Globalization and Cultural Relativism - Essay Example

How have globalization and cultural relativism impacted on religion in the American society? Grade (June 2, 2015) Thesis: How have globalization and cultural relativism impacted on religion in the American society? Anthropology has studied humans and human behaviors for long. Through anthropological analysis, it has become possible to understand how humans have changed over time. One of the major areas of anthropological interest is the issue of human cultural and religious transformation. Intolerance for religious and cultural change was a major characteristic of the ancient human interactions. Notable historical human conflicts can be attributed to religious or cultural intolerance of one group towards the other in the ancient human era. However, the high level of religious and cultural diversity intolerance has been fading over time, with the increase in the prevalence of both cultural relativism and globalization. Globalization can be simply termed as the process by which people from different cultures are connected and made to interact with each other. On the other hand, cultural relativism is the thought that all cultures are acceptable, despite the differences in their basic principles. Thus, the fact that anthropological analysis has discovered a transformation in religious and cultural tolerance overtime may be attributed to different factors globally. For example there is tolerance of both the Christian and Islamic religions in the American society. Nevertheless, one of the major areas of anthropological interest would remain to unearth the factors that have contributed to human cultural and religious transformation, leading to the acceptance of religious and cultural diversity over time. Thus, the major question becomes; how have globalization and cultural relativism impacted on religion in the American society? According to Dr. Xia Guang (Guang, 2007), the world has become a global village. However, rather than being culturally homogeneous, it has remained a field of diverse cultures. Thus, how different cultures interact with one another determines their survival and reinvention. There are various factors accounting for survival and dominance of certain cultures and religions over others. The first and most important factor is civilization and the influence of the Western culture. Most of the cultures of the developing nations have been greatly influenced by the Western culture which is considered to be more superior to the other cultures. This has led to the erosion of most of the cultures of the developing nations. These nations have adopted the so-called superior cultures of the West. The coming of modernity and civilization has contributed negatively to the demise of the traditional cultural values and beliefs of people. This demise has given room for the nourishment of the Western culture and its survival. Globalization has also contributed to the survival and dominance of certain cultures over others. Globalization has increased the social interactions among the world nations. People have been exposed to diverse cultures that they never knew before. The more socialization occurs, the more these people appreciate and embrace the cultures that are considered to be better than others. The cultures considered to be inferior soon fade off and these new ones take precedence. Human beings also have a tendency to imitate others. Once they have been exposed to the diverse cultures, there is likelihood that they will develop a temptation to want to imitate those other cultures. With time, the imitated cultures will gain supremacy over the others and they will start dominating over the rest of the cultures. Formal education equally enhances the survival and dominance of certain cultures over others. It enhances social interactions will eventually lead to globalization. Traditionally, culture and religion were homogenous for people within a defined jurisdiction, and so people were born and died while knowing only the same culture and religion (Johnston, 2014). However, due to globalization, cultural and religious transformation has occurred, and many people have now deserted traditional religion. Globalization has influenced both religion and culture in a number of ways. It has made people to compare their own customs and beliefs alongside those of diverse world cultures. This comparison enhances the appreciation of other religions and weakens the religious exclusivity of people. Once religious exclusivity is broken, unity and spiritual transformation among the world cultures is enriched. People start to realize than the other religious beliefs also have truths just like their own religious beliefs have. Rising above one’s own beliefs and the embracement of the existing differences is heightened. The bonds of the primacy of our own beliefs are broken. It can therefore be rightly argued that globalization makes people to seek to have an insight on the other people’s religious beliefs and appreciate the same appropriately. Globalization empowers one to comprehend the symbolic nature of the stories in their religious writings. This is followed by an acknowledgement that all religious beliefs have the same intent. This is due to the recognition that they all encompass a common core of values that is adhered to by the people who subscribe to that religion. The intent is the human aspiration to bond with a more superior being, far superior to themselves. Globalization is also responsible for the establishment of relationships among the world cultures. The relationships make the people to endeavor to acknowledge the differences that exist between their own cultures and those of others. The differences would be in their food, music or religion. The African traditional culture of collectivism has been transformed through globalization into the modern African culture of individualism (Kasongo, 2010). However, the same globalization concept has not succeeded in transforming the traditional African religion culture into full adoption of modern religions, since traditional African religions still plays an important role in the African communities. Kasongo highlights the factors accounting for cultural transformation, while at the same time sustaining traditional religion. He argues that globalization sanctions two dissimilar cultures to cohabit or build a transformation to a novel and third type of culture. One of these cultures is eventually absorbed by the other. An acculturation of identity is thereafter created. This is a situation whereby the people keep their cultures while at the same time appreciating and coexisting with other people who possess different cultures. People have a unique culture and therefore they can only coexist with the others who do not share their cultural practices and beliefs. A universal culture ought not to be executed on people’s cultures in resolving their conflicts. This is despite the important part that globalization plays in transforming cultures. Kasongo argues that the African cultural conflict should, for example, be elucidated using the African cultural viewpoint and not