It is often argued that cultural traditions are being lost due to globalization. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
It is often argued that cultural traditions are being lost due to globalization. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Meticulously undertaking for decades, globalization now is a notorious term widely used across conventions as a driving factor to bring products – either in the economic or cultural terms out of the geographic borders to other ends of the world. However, it is also in the center of heated arguments to be responsible for the loss of cultural traditions which are believed to take years to construct. Though accountable to a certain level, it is undeniable that globalization contributes immensely to preserve those longlasting values rather than cause degradation or even disapperance of them.
To begin with, globalization benefits local economy and employment, allowing to increase the captial necessary for local authorities to preserve cultural remains through numerous policies, namingly promoting tourism, subsidying for local resident or constructing museums. Specifically, it weakens commercial trading barriers, enabling not only cultural heritages but also culture-embedded products to be purchased across the world, hence promoting the uniqueness to the global. Moreover, the average bar of income of the local increases significantly, a result from a higher rate of employment in professions of sales, traveling, food and beverage thanks to this emergence.
Opposite to the idea that globalization is to blame for the loss of traditional values, globalization even reinforces local customs more immensely than ever and forces joint efforts to protect outstanding features in the situation where minor cultures are deliberately submerged to the major ones, the situation also known as homegenization. On one hand, modern tourism is of little barriers for any international travelers seriously poses a critical question about the originality of each culture. An average european travelers certainly will not take thousands of miles from the eastern to Vietnam – a country in Southeast Asia to experience Pizza and buy Gucci bags as sourvenirs back home. On the other hand, under that pressure, many local authorities are collaborating to capture the worthwhile values of their culture to preserve and promote them. It explains why many communities now are making efforts for recognition from UNESCO on their newly discovered or historical remains in need to be protected.
To sum up, rather than globalization to be the ultimate culprit for the declining trends of some cultures, it is inadequacy of the awareness of the residents and of collective efforts from multi-stakholers to understand and preserve them. It implies that when globalization is likely to be unescapable as a part of revolution, the corresponding acts of the local will be the final answer to how the culture will be shaped.
