Global Media Culture
ABOUT THE LESSON:
This lesson discusses the actors that facilitate economic globalization, and the theories of glo
At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:
LO1. Analyze how various media drive different forms of global integration.
LO2. Compare the social media impacts of different media on the process of globalization.
LO3. Reflect on the issue of media biases in the context of freedom of speech.
CONCEPTUALIZING GLOBAL MEDIA
CULTURE
You can easily gain Information across the world through different media platforms
powered by technology. Communication and information on Government economic
alliances, issues on global poverty, environmental problems, inequality, global security,
and even the day-to-day life of people are accessible with less or no censorship. The UN
Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to information is an integral part of the
fundamental right of freedom of expression.
(http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/freedom-ofexpression/freedom-of-information/)
HOW DID MEDIA START?
The intensification of interconnectedness among people across world time, as motivated
by globalization, resulted in the change of perception of people on media and its impact
on the global way of life, system, and processes such as global media cultures. In which
this refers to mass communication on a global level, letting people across the world share
and access information. Kirillova (2016) describes the primitive culture of a people as
synthetic or differentiated in form. In 2000 BCE. When the Mesopotamian cuneiform
writing and hieroglyphs of Egypt was invented, the life of people change specifically in
acquiring information. The government, religion, education systems, and day-to-day life
of people are scripted into text and can be read and preserve.
The early Greek and Roman people also contributed to the development of means of
communication and information, which became the basis for Latin and Slavic alphabets.
Books like Iliad and Odyssey in which the political, religion, economics, and society of the
early Greeks were described. The freedom of expression during this time was clear
among the Athenians, it manifested in their arts, music, literature, philosophy, and public
speaking and debate were encouraged.
During the Medieval period, the culture of people centers on religion. Church has an
enormous influence in people’s lives like the monasteries became the center of the source
of information, they limited freedom to information during this time, they even prohibit and
self-expression and religious rights. (Zaide, 2015)
Renaissance period introduces a new way of culture, this period marked the rebirth of
people’s interest in acquiring new learning. The richest and wisest people focused again
on arts, music, education, where they build libraries in parts of Europe like in Milan,
Florence and Venice. Communication and information also flourished because of the
interconnection of people from a different part of the world through trading and commerce.
Renaissance resulted to the awakening of people’s ideas on freedom eventually leads to
the revolution of the colonized places. (Zaide, 2015)
The Age of Enlightenment further expands the idea and way of thinking of people, the
rise of philosophers gives another way of resolving problems of the society. Philosophers
like Rene Descartes, John Locke. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that science and
reason could solve major problems facing society. Issues on government economic,
education and culture were being challenged through the “new ideas” “new way of
thinking” that they introduced.
The Industrial Revolution and French Revolution proved that scientific and cultural ideas
were the motivating force in social development. The rise of the money-lending class,
bourgeoisie, help in promoting culture by patronizing energetic people of all backgrounds.
The emergence of the “new class” powered by their money, forced their own utilitarian
ideals in society and this led to introducing “new culture” “mass culture” referring to mass
media.
In the contemporary world, advanced technology, the invention of television, the radio,
cellphones, and computers, help in the emergence of mass culture and change the global
social norms. Information is sinking into one global perspective and making the people
live in a global community.
THE CREATION OF GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE
To further widen your knowledge about global media culture, you will now proceed to the
in-depth discussion on media, focusing on the creation of global media and its impact on
the global community.
The concept of global culture is driven by the emergence of mass media. The media plays
an important role in the development of global media culture. They provide an extensive
transnational and transmission of cultural products and they contribute to the formation
of communicative networks and social economics, and even political structure. The fast
production of technology creates a continuous cultural change across the world, such as
cellphones, tablets, and android television, data internet, which makes the information
accessible.
The emergence of “new media” or the so-called digital media (Southern University Online
Learning, 2020) social media has shrunk the world into a global community. International
organizations like United Nations use social media to inform the people about the
development of COVID 19. In the Philippines, television networks like PTV, GMA and
ABS-CBN stream via social media.
