What is right or wrong with globalization?
What is right or wrong with globalization?
Generally speaking, globalization is the process of transitioning from a local economic, social, or cultural production towards international production, exchange, and trade. The effect is increasing interdependence of what were once local economies and cultural practices. Do you think globalization promotes democracy and equality or does it maintain international and cultural relations of subordination and dominance? Does it increase cross-cultural understanding and foster the development of “world-citizens,” or does it force local people to surrender the authority they once had over their own practices to those of the world at large?
For example, Salsa, a local music of the Caribbean, is now being taught by Anglo people in suburban Chicago, and original Salsa compositions are created in Japan by entirely Japanese bands for Japanese consumption. And speaking of the Japanese, they won their first Little League World Series Championship in 1967. They have won it six times since and appeared in the final series ten times. Korea has also won the Little League World Series, not to mention Taiwan, who has won the series seventeen times since 1967. Does this make baseball less of an American sport? Are “they” playing “our” sport? Are the Japanese making Japanese-Salsa or just Salsa? Can they really understand Salsa the way a native of Puerto Rico does? Do Puerto Ricans retain any “authority” over Salsa, or has the world become open to any source of “authentic Salsa” or (paradoxically) can anyone lay claim to define how a “genuine American pastime” is played?
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