TCW MODULE 4 ONLY

Global Media Culture

CONCEPTUALIZING GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE

You can easily gain Information across the world through different media platforms powered by
technology. Communication and information on Government economic alliances, issues on global poverty,
environmental problems, inequality, global security, and even the day-to-day life of people are accessible with
less or no censorship. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to information is an integral part of
the fundamental right of freedom of expression.

HOW DID MEDIA START?

The intensification of interconnectedness among people across world time, as motivated by
globalization, resulted in the change of perception of people on media and its impact on the global way of life,
system, and processes such as global media cultures. In which this refers to mass communication on a global
level, letting people across the world share and access information. Kirillova (2016) describes the primitive
culture of a people as synthetic or differentiated in form. In 2000 BCE. When the Mesopotamian cuneiform
writing and hieroglyphs of Egypt was invented, the life of people change specifically in acquiring information.
The government, religion, education systems, and day-to-day life of people are scripted into text and can be
read and preserve.
The early Greek and Roman people also contributed to the development of means of communication
and information, which became the basis for Latin and Slavic alphabets. Books like Iliad and Odyssey in which
the political, religion, economics, and society of the early Greeks were described. The freedom of expression
during this time was clear among the Athenians, it manifested in their arts, music, literature, philosophy, and
public speaking and debate were encouraged.
During the Medieval period, the culture of people centers on religion. Church has an enormous influence
in people’s lives like the monasteries became the center of the source of information, they limited freedom to
information during this time, they even prohibit and self-expression and religious rights. (Zaide, 2015)
Renaissance period introduces a new way of culture, this period marked the rebirth of people’s interest
in acquiring new learning. The richest and wisest people focused again on arts, music, education, where they
build libraries in parts of Europe like in Milan, Florence and Venice. Communication and
information also flourished because of the interconnection of people from a different part of the world through
trading and commerce. Renaissance resulted to the awakening of people’s ideas on freedom eventually leads to
the revolution of the colonized places. (Zaide, 2015)
The Age of Enlightenment further expands the idea and way of thinking of people, the rise of
philosophers gives another way of resolving problems of the society. Philosophers like Rene Descartes, John
Locke. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that science and reason could solve major problems facing society.
Issues on government economic, education and culture were being challenged through the “new ideas” “new
way of thinking” that they introduced.
The Industrial Revolution and French Revolution proved that scientific and cultural ideas were the
motivating force in social development. The rise of the money-lending class, bourgeoisie, help in promoting
culture by patronizing energetic people of all backgrounds. The emergence of the “new class” powered by their
money, forced their own utilitarian ideals in society and this led to introducing “new culture” “mass culture”
referring to mass media.
In the contemporary world, advanced technology, the invention of television, the radio, cellphones, and
computers, help in the emergence of mass culture and change the global social norms. Information is sinking
into one global perspective and making the people live in a global community.

THE CREATION OF GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE

To further widen your knowledge about global media culture, you will now proceed to the in- depth
discussion on media, focusing on the creation of global media and its impact on the global community.
The concept of global culture is driven by the emergence of mass media. The media plays an important
role in the development of global media culture. They provide an extensive transnational and transmission of
cultural products and they contribute