Another online source of information is Twitter, President of the US Donald Trump is
active in posting the happenings in the US government. This is free speech online for
global media where you can post your personal, societal, and government sentiments.
YouTube and Instagram, where you can follow people from different parts of the world,
enable to share their lifestyle, societal events, government, and you can even tour places
any time because social media makes them available to you.
Have you seen the fistfight in Taiwan Parliament? Hong Kong riot? What about black
Americans and their sentiments? Or are you updated on the lives of the British Royal
family? Beautiful places in New Zealand, Ireland or even the Iceberg in the North Pole?
They make all these possible because of the “new media”. In the contemporary world,
this is the major force in the accelerating trend of globalization. This brought society to
the top level of interconnectedness that made the global societal transformation possible.
GLOBALIZATION
CULTURE
AND
GLOBAL
MEDIA
The media has an important impact on cultural globalization in two mutually
interdependent ways:
First, the media provides an extensive transnational transmission of cultural products,
and, second, they contribute to the formation of communicative networks and social
structures. The rapidly growing supply of media products from an international media
culture presents a challenge to existing local and national cultures. The sheer volume
of the supply, as well as the vast technological infrastructure and financial capital that
pushes this supply forward, have a considerable impact on local patterns of cultural
consumption and possibilities for sustaining an independent cultural
production. Global media cultures create a continuous cultural exchange, in which
crucial aspects such as identity, nationality, religion, behavioral norms and way of
life are continuously questioned and challenged. These cultural encounters often
involve the meeting of cultures with a different socio-economic base, typically a
transnational and commercial cultural industry on one side and a national, publicly
regulated cultural industry on the other side.
Due to their very structure, global media promotes the restructuring of cultural and social
communities. Just as media such as the press, and later radio and tv have been very
important institutions for the formation of national communities, global media support the
creation of new communities. The Internet, for example, not only facilitates
communication across the globe, but also supports the formation of new social
communities in which members can interact with each other. And satellite tv and radio
allow immigrants to be in close contact with their homeland’s language and culture while
they gradually accommodate to a new cultural environment.
ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE
GLOBALIZATION
ON
MEDIA
MODERNIZATION PARADIGM
One of the most influential theories that assigned a very important role to
communication was proposed by U.S. scholar Daniel Lerner. In The Passing of
Traditional Society (1958) Lerner identified four critical variables that he said
summarized the development process: urbanization, leading to increased literacy,
which in turn affects mass media exposure, resulting in greater economic and political
participation in society. This simple, linear scheme was initially modified by Lerner
himself to allow for reciprocal influences between literacy and mass media exposure.
Several other researchers tested many other models, using the same four variables
on different data sets and later including other variables to create more complex
models. At the individual level, Lerner's most important hypothesis has to do with the
nature of the "modern individual," characterized by an ability to accommodate to
change plus a high degree of empathy-the ability to imagine oneself in the role or with
the responsibilities of someone else. Lerner argued that the primary step toward
individual modernization was the acquisition of this capacity for empathy as well as
the willingness to hold opinions on a wide variety of issues and questions not usually
familiar to "traditional" peoples (who may not even have knowledge of those issues
owing to lack of access to mass media sources of information).
Modernization theorists believed that when indigenous cultures finally adapted to the
“modernity” of the industrialized countries and left their cultural peculiarities and
traditions behind, economic progress would be sparked off (Waisbord 2008,
unpaged). Such social change in developing countries was believed to be intensified
through transferring western knowledge and values via communication channels
(Sparks 2007, p.23). This idea was most prominently illustrated by Everett Rogers’
(1962) diffusion of innovations model.
Thus, Modernization in the eyes of western actors implied that people in poor countries
had to adjust their culture to western values, economic systems and political institutions
in order to achieve an allegedly desirable western way of life. In this context,
Modernization theorists were also the influential Modernization theorist Rostow (1960)
believed that capitalism was the most desirable system for developing countries. In his
theory on stages of economic growth, he argues that developing countries need to go
through different stages in order to reach the age of high mass consumption – in other
words, capitalism.
