About the Umbrella Theme: How globalization affects cultures & how cultures shape globalization
Why the Globalization?
Globalization—what is it, is it real, and how does it affect us? Responses to these questions elicit fear and hope, praise and condemnation, benevolence and violence. Globalization is laden with political, social, economic, ecological, ethical, moral and religious implications, whose cultural dynamics often fail to be recognized and discussed either academically or practically in the rush to seize opportunity, to act and react in the face of rapid change. Globalization is linked with both cooperation and wars, economic development and new forms of colonialism, planetary stewardship and wholesale destruction of irreplaceable resources, migration and forced displacement of peoples, retrenchment in local pride and traditional values and belief systems, withdrawal and resistance.
Globalization raises questions and points to paradoxes and challenges not only on the macro level but also for individuals, families and local groups:
- What is the culture that drives corporate globalization? How does it affect the cultures of the communities it meets?
- How do community cultures react, change, and resist in the face of corporate, economic and political expansion and homogenization?
- How can unique collective experiences, histories and traditions be respected and continue to nourish us, while building common ground in larger frameworks?
- How can people participate in global change processes? Who is included and who is not?
- Who wins and who loses when international-level changes occur in social, political, economic and ecological conditions? Who benefits and who is deprived?
- To what degree are the cultural values, paradigms and behaviors of “old” democracies linked to a growing disempowerment in the face of the larger, transnational context?
- How can national and group as well as personal boundaries and identity be negotiated in an increasingly global environment? Who is an insider, who an outsider in a specific setting, and why? How wide are our choices when it comes to being with, working with and living within other cultural values systems?
- What personal psychological, spiritual and cultural resources do people need to live, work and thrive in a shifting global environment?
- What is the role of fear and trust in the management of information and public opinion, in the creation of political and economic power? How are cultures of fear and trust created? How are they managed and manipulated? How can trust be built across cultures?
- What does it mean to be a “global citizen?”
- What is the culture of interculturalists? What heritage and costs are associated with our current management of culture and cultural learning? What can we offer to the next generation of those who manage the culture and cultures resulting from globalization?
- How compelling and absorbing are the virtual worlds in which many of us spend increasing time and energy at work and at play? What is their culture and their impact on us? How do we manage culture in virtual space?
