Culture is globalised This connotes a widening of human experiences Essay

Culture is globalised This connotes a widening of human experiences and wisdom. (A. Gurnah). How valid is this comment - Essay Example This essay will look at the validity of arguments about the outcomes of a globalised culture after defining key terms. Globalisation has numerous definitions depending on the school of thought from which one originates; sometimes it may be defined from a sociological, political economic or anthropological lens. For purposes of this analysis, it will be defined as â€Å"an intensification of world-wide social relationships, which link distant places in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa† (Giddens, 1990, p.4). It is an undeniable fact that globalisation affects almost every single person on the planet irrespective of their class, gender or ethnicity. People’s level of consciousness is changing and many of them have now acquired a global orientation or at least global awareness (Beynon, 2000). This state of affairs has led to certain paradoxes, which had not been imagined before; increased awareness is not unifying the world, as one would expect. It is instead making people more diverse and even disjointed. Human experiences as defined in Gurnah’s phrase refer to things that occur in people’s lives that have the capacity to affect how they act and think. It may also be envisaged as the totality of all the skill and knowledge that people acquire through certain periods of time when they participate in something. Conversely, human wisdom refers to the ability to utilise one’s knowledge and experience in order to make sound decisions (Beynon, 2000). Finally, cultural globalisation refers to a phenomenon in which lives lived by people reflect a standardisation of cultural ideas from different parts of the world. This came about as a result of the proliferation of the internet, international travel, and the rise of popular culture. Homogenisation of cultural influences is apparent in the presence of fast food franchises like McDonald’s all over