PEAC Certified

SELF – LEARNING
MODULE IN
UNDERSTANDING
CULURE, SOCIETY AND
POLITICS
SECOND QUARTER –
MODULE 5
CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN
THE
GLOBALIZING WORLD

ALEX A. DUMANDAN

STUDENT NAME: _______________________________________________________________

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MODULE 5 - SECOND QUARTER TOPIC: CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE

GLOBALIZING WORLD
OVERVIEW:

Hello Dear Learners! Welcome To This Module on Economy, Society and

Cultural Change. This Module Deals with Activities That Could Help the Learners
To Explain The Context, Content, Processes And Consequences Of Socialization. The
Module Is Self – Instructional and Allows You to Learn in Your Own Space, At Your
Own Pace. So, Relax and Enjoy Learning.
CONTENT STANDARD: Demonstrates understanding of … explain the changes
brought about by modernization while being critical of the Western dominated definition of
modernization;
PERFORMANCE STANDARD: Learners should be able…
1. identify the changes that culture undergoes during the period of globalization;
2. identify the changes that culture undergoes during the period of globalization;
3. critically examine the Westernizing influence of globalization on local non-Western
cultures;
LEARNING COMPETENCY:
discuss the positive ways in which globalization is able to widen the cultural horizons of
people around the world.

CONTENT:

Lesson 1: Culture and Social

Change Modernization and
cultural change
Culture and Social Change Modernization and cultural change

Sociologist argues that….

i. society evolves and develops primarily due to social and

ii. the significant role played by cultural forces like religion.
economic factors
CULTURE
Max Weber provided an interesting analysis that showed how
capitalism in the West could have not developed were it not for
https://cdn.pixabay.co the push given by Calvinist ethics.
m/photo/2020/03/03/
09/28/john-calvin-
4898122_960_720.jpg

Calvinism shaped the work ethics of entrepreneurs and capitalists

during the early part of capitalist industrialization. Calvinism created
anxiety among the believers that could only be relieved through hard–
work, total devotion to work, avoidance of idleness, and renunciation of
worldly pleasures. Furthermore, Calvinist doctrine of predestination
(i.e., the doctrine that teaches that God already preordained some
people to be saved), led its members to equate prosperity in this world
with salvation. Hence, the cultural ethos generated by the teachings of
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2020/03/0
Calvinism supplied the work ethic necessary for capital accumulation
3/09/28/john-calvin4898122_960_720.jpg during the incipient growth of capitalism.
John Calvin an
influential French
theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation

Weber’s culturalist theory of the emergence of capitalism in the West became one of the
pillars for the development of modernization theory.
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In the 1960s… many social scientists, governments, and policy makers believed in the theory
of modernization. According to this view, based on evolutionary theory of culture, all
societies undergo a process of change in the direction of greater
complexity and progress.

Walt Rostow (1916–2003) proposed earliest formulation of

modernization theory. Walt Rostow (1916–2003), an American
economist and political theorist, proposed five stages of development.

5 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

Rostow’s 5 Stages of
growth
Stage 5: High Mass
Dependent on Global Economy or
Consumption
Market Managing Economies
Consumer oriented durable goods,
flourish, service sector becomes
dominant
Dependent on Growth and
Stage 4: Drive to Maturity
Developed Economies
Diversification, innovation, less
reliance on imports investments

Stage 3. Take Off

Dependent on Sub-urban
Industrialization, growing
Economy
investments, regional growth,
political change

Stage 2. Transitional Stage Dependent on Social Appreciation of

Specialization, surpluses, Education and Skill Development
infrastructure

Stage 1. Transitional Society Dependent on Rural

Economy
Subsistence, barter, agriculture

Demographic research requirement using Rostow’s model prior to Product Launch

Dr. Krishnan Umachandran

Globalization and Culture

Cultural homogenization is the process whereby spaces between nations become porous
because of the accelerated phase of diffusion of information, people, capital, and goods.
Immersed in computer-mediated technologies, people’s relationships
and forms of interaction around the world increasingly have become
unconstrained by geography and are no longer necessarily local or
national in nature.
Roland Robertson (1992) defines globalization as ‘the compression of
the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a
whole. Globalization process intensifies the consciousness of the
people that cultures are intricately linked on the global scale. This is
globality—as opposed to globalism— that equates globalization with
simple spread of Western-style liberal democracy and unhampered
market forces of capitalism. With globalization has come the idea of a
https://www.dur.ac.uk/images/
world culture, that is, the universality of particular cultural traits, whose
IAS/2018_revisions/Fellows181
9/Fellows1011/ProfRRobertson.
spread is a consequence of globalization.
jpg
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Cultural universalism refers to cultural elements, such as the Internet, fast food from
McDonald’s, and Nike sneakers. Technological objects such as “iPhone” and “Android” are
known all over the world although many people do not possess them. Scientific ideas have
the same status.

