Essay#3 - Jason Preston - Distant Education in a Global Society

        

            Here in the United States when the topic of globalization is brought up in a conversation, the subject matter is usually quickly shifted to the idea of a global economy.  The increase in economic interactions due to swift technological advancements, between the United States and other foreign nations is a ?hot topic?.  The United States has always been considered a capitalistic society, one that thrives on economic strength, some would even choose to label the United States imperialistic. ?Many locate the ultimate authority that rules over the processes of globalization and the new world order in the United States.  Proponents praise the United States as the world leader and sole superpower, and the detractors denounce it as an imperialist oppressor,? (Hardt, Negri pg 2). How ever, before people of the 21rst century get caught up in debates about money and imperialism, we should make a conscious effort to stop and redirect our attention to education.  We have all come to a basic understanding that the phenomenon of globalization is swiftly changing the way that we do business here in the United States, however, we must also address the issue that globalization will effect the way in which we handle education.  Distant education should play a major role in our global society.
        A global village is swiftly developing before our eyes. In order to function productively in the global village, an individual needs to be educated about globalization. An individual has the opportunity to be an even more productive member of our global society if they receive their education on a global level.  Basically, the point that the previous sentence is trying to make is that distant education on a worldwide level we become a necessity.  Driven by the Internet, distant learning on a national level has proven to be an effective and powerful tool here in the United States alone.   The Internet seemingly became a household communication technology overnight, and schools quickly adopted it as a tool for teaching and learning.  ? The Internet is the eight wonder of the world, it brings unlimited information, entire libraries, courses, and instructions to anywhere you have a modem and a server,? (Murray, pg1). 
        A perfect example of how distance education on a national level is being successfully deployed is Manning High School in Iowa.  Educators at Manning High have tapped the power of the Iowa Communication Network  (ICN), a statewide computer infrastructure designed specifically for use by public agencies, to deliver foreign language and upper-level mathematics courses via videoconferencing to students across the state.  Not only does distant education offer students a greater variety of courses to choose from, but also it is also economical.  ? Good teachers are hard to find.  Delivering courses via Internet provides a highly attractive, economically feasible alternative to hiring full time teachers, especially in rural areas.
        Distant education should play a major role in our global society.  At the rate at which globalization, fueled by advancements in communication technology, is seemingly creating a sort of homogenous global village, the spread of distance education on an international level appears inevitable.  ? Nation-States are not seen to interact but to constitute a world, a global context in which the world becomes a singular place with its own processes and forms of integration,? (Featherstone, pg. 5).  Distant learning has been successfully deployed on a national level to educate students.  Just as business and economics have expanded to better function in our global village, education appears to be the next to follow.
   


Electronic-school (2001, pg 2) www.electronic-school.com The World We Live In: Rural and urban board members alike recognize technologies importance today.

Featherstone, M. (1990).  ?Global Culture; Nationalism, globalization, and modernity?  Sage Publications.

Hardt, M. , Negri, A. (2000 preface).  ?Empire? Harvard University Press

Murray, C.  ESchools News (2005, pg1).  www.eschoolsnews.com Shared technology fortifies ed.


 

Posted at 11:45PM Jun 07, 2007 by PRESTON, JASON in General  |  Comments[2]

Essay #3-Keitris Weathersbe-A Globalized Culture within a 'Subtle' Empire

A Globalized Culture within a ?Subtle? Empire

            Questions have been raised as to whether a global culture exists.  This single question was explored by Mike Featherstone in his article Global Culture: An Introduction.  In regards to New York City, several cultures are meshed together to form one entity; one city.  From this, we have a globalization of several cultures, meaning the various cultures of New York City influence other areas of the world.  These influences range from technological to mediated to cultural.  As supported by Featherstone, ?it therefore may be possible to point to trans-societal cultural process which take a variety of forms? (Featherstone, 1990, p. 1).  Featherstone characterized these processes as sustaining ?the exchange and flow of goods, people, information knowledge and images which give rise to communication processes which gain some autonomy on a global level? (Featherstone, 1990, p. 1).  To expand on Featherstone?s claim, New York City has adapted to globalization.  However, an overall ?global? culture does not exist.  Each city, state, nation, etcetera, has its own cultural identity; e.g. New York City.  Featherstone (1990) refers to King (1990) and Hannerz (1989) in regards to global cultural centers.  New York City functions as a political, financial and popular culture global center.  Being a global cultural center, New York City is placed in position where globalization is inevitable. 

