How has globalization affected cultures around the world?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: The fragility of life in a crowded, shrinking world and a global village encouraged or demanded multiple perspectives, as neighbors adopted or sampled each other's points of view. The prevailing values of the late twentieth century were appropriate to a postcolonial, multicultural, pluralistic era. Hierarchies of value, which rated some peoples' priorities higher than others', had to be avoided, not because they are false but because they lead to conflict. Relativism—the doctrine that each culture, and even individual, can choose appropriate norms, and therefore that no single set of norms is universally applicable—displaced Westerners' confidence in the superiority of their own culture. This doctrine, however, brought problems of its own. It made it hard to argue for the universality of human rights. It caused tension between minority values and mainstream culture. Festivals associated with majority religions had to be downplayed or modified to avoid offending minorities. Conflicts arose when migrants brought with them cultural practices and values that conflicted with the laws of their new homelands. In Islamic countries increasingly influenced by Sharia, or Islamic law, for instance, Westerners found that they could be prosecuted for using alcohol, or for not respecting traditional codes of dress and comportment for women. In theWest, immigrants could not be allowed to continue some traditional practices, such as female circumcision, or polygamy, or the marriage of minors. "Asian values" became a slogan to justify use of the criminal law in, for example, Malaysia and Singapore, against practices the West tolerated, such as homosexuality and the recreational consumption of some drugs.