MODERNIZATION THEORISTS:
Lerner and Schramm were the first generations of researchers and policymakers who
approached development from the modernization theory perspective. Daniel Lerner and
Wilbur Schramm were the main exponents, with Everett M. Rogers succeeding Schramm
at Stanford University as director of the Institute for Communication Research. Lerner and
Schramm argued that mass media could multiply development efforts and promote rapid
economic growth and stable democracy . Schramm’s 1964’s Mass media and national
development analyzed the role of economic and social development and the ways in
which the media can be of assistance.
Daniel Lerner (1958) believed that the mass media could break the hold of traditional
cultures on societies and make them aspire to a modern way of life. International
communication had a role in the process of modernizing and developing the Third World.
This paradigm was founded on the notion that international mass communication should
become the vehicle for spreading the message of modernity. Mass media were thus seen
as being instrumental in spreading education, transferring educational skills, fostering
social unity and creating the desire to “modernize”.
“Lerner found a very high correlation between the measures of economic growth and the
measures of communication growth.” In the Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing
the Middle East, Lerner discerned a psychological pattern, pointing to the first element,
the “mobile personality.”


The second element is the “mobility multiplier: the mass media”.
The mass media serve as the great multiplier in development, the “device that can
spread the requisite knowledge and attitudes more quickly and widely than even before.”

“The media have disciplined Western man in those empathic skills which spell modernity.
They also portrayed for him the roles he might confront and elucidated the opinions he
might need.”'
According to Everett M. Rogers (1974, 45) in Communication in Development,
modernization is “the process by which individuals change from a traditional way of life to
a more complex, technologically advanced and rapidly changing style of life.”
“Development is a type of social change in which new ideas are introduced into a social
system in order to produce higher per capita income and levels of living….The mass
media….are especially able to raise the level of aspirations of citizens in developing
countries.”
Role for the mass media in development:
1) the mass media are coupled with group discussion in media forums;
2) the traditional mass media….are utilized along with the more modern electronic and
print media.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
Cultural imperialism is defined as:
1. As stated by Tobin (2020) and (Tomlinson, 2012), they define cultural imperialism
as an imposition by one usually politically, economically, culturally dominant
community to a nondominant community. In this manner, there is enforced
adaption of culture and habit resulting in homogeneity but this time, motivated by
western mass media and not of the use of military power. In the case of the
Philippines, colonial mentality strengthens this dominance of westerners.
2. Moreover, Sreberny (2001) mentioned in an article on Media Imperialism, cultural
imperialism sees culture as singular, cited example American television
impacted on Iran. There is an increase in the loosening of the hyphen in the
nation-state and thus the “national culture” is better seen as a site of
contest. Sreberny (2001) pointed out that the issue of media imperialism is also
happening in different parts of the world and resulted in conflicts among nations.
Critiques on cultural imperialism resulted in the emergence of cultural
pluralism.

Singh (2006) describes cultural pluralism as equal legal status, enjoy the minimum
status of equality in educational, economic, and political opportunity, these will
restrain the politically, and economically dominant countries in intervening and
giving the non-dominant countries to be heard and propose solutions on global
problems.
Is there also imperialism in mass media? Yes! Domination of the US in global media
markets, which refers to television, film, news broadcasting like CNN, Reuters etc.
resulted in the idea that the largest mass media company are from America, hence,
resulted in the idea of cultural homogeneity. (encyclopedia.com, 2020)
Globalization challenges the concept of cultural imperialism in the context of digital media.
Western mass media have been viewed as biased in probating culture because they are
in favor of industrialized countries, hence influencing the politics, economics, society and
culture of the developing and under developing countries. (Kraidy, 2002)
Worlds culture impacted the world society, conflicts arises on the economic and cultural
domination of Western countries less developed countries in Africa and Asia. The
formation of international organizations like United Nations becomes the platform for less
developed countries and called for the restructuring of the New World Economic Order
and New World Information Order. Former colonies pursued the principle of world cultural
equality. (J. Boli, F.J Lenchner, 2001)
Digital media changed the phase in acquiring information, the use of social media
platforms, the access to the internet, and the fast production of cellphones and alike,
becoming the medium of enforcement that affects the lives of people around the globe.
