Does the globalization process always produce a homogenizing of human experience around the world?
In 20th century, with the help of technologic improvements world entered into a new era. As technology kept improving, in the 21st century a new idea was given to birth. It was the idea of making the world a single village, which is called as globalization. Globalization affects almost every person, because the globalization process is expanded to every corner of the world either through transport, commerce, and communication. Culture, on the other hand, as a way of living man, is identified for everyone after birth and usually is seen as distinct from each other. Societies are made of their past, their expectations about future and their culture and characteristics. Since their culture gives them social status and presence in the world, they would keep it. They would not be giving up or changing their culture so easily. Globalization process is often misunderstood as societies would lose their values or their cultures. There are lots of counter arguments about globalization and whether it produces homogenizing of human experience around the world or not.
Globalization is usually understood as Americanization, and global American corporations like McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Starbucks and Dockers are just a few good examples with their globalizing in almost all over the world. There is even a term McDonaldization which was first coined by Ritzer George in his text “the McDonaldization of Society”. Cited in Taylor Stephen and Lyon Phil (1995), he explains McDonaldization as "the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world". Ritzer says McDonaldization is "a largely one-way process in which a series of American innovations are being aggressively exported too much of the rest of the world". However, it should be remembered that a Chinese guy’s eating...