Globalization Often Has a Paradoxical

Globalization often has a paradoxical effect. On one hand, it seems to make cultures more 'like' one another: the ubiquity of American popular culture all over the world is often cited as a symptom of the phenomena of globalization. For example, in Jeffrey Pilcher's discussion of the industrialization of traditional Mexican cuisine, the laborious but skilled work of traditional Mexican tortilla preparation was a source of social esteem as well as income for the women who crafted tortillas at home. When this process was rendered into a mechanical process at factories, the work was not much less tedious, but because it had become a standardized product, the woman took less pride and pleasure in it, and became merely cogs in a machine. The final product was less tasty and more suited to the American palate. It was also, more importantly, better-suited Western capitalist demands for standardization and mechanization in production methods. American culture's standardization can even seemingly change the nature of people quite quickly, within a generation. The Americans, Mr. And Mrs. Das in Jhumpa Lahiri's short story "Interpreter of Maladies" are unrecognizable to their Indian guide Mr. Kapasi in terms of their cultural worldview, although they are ethnically Indian.

On the other hand, whenever two cultures are exposed to one another, a kind of synergy always takes place. American culture transported across national borders is never transported in an intact fashion. The culture that acquires new cultural artifacts always makes those artifacts uniquely its own. While it is true, as noted in John Tomlinson's discussion of the phenomenon of cultural globalization, that many cultural artifacts have been 'deterritorialized' from their original location, this is not a process of imposing one culture onto another, but grafting two cultures together in a kind of cultural hybridization. Something new is produced, like the American version of yoga, for example, which is a fusion of American cultural physical fitness traditions with Near Eastern practices.

Even when immigrants establish ethnic enclaves abroad, as in the case of the Chinese community in Australia, a new culture is created. The more recent Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong were often wealthier than long-term Chinese residents, which caused class conflict between the two groups. The more recent immigrants were unhappy with how traditional dim sum culture had been, in their eyes, corrupted by Australian sensibilities. They thought dim sum was no longer as 'pure' as it should be, even though it was still produced by people of Chinese origin. They attempted to recreate their own dim sum experience abroad -- and of course, produced yet another 'new' product, not a recreation of what they had left.

Q2. From an American perspective, it is tempting to look out at the world and to assume that American culture now dominates and reigns over all, given the seeming ubiquity of American movies, television, and music. However, a cultural analysis of many regions of the world yields the finding that culture is far more regional and pluralistic in nature.

For example, in Mexico, soap operas known as telenovelas captivate almost the entire population. They often give voice to Mexican fantasies about transgressing economic borders. One such soap opera, Ugly Betty, has actually been appropriated by U.S. culture. Mexican culture has changed the U.S., as well as vice versa, despite the U.S.'s greater economic power in the region. And within India, Bollywood films are far more popular than Hollywood films because of the way they speak to unique Indian culture needs. Within this densely-populated and fantastically diverse nation, the fascination with Bollywood forms a source of cultural unity, as noted in Raminder Kaur's and Ajay Sinha's discussion of the history of Bollywood. It is also very clearly not 'of' the West, in terms of Bollywood films' high level of theatricality and embrace of music. Its style is often jarring to Western viewers, even though it has adopted some of the conventions of old-fashioned Western cinema.