In the first quarter of the year 2020, statistics reveal that there are 4.57 billion people
were active internet users, encompassing 59 percent of the world’s population. China,
India, and United States ranked ahead of all other countries in terms of internet users.
Among the media platforms, Facebook ranked first, with 1 billion registered active
accounts. This leading platform is available in multiple languages and enables the users
to connect across geographical, political and economic borders. (Clement, 2020)
CRITICISMS TO MODERNIZATION THEORY:
Criticisms came from the “dependency school of theories”. These argued that the
underdeveloped world would not be capable of developing in this model.


The emphasis on the individual as responsible for the state of underdevelopment, and
not on the political and economic system.
Modernization theory was seen as having neglected the political, social and cultural
dimensions of development.


Developing countries saw the theory as too ethnocentric, holding a simple view of a
linear development. Inequalities were seen as not being narrowed, with the prosperity
of the North contributing for the “impoverishment” of the developing countries
According to the critics, advanced economies like the US, Germany and Japan went
through the early stages of industrialization behind protective tariffs until they felt
competitive enough to confront the global market on equal terms.” (Kingsbury et al,
2004)

Modernization theory failed to make distinctions between countries, regions,
structural conditions or specific historical experiences. Many countries that
were classified as “underdeveloped” had in fact “modern” industries.

The term “modernization” was also seen as another word for “Americanization”, with
the field being labelled as “pro-capitalist.”

By emphasizing the nations’ internal problems, modernization….seemed to
blame the victims for their poverty. • Some modernization ideas have come
back into the mainstream from the 1980’s onwards, having been mainly
adopted by the Right, but many also argue that mainstream development
thinking is still largely influenced by modernization theory.
RELIGION AND GLOBALISM
Globalization, as you know, refers to the
interconnectedness among people across world time and space. The fastpacing production of technology made this interconnectedness possible. This
resulted to the emergence of the concept of cultural pluralism in which non
dominant countries could share to the world their unique culture and accepted
by the dominant countries.
On the other hand, religion refers to the set of belief of people in the divine
creator which considers as holy and sacred (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020).
People from early civilization, religious practices are already visible. For
example, in the ancient Sumerian religion who worships great god Marduk who
defeated Tiamat and the forces of chaos to create the world.
As defined by Haynes (2006), the concept of religion has two distinct meanings.
There are three ways of how social and individual of believers are organized in
spiritual sense. First is that it involves the idea of transcendence, referring to
supernatural realities. For example, talking to God. Second, It relates with
sacredness or holiness and system of practice and language. An example of
sacred is confession, baptism and more. Third, it concerns ultimacy, on how it
relates to people to the ultimate conditions of existence. In the material sense,
religious beliefs are capable of motivating individuals and groups to collectively
mobilize to achieve political goals and consequences, suppress mass actions
as tool of repression.
While religion takes advantage of communication and transportation
technology, it is at the same time the source of globalization’s greatest
resistance by acting as a haven for those standing in opposition to its power.
On the other hand, because globalization allows for daily contact, religion enters
a circle of conflict in which religions become “more self-conscious of themselves
as being world religions.
HISTORY OF MAJOR
RELIGIONS
In an article by Preceden (2020), Judaism is an Abrahamic belief based on the
teachings of Moses. The holy book of Judaism is the Torah. It is the oldest
religion of the group and starts around 4,000 years ago. A main figure from
Judaism is Moses who freed the Israelites from bondage. One particular scene
from Judaism is Moses with the Ten Commandments. It shows a older long
bearded and long haired standing upon a big jagged grey rock. He is holding 2
stone tablets with older Roman numeral on it carved deeply in the tablet.
Hinduism.
