Cultural Diversity and Globalization: Impacts and Trends
Cultural Diversity: Two Special Characteristics
Cultural diversity has two special characteristics:
- All cultures receive influences from other cultures.
- As a result of cultural diversity, each culture gradually loses homogeneity.
Relations and influences among cultures are often the result of violent imposition. Cultural diversity is particularly common when people originating from elsewhere settle among us. We come into contact with cultures other than our own. Excluding them ultimately leads to either forcing them to undergo an acculturation process or else creating immigrant ghettos in our cities. The existence of different cultures within a society is cultural diversity.
The Power of Multinationals
Society’s economic and social trends are directed, and this is called neoliberalism.
- Economic perspective comes before politics.
- The market is driven by capitalism and especially by the stock exchange.
- Competition and competitiveness are prioritized.
- Unrestricted trading is encouraged.
- Globalization of products and money is promoted.
- There is an international division of labor.
- A strong currency is a sign of stability.
- Deregulation, privatization, and liberalization are favored.
- There are fewer and fewer states and a pro-capital position, improving profits at the expense of salaries.
- There is indifference to any resulting ecological damage.
In the next thirty years, 300 multinationals around the world will have shared out the consumer goods market, and a few small companies will survive to supply the remaining markets. Those multinationals will join so that each controls the world market in its specialty.
What is Built for the Multicultural Society?
A multicultural society is not built by separating cultures or isolating subcultures, but through communication between them. In other words, recognizing their differences, they must accept their common cultural language. Cultural diversity is based not upon differences but on relations between cultures. In these relations, each culture must accept that, beyond the differences between them, cultures contribute to the human experience and that each culture is an attempt at the universalization of an experience.
Activity: Factors Influencing Population Density
Relief
Flat, low-lying rural areas are easier to farm, like South-East England. Mountainous areas like the Rockies in Canada are too steep and cold, with poor, often infertile soils.
Climate
Rainfall and temperature must be just right for crops to grow. In South East Asia, there are 3 crops of rice per year. The Arctic is too cold, and the Sahara is too arid for crop cultivation.
Economic Activities
Extensive farming may need a lot of land, so not many people live there. Intensive farming may need the labor of many people, like in Bangladesh. Industry and services provide many jobs, so more people live in towns to be near their place of work.
Soils and Vegetation
Lowland river deltas like the Nile have fertile soil brought by the river. Many people can live and farm there. Tropical rainforests have poor soils, and the thick forest is hard to clear, so few people live there. This is called a sparse area of population.
History
India is very crowded; people have been settled there for thousands of years. North and South America have large areas with few people. Until a few hundred years ago, only small groups of people lived there.
Technology
Poor education slows down a country’s technical progress so that farmers maintain the use of wooden ploughs and grow small amounts of food. This can keep population levels low, like in North-East Brazil, and can prolong poverty. With education, there are new inventions and new jobs. This gives high population levels, like in Tokyo.