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Because of globalization, there has been a "universalization" of culture across the world.

THE INEVITABILITY OF GLOBALIZATION ON THE HUMAN RACE

Sometime in the not too distant future, perhaps tomorrow, all human beings in every country and across all continents will practice one culture. They won't speak one language or practice one religion but lifestyles will be similar across the world. And so will economic systems and forms of governance. The myriad of cultures that exist today will amalgamate into a world culture.

Western, African and Asian culture will melt into one. Local languages such as those spoken by Kenya's 42 ethnic groups will perish as each succeeding generation of children takes up world culture. Borders that divide nations will be dissolved by a growing international trade and vast, seamless communication that's getting cheaper by the day. As states become irrelevant, the concept of a single world government that can combat international crime and terrorism will gain acceptance.

The future of a globalized humanity is exciting and at the same time frightening as it represents uncertainty. Many questions remain to be answered. The journey has already started and by analyzing the present, its possible to catch a glimpse into the future.

Globalization

Globalization is the ongoing set of phenomena in which all world cultures exchange amongst each other such aspects as language, culture, religion, economic systems and forms of governance. The term itself has gained much currency over the past twenty years but globalization has been an ongoing process for hundreds years. The forces of conquest, imperialism and colonialism have served as avenues of intercultural exchange all across the world.

Islam and Christianity, two of the world's main religions, have been spread commercially and militarily across Europe, Asia and the American continents. The ideas of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations such as the Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans were similarly exported across the world. In turn, Spanish conquistadors in Latin America spread the foods they found indigenous American Indians growing. That's how maize, tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco became common fare on dinner tables all over the world. The slave trade took with it aspects of African culture to the Caribbean and to the mainland American continents. English colonialists in Africa helped enrich their mother tongue through the assimilation of such words as “safari” (Rocha, 1998).

The explosive in the use of information technology for interpersonal communication in the past ten years has greatly accelerated the pace of globalization. The internet and mobile phone enables almost instantaneous communication virtually anywhere on earth at low cost. Thus globalization can be illustrated as the combined effect of millions of individual acts by people who have availed themselves of the potential granted them by technologies that shrink the planet (Elliott, 2000).

Criticism against globalization

The critics of globalization have certainly made a name for themselves gate crashing into world summits and rubbishing trade agreements in the name of the world's marginalized peoples. At times, globalization can appear as a form of “Westernization” by multinational corporates backed by powerful states aiming at dominating world commerce. This is because it is Western culture that is being widely adopted across the world.

As the West also happens to be highly industrialized and technologically advanced, its people enjoy high quality living standards with less manual labor and advanced health care provided by the state. This lifestyle, beamed to billions across the world on television and films, is very appealing. Which human being doesn't want a good house, a perfect family, a car and a fun job? The influences of past imperialist polices cannot be overlooked either. Subjugated peoples were taught that Western culture represented modern values.

In order to appear civilized, humankind is aping everything from the West. From fashion, education, politics and technology, local values are losing out to Western ideas. The mass media has had a significant role to play in this. Its cheaper to relay foreign media content than to produce local material.

Possessing both technological and financial resources, the Western world has swamped the rest of the world with films, newspapers and music. The American-based Hollywood film industry churns out thousands of films and soap operas each year. The American music industry, exemplified by the likes of Mariah Carey, Eminem, Britney Spears and Whitney Houston keeps millions across the world humming to its tunes. The Western media industry - dominated by America - is so efficient that connoisseurs of art in “Old Europe” are lashing out against globalization, terming it as “Americanization”.

Because of the pervasiveness of Western media in this globalizing environment, local cultural values have been distorted causing identity crises among individuals who cannot establish where they belong. Acculturative stress occurs whenever persons are exposed to two or more contradictory cultures both of which are necessary for social interaction within parallel social contexts. In Kenya, for instance, its rather common to find a polygamous church elder who never seems to notice the paradox.