Accor
ding to Hornak (2019) most scholars believe Hinduism started somewhere
between 2300 B.C. and 1500 B.C. in the Indus Valley, near modern-day
Pakistan. But many Hindus argue that their faith is timeless and has always
existed. Unlike other religions, Hinduism has no one founder but is instead a
fusion of various beliefs. Around 1500 B.C., the Indo-Aryan people migrated to
the Indus Valley, and their language and culture blended with that of the
indigenous people living in the region.
Confucianism.
As
stated
by
Clayton (2020), it was developed in China by Master Kong in 551-479 BC, who
was given the name Confucius by Jesuit missionaries who were visiting there.
However, the fundamental principles of Confucianism began before his birth,
during the Zhou Dynasty. At that time, the ideas of respect and the well-being
of others were prevalent, but there was also an emphasis on spiritual matters specifically, the goodness of the divine and the mandate to rule given to those
in power. These ideas were meant to unite the people, create stability and
prevent rebellion.
Confucius believed his philosophy was also a route toward a civil society.
However, he shifted attention away from ruling authorities, the divine or one's
future after death, focusing instead on the importance of daily life and human
interactions. This new, refined version of the philosophy did not completely take
root until the next dynasty, the Han (140-87 BC). It is the Confucianism that
many people are familiar with today.
Buddhism.
As
identified by Chu (2019) it is a faith founded by Siddhartha Gautama (“the
Buddha”) more than 2,500 years ago in India. With about 470 million followers,
scholars consider Buddhism one of the major world religions. When Gautama
passed away around 483 B.C., his followers began to organize a religious
movement. Buddha’s teachings became the foundation for what would develop
into Buddhism.
In the 3rd century B.C., Ashoka the Great, the Mauryan Indian emperor, made
Buddhism the state religion of India. Buddhist monasteries were built, and
missionary work was encouraged. Over the next few centuries, Buddhism
began to spread beyond India. The thoughts and philosophies of Buddhists
became diverse, with some followers interpreting ideas differently than others.
In the sixth century, the Huns invaded India and destroyed hundreds of
Buddhist monasteries, but the intruders were eventually driven out of the
country. Islam began to spread quickly in the region during the Middle Ages,
forcing Buddhism into the background.
Christianity.
This religion is based on the teaching of Jesus Christ. The
religion was started 2,000 years ago, when Jesus Christ was born. Early
Christians were persecuted for their faith by both Jewish and Roman leaders.
In 64 A.D., Emperor Nero blamed Christians for a fire that broke out in Rome.
Many were brutally tortured and killed during this time. Under Emperor
Domitian, Christianity was illegal. If a person confessed to being a Christian, he
or she was executed. Starting in 303 A.D., Christians faced the most severe
persecutions to date under the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius. This
became known as the Great Persecution. When Roman Emperor Constantine
converted to Christianity, religious tolerance shifted in the Roman Empire.
During this time, there were several groups of Christians with different ideas
about how to interpret scripture and the role of the church.
In 313 A.D., Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity with the Edict of Milan.
He later tried to unify Christianity and resolve issues that divided the church by
establishing the Nicene Creed. Many scholars believe Constantine’s
conversion was a turning point in Christian history.
In 380 A.D., Emperor Theodosius I declared Catholicism the state religion of
the Roman Empire. The Pope, or Bishop of Rome, operated as the head of the
Roman Catholic Church. Catholics expressed a deep devotion for the Virgin
Mary, recognized the seven sacraments, and honored relics and sacred sites.
When the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 A.D., differences emerged among
Eastern and Western Christians.
In 1054 A.D., the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox church
split into two groups. Between about 1095 A.D. and 1230 A.D., the Crusades,
a series of holy wars, took place. In these battles, Christians fought against
Islamic rulers and their Muslim soldiers to reclaim holy land in the city of
Jerusalem. The Christians were successful in occupying Jerusalem during
some of the Crusades, but they were ultimately defeated.
