The Impact of ‘Globalization’ on Cultural Identities

The purpose of this contribution is to analyze the impact that the ongoing globalization process has on the cultural identities of peoples. However, to be able to carry out this analysis it is first necessary to locate the process of globalization within the realm of understanding culture, something which is usually not done. The commonly used definition of globalization comes from the economic realm, from the opening up to free trade and from the growing interdependence of world markets at their different levels. To this definition is usually added the political and institutional dimension, the responsibility of the organisms of the United Nations, multilateral pacts, and regional agreements. In both dimensions there exist, certainly, involved cultural aspects: the so-called ‘cultural industry’ and ‘show business’ on the one hand, and cultural institutions protected by law, such as schools, universities and the media, on the other. However, with an approach of this type we only touch the surface of the cultural dimension, since this last cannot be reduced either to the exchange of products or to institutions. Therefore, I would like to analyze at the outset what I understand as culture from the perspective of sociology and how the process of globalization can be defined using this approach.

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