research paper

Globalization vs. Local Cultures

The globalization of the production and distribution of goods and services is a welcome development for many people in that it offers them access to products that they would not otherwise have. However, some are concerned that the changes brought about by globalization threaten the viability of locally made products and the people who produce them. For example, the new availability of foreign foods in a market—often at cheaper prices—can displace local farmers who have traditionally earned a living by working their small plots of family-owned land and selling their goods locally.

Globalization, of course, does more than simply increase the availability of foreign-made consumer products and disrupt traditional producers. It is also increasing international trade in cultural products and services, such as movies, music, and publications. The expansion of trade in cultural products is increasing the exposure of all societies to foreign cultures. And the exposure to foreign cultural goods frequently brings about changes in local cultures, values, and traditions. Although there is no consensus on the consequences of globalization on national cultures, many people believe that a people’s exposure to foreign culture can undermine their own cultural identity.

One of the principal concerns about the new globalization of culture that is supposedly taking place is that it not only leads to a homogenization of world culture, but also that it largely represents the “Americanization” of world cultures.

The spread of American corporations abroad has various consequences on local cultures, some very visible, and others more subtle. For example, the influence of American companies on other countries’ cultural identity can be seen with regard to food, which matters on two levels. First, food itself is in many countries an integral aspect of the culture. Second, restaurants can influence the mores and habits in societies where they operate.

The French are proud of having a localized cuisine, including crepes and pastries, which reflects their unique culture. Because of their pride in their cuisine, some French people are concerned that U.S. food restaurants crowd out their own products with fast food. Some French people would argue that fast food does not belong in the French society and is of lower quality than their own.

Moreover, food restaurants not only affect eating habits, but they also influence the traditions and habits in countries where they are located. Starbucks causes cultural concerns in Italy because of the association that Italians make between coffee and leisurely sidewalk cafes. Coffee in Italy is more than a drink; it is part of the way of life and Italian mores.

While in the United States it is common for people to buy takeaway coffee for drinking in the street or office, in Italy people usually prefer to relax and chat with peers while drinking coffee. Coffee shops offer a personal, friendly atmosphere that many Italians believe a large chain could not provide. Similarly, many people would prefer to frequent coffee shops that are each unique, while Starbucks offers a standard formula.

Another example can be seen with the worldwide influence of McDonald’s. Fittingly enough, the sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization. In his book The McDonaldization of Society, Ritzer states that “the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.” Statistics show that within the last fifty years, McDonalds has expanded to over 31,000 restaurants worldwide.

McDonaldization, Ritzer argues, is a result of globalization and, ultimately, leads to global uniformity, influencing local habits and traditions. Take, for example, the previously mentioned example of Starbucks coffee disrupting the traditional coffee culture in Italy. This sometimes leads to negative reactions, such as in the case of the Starbucks coffeehouse in the Forbidden City in central Beijing. This particular Starbucks branch, which opened in 2000, was shut down in 2007 due to heavy protests. Critics called it a stain on China’s historical legacy.

Concerns that globalization leads to a dominance of US customs and values are also present with regard to films and the entertainment industry more broadly. This is the case with French films in France, for example. As will be discussed later in the brief, governments from countries like France have attempted to intervene in the functioning of the market to try to protect their local cultural industries, by taking measures such as restricting the number of foreign films that can be shown.

But if a government imposes domestic films, TV shows, or books onto its people, it limits their choice to consume what they prefer. In other words, the government is effectively saying that it does not trust its people to make the choices that are right for them.

Throughout history, cultures have changed and evolved. Globalization may accelerate cultural change. However, because change is driven by the choice of consumers, the elements of a particular culture will inevitably reflect consumer choice.

THE DEADLY NOODLE

of all the ways France has resisted the cultural imperialism of the United States, it has arguably achieved its greatest success in the realm of food. Not only is French cuisine the envy of the world, but culinary tradition has allowed the French to consume their sauce veloute and creme brulee without succumbing to the ills of over consumption that plague the land of burgers, fries and angioplasty. In recent years, however, statistics have begun to reveal that France is vulnerable to America's junk-food influence after all. Although southern, rural France remains steadfastly healthy, its more urban neighbors to the north suffer more from eating-related problems, not least a rise in childhood obesity. "We can't point our finger at any one thing," says Mariette Gerber, a nutritional scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research and Health in Montpellier. "It's a modern way of life, very urban. And it has come from the United States."

