Is globalization really Westernization?

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There is a stereotype that the current generation of Western youths, especially Americans, like to consume Japanese culture to the point of fetishizing it, but I honestly suspect that it's the Japanese who are aping the West these days. Anime is one prime example; not only does the art style draw upon Western animation, especially Disney, but most of the "Japanese" characters in it have pale skin, pointy noses, large and rounded eyes, and European hair and eye colors. Then you have all the Japanese people dying their hair blonde or red as if they want to resemble Europeans. In fact modern Japan in general looks more Western than traditionally Japanese, what with all the skyscrapers rather than pagodas and bonsais. The Japanese are mimicking the West far more than the reverse.

I have ambivalent feelings about this. I generally support intercultural mixing and the exchange of ideas and technologies between different kinds of people, and at least the Japanese are adopting these Western influences on their own terms rather than having some colonial overlords shove it down their throats, but it appears to be part of a larger trend for the rest of the world to imitate Western civilization more than Westerners imitate other cultures. You see Japanese and Nigerians wear Western T-shirts and pants all the time, but you seldom see white Americans in kimonos or dashikis. In fact Westerners actually get upset when they see their own kind consuming a lot of non-Western culture, accusing the latter of politically correct romanticism or cultural appropriation. Meanwhile non-Westerners assimilating Western culture and values are praised for becoming civilized or modernized while those who prefer their traditional cultures are vilified as inhumane barbarians.

The presentation of non-Western cultures in the media is also unbalanced. 90% of news stories about non-Westerners have something to do with religious fanaticism, terrorism, patriarchy, honor killings, witchcraft beliefs, despotism, corruption, or poverty. Sometimes the West even accuses non-Westerners of barbarities little different from its own: for example, Westerners love to whine about "sexist" female circumcision in Africa without showing the same concern for male circumcision in their own countries (incidentally, male circumcision also features in traditional African cultures; at least the "sexist" Africans are fair to both sexes in this regard). And then of course the non-Western world wouldn't be so poor in the first place if the West wasn't hogging all the planet's finite resources for itself. At any rate, few positive aspects of non-Western civilizations ever get mentioned, except possibly the supposed studiousness of East Asians in the US, and then only to make African and Native American people feel inferior to a "model minority".

The intercultural dialogue between the West and non-West commonly called globalization is biased in favor of Western influence upon the latter. This is a problem because while Western culture has its positive aspects to contribute, so do the various non-Western cultures, although these rarely receive any attention in the Western media. A truly globalized world that would benefit all humanity would have all the world's different cultures learning from each other, borrowing the positives and eschewing the negatives. Instead we have the West exporting its culture, positives AND negatives included, to the rest of the world while importing little from outside. This isn't fair and equal globalization. This is indirect cultural imperialism.

Globalization has really been Americanization. That is because of the disproportionate influence of American culture, including media, around the world.

Even the Internet started in the U.S. (with the military, techies, and professors). When I first started using the Internet, almost everyone I met was either a professor or a techie (a few military types). The Internet was not really popularized until the mid-to-late 1990s.

Of course, there is no reason why globalization needs to be Americanization, but it has been, for the most part, until now.

I think the reverse influence of the peripheral countries unto the United States is underrated, but this is just gut feeling. I don't think that the current period of globalization can be that fundamentally different from the earlier ones, which were multilateral. Of course, the United States, and the West generally, are the centre of the process, and thus "export" more than they "import", in a way, but "westernization" or "americanization" lack nuance as concepts, I think. Of course, as I said, it is more an intuition than anything, but there are certainly examples of multilateral cultural exchanges in the case of food, art, music, etc. In this case, it is more a bit of flavour added to a generally Western culture, not a fundamental change, so I don't know.

One of the main routes of modern Japanese culture is American culture. After the U.S. Navy forced Japan out of isolation in 1854 they started studying American culture and adopting American technology such as railroads. They changed from an agricultural society to an industrial one. They started to militarize and wanted to expand their range of territory. In 1936, Japan became one of the Axis Powers alongside Germany and Italy. In a way, the U.S. caused the creation of one its own rivals. The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan near the end of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died as a result of the bombing. The Japanese military did some heinous things during World War II, but all of those civilians didn't deserve that. Most people in the U.S. don't seem to have a good understanding of how freakishly horrifying the results of that bombing were. Today, the U.S. and Japan are allies and exchange parts of each other's culture. Japan has made many technological advancements that have impacted the rest of the world. For example, the Japanese were the first to have CDs and MP3 players. Now CDs and MP3 players are used worldwide. Japanese culture has impacted my life a lot. I use technology that was invented in Japan on a regular basis, and I like to play Japanese puzzle games and Japanese video games.

