Cultural and Religious Identities in an Era of Information and Communications Globalization (original) (raw)
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Cultural and Religious Identities in Era of Information and Communications Globalization
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 2005
The rapid advances in information and communication technologies coupled with the dominant overarching Neo-liberal/capitalist ideological underpinnings of the dominant Western powers have generated a momentum towards a homogeneous global village. The impact of which has been to expand World conflict and propelled many nations towards losing their national identity and traditions. This article discusses the various impacts from IT globalization and calls for a new global communication awareness.
The article is focused on the consequences of the use of new media on the cultural identity construction of the individual. There will be analyzed not only the implicated phenomena as acceleration and granularization of many spheres of life but also the rapid growth of new digital technologies in collectivistic societies. As an exemple the author gives some facts about the use of new media in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, and the inherent implications on individual and societal self-understanding and identity construction.
Global communications and cultural identities
1999
Many claim that the most recent wave of global communications has increased the interconnectedness between people, companies, and governments worldwide. But has it transformed popular culture so that more people have come to see themselves as global citizens rather than, say, Americans, Russians, or Brits or, at a more local level, Bostonians, Muscovites, or Londoners? Or in reaction has there been a resurgence of nationalism or even parochialism?
Global communication and pluralization of identities
Futures, 1998
As a burning issue of the modern era, national identity is currently subjected to two main contradictory forces. Globalization processes from above and localization forces from below are simultaneously integrating and fragmenting national identities. This essay examines the negotiation of cultural identities in light of the historical transitions from premodern to modern and postmodern modalities and sensibilities. The essay argues that the commodity fetishism of the marketplace is as important an element in contemporary cultural formations as the identity fetishism of militant social movements. Both phenomena are fostered by global communication processes in which identity formations increasingly depend on commodification and distantiation. While global advertising focuses on consumption to frame status identities, mediated communication appeals to primordial myths to structure civic and political identities within imagined communities. The two phenomena must be considered as dialectical twins in contemporary motivation, legitimation, and hegemonic crises.
Communication and International Relations
2016
Abstract—This papers aims to reflect on the relationship between Religious institutions and new technologies. It seeks to deepen on the idea of the complex 2.0 conversion that most religions experience in today’s digital context around the globe. Keywords-religion; new technologies; digital;media; Net I. TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE ENEMY There is a marketplace of narratives ideas and messages that could not be ignored by religious institutions in the digital age. As Hoover and Kaneva [1] suggest, “today, increasing personal autonomy in faith practice is an additional such pressure, encouraging religions to further relativize to compete in a secular-media-defined marketplace of ideas and discourses. The development of social networking media and web 2.0 cannot help but further exacerbate this trend”. Religious institutions have come up against new
Cultural Identity Crisis in the Age of Globalization and Technology
Online Submission, 2006
The purpose of this paper is to bring together various elements that portray the complex conceptuality of cultural identity within technological society. It engages in a theoretical inquiry into the questions of how the wideranging uses young people are now making of new information and communication technologies and global media may possess the potential to transform their cultural identity and how educational institutions should understand and respond to this evolving cultural reality. In discussing these questions, it refer to recent theories of cultural identity, especially as they relate to the increasing volume of global flows of ideas and ideologies, people, finance and cultural practices, and specific theories about the nature of technology in terms of explicating the relationship between society and technology. Finally, it concludes with implications for educational practices of technology use. "We now live…in an open space-time, in which there are no more identities, only transformations" (Zygmunt Bauman
Global Culture or Cultural Clash: An Islamic Intercultural Communication Perspective
Central within the current debate on the impact of the information and communication technologies are the theories of the "global culture" and "cultural clashes", or global village and clash of civilizations. According to the first theory (ICTs) will generate global culture or American culture and homogenous religious patterns; the cultural dimension of globalization. On the other hand, theory of cultural clashes claims that ICTs intensifies awareness of cultural differences that ultimately lead to cultural clashes. From the Islamic intercultural communication perspective, Islamic world communication values provide a "Third Way" based on peaceful and democratic coexistence among different global cultures. The "Third Way" also opposes the principles of both global culture and cultural clashes. To use the words of Ali Izetbegovich, the Muslim President of Bosnia: ... As Islam in the past was the intermediary between the ancient cultures and the West, it must again today, in a time of dramatic dilemmas and alternatives, shoulder its role as intermediary nation in a divided world (Braibanti, 1999). By the same token, I argue that the universal intercultural communication values of Islam could solve all the problems related to and generated by the dominant global and homogenous culture perspective, and those of the clash of cultures perspective. And definitely, this is the meaning of the Third Way, the Islamic way. In this paper, I also think that theories of global culture and clash of cultures threaten the democratic intercultural communication and undermine the potentials of the Islamic intercultural communication.
Governments sometimes seem to forget that information and communication technologies may not only have a direct impact on the economic development, but also on the political organization, and socio-cultural value system of a society. Many policy-makers seem to assume that technical and economic progress is simply a means to an end and that it hardly affects the culture in which it occurs. It seems as if they believe that they can achieve Western-style progress while at the same time retain the essential parts of their culture. This book takes a closer look at the other side of the information highway. It wants to find out what is happening on and around the dirt roads. It does so by looking at the problems of communication, culture and development from different perspectives: historical and futuristic, theoretical and applied, institutional and organizational, strategic and methodological. Global and local, globalization and localisation, are terms which could be used to characterize the processes of growing interconnection and interdependence in the contemporary world. It is generated by growing international economic, cultural and political cooperation and links, as well as by the need to respond together to complex problems which can be solved only on a planetary scale. The world is "shrinking" as a result of increased human mobility, and the increasing contacts between the world's people, possibly with the aid of cheap and speedy travel, the telephone, fax and the Internet. Barriers have been eased with the reduction in trade barriers, the expansion of capital flow and the transfer of technology. However, we lack insights into how the processes of cultural globalization and localisation actually operate in locally defined public spheres. We consequently also lack insights into how the global is linked to the local and how new perceptions of the global and the local lead to adjusted (cultural) identities. These are the issues which the 12 contributing authors of this book are trying to get a grip on.
The global village in international communication
Leanne Carter, 2014
Today, we live in a world where media and globalisation has brought us together to share and communicate through advanced technologies. Globalisation has enabled the changing role of geography and physical distance to become interconnected. It has also provided the means of instantaneous communication breaking down time and distance. Globalisation is often referred to as a “process rather than an outcome since” it has enabled production, trade and finance (Flew 2007). It is conceptualised in economic, political and cultural globalisation. However, it is through the linking of information technologies, that McLahan's (1962) belief created a global village which allowed people to live in an interconnected community on a global scale. In today's world media and globalisation brings people together, linking them geographically enabling them to share and acquire information. Although the term global implies that information is accessible everywhere and to everyone, some would argue that this is not necessarily true. Distribution is imbalanced in some parts of the world because it is socially and economically given. Furthermore, one implication of the global village is that the spread of global culture has become homogenised at a global level. This is associated with American imperialism through materialistic culture and consumerism. Moreover, it is argued that the content of Western media still dominates western values into non-western countries that produce their own media content as it is still largely controlled by overseas corporations. Today's notion of the global village is not fulfilled, as it hold inequalities in the spread of information technologies and telecommunications.