INTRODUCTION

   James Clifford is the writer most associated with making association between culture and travel or movement. Clifford contends that culture can no longer simply be understood in relation to location or place, but should be seen as something that is mobile and traveling. Travelers, tourists and migrants are physically moving around the world, taking their cultures with them and interacting with other cultures and peoples, reproducing, negotiating and defining themselves as well as helping to ensure that cultures transmogrify into new cultural forms. Of course, not everyone is traveling, but even if we choose to stay at home, we still encounter travelers. Moreover, for Clifford the conception of culture as travel applies not only to people, but also to the flows of images, ideas, sounds, symbols and objects that circulate the globe, criss-crossing national borders in the process.¹³ Cultures are therefore not motionless; they move, adapt and change. For this reason, the idea of “cultures in motion” has been advanced as a useful way of thinking about this subject.

    All the above has implications for identity and identity- formation, because, if cultures are continuously evolving and moving, how is it possible to have stable identities? But we must not overstate the extent and the pace of the change that take place at any one moment. This is because if cultures were simply fluid and ever changing, then it would make it very difficult for people either to identify with or inhabit them. Therefore, there must be moments of stability: periods of time when networks and clusters of people come to identify with such things as set of ideas, values, symbols, as well as associated artifacts, texts and objects, and are able to internalize these elements of the culture. In other words, even in a world of motion, cultures are still being reproduced within a myriad of social contexts, providing us with interpretative frameworks, value-systems and sources of identity.¹⁴

2.2. CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

    The cultural focus of globalization is a worldwide phenomenon that includes the interconnections and interchanges of people, images and commodities, which transcend the nation-state. As a result, societies are moving away from a national consciousness to a global consciousness. A global consciousness involves changes to perceptions, beliefs and ideas.                  Contained within the globalization of culture are three main cultural flows happening in the world today. The movement of ideas (e.g., democracy and human rights) crossing over national boundaries is one such cultural flow, the movement of images (e.g., the increasing appearance of global occasions captured through what some have called the CNN factor) is another. The other cultural flow would be the movement of people (e.g., exiles, tourists and immigrants) moving across national boundaries. In addition to these three main cultural flows, the formation of the European Union (EU) is another example of globalization of culture at work. Since 1979 there has been a European Parliament with elected members. In more recent times a European culture has been widespread, as opposed to individual national identities in Europe. The European Union has its cultural identity that is distinct from its member countries. The EU now has a flag, anthem and passport, political symbols, forms of identity and even electoral participation that go beyond and transcend national boundaries on the European continent.

     As the world gets increasingly interconnected through globalization, a sundry of changes are taking place, some of which evade our attention mainly because we are more concerned about the economic and political impacts of the phenomenon. Life as we know it is changing.  Changes enter our lives through technology, consumer products, new thoughts, lifestyles and visions of others.¹⁵

     Globalization is a social and cultural process in which individuals of different cultural backgrounds interact with each other in all spheres of life more intensively than before. One of the most interesting phenomena of globalization is the shaping of online communities. This process has led to the evolution of new identities for people around the world while disregarding where they live and what their nationality is. This is a new phase of acculturation. New ideas, new methods of work and good life and governance are being shared worldwide even in the most secluded places of the globe.

2.3. THE INFLUENCE OF U.S. CORPORATIONS ON LOCAL MORES

  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 less obvious. 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, food restaurants can influence the mores and habits in societies where they operate. American companies in foreign countries can have unexpected consequences. 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 not only standardizes the production of fast food, but controls the behavior of workers and customers alike and ensures that products and services will be the same in all locations and at all times. Ritzer points out that the success of the McDonald's formula is being widely replicated internationally, with the result that many more commercial activities have become "McDonaldized." All over the world, hotels, supermarkets, cinemas, department stores and other commercial enterprises are adopting the McDonald's approach. Ultimately, Ritzer believes that many more organizations, and even society itself will be permeated by McDonaldization.¹⁶ To further develop these ideas, Benjamin Barber coined the term "McWorld" to signify the way culture converges around market capitalism, secular beliefs and values throughout many parts of the world. Many social science accounts have stressed the role of media and entertainment images in promoting cultural convergence.  McDonaldization is a result of globalization and, ultimately, leads to global uniformity, influencing local habits and traditions.¹⁷

    Although the United States may play a dominant role within the phenomenon of cultural globalization, it is important to keep in mind that this is not an entirely one way street. Many other countries also contribute to global culture, including American culture itself. Just as American popular culture influences foreign countries, other national cultures are influential within the United States and also increase their presence worldwide. Hollywood is a good example of an industry that integrates elements from more than one culture. Most people would think of Hollywood as something entirely American. However, while Hollywood dominates world cinema, American movies are subject to foreign influence. Many film-making companies, producers, and actors in Hollywood are not even American, many of Hollywood's most famous actors are not Americans. From this perspective, one may argue that Hollywood is a typically global institution.