France's growing fat problem underscores how inexorable the Americanization of food habits has become. The problem is even more acute in the developing world, where the taste for American fast-food products like McDonald's hamburgers and Coca-Cola has long been fashionable. Urbanization is leading to more sedentary lifestyles in many places. And more and more, even traditional foods are being prepared from processed flour and other ingredients that yield more calories and less healthy roughage. Nobody ever thought resisting the export of American diets would be easy. But the trend has turned out to be more insidious and more widespread than previously thought. "It's very easy to blame globalization, or the big brands like Coca-Cola or McDonald's," says Derek Yach, executive director of the World Health Organization's disease prevention, nutrition, diet and physical-fitness program. "But the problem goes much, much deeper."

Diet and exercise habits may be complex, but the basic recipe for health problems is simple: a rise in caloric intake and a decline in calorie-burning activities. The number of overweight people in the United States doubled in the past 20 years to 60 percent, and Europe and Asia are catching up. In some developing countries, obesity is increasing faster than in America--the rate is three times higher in --Mexico and Egypt. Each year more new cases of diabetes arise in China and India than in all other countries combined.

Where are all the extra calories coming from? One surprising source is the raw grains and other ingredients used for cooking traditional--formerly healthy--dishes. When crops are grown in big farms and processed en masse, much of their nutrient value is taken out, and their "caloric density" rises. Even the noodle, a staple of many traditional diets, is no longer as healthy as it once was. In China, for instance, home-cooked noodles used to be made from whole-grains, ground by hand. Now, households use factory-made "refined" flour, from which the grain husks have been discarded along with nutrients like fiber and minerals. What remains are simple carbohydrates that the body more easily turns into fat.

Cooking oils have taken a similar turn for the worse. Back in the 1960s, Japanese and American researchers discovered an inexpensive way to extract oil from vegetables. Westerners and developing countries alike adopted vegetable oils as a cheaper alternative to butter, healthy if used in moderation. The problem is, the oil is so cheap that in places like India it's used to excess. It's not uncommon for Indian cooks to use vegetable oil for breakfast, lunch and supper, and to throw in an extra 10 or 20 grams to enhance a dish's flavor.

Sugar is another culprit. Diets in some developing countries contain on average about 300 more calories a day than they did 20 years ago, according to Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. Some of the extra sugar comes from soda, but a bigger factor is the growing adoption of Western manufacturing practices, which allow local companies to sweeten bread and other staples. Brazil now consumes more sugar per capita than even the United States.

No part of the world, no matter how remote, is immune from empty calories. Over the course of 30 years, the native population of Samoa has fallen victim to rampant weight gain--today more than half its residents are clinically obese. James Bindon, a biological anthropologist at Alabama University, traced one of the causes to a fondness for tins of corned beef imported from England. Similar trends have been observed in Fiji. "Where in the past they produced their own fruits and vegetables, now they're swamped with canned soda and mutton fat imported from New Zealand," says Yach of WHO. "Call it the Coca-Colafication of the Pacific islands."

People in both developed and developing countries are also doing less and less physical activity. It's the couch-potato syndrome. Rather than riding their bicycles and working the fields, people sit on assembly lines, ride in cars and spend their free time watching television--95 percent of Chinese households now have a TV set. "We export our jobs, and our wage-labor patterns," says Bindon. "It's a culture-bound syndrome."

The syndrome is raising health-care costs--$100 billion for obese children in the United States, estimates the Centers for Disease Control. What about the 35 million overweight kids around the world, not to mention 300 million adults? "The cost of health care--to feed the hungry and pay for the medical bills of obesity is staggering," says Weight Watchers International chief science officer Karen Miller-Kovach. Unfortunately, obesity and all the illnesses it entails hit the poor hardest of all. High-caloric junk food is cheap enough to afford even on a low income. And the well-heeled and well-educated tend to be better about hitting the gym. In developing countries, those leisure activities aren't even an option yet. The popularity of Western-style food has thus led to an alarming trend: obese parents and undernourished children living under the same roof. "It's a very attractive lifestyle," says Popkin. But it's killing people all the same.