People in the U.S. are becoming more prejudiced against people who live in communist countries like China and North Korea. People claim that a lot of North Koreans hate us because of our freedom, but they don't. A lot of North Koreans hate the U.S. because during the Korean War the U.S. supported the dictator from the south known as Syngman Rhee. Syngman Rhee had tens of thousands of suspected communists executed during his struggle for power against Kim Il Sung from the north. North Koreans blame the U.S. for supporting the genocide of their people. A lot of citizens of China don't hate the U.S. or our way of life. Most members of the Chinese lower class would probably rather be in the U.S. or in another country where they could have more rights and increase their standard of living. The Chinese term for America literally means "Beautiful Nation" and the Chinese term for the United Kingdom literally means "Brave Nation". It appears that they have a lot of respect for capitalistic countries where people have more rights. I'm by no means a communist, but I think that it's a shame that people often blame the citizens of a country for the decisions of their government.

Both Western culture and Eastern culture have positive and negative aspects. I don't believe that people should replace their own culture with a foreign culture simply because they are becoming more modern. They should try to adapt their own culture to modernization rather then replacing it with a new one, but they also shouldn't completely reject foreign cultures either. In the U.S. people of many different cultures and backgrounds coexist. No one loses their individual identity but anyone can get a taste of a culture different from their own. People should embrace and try to prevent the disappearance of their own culture as well as adopting positive aspects of other cultures. Just because a culture has different ways of thinking than our own doesn't mean that it's inferior or barbaric. It just means that it has different routes, thus it has different ideals.

A few hundred years ago globalization was British, French, Dutch and Spanish.

ruveyn

I agree. Some standardization and idea sharing can be a good thing, but countries should try to keep their own cultures. When I travel, I love to see different cultures, different scenery, and the different ways that people do things. How boring would it be, if everything was the same?

Also, I think there are certain aspects of western culture that aren't exactly good for society, or the environment, for that matter. Look at what is happening to China. They are transitioning from agricultural to industrial, and with the amount of people they have, they are destroying the environment, and depleting resources, at a faster rate, than even the U.S.

They dominated the globe. However, globalization, in a modern sense, didn't start until after WW2. Some people date it to Eisenhower's classic comment about the military-industrial complex, but that is an over-simplification.

The British Empire currently holds the world record for having control over the most territory at one time. The Mongol Empire is second and could even be considered first depending on where you consider its boundaries to be. Imperial powers have dominated most of the world in the past as can be seen by these maps.

World Territories - 1900


World Territories - 1942

Prior to the Great War (AKA WW I) commerce was globalized. Britain was the main player. The U.S was a minor player.

One could order goods made in Europe, or India or China and have it delivered just about anywhere. A telegraph P.O. is all that was required.

ruveyn

It depends on one's definition. I date globalization, as that term is generally used today, to the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and to GATT (1947).

John Maynard Keynes wrote about the global economy that existing before the Great War.

ruveyn

Fallacy of authority. Someone else's opinion is not evidence.

John Mayard Keynes was a recognized world authority on economics. There is nothing wrong with expert opinion and one does not get much more expert than Keynes. He was hired by Britain to calculate what could be squeezed out of Germany after the Great War. His estimate was right on the dot. France wanted more than Germany could give even after all the asserts were sold and France's greed was instrumental in leading to the rise of extreme political parties in Germany. Keynes more realistic approach if followed might have prevent another great war 20 years on. (almost to the day). Keynes was not only a great economist, he was a world class probability theorist and mathematician. Yes, I use Keynes as an expert because he proved himself in practice and he was a genius on top of that.

There was a global corporate based economy centered in Europe prior to the Great War. It produced prosperity in Europe at the cost of misery in the various European colonies (China and India in particular).

When corporations trade and expand almost without barriers and restraints across national bounds, you have a global economy in action

If the French and the U.S. (under Woodrow Wilson) were not so stupid we would have had no second world war and we would have had a vibrant global economy from the mid 20's onward.

ruveyn

This map is misleading. Only half of what is British Africa on the map was really British, the rest being Belgian, French and Italian colonies occupied/protected during the war. Persia was not a British territory, only occupied by Allied troops, and half of those were Soviet.

It is wrong on many other levels. I guess it was taken from a game, which is a very bad idea. (The other one has an anachronic Dutch flag and forgot to include Sweden in Sweden.)

Globalization is Western propanganda that all should honor the greatness of multinational corporations and bow to their wishes.