2.4. THE IMPACTS OF CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

  Typically, globalization has been associated with destruction of cultural identities. Before the era of globalization, there were well-defined boundaries between geographical places and cultures. It was easy to define a geographical place thanks to its culture, because the transnational or the transcultural power of globalization did not exist. The differences and gaps between cultures enabled people to define what a “cultural identity” was. Indeed, it was easy to refer to the values of a precise location to be able to define an autonomous, local and unique cultural entity-which could be a community, a nation or any group. 

     In such cases, identity was considered as a “gift”, as something built through traditions, and time, as a treasure to preserve. People who refer to their own cultural identity had no idea of the linkages with the other cultures, because they only considered their cultural identity. Culture, like language, was not only a description of the community, or the group, but also an entire process of recognition.¹⁸ Gurvitch defines culture as a “multi-layer entity”, composed with four elements: the physical layer, the social organization layer, the habits and values layer, and the forth layer, which includes values and ideas, including religion and notions like patriotism. The forth layer represents what was considered, before globalization, as an inherent and unique cluster of culture within a community or a group.¹⁹

     Then approximately in the middle of the 1980s, globalization and its “transcommunity”  went through all the barriers, and  cultural identities burst. Globalization, taken as a cultural idea, destroyed quiet equilibrium of isolated cultural identities and generated a market-driven power for culture mixing and development. Thus, globalization has been seen as a general process, a top-bottom trend of loss of cultural identity. Some scholars believe that globalization is inexorably changing people's identities and creating what Roland Robertson calls a "global consciousness." Pointing out that people have historically perceived and interpreted reality through the experiential frames of local cultures, he believes that globalization's time-space compression and de-territorialization is creating a new and shared perception of the world. The world is increasingly being viewed as a "single place." Since people's lives will be lived and experienced at the global rather than the local or national levels, a shared consciousness of the global is emerging. Like the small cosmopolitan elite that has transcended indigenous cultural affiliations, personal identities previously shaped by local and national cultures will be replaced by a new, universal identity based on Western cultural values and beliefs.²⁰ The main side effect of globalization impact on cultural identity is considered to be the spread of multinational corporations. This encourages consumer culture and standardizes products and values. Culture has almost become a one-way operating manner of business. Cultural goods and services produced by rich and powerful countries have invaded all of worlds markets, and left with difficulties undeveloped countries which are not able to stand up the competition. The natural result is that these countries are unable to enter areas of influence occupied by multinational companies of developed ones and local products are replaced by mass products. Far from destroying cultural identity globalization also has the most significant force in creating and proliferating cultural identity. Identity is seen here as the strong power of local culture that offers resistance to the centrifugal force of capitalist globalization. Cultural flows occur differently and may originate in many places. Diversity has itself become a global value, promoted through the international organizations and movements.²¹ Another good impact of globalization on cultural identity is that human rights are universal and guaranteed by law. For example Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. It is the aggregation of lots of individual choices. Thanks to the global spread of law and declarations with human rights societies can decide about their values and choices. The idea of free market and democracy provides a wide variety of perspectives, encourages students to think and learn more deeply in order to live better lives.

      Globalization effects cultural identity in a good way because of spread of technology and Internet. The internet breaks down cultural boundaries across the world by enabling easy, near-instantaneous communication between people anywhere in a variety of digital forms and media. The Internet is associated with the process of cultural globalization because it allows interaction and communication between people with very different lifestyles and from very different cultures. These two factors promote local culture. What helps these processes is the global dominance of English. This factor has a big importance in the issue of cultural identity and globalization. Knowledge of English gives people the chance to communicate with other human beings around the world. It gives the opportunity to broaden one's horizons and to get to know other cultures. This language expansion produces plethora of interactions between nations in the form of similar policy making and influences cultural identity.

