Underneath the drive for globalization which led to several new products, services, and ideas, is a query of whether or not it is a good thing on local communities and global society. A major outcome that globalization brought in our lives is Cultural Imperialism that tends to backfire in many countries and companies. As provided by Gray (2007), Cultural Imperialism is the imposition of a larger country on others, its own set of beliefs, principles, ideas, social standards and its way of living. The rise of globalization and cultural imperialism introduces one major idea of universalization, the Westernization. Due to the ability of the Western world to maintain its strong emphasis on innovation and invention, there is no doubt that they are leading the world when it comes to technological and scientific disciplines. As we take a glimpse again in the past, the world has high regards to the West also for the development of the steam engine, electrical motor, transformers, and communication devices such as telephone, radio, television and many more which the world has embraced. As we can see, the Western world was able to control small clusters of nation making them more powerful and richer day by day proving that globalization through cultural imperialism operates mostly for the benefit of the richer countries. Hence, it continuously drowns out local economies, traditions, and languages which is a threat to cultural diversity. For example, multinational companies and products such as CocaCola, Nike, and KFC impose American or European consumer trends on other cultures which slowly eliminate local companies in the market. George Ritzer states that America will be known as every country’s second culture and everyone will be called as citizens of McDonaldized planet. George Ritzer in his statement shows how globalization through cultural imperialism kills other cultures and companies and his example of McDonalds Company is a good one since it is one of the major leading foodservice retailers in the world and it is located in more than 100 countries. The photo provided below shows the domination of Mcdonalds company. Photo source: https://sites.psu.edu/comm411spring2015/2015/03/17/c ultural-imperialism-abroad/ Also, the domination in media and internet services by Western companies create a single set of cultural standard promoting their own culture as being more correct than that of other countries’ or groups’ cultural values. Meanwhile, English has become the main language being used across the world as it facilitates the understanding of information between two people not sharing the same language, making other languages less important. Like here in our country, the English language plays a vital role in our communication wherein almost all Filipinos know how to speak or understand the English language. Also, we are required to study the English language wherein, we have our English subjects. It just shows that Filipinos continue to embrace Western culture with the utmost importance. Meanwhile, in a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, the results showed that 92% of Filipinos are proAmerican. The idea of western cultural imperialism brought by globalization takes away a large amount of culture from other countries. In today’s modern world, traditional clothing that people usually wear is slowly being eliminated and replaced by what is popular in the market. For example, countries like Japan, South Korea, and India are continuously adopting the jeans and t-shirt style brought by Western culture instead of their traditional clothing. Photo source: http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Globalization_ and_its_Effect_on_Cultural_Diversity On the other hand, in the late 20th century, Western media outlets like CNN controlled the news narrative wherein they only reflected Western views on world events (Seib, 2011). Thus, Cultural Imperialism in the media climate that we have today is very prevalent since the largest and main countries own the majority of global media and export their cultural values all over the world. As we can see, the idea of Westernization brought by globalization leads people and countries to a loss of individualism and group identity. There is a cultural homogenization that occurs wherein; there is global assimilation of a single culture which led to the reduction of cultural diversity. Reference: Andreeve, Alexey., Ilyin, Ilya. & Zinkina, Julia. (2013). Approaches and paradigms in defining the essence of globalization. Retrieved from https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/approaches_and_paradigms_in_d efining_the_essence_of_globalization/ Drysen, Elin. (2016). A critical examination of cultural imperialism and its impact on global communication today. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critical-examination-cultural-imperialism-itsimpact-global-drys%C3%A9n Gray, Jonathan. (2007). “Imagining America: The simpsons go global.” Popular communication. Retrieved from https://sites.psu.edu/comm411spring2015/2015/03/17/cultural-imperialismabroad/ McKenzi, Eleanor. (2018.) Negative effects of globalization on culture. Retrieved from https://www.theclassroom.com/negative-effects-of-globalization-on-culture12083897.html Petras, James. (2000). Cultural imperialism in the late 20th century. Retrieved from https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/154/25597.html Plagiarism Checker:
