Tracking Global Flows

Globalisation is considered to be a process whereby regions of the world are linked by economic or cultural flows. The process involves the expansion and contraction certain aspects of culture, in that one country may adapt certain tendency of another nation perhaps at the loss of a former tradition. The example banded about is that of the prevalence of Mac Donald’s throughout the globe.
Much thought has been given by academics as to the effect of an increasing globalised world. The findings have rendered both positive and negative outcomes. Noam Chomsky summates perhaps one of the negative aspects of globalisation;
‘The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental.’
Chomsky address a very important point, that globalization is a process that protects and supports the economic gain of certain investors, perhaps at the cost of many people’s cultures and traditions.

To offer further explanation, I shall consider the concept of outsourcing. Outsourcing is a practice used by many international corporations; it allows for a cheaper means of production, often a company will relocate to a country where labor is cheaper or there are cheaper natural resources. While this may offer the population of the relocated country employment, there has been reports exploitation of people and the natural recourses. Bearing this in mind, within the article ‘tracking global flows’ there is a clear identification of the types of cultural flows that have been shaped by globalisation. There are; images, capital, commodities, people and ideology.

The article clearly addresses the question does culture flow equally? In terms of globalisation and culture, there appears a one dimension flow, from the centre (the west) to the periphery (the east). This flow is regarded to be a cultural imperialism, where there is a domination of one culture over another. The domination of a few leading cultures, notably America is leading to a ‘cultural homogenization of the world’ (R., p. 15). What is described is how the dominant imposes on the peripheral culture, which leads to the peripheral culture is become an off shoot of the dominant culture. There is a fear that the loss of cultural differences will ultimately lead to a global culture that promotes sameness. However this does mean to suggest that the flow is solely one sided, rather is uneven, as the peripheral cultures do have a marginal influence on the centre, consider fast-food, while the west has exported Mac Donald’s in return we have received cuisine from a variety of places, Mexican Chinese, Thai and Indian are among many. This example can be extended to music and religion. It would be wrong to consider globalisation as merely westernisation as there is a far more interactive relationship between the centre and periphery. As the west becomes home to many migrants, they export their culture and adopt their hosts, what comes into play in interdependency, they feed into each other.

Globalisation is not uniform but is subject to limitations, the article coins the term materiality of the globe and awkward connections to identify the limitations. The former relates to governmental agencies, infrastructure and institutions, and how such powers allow for some entities to flow throughout the globe and other not to. While the term awkward connections relates to selectiveness of interconnection around the globe. To conclude the global flows are ever increasing but are very much bounded by an unevenness.