            New York City could be considered a globalized culture within a subtle empire; the United States being the empire.   As discussed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000), ?many locate the ultimate authority that rules over the process of globalization and the new world order in the United States? (p. xii).  A remaining question is whether or not the U.S. as an authority hinders or encourages the globalization processes of New York City.  For starters, since the large movement of over 20 million immigrants through Ellis Island from the 1890s to 1950s, New York City with the help of the U.S., has embraced diversity and cultural differences within its city borders (history.com ?Ellis Island?).  From this embrace comes an increasing population, an increase in scholars and technological innovators from different cultural and intellectual backgrounds to the city, and the opportunity for New York City?s influence on the rest of the world.  Ellis Island and what it once represented was disputed by the United States Supreme Court in 1998, in regards to its jurisdiction (Wikipedia ?Ellis Island?). 

Again, there was a question over sovereignty and the United State?s role in New York City affairs.  Hardt and Negri (2000) discuss a new ?global form of sovereignty? as an empire (p. xii).  According to the two authors, empire is seen as concept and its ?rule has no limits? (p. xiv).  In once an imperialistic form, the United States has for some time controlled several areas of its territories or states.  Each state, of course, has its own ?set of rules, or government, but it is the central authoritative power of the U.S. government that holds these "united states" together.  In relation to New York City and the rest of the world, the United States ?does indeed occupy a privileged position in Empire? (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. xiv).  The U.S. as a ?free? nation provides its citizens and individual states the opportunity to network with other nations of the world, creating flows of global exchanges of culture, media, money and technology.

References

Featherstone, M.  (1990). Global Culture:  An Introduction.  In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global Culture:  Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, 7, 1-14.

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio (2000).  ?Preface? (pp.xi-xvii) and Part I  (pp. 1-66), Empire.  Cambridge, MA and London, England:  Harvard University Press.  Online:  http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/~wiley/courses/447/hardtnegri2000.pdf.

http://www.history.com/minisites/ellisisland/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island#Immigration

Posted at 09:15PM Jun 07, 2007 by WEATHERSBE, KEITRIS in General  |  Comments[3]

Essay 3 - Allison Cuculich - Music and Global Culture

Music and Global Culture

The debate is still out as to whether or not our world is moving in the direction of a global culture.  Even though (depending on who you ask) there is not a definite answer to this, the media industry has not put a halt to any gains that could be made in search of profits.  This is due to the fact that the idea of building a global culture is not necessarily on the agenda of money driven media corporations. 

Although this idea is of no importance to media, the outlook of a potential global culture is cloudy.  There are too many responses and understandings that people have when faced with globalization, that a singular culture is not very probable but rather a handful of cultures is more likely (Featherstone, 1990, p. 10).  This being said, the music industry continues in its pursuit to spread musicians that reach one if not multiple cultures that are present.  The process that is taken by the music industry to incorporate a number of cultures usually results in only reaching one that they set out to impact.  This is the idea known as transcultural music (Wallis & Malm, 2003, p. 376). 

Transcultural music appears to be a unifying idea, but this is only at the surface.  Deeper into this idea, there is the fact that musicians participate in this exchange of music whether they are fully aware or even want to (Wallis & Malm, 2003, p. 377).  Wallis and Malm give an example of this that a record producer, from the West for argument?s sake, travels across the sea to record music native to a specific tribe in Africa unbeknownst to them and then brings it back to the West and adds and tweaks the sound to resemble something that Westerners would recognize while still possessing a distinct quality about it (2003, p. 377).  So, even the plan to make music that transcends cultures ends up at the heart of the music industry, which is cut whoever you can to make top dollar.

Herbert Schiller makes the points that everything people are exposed to, will essentially become their new culture and that because Western culture extends to virtually every corner of the earth that we are living in a U.S. dominated view of world culture (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 116).  Tomlinson counteracts this by adding that transnational media can and will be separated from each other once people come in contact with it (2003, p. 117).  This opens up the idea that even though the U.S. has put itself out there on the music market, that there is still room for other countries that do not have the power that is tied to the U.S. to infiltrate our boundaries.  An example of this would be Jamaica, which is definitely not known for its extreme wealth as a nation, and the way reggae became a major part of music across the world.  Reggae has not generated nearly as much music as a few American pieces of media have, but the point is the impact that the music makes and the fact that ?people will be listening to and talking about Bob Marley and the Wailers long after they ever watch Titanic as an old classic? (Waring, 2001, ¶ 14). 