After the Crusades, the Catholic Church’s power and wealth increased. In 1517,
a German monk named Martin Luther published 95 Theses which is a text that
criticized certain acts of the Pope and protested some of the practices and
priorities of the Roman Catholic church. Later, Luther publicly said that the Bible
didn’t give the Pope the sole right to read and interpret scripture.
Luther’s ideas triggered the Reformation which is a movement that aimed to
reform the Catholic church. As a result, Protestantism was created, and
different denominations of Christianity eventually formed.
Islam.
Islam, based on an article by Ifansasti (2019),
Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, with about 1.8
billion Muslims worldwide. Although its roots go back further, scholars typically
date the creation of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major
world religions. Islam started in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, during the
time of the prophet Muhammad’s life.
Today, the faith is spreading rapidly throughout the world. Islam is a
monotheistic and Abrahamic religion; they believe that Muhammad was the last
prophet of god. Muslims has many beliefs for example they believe that god is
one and incomparable and that the purpose of existence is to love and serve
god.
Sikhism.
According to Mcleod (2020), Sikhism
religion and philosophy was founded in the Punjab region of the Indian
subcontinent in the late 15th century. Its members are known as Sikhs. The
Sikhs call their faith Gurmat (Punjabi: “the Way of the Guru”).
According to Sikh tradition, Sikhism was established by Guru Nanak (1469–
1539) and subsequently led by a succession of nine other Gurus. All 10 human
Gurus, Sikhs believe, were inhabited by a single spirit. Upon the death of the
10th, Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the spirit of the eternal Guru transferred
itself to the sacred scripture of Sikhism, Guru Granth Sahib (“The Granth as the
Guru”), also known as the Adi Granth (“First Volume”), which thereafter was
regarded as the sole Guru. In the early 21st century there were nearly 25 million
Sikhs worldwide, the great majority of them living in the Indian state of Punjab.
Religion and globalization persistently engage in a flexible relationship in which
the former relies on the latter in order to thrive and flourish while at the same
time challenging its globalization’s hybridizing effects. Undoubtedly, religion is
not immune from these changes and their burgeoning effects brought about by
globalization. However, religions still have their respective homes in specific
territorial spaces where they originally appeared and where their respective
shrines exist.
Secularization: The Consequences of Modernization (T
2020)
At the most abstract level of analysis, modernization leads to what Max Weber
called “the disenchantment of the world.” It calls into question all the
superhuman and supernatural forces, the gods and spirits, with which
nonindustrial cultures populate the universe and to which they attribute
responsibility for the phenomena of the natural and social worlds. In their place
it introduces as a competing cosmology the modern scientific interpretation of
nature by which only the laws and regularities discovered by the scientific
method are admitted as valid explanations of phenomena. If it rains, or does
not rain, it is not because the gods are angry but because of atmospheric
conditions, as measured by the barometer and photographed by satellites.
In short, modernization involves a process of secularization that is, it
systematically challenges religious institutions, beliefs, and practices,
substituting for them those of reason and science. This process was first
observable in Christian Europe toward the end of the 17th century. (It is possible
that there is something inherently secularizing about Christianity, for no other
religion seems to give rise spontaneously to secular beliefs.) At any rate, once
invented in Europe, especially Protestant Europe, secularization was carried as
part of the “package” of industrialism that was exported to the non-European
world. Wherever modern European cultures have impinged, they have diffused
secularizing currents into traditional religions and non-rational ideologies.
Although secularization is a general tendency or principle of development in
modern societies, this does not imply that religion is driven out altogether from
society. In fact, as one of the most modernized countries in the world, the United
States is also among the world’s most religious. Against a deep background of
tradition, modernization inevitably leaves many religious practices in place and
may even stimulate new ones. Religious rituals, such as Christian baptism and
church weddings, persist in all industrial societies; the church may, as in
England and Italy, continue to play an important moral and social role. The
majority of the population may hold traditional religious beliefs alongside more
scientific ones. There may even be, as in the United States and in industrializing
societies such as India, waves of religious revivalism that involve large sections
of the population.
