To me culture is about the way we live, our values, the rules we follow, how we communicate and express ourselves... the list goes on and on. What comes to mind when I think about culture is how culture has changed because of technology. To me it seems as though culture used to be based on what ethnic background we are from and where we live because people were somewhat isolated from other cultures. Travelling around the world was almost impossible for most people, and we didn't have news stations and the internet to learn about what the rest of the world was doing. Today culture has evolved, most people have access to the internet and can learn about anything they want just from doing a google search.
This also brings to mind the ethnocentrism of the western world. We seem consumed by pop culture and always being 'in the know' about whats going on. For example, Perez Hilton (www.perezhilton.com) makes a living off of updating the world on the latest scandals in Hollywood. There is also an increased amount of counterculture because of greater globalization and in the western world it's becoming much more accepted to stray from the norm.
I hope to learn much more about cultures and how cultures work throughout this course, so far it's been great!
-Annie
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Very interesting perspective. So is globalization actually ethnocentric? In some ways the Western world doesn't see far beyond Hollywood, but there are also lots of immigrant / diaspora communities that seem to help shape this Hollywood lens of global reality.
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