a global culture. Socialization and social interactions equally contribute to cultural transformation in a society. Socialization contributes to the acquisition of culture and other motions from social clusters as well as one’s environment. It is the idea behind the imposition of beliefs on people and the provision of new experiences to the people concerned. Education is an epitome of how social interactions can easily change a person’s cultural perspectives. It makes people to understand and adopt new cultures while keeping their own. Apart from globalization and socialization, modernity/civilization on the other hand erodes the traditional religion of a people. Modernity uses people’s enthusiasm of their self-centered wants to direct their actions. It is a concept of supremacy and the imposition of a fresh culture over traditional cultural values. Civilization automatically leads to the death of traditional culture. It will therefore be right to argue that as much as modernity contributes to cultural transformation; it does not sustain traditional religion. The need to stick to the traditional cultures and the need to move with time has particularly created a major conflict among societies globally (Sijuwade, 2006). He argues that globalization can lead in cultural transformation, yet still create high cultural tensions between the traditional and the modern cultures. In his opinion, veneration of cultural groups encompasses a profoundly different alignment of humans to life itself. This is in contradistinction to life which strives for the protection of individual self-determination. This tension presents differences that cannot be reunited as it involves opposing views of the human situation, life and the tenacities for which the humans have been fashioned. Modernity conceptualizes an individual as all-knowing. The individual is not presented with an opportunity to consider themselves as members of a group. Modernity gives no room for a sense of belonging but rather individualism. This creates a major conflict as people still have the desire to stick to their traditional cultures where they have a sense of belonging and at the same time the doors of modernity are knocking on them. Modernity is viewed as more superior compared to the traditional beliefs. People who subscribe to modernity in most cases view those who subscribe to traditional beliefs as inferior humans. This creates social unrest in a society as well as conflicts which would have been resolved had modernity and traditional cultural beliefs found a meeting point. Sijuwade also argues that the United States individualism, for instance, is deliberated to be a mirror image of reality. It is also considered to be the accurate view of existence from which all other beliefs can be ruled on accordingly. It employs over the rest of the cultures. This definitely causes conflicts among the people in a society as each will want to prove how their culture is superior to the culture of the rest of the people. Modernity is therefore destined to achieve a goal of bringing disunity among the world cultures as compared to unity. The whole purpose of humanity is at stake with this concept of globalization as it will be very difficult to elucidate what the purpose really is. Globalization predicts to cultivate a new culture that can surpass different economic, ethnic, political, racial and religious upbringings. This type of a culture is destined to be one that will either outdo the customary empathies for one’s own cultural development or undercut them. A conflict is bound to arise if certain classes of individuals feel that their cultural beliefs are being undermined. They will struggle to rise above this type of undermining and in the process of the struggle; conflicts that must have been expected will ensue. This is likely to go on until the individual feels that he or she is at par with the rest of the cultures or better off superior than them. This is the only time that they will get a sense of satisfaction. It is therefore clear that the process of globalization will only occur with difficulty and conflict. This is more so to the developing nations as compared to the nations that have already developed. The difficulties and conflicts are predicted to be in opposing conceptions of epistemology, morality and social tenets as well as schemes of perceptions. Morality is generally accepted to be a subjective notion. What is moral to one nation is not necessary moral to the other nation. If therefore a situation arises whereby a developed nation seeks to impose its own notions of morality on another nation, this will give rise to conflicts. For example, homosexuality would be a morally upright sexual orientation in one nation for a person to engage in while in another nation it would be an abomination to even develop the thoughts of becoming a homosexual or encourage others to become so. Coming into an agreement of what is moral and what is not moral is therefore very difficult. Any slight misunderstanding will give birth to a number of conflicts among the affected individuals. Tomlinson, (1999) argues that globalization is not a threat to cultural identity. On the contrary, it is responsible for the creation and prosperity of cultural identity. This is simply due to the fact that cultural identity is a substantial dimension of concrete social life in the modern society. Globalization proliferates rather than destroying identities. Tomlinson is against the idea of some critics that globalization erodes the cultural identity of a people. He claims that the repercussion of considering identity as a specifically contemporary cultural fancy is sufficient to underscore the simple idea that globalization terminates identity. He has put forth a stronger claim that globalization actually breeds identity and even goes further to producing too much identity that may prove to be dangerous. He further argues that globalization is not only the distribution of a specific Western lifestyle but also a dissemination of an entire range of institutional features of cultural modernity. The process of distributing the institutional features of modernity across all cultures results in the creation of an identity where none existed before. Globalization equally has the power to distribute and promote its cultural goods in all the nations of the world at large. References 1. Guang, X. (2007). Culture in the Context of Globalization: A Sociological Interpretation. Macao: Macao Polytechnic Institute. 2. Johnston, M. P. (November 26, 2014). Globalization vs. Traditional Religion. The Huffington Post. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-placentra-johhston/globalization-vs-traditional-religion_b_2170609.html 3. Kasongo, A. (2010). Impact of Globalization on Traditional African Religion and Cultural Conflict. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 2(1), 309-322. 4. Sijuwade, P.O. (2006). Globalization and Cultural conflict in developing countries: The South Africa Example. In Anthropologist 8 (2), 125-137. 5. Tomlinson, J. (1999). Globalization and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Read More