Paths of Globalization: From the Berbers to Bach

Yo-Yo Ma is one of the world's most renowned cellists. This article is based on a talk he gave at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

Davos -- Over the past 30 years as a professional cellist, I have spent the equivalent of two full decades on the road, both performing and learning about musical traditions and cultures. My travels have convinced me that in our globalized world, cultural traditions form an essential framework for identity, social stability and compassionate interaction.

A world changing so quickly as ours is bound to create cultural insecurity, to make people question their place. Globalization so often seems to threaten the identity of the individual, by subjecting us to someone else's rules. That naturally makes us nervous, since these rules ask us to change our time-honored habits. So the critical question for today's global leaders is: How can habits and cultures evolve to join a bigger planet, without sacrificing distinct identities and individual pride?

My musical journeys have reminded me that the interactions brought about by globalization don't just destroy culture; they can create new culture and invigorate and spread traditions that have existed for ages. It's not unlike the ecological term "edge effect," which is used to describe what happens when two different ecosystems meet, for example, the forest and savannah. At that interface, where there is the least density and the greatest diversity of life forms, each living thing can draw from the core of the two ecosystems. Sometimes the most interesting things happen at the edge. The intersections there can reveal unexpected connections.

Culture is a fabric composed of gifts from every corner of the world. One way of discovering the world is by digging deeply into its traditions. In music, for instance, at the core of any cellist's repertoire are the Cello Suites by Bach. At the heart of each suite is a dance movement called the sarabande. The dance originated with music of the North African Berbers, where it was a slow, sensual dance. It next appeared in Spain, where it was banned because it was considered lewd and lascivious. Spaniards brought it to the Americas, but it also traveled on to France, where it became a courtly dance. In the 1720s, Bach incorporated the sarabande as a movement in his Cello Suites. Today, I play Bach, a Paris-born American musician of Chinese parentage. So who really owns the sarabande? Each culture has adopted the music, investing it with specific meaning, but each culture must share ownership: it belongs to us all.

In 1998, I founded the Silk Road Project to study the flow of ideas among the many cultures between the Mediterranean and the Pacific over several thousand years. When the Silk Road Ensemble performs, we try to bring much of the world together on one stage. Its members are a peer group of virtuosos, masters of living traditions, whether European, Arabic, Azeri, Armenian, Persian, Russian, Central Asian, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese, Korean or Japanese. They all generously share their knowledge and are curious and eager to learn about other forms of expression.

Over the last several years, we have found that every tradition is the result of successful invention. One of the best ways to ensure the survival of traditions is by organic evolution, using all the tools available to us in the present day. Through recording and film; through residencies in museums, universities, design schools and cities; through performances from classroom to stadium, ensemble musicians, including myself, are learning valuable skills. Returning home, we share these skills with others, ensuring that our traditions will have a seat at the cultural table.

We have found that performing a tradition abroad energizes the practitioners in the home country. Most of all, we have developed a passion for each others' music and developed a bond of mutual respect, friendship and trust that is palpable every time we're on stage. This joyous interaction is such a desirable common greater goal that we have always been able to resolve any differences through amicable dialogue. As we open up to each other, we form a bridge into unfamiliar traditions, banishing the fear that often accompanies change and dislocation. In other words, when we broaden our lens on the world, we better understand ourselves, our own lives and culture. We share more in common with the far reaches of our small planet than we realize.

Finding these shared cultures is important, but not just for art's sake. So many of our cities -- not just London, New York or Tokyo, but now even the mid-sized cities -- are experiencing waves of immigration. How will we assimilate groups of people with their own unique habits? Must immigration inevitably lead to resistance and conflict, as it has in the past? What about the Turkish population in Germany, Albanians in Italy, North Africans in Spain and France? A thriving cultural engine can help us figure out how groups can peacefully meld, without sacrificing individuality and identity. This is not about political correctness. It's about acknowledging what is precious to someone, and the gifts that every culture has given to our world.