Secularization is but one manifestation of a larger cultural process that affects
all modern societies, the process of rationalization. While this process is
epitomized by the rise of the scientific worldview, it encompasses many more
areas than are usually associated with science. It applies, for instance, to the
capitalist economy, with its rational organization of labour and its rational
calculation of profit and loss. It applies also to artistic developments, such as
the rational application of the geometry of perspective in painting and the
development of a rational system of notation and rational harmonic principles
in music.
For Max Weber, the most careful student of the process, it referred above all to
the establishment of a rational system of laws and administration in modern
society. It was in the system of bureaucracy, seen as the impersonal and
impartial rule of rationally constituted laws and formal procedures, that Weber
saw the highest development of the rational principle. Bureaucracy meant a
principled hostility to all traditional and “irrational” considerations of person or
place, kinship or culture. It expressed the triumph of the scientific method and
scientific expertise in social life. The trained official, said Weber, is “the pillar
both of the modern state and of the economic life of the West.”
Rationalization is a process that operates at the highest, most general level
of social development. It would be surprising if its effects were to be found in
every nook and cranny of modern society. Everywhere one should expect to
find the persistence of non-rational and even antirational attitudes and behavior.
Superstition is one example; the occasional rise of personal, charismatic
leadership breaking through the rationalized routines of bureaucracy is another.
These should not be thought of simply as vestiges of traditional society. They
are also the expressions of essential needs, emotional and cultural, that are in
danger of being stifled in a scientific and unillusioned environment.
Weber stressed another significant point. Rationalization does not connote that
the populations of modern societies are, as individuals, any more reasonable
or knowledgeable than those of nonindustrial societies. What it means is that
there is, in principle, scientifically validated knowledge available to modern
populations, by which they may, if they choose, enlighten themselves about
their world and govern their behaviour. In practice, as Weber knew, such
knowledge tends to be restricted to scientifically trained elites. The mass of the
population of a modern society might in their daily lives be relatively more
ignorant than the most uneducated peasants, for peasants usually have a
comprehensive and working knowledge of the tools they use and the food they
consume, whereas modern people may well use an elevator without the
slightest idea of its working principle or eat food manufactured in ways and with
materials of which they are totally unaware.
To broaden your knowledge regarding the issues of religion, kindly access the
link below and read “Global Religious Terrorism, A Troubling Phenomenon”.
LINK: https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume19/1-Global-ReligiousTerrorism.pdf
IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION TO RELIGIOUS
PRACTICES AND BELIEFS
Peter Beyer (1994), identified three key impacts of globalization on religion:
Particularism.
Religion has increasingly used as an avenue for anti-
globalization activity. While one feature of globalization is a sort of cultural
homogenization (the creation of a single, global popular culture) religion is often
seen as the opposite of that: a symbol of how people are culturally different
from one another, rather than the same. This has contributed to a rise in
fundamentalism and is a feature of political conflict in many areas of the world.
Universalism. There are also some evidences of the opposite trend. While
small fundamentalist groups might emphasize their difference from other
people, the major religions have increasingly focused on what unites them. Far
from the feared clash of civilizations, religious leaders emphasize shared values
and common concerns. Indeed, inter-faith dialogue through global
communication has helped to diffuse conflict between religions.
Marginalization. Beyer also notes that religion is increasingly marginalized
in contemporary society, playing less part in public life, although this may well
be a rather Eurocentric view and may be caused by other social changes rather
than globalization.
Another way in which globalization has impacted on religion is the way religions
have made use of global communications. Religious groups are able to take
advantage of modern technology to recruit new members, spread the word and
keep in contact with other members of the religion. While with some of the more
fundamentalist, anti-modern, anti-global religious organizations this can hold a
certain irony, it is one of the ways in which religion is much less linked to
nationality than it once was. Furthermore, the media plays the same important
role in the dissemination of religious ideas. In this respect, a lot of TV channels,
radio stations and print media are founded solely for advocating religions.
Taking Islam as an example, we find such T.V channels as Iqrae, Ennass, Majd,
El Houda, Erahma, etc. as purely religious channels created for the
strengthening and the fortification of Islam.