Question and Answer:
From what you have read in the chapter on culture, do you think that a global culture is emerging? Do you think the prospect of a global culture is a good or bad thing? Why/ why not?
Culture as defined by the text is the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together from a people’s way of life. Added, this definition includes something called material culture and nonmaterial culture.
To be frank, I think that there is an emergence of Global Culture. Because of instantaneous global communications, especially through the media, global culture is developing. It can be found to be that the French was once the language of trade, but now the English have become the language of the information age. It distributes information through sources where it affects or impacts the world to conformity of change. Global culture is more prevalent and evident in Fiji. After doing a quick research about global culture, I found it to be that through the customs of westernization it is affecting the other cultures around the world. As stated above, Fiji is an evidence of global cultural change which was less well known and more subtle to be the fact that the women of Fiji are dieting. In the tradition of Fijian culture, it is or was considered fashionable for women to weigh 200 or more pounds. However, since the introduction of TV in 1995 to the Fijian Islands, women (especially schoolgirls) now see that the rest of the world equates to slimness with attractiveness and now they have also enjoyed the dieting craze. After reading an article (Television, Disordered Eating, and Young Women in Fiji by A.E. Becker), it states that, “Televised imagery appears to have engaged the imagination of Fijian youth at multiple levels, apparently operating synergistically with the sweeping and rapid social changes taking place in Fiji over the past two decades. The ensuing changes in self and body image were multifaceted. On the most superficial and concrete level, television appeared to redefine local aesthetic ideals for bodily appearance and presentation.”
Well, to say, the prospect of global culture is a good thing. Looking at facts, it is evident that it has changed many societies their way of life and conformity. It has to some extent expanded their society