World polity theory was developed as an analytical frame for interpreting global relations,
structures, and practices. Invoking an image of the world as a system of interrelated
interdependent units, it is a theory of transnational interaction and global social change

Fear of consumerism leads many sociologists to invent new words to characterize this
corporate process of homogenization of the world like:

“Coca-Colonization” “McDonaldization”
“Disneydization” by
by Kuisel, (1993) by Ritzer (2008) Bryman (2004)

“Starbuckization”- prompted by the phenomenal spread of Starbucks

worldwide (Ritzer 2010, p. 36).

Cultural Homogenization-Ours is a consumers’ society, in which culture, in common with

the rest of the world experienced by consumers, manifests itself as a repository of goods
intended for consumption, all competing for the unbearably fleeting and distracted attention
of potential clients, all trying to hold that attention for more than just the blink of an eye.

“Globalization” a kind of cultural homogenization is called which is defined “as the

imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations. (Ritzer 2011, p. 172).

Ritzer popularized the word McDonaldization.

The best example given by Ritzer on globalization of nothingness are the malls. The structure
of the malls can easily be adapted and transported to other localities yet allowing for local
choice of goods, services, and commodities to be served and displayed. Malls have created
a culture of “malling.”

Cultural heterogenization as hybridization

As globalization intensifies cultures become hybridized. Hybridization denotes a wide register

of multiple identity, cross-over, pick-’n’-mix, boundary- crossing experiences and styles,
matching a world of growing migration and transnational families, intensive intercultural
communication, everyday multiculturalism and erosion of boundaries. In optimistic takes on
hybridity, ‘hybrids were conceived as lubricants in the clashes of culture; they were the
negotiators who would secure a future free of xenophobia’ (Papastergiadis 1997, p. 261). A
Filipino-American, for example, may find himself or herself in Seoul, South Korea watching
American soap opera dubbed in Korean language while eating Mediterranean food.

Hybridity has always been with us. But the pace of mixing accelerates and its scope widens
in the wake of major structural changes, such as new technologies that enable new phases
of intercultural contact. Scholars who support cultural heterogenization does not deny that
there is some truth in claims as to global cultural homogenization, – that is, the whole world
becoming culturally similar in some ways. But this is not the whole story, for forms of cultural
heterogenization—things becoming more culturally complex—are also part of, and are
produced by, globalization processes (Back, et al. 2012, p.122). People do frame their
thinking—especially thinking about themselves and who they are—within global frames of
reference. They are compelled to see themselves as just one part of a much greater global
whole. In this view, cultural globalization is ambivalent: it can either encourage a cosmopolitan
consciousness and open attitude towards the wider world and all the different cultures and
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groups within it, or it can involve the creation of negative feelings towards people from other
cultures, involving racist and ethnocentric attitudes. Eric Hobsbawm (1982) puts this analysis
in good light: …somewhere on the road between the globally uniform coke-can and the
roadside refreshment stand in Ukraine or Bangladesh, the supermarket in Athens or in
Djkarta, globalization stops being uniform and adjusts to local differences, such as language,
local culture or... local politics (p. 2, as quoted in Back 2012, p. 122).
REFERENCES
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2020/03/03/09/28/john-calvin-4898122_960_720.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Walt_Rostow_1968.jpg/1280px-
Walt_Rostow_1968.jpg
https://i2.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/rostows-five-stages-
growth.jpg?resize=640%2C480&ssl=1
https://www.dur.ac.uk/images/IAS/2018_revisions/Fellows1819/Fellows1011/ProfRRobertson.jpg
https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/reference/rostow-five-stages-of-economic-growth-model