Cultural Imperialism, Transnationalism And Local Cultures

In the assigned readings, few concepts and ideas have been discussed: Cultural Imperialism, Globalism and Local Cultures, Transnationalism and the Multi-local Corporation and McDonaldization versus Localization. The reading also provided a brief history (the timing) of McDonald’s expands in East Asia and also explained the Rationalization of McDonald’s (i.e. McDonaldization) and it’s Local Sensitivities.

For Cultural Imperialism, European and American intellectuals (and now Chinese leaders seems to be one of them) claimed that McDonald’s and other famous corporations in the fast food industry are the agents of cultural imperialism. It shows the domination of popular culture that related corporations are able to manipulate “personal taste” and undermine others. The popular examples are McDonald’s and Hollywood movies.

For Globalism and Local Cultures, Globalism is a social condition that when people over the world share a homogenous, culture and form a “global village” by the means of electronic communications and mass media. However, the author pointed out the difficulties in defining both “culture” and “local”. For “culture”, instead of the traditional definition, the more recent one – “Culture is a set of ideas, reactions, and expectations that is constantly changing as people and groups themselves change” would be adopted by the

However, in my opinion, it provides an illusion to people that local cultures are being “protected”. Local cultures are being “selected for protection” in purpose of “commercial gaining” instead of all-rounded evaluations (e.g. with purpose of educations). Most of them are selected when they are appealing, presentable or being a taboo of society. Sadly, Cultural Imperialism still exists under the welcoming of Localization and some local cultures are still being