Globalization spreads positive values

Globalization has resulted in greater political freedoms coupled with respect for human rights. Globalization's impact has been in the engendering of greater personal mobility across borders, greater opportunities for jobs and education as well as the rapid advance in science and technology.

International bodies have helped spread democracy and free trade to areas where such concepts were previously unknown. The main bodies that have accelerated the pace of globalization in governance are the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The United Nations was formed in 1945, just as the world was reestablishing peace after World War 2. The preamble to the United Nations Charter reads,

“We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and … to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom … have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims …”

(The United Nations Charter)

The birth of international financial institutions at about the same time was a direct response to the dismal experience of the 1920s and 1930s. The world had witnessed the Great Depression in the years following 1929. The global economy had gone through many traumas: banking failures, monetary instability, trade protectionism and extraordinarily high levels of unemployment.

Many of those who surveyed the wreckage of the global economic system during World War 2 concluded that the world's economic system needed some honest referees. The global system could not be left to the mercy of governments or to the unregulated workings of international markets. It needed international institutions of economic governance which could lay down some agreed rules by which all nations would conduct their affairs. Thus emerged the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and later on, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Regency, 1995). The GATT later grew into the present day World Trade Organization.

Thanks to globalization, the workforce of today is able to move across state borders in the search for career opportunities. Kenyan medical personnel are working in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and the United Kingdom. Nigerian pastors minister to Kenyan congregations. Chinese engineers are designing and building roads in Africa. On the streets of Nairobi, a Japanese man has been spotted selling pieces of roast maize to city commuters. Workforce mobility fuels economic growth by creating intellectual interchange, fed by continuous infusions of new blood (Newsweek, Nov 1, 2004).

The rapid spread and acceptance of technological advances is, in no small part, attributable to globalization. The mass media creates awareness on technology and encourages its use. Many people today own mobile phones because they have been greatly popularized in Western films. Globalization forces businesses to adapt new technology in order to remain competitive and this is responsible for the computerization projects many firms have undertaken. Also, worker mobility across borders tends to act as an avenue of technological capacity transfer. The institutions of globalization have acted as agents of technological transfer. They facilitate international trade, nurture peace and urge the protection of intellectual property rights.

Globalization is human

Humans are social beings and have to interact with one another in order to survive and reproduce. Anthropological studies have found this to be a consistent fact in all world cultures, from the advanced to the primitive.

Humans in every environment communicate their needs for basic requirements, such as food. People also communicate psychological needs, such as companionship. The communication process begins among individuals for the purpose of not only conveying information but also for bonding. Further communication occurs among groups of people, for instance between one village and another. Taken further afield, ethnic groups do communicate to resolve disputes or to exchange what the other doesn't have. In pre-colonial Kenya, the Kikuyu and the Maasai interacted over many years at times of peace and also during periods of war. Communication took place across continents, for example, between Arabs and East Africans, between Indians and Chinese as well as between Europeans and American Indians. Constant interaction enables cultures to acquire new ideas from each other.  

To fight globalization is to go against the trait of unquenched inquisitiveness that is typical of humans. People always want to learn more each day and what better way than to find new information from other communities?

Our humanity is enriched when we do the mundane things from other cultures that have been introduced to us by globalization forces. We eat new foods, cheer sports heroes from unlikely places, visit towns and villages that a generation ago seemed as close as the far side of the moon. We understand at least the surface of unfamiliar faiths. In that way, globalization is good (Elliott, 2000).

Bibliography

1). Rocha, Chimerah (1998). Kiswahili: Past, Present and Future Horizons Nairobi. Nairobi University Press
ISBN: 9966 846 35 2

2). Elliott, Michael (2000). “Globalization is Good for You.” Newsweek Vol CXXXV, No. 15, April 10. P 2
ISSN: 0163-7053

3). Regency (1995). A Vision of Hope: Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations. London. The Regency Corporation
ISBN: 0-95204695-4

4. Newsweek, Nov 1, 2004
ISSN: 0163-7053