What is globalization? When did it start? Who is being benefited by this system? These three questions were the main themes of this week lecture. My definition for globalization – Globalization is a term that allows global sharing of culture, world trade for multiple countries which brings us in a competitive world. There are many other aspects that can be considered under globalization and some of my colleagues mentioned about technological development, transportation improvement, climate change and so on.
So when globalization actually started. In this topic we had an interactive discussion with our professor. Some students claimed that globalization existed before the modern era as there were international trades going on. On the other hand some students said as it was limited to some region of world and not worldwide, globalization does not existed before. However, my opinion is globalization existed before as we can see that world trade existed before and the cultures were shared because of colonization.
The most important issue is the partial benefit of globalization. We have many positive effects of globalization, but in this technical world the developed countries or the dominant countries are getting more benefit from the globalization system. In other way the developing countries are being forced to use more international product rather than the domestic one. For example, we had a great tradition of making Saree in Bangaldesh( woman dress), but due to the globalization nowadays people are going for Indian Sarees rather than buying domestic Sarees. In addition cultural aggression is another threat of globalization where the dominated country is losing their traditions. As an example, my grandfather and my father used to wear Pangabi (Male traditional Dress) with Paijama (Trousers) in traditional festival. Nowadays although people wear Pangabi, but the Paijam has been replaced by jeans. To tell the truth, I rarely wear Pangabi with Paigama and this is how globalization has changed us, the younger generation. Another issue is, when I was around 12 years old we used to go to restaurants to have Biryani but when I went back to my country on last year, my friends asked me to treat them fast foods such as Burger, French Fries and I did that.
In conclusion every aspect has it positive and negative sides, but it’s up to us which one we accept. Although it is difficult to avoid the powerful effect of so called Cool Culture, indeed it is necessary to maintain our own identity.