Globalization has substantial impact on people’s way of thinking, cultural values and   on the family because the family is the strategic social unit where division of labor, social role play, collective decisions for members and their future, their movements and development are decided on. Such decisions define the identities of family members and their interaction with the larger society. Moreover, all of these decisions may change, be debated, be renegotiated and their conflicts resolved. In other words, not only societal but intra-familial issues are affected by globalization, now more than ever. Needless to say, the impact of globalization on families is differential, depending on many factors, but specifically depending on where the family lives and the social class it belongs to.²² Because adult family members in Western countries are today preoccupied with work and material achievement, Arlie Hochschild's believes that they do not have time to meet the obligations of family life and instead purchase care on the market to meet the needs of their children and elderly family members. This involves a complex set of interactions with market based institutions such as day care centers, private schools and nursing homes which are staffed by aides, paid carers and nannies. Nannies are now regularly imported from developing countries to provide the care and affection that Western, middle class, and high income families are unable to provide.²³ Jeremy Seabrook makes a similar point in his account of women migrant workers from the developing world who leave their families and children behind to work as servants and nannies in the rich countries. Although remittances may well raise the incomes of their family members back home, they have to deal with the "broken webs of connectedness, the bitterest separations and reluctant partings, and the loss of loved ones in places where they are most needed". The negative moral consequences of migrant labor should, he argues, be widely condemned, particularly since young women migrant workers are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Women may get out of the family circle to join the workforce in traditional-conservative environments. But to denote that they belong to a cultural environment that is morally different, they may dress differently and cover their heads. Hence two culturally different worlds meet to be permanently changed.²⁴

    Some social scientists believe that globalization is producing widespread international chaos and destroying the world's traditional cultures. Scholars who emphasize globalization's destructive effect on culture do not believe that new cultural institutions that promote organized patterns of social interaction and maintain social stability are being recreated in ways that have positive consequences for economic development. Instead, they contend, globalization has generated enduring conditions of chaos and social disorganization. 

Some observers claim that globalization is gradually transforming local cultures and superseding them with a new, universal culture rooted in the values and practices of modernity. This global culture, they believe, is essentially Western in character, extolling individualism, rationalism, secularism and other values coming from the Western nations. As these values and institutions are being diffused and absorbed locally, they believe that the world's cultures are becoming increasingly similar. However, while cultures are converging and forming a new "world culture," this is not a sudden process. Indeed, many features of the local, traditional culture endure for many years.²⁵

    The idea that globalization is fostering greater cultural homogeneity includes ideas expressed in the 1950s and 1960s by American modernization theorists. Long before the term globalization was invented, scholars such as Daniel Lerner stressed the role of industrialization in social and cultural change, predicting that the drive for industrial development would be accompanied by the spread of modern beliefs and practices. Wherever industrialization took root, he argued, traditional social and cultural institutions would be transformed and diverse cultures would increasingly exhibit greater similarities. In addition, he claimed that people affected by the spread of industrialization and modernity would become more individualistic, competitive and achievement-oriented. Under the influence of industrialization, attitudes and values everywhere would converge.²⁶

   Contemporary globalization theorists have reached similar conclusions, but instead of identifying industrialization as the agent of change, they stress the role of capitalism, communications, migration, and even Western imperialism in shaping cultural convergence. The diffusion of capitalism and its market values and behaviors is resulting in the emergence of individualism, self-reliance, responsibility, and competition in all cultures. It is also promoting the adoption of liberal political beliefs and democratic values.

