Culture Globalization

Most families in the US have some slight mixing of the different races of the world but I see my family as a collector of people. We embrace the differences and similarities in all our different heritages. For me, I see globalization as a way to learn about other cultures and to become a better world because of our constant contact with other countries through trade and migration. There are problems with globalization but there are problems without it too. Globalization is here to stay and the best thing is to meld into the world of multi-culture and enrich our lives while learning from other cultures.

Some novelists have touched this discussion, specifically Bharati Mukherjee and Salman Rushdie. They have lived through the good and bad of globalization and learned to accept and reject, knowing that its best to take the good and the bad with this new reality of globalization.

In Bharati Mukherjee’s novel, Jasmine, the main character from India changes her identity multiple times to suit her situation. While in America Jasmine adopts a Vietnamese son, Du, and soon sees the difference between an immigrant who has completely melded into a new country and one holding on to the old. For her "transformation has been genetic; Du’s was hyphenated." She has given up her Indian identity to protect herself and to make her life easier by trying not to stand out. But for Du, he is Vietnamese-American, because he chooses to hold on to his Vietnamese self, while accepting what he will from America and its culture.

Whether or not people choose to become one with their new found culture or become hyphenated, it is still a good thing that they are accepting another culture. Jasmine described Du as a "hybrid" because he does not meld his two cultures but takes what he needs. For someone like Jasmine that is impossible because she feels she has to distance herself from her past. The actions that she and Du take are different because of how they view themselves but they are similar because their experience makes them feel like "there can be no other way." Depending on experience people react differently to the meeting of their own culture to a new culture. I think though that as globalization moves on more people will find themselves in between what Du and Jasmine have felt.

From reading Salman Rushdie’s collection of short stories, East, West, I think he shows that he feels globalization can lead to a world of people who are basically all the same. In his short story, "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers," the world is obsessed with auctioning anything and everything; it is an ugly view of what can happen to man kind if globalization goes wrong. And to the people of that world "everything is for sale [… and they] engage in a battle of wits and wallets, a war of nerves." These people have given up all that makes cultures and people unique in exchange for being classed as one stereotype or another depending on what they have. But to that society, they believe that there is a "purity" about their auctions and an "immense simplicity of [their] manner of dealing with [that] life." And yet at the end, the nameless narrator turns his back on letting the auction be his culture. He steps out of that routine and finds his own identity and freedom. Rushdie’s story of what globalization might lead to is an extreme possibility that is dependent on people willing to live by throwing away personal and cultural identity for money. Not everyone could accept that life. If we don’t use the trends of globalization as a way to qualify who we are, then globalization wont become similar to the one in Rushdie’s.

Globalization is not good or bad as long as cultures can thrive in and around each other. For my family, sharing our cultures is a way to learn more about other cultures and strengthen our personal identities. We do not forget our own heritage or totally separate our past culture from our present culture. Individual cultures and identities are what need to be protected and nurtured while globalization becomes stronger. As long as we remember our heritage and celebrate our differences globalization doesn’t have to be seen as good or bad but just a new part of everyone’s culture.