Globalization of Culture (or Cultural Globalization)

While global economy is the most discussed and debated aspect of globalization, its cultural aspects are the least noticed and appreciated. This is primarily because of the multifaceted nature of the concept of culture and the vast diversity of its manifestations and expressions. Sociologists define culture as “all the products of a society that are created over time and shared. These products may be tangible or intangible,” belonging to the material or nonmaterial dimensions of culture, respectively.1 We as humans think, believe, and behave through our culture and in the process we create it. According to sociologist George Herbert Mead, it is through this interactive relationship between the human mind and culture that both our selves and society have evolved over time.2 There are a thousand different ways in which mankind has thought, believed, and behaved in different physical and social spaces. It is, therefore, hard to think of a “globalized culture,” at least in terms of its intangible dimensions, such as language, beliefs, and rituals. But as a reminder, the common denominator of globalization in this discourse is not uniformity but interaction, interdependence, and elements of unity in a vast sea of diversity. World cultures have interacted and learned from each other for thousands of years through the processes of acculturation, adaptation, diffusion, and assimilation. The difference is that these processes and the changes they produce have accelerated enormously in the age of globalization making the local global and the global local.