Other scholars claim that globalization is causing a powerful cultural backlash. In an attempt to resist and preserve their culture, people vigorously reassert traditional values and beliefs. The result is the consolidation and strengthening of indigenous culture, and increasing cultural polarization. Samuel Huntington is perhaps the best-known exponent of the cultural polarization thesis. He claims that the modern global system involves a "clash of civilizations" between the culture of the West and the cultural orientations embodied in the world's major religious traditions, or, as he famously put it, between the "West and the rest." Huntington pays particular attention to Islamic fundamentalism, suggesting that it offers a powerful alternative "civilizational" force to the Western liberal tradition.²⁷ The clash of global and local can also give rise to new, unique cultural identities or serve to reinforce and intensify existing or historical ones. For instance, when the Roman's left Britain they left behind a cultural legacy that included, for example, Christianity. Argentine and Brazilian cultures cannot be said to be truly Iberian, neither do they belong to the indigenous races that populated the lands before the arrival of the colonists. One culture does not steamroller another - cultures clash, interact, fracture, breed and ultimately form new cultures distinct from the ingredients from which they were formed. However, this account does not explain the resurgence of traditionalism in recent years, and interpretations that stress the notion of cultural consolidation and intensification in the face of exogenous cultural influence have become more popular. Within the context of immigration in the Western countries, explanations of this kind suggest that traditionalism provides a haven for ethnic minorities living in alien cultures. Surrounded by a host culture that undermines traditional values, ethnic minorities come together to reassert their identity. In addition, the assertion of identity may be seen as a reaction to discrimination and racism. In this situation, ethnic minorities respond by affirming their cultural values and beliefs in order to find solace and protection in the face of hostility.²⁸ Another explanation regards cultural polarization as a logical reaction to the uncertainty and confusion created by modernity. This interpretation echoes earlier work on the dynamics of nationalism by Ernest Gellner who took the view that nationalism emerged as a response to the destabilizing effects of industrialization and provided a sense of common identity and security in a rapidly changing world. Similarly, many contemporary scholars regard the rise of religious fundamentalism as a predictable response to the corrosive effects of globalization which subverts long established beliefs and shared meanings, and creates confusion and uncertainty.²⁹

  Media and technologies are an integral part of globalization. Many years ago, Marshall Mac Luhan coined the phrase "global village" to refer to the way media and communication technologies were facilitating greater international integration. His views have been extended by many subsequent analyses of the global diffusion of media and entertainment images. In recent years, American movies, music, and TV shows have consistently gained more and more audiences worldwide. For the United States, the entertainment industry is one of the most important spheres of economic activity. In fact, the U.S. entertainment industry generates more revenue from overseas sales than any other industry other than the commercial aerospace industry. CNN exemplifies the global news network. After starting as a cable news network for U.S. viewers only, CNN now reaches over 200 million households in over 212 countries and territories. However, television remains a more local cultural form than movies, music, or publications. For example, in 1998, no U.S. TV series broke into Europe's top ten.³⁰

    In addition to the diffusion of media images through communications technologies, international population movements are also facilitating the spread of Western beliefs and values. Migration has long been recognized as an important factor in cultural exchange. However, contemporary migration trends predominantly involve the movement of people from the developing to the industrial world and do not, therefore, promote the diffusion of Western culture to the Global South on a significant scale. Nevertheless, migration from the South does involve acculturation, particularly among the children of immigrants. This often creates tensions between those who wish to preserve cultural traditions and those who wish to adopt the culture of the new host society.³¹

     Increased international contacts are also promoting cultural homogenization among elites drawn from the business, political, media, professional and artistic communities of different countries. Arjun Addapurai believes that these "cosmopolitan elites," as he calls them, now share many cultural preferences. They travel frequently and gather at international conferences, celebrity events and vacation sites. Despite their very different cultural backgrounds, they engage in common activities and share common cultural tastes and habits that are heavily influenced by Western beliefs and values.³² Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington has characterized this group of global professionals as the "Davos culture," named after the Swiss luxury resort locale of an annual, informal meeting of very select and elite businessmen, financiers, and heads of states. (Although the participants at the meeting do not represent governments in any official capacity, make policy decisions, or negotiate any agreements, they do share ideas and put forth proposals pertaining to global economic concerns). Huntington sees these individuals as drivers of global economic processes and as a force for pursuing the business agenda of further globalization. The members of this group around the world are largely proficient in English, and from their offices in their native countries they are immersed in a shared world of computers, cell phones, and flight schedules.³³

    Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton also noted the existence of this group. However, Reich draws a broader definition of its membership, including a wide segment of professionals within the United States. However, others argue that globalization offers the potential to enrich the world culturally. To these people, the notion that the opportunities for cultural exchange brought about by globalization can help promote tolerance and diversity is very attractive. For Reich, this new class of globalized professionals accounts for perhaps 15 to 25 percent of the U.S. population. He observes that the members of this group:

• think in cosmopolitan rather than national terms;
• have high skill and education levels, and, as such, benefit the most economically from globalization;
• speak foreign languages;
• travel internationally;
• are much less likely to lose their jobs, or to work in industries with falling wages, due to globalizing economics;
• are unlikely to have served—or even have family members who have served—in the military.