Is globalisation homogeneous?
McDonaldization vs Hetrogenenization
- McDonaldization is a term used by sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). He explains that it becomes manifested when a culture adopts the characteristics of the dominant culture
- In contemporary society, the concept of McDonaldization is gaining attention in different aspects such as culture. McDonaldization thesis in cultural version is a comparatively recent idea of the worldwide homogenization of cultures. In the current period, most countries have adapted to this concept because of globalization. In fact, it has been predicted that the Ritzer model will come to dominate in most cultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonaldization
- What are homogenization and heterogenization?
- Base on the research, homogenization is that mighty culture has invaded local culture as well as it has become the dominant culture in local area that aims to eliminate the local culture. Society becomes homogenous. Everyone conforms to western ideal. It also results that loss of individual culture and religions.
- However, cultural heterogenization or multicultural society, which means region culture was widely disseminated and accepted by other societies and cultures and meanwhile enhance the cultural diversity in local society. It could be resulted that richer countries gives incentive to poorer countries to protect their natural environments as well as to adopt more sustainable practices.
- Bounded cultures as minorities and Western culture as unbounded
- Unbounded – historical (fluid/hot) – WESTERN/Bound – A-historical (Static/cold)- NON WESTERN
- A study through anthropology
- Assimilation and Appropriation of ideas – esp. in language
- Selective incorporation – Chinese Meiji Period (1889)- a way of incorporation and regeneration of culture
- Is this due to the objects superficiality (central unchanged essence) or as wholly transformative
- Cultures as a locality and COLONIALISM
***’Authetni-kitsch’ – “it is the reformed and the reconstituted global-local displayed for… consumption” – Lee Went Choy: International Perspectives on Art and Culture, p.16
- Fear of contamination between cultures
- Does globalization mean the destruction of (cultural) specificity… or does the local have more strength then we give it credit for?
- Comes from a fundamental understanding of what is globalisation and modernity
- MODERNITY – FROM DIFFERENCE TO SAMENESS (Unshackled from the past)
- Multiplicity to one single object of modernity through historical progress and process
TELEOLOGY – ‘telos’ – here quote Greenberg’s onion on Modernist painting
- Implies that everything becomes homogeneous – mimicries of a Western culture as if there is one example of Modernity
However historical process does not represent a ‘single historical line’ – it is convergent not divergent
- CONSUMPTION as an end point
- “Beyond the limits of the object set on is utilization” – Michel de Certeau, ‘The Practise of Everyday Life’
- Fashion Items/Media as an example – our consumptions are different as the object becomes ratified depending on culture
- Then comes the issue of power and economics
- Uses of the media in which globalization is formalised
- McDonalization opinion assumed passive consumption – Therefore is the theory is patronising and formulaic
***La Sape – “the content does not shape the container”
(symbolic meaning to the culture and not just a process of assimilation) – here it is an issue of westernisation and western interpretation
- Does difference overwhelm capacity and Westernisation begins
- Is there still a ‘pure’ local?
- What does it mean to maintain a remote essence in the local in today’s modern culture climate of appropriation and assimilation?
- Two forms of repetition – in media and in the local – both have power effect on the ‘local’What constitutes culture does not have to be material – what about the innate or internal local that exist in the virtual existence
- What in history validates the local?
- Localisation in localities worldwide between people who have similar interests, not localities as the originally were
