainment. Culture defines the identity and preserves the individuality of the society it belongs to.

A global culture, thus, literally means ‘culture of the world.’ The notion of global culture implies that there is one language, dress, one rite, and one uniform way of doing everything. English language, for example, is now spoken in most countries. Due to this overpowering of English over other languages and language being the basic source of communication, western culture, to which English belongs, has been under promotion and embracement by faraway lands and their populace. Therefore, jeans have become universally accepted and loved the garment.

All big cities and towns of the world now have an outlet of McDonald's. Surprisingly, people also have adapted to the styles and norms of Western culture. The ‘size 0’ trend of Hollywood actresses have penetrated the ideals of men all around the world, even in the Fiji Islands, where it was once considered fashionable for women to weigh 200 pounds. The global culture seems to have a much stronger effect on the lives of the people than what is contemplated. It is rather interesting that the economic system that a state follows also says a lot about the culture of that place.

The formation of teams like G-7, which is now expanded to G-20, is an example of how more and more countries are now following the lead of large capitalist economies. Even, a basic entity like food has failed to escape the attack of globalized culture. As mentioned above, brands like McDonald's, KFC, Subway, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Mr. Burger have reached most cities and towns. This globalizing of food has earned a great fortune to these brands and goodwill to the United States. Analytically speaking, this emergence of global culture has many pros and cons.

On the one hand, it brings people together. Having a global framework of things help people connect to each other. This is of greatest help to third-world countries who feel left out because of the economic disparity. Also, since how much one has adapted to the global culture has become a measure of development, it also provides a pseudo-satisfaction to the developing states and their people when they see successful nations having similar lifestyles and accessories as they do. Thirdly, this global culture will eventually lead on to end of violence and abuse of human rights.

All the societies will be accountable to one another for their conduct towards each other and amongst themselves, and this accountability will reduce the human rights violation and wrongs of other kinds. However, there is another side to this situation. The global economic system, which is an inherent component of the global culture, has raised certain speculations about the world leading to a one-government system in the near future. Although no substantial has yet been extracted, it has been predicted that soon the western culture will take over the rest of the world and exercise authority.