There is an infinite amount of ways that the globalization of music could be read.  There are some people within a nation that will always refuse the idea of foreign anything, whether it is media or not.  On the other hand, there will be the people within a nation that embrace these differences and look to build a common culture or music, economy, politics, etc.  I predict there will be a united culture that will encompass these ideas that are shared across the globe, but that culture will not be strong enough to reach the entire population.
   

References

Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: An introduction. In M. Featherstone (Ed.),
    Global culture: Nationalism, globalization and modernity, 7, 1-14.
Tomlinson, J. (2003). Media imperialism. In L. Parks and S. Kumar (Eds.), Planet TV:
    A global television reader, 113-134.
Wallis, R., & Malm, K. (2003). The international music industry and transnational
    communication. In J. Lull (Ed.), Popular music in communication: Social and
    cultural perspectives, 375-377.
Waring, M. (2001). Will the world economy produce only world culture? Retrieved June
    7, 2007 from the International Society for the Performing Arts Foundation Web
    site: http://www.ispa.org/ideas/waring.html

Posted at 07:52PM Jun 07, 2007 by CUCULICH, ALLISON in General  |  Comments[2]

Essay # 3- Julia Tew - The Globalization of Human Rights

The Globalization of the Human Rights

While many aspects of globalization are constantly under scrutiny, 
with analysts evaluating infrastructure, outcomes, and barriers to 
the oft-touted one world village ideal, the common issue running 
under them all is that of culture.  The questions of how to
unify people of such diverse backgrounds supply the
backdrop for all the other questions that
globalization raises.  Can unity be established across cultures? 
Should it be?  And of course, with these come
questions of power.  There are those, like McChesney,
who claim that the world cultures are being slowly
homogenized, and into one that reflects modern
capitalist Western culture (2001).  But in Hardt and
Negri's article, a different theory is presented, one
which suggests that not only is a global culture
possible, but it can be desirable and additionally, it
cannot be controlled by any single nation (2000).  

The theory that Hardt and Negri describe is that of
empire.  It states that within an empire-styled
culture, the world is governed by a set of rules, or
particular logic, that is both "decenterd and
[deterritoialized]" (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 2). 
Under this theory in order to maintain membership in the
global community, all nations, governments, industry
and people must play by the rules.  No one is exempt-
not even the more powerful nations.  Embedded in this
rule structure is also an implicit system of rewards. 
Those nations, corporations and governments that can
play the game the best are likely to be the most
successful, the most powerful.   

The ability of the empire to create a world culture
with both rewards and sanctions still allows for the
existance of diversity among sub-cultures, while
drawing on a the new world order for the regulation
and governance of general rules (Hardt and Negri, 2000,
p. 14).  Featherstone (1990) provides one example of the overarching global culture
in noting that "a crucial point of unification" has
often been simply a common humanity (p. 4).  It is on
this point of commonality that human rights movements
and organization mobilize.

Amnesty International (AI) carries individual stories
of personal sufffering to a global audience, and
relies on a universal intrepretation of basic human
rights to carry its message across cultural borders. 
Most of its members and supporters have never been to
Afghanistan, and many have no first-hand experience or
knowledge of Middle Eastern or Islamic culture.  But
these differences are transcended through a mutal
understanding of humanity.  Drawing from the United
Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, AI
campaigns for phyiscal, social, politcal, and economic
safety and security of women often using the women's
own words and cultural interpretations to situate
claims both within unique cultures and within a global
culture (UN, 1948, AI, 2007). This situated position
lends both form and support for their appeals.  In her
study of the globalization in Senegal, Fatou Sow (2003)
explains, "Women's claims to equality have been
strengthened by the international recognition of
universal human rights and by secrutiny of the extent
to which these rights are upheld in particular
contexts" (p. 73).  In this way, the particular
cultural issues are remain valuable while the
overarching empire's values are enforced. 

McChesney, R. W. (2001). Global Media, neoliberalism,
and imperialism. Monthly
Review 52(10).
http://www.monthlyreview.org/301rwm.htm.

Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: an
introduction. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global
culture: Nationalism, 
globalization, and modernity. London; Newbury Park :
Sage.

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio (2000). ?Preface?
(pp.xi-xvii) and Part I (pp. 1-66), Empire. Cambridge,
MA, 
and London, England: Harvard University Press. 
Online: 
http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/~wiley/courses/447/hardtnegri2000.pdf.


Amnesty International. (2007). About Amnesty
International. Retrieved May 31, 2007,
from http://web.amnesty.org/pages/aboutai-index-eng



Sow, F. (2003). Fundamentalisms, globalisations, and
women's human rights in Senegel. Gender and
Development. 11(1). p. 69-76.

Posted at 04:41PM Jun 07, 2007 by TEW, JULIA in General  |  Comments[1]

Essay #3 - Christina Kellmann - Americanization of Foreign Advertising

Research has shown that Americanization of advertisements do have an effect on other cultures by making them more aware of what is happening in the Western part of the world. Although people of all cultures have their own way of looking at things, there is no denying that advertisements, especially through television, have an effect on foreigners. First of all, language is a major part of achieving globalization. English is prevalent in many foreign countries and thus used in many overseas advertisements. Also, the fact that a majority of homes have televisions makes it easy for American owned corporations to get their products out there, globally.

            Language is what we use in which to understand the world around us. Hardt and Negri (2000) said, ?Language, as it communicates, produces commodities but moreover creates subjectivities, puts them in relation, and orders them? (p. 33). Without language, there would be no method of communication that is as precise or detailed. Specifically, the English language is the most widespread language globally. It is the basis for many forms of communication across cultures. With an estimates 300 million people worldwide that know how to speak English, it is the ?language spoken by the greatest number of non-native speakers? (vistawide.com, 2004). According to the same website, English is also the most published language in the world (2004). English is used in advertisements frequently in Japan. According to a study by R. Jeffrey Blair (1997), ?Studies of Japanese commercials and advertising demonstrate that commercial managers employ positive ethnocultural stereotypes, usually of white North Americans or Europeans in the advertising of numerous products? (¶ 8). English has a positive connotation in foreign cultures, in this case Japan. ?English language attracts much more general prestige than French or any other foreign language? (Blair, 1997, ¶ 8). Language definitely contributes to Americanization of foreign cultures because it adds a sense of prestige that is not attributed to the home language of a certain country.

            Television goes hand in hand with language as a huge factor in the Americanization of advertisements. Television is a major force in the world of advertising because it is a very common media outlet. Along with print journalism and radio, television?s presence in the daily life of global society is very large. For example, 98% of German households contain at least one television set (Kleinsteuber and Thomass, 2006). Even in countries like Russia, ?practically each?household owns at least one TV set? (Krasnoboka, 2007). If countries have such access to television, it makes it that much easier for American owned corporations to advertise through that medium. Morley and Robins (1995) said, ?Television thereby becomes the basis of common experiences and interactions? (p. 132). This being said, television creates a source of marketing information for people across the globe at any given time. The fact that television is so prevalent makes it a great outlet for advertising therefore American corporations can get into foreign markets easily.

 

Sources:

 

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio (2000). ?Preface? (pp.xi-xvii) and Part I (pp. 1-66), Empire. Cambridge, MA, and London, England: Harvard University Press. Online:

http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/~wiley/courses/447/hardtnegri2000.pdf

 

 

 

Morley, D., and Robins, K. (1995). Under Western eyes: Media, empire, and otherness. In D. Morley and K. Robbins, Spaces of identity: Global media, electronic landscapes, and cultural boundaries. London: Routledge.

Electronic reserve: Part 1: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/eresdocs/files2/h5974.pdf. Part 2:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/eresdocs/files2/h5975.pdf.

 

Blair, R. J. (1997). The role of English and other foreign languages in Japanese society. The Internet TESL Journal, 3(7), July 1997. Retrieved from: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Blair_EngJpn.html

 

Media Landscape of Germany. European Journalism Centre. 2006. http://www.ejc.net/media_language/article/germany/

 

Media Landscape of Russia. European Journalism Centre. 2007. http://www.ejc.net/media_language/article/russia/

 

 

 

Posted at 04:29PM Jun 07, 2007 by KELLMANN, CHRISTINA in General  |  Comments[2]