Cultural identity Essay

According to Bloch, the ultrasocial and communicative nature of the human species makes the desire for a unequaled sense of belonging a deep-seated need. Identification with a special(prenominal) community, whether it is a distinct cultural identity or a sub gloss of socio-political beliefs helps see this need. This is not to say the desire for cultural identity rests on the comparable psychological drive or libidinal charge that powers fashion or gestation.It is important to distinguish that need from these desires, as cultures be not upright surface properties distinguished only by flavor and aesthetics, instead they rebel natur totallyy from the unique properties of the geography that spawn them. Archaeologist Paul Bidwell notes that the triumph of many empires such(prenominal) as those of the Roman Empire quite maybe has more to do with their ability to accommodate diverging cultures.Areas which were successfully Romanized such as southern Britannia were won over by invi ting the ruling classes to dinner, composition Celtic chiefs disinterested in Roman culture were never successfully incorporated into the pre-modern proto-melting pot that was the Roman Empire. In essence, Bidwell asserts that the Roman Empires assimilation policy rested entirely on a dominion of minimizing the amount of intervention necessary to secure imperial interests such as the food supply provided by Egyptian agriculture, limiting their actions entirely to structured forms of co-optation legislation, taxes and the requisitioning of goods.Bloch concurs, noting that when an empire begins to disrupt the social fabric of a culture, that care begins. This is not unlike the present state of the accidental empire of the united States, which as a melting pot (or salad bowl, depending on who you ask) is remarkably tolerant of other cultures to the extent that it does not threaten the status quo.Globalization permits the fulfillment of the desire for individual cultural belongin g by making all sorts of cultural identities permissible by deoxyadenosine monophosphatelifying their importance in relation to an American past that had previously been subject to the hegemony of European culture. Because cultural diversity is at one time more relevant to the economic and political concerns of the United States, they are like a shot considered more relevant to individuals by making the range of identity scene more permissible.If the United States is the Roman Empire, then it has now begun to authoritativeize that it is no longer practical to keep the cultures of Celts and Egyptians at arms length. For congressman, European cultures relationship with the United States resembles that of the relationship between classical culture to the Roman Empire, while many other cultures stand in for the Celts which are largely held up as valuable assets to be accommodated into a global economy that has been enabled by digital telecommunications technologies.Jerry Mander a rgues that whatever criticisms can be leveled against free trade agreements and other room by which nation states and multinational corporations exert commercial and political hegemony, these acts are merely external homogenization processes, and as such, a truly efficient and successful homogenization of culture relies on the ever expanding range of communication technologies such as TV and the Internet.Global telecommunications are in essence, internal homogenization forces that speak instantaneously into the minds of people everywhere, imprinting them with a co-ordinated pattern of thought, a unified set of imagery and suppositions, a single framework of understanding for how liveness should be lived, thus carrying the homogenization and commodification mandate directly inside the brain. For example, Todd Gitlin argues that the increase influence of Hollywood on the international film market check essentially rewritten the parameters by which filmmakers produce their film s, effectively washing away the paradigms of filmmaking that are unique to various cultures as well as reengineering local tastes. Gitlin does not suggest that differences in cultural content have been eradicated, but rather, the models and designs of American entertainment have become the most far-flung, successful and consequential.However, Soraj Hongladarom does defend the idea that digital telecommunications do not necessarily erode notions of local culture, presenting an example in which one thrives in spite of globalizing effects of such. In an examen of Siamese based newsgroup culture, he notes that the Internet replicates the heterogeneity of local cultures victimisation it, rather than subsuming them into one homogenous whole.Hongladarom thus concludes that what the Internet does, is create an umbrella culture under which disparate cultures can communicate Thai attitudes toward the CMC technologies, especially the Internet, seem to show that the technologies only serve a s a means that makes communication possible, communication which would take place anyway in rough other form if not on the Internet Cyberspace mirrors real space, and vice versa. Works Cited Bidwell, Paul. Roman Forts in Britain. Wiltshire English Heritage, 2007. Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited How the soaker of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives.New York Henry Holy and Company, 2002. Hongladarom, Soraj. Global Culture, Local Cultures and the Internet The Thai Example. C. Ess and F. Sudweeks (eds). Proceedings Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology 98, University of Sydney, Australia, 231-245. Retrieved May 6, 2008 at http//www. it. murdoch. edu. au/sudweeks/catac98/pdf/19_hongladarom. pdf Mander, Jerry. The Homogenization of Global Consciousness Media, Telecommunications and Culture. Lapis Magazine. Retrieved on May 6, 2006 from http//www. lapismagazine. org/index. php? option=com_content&task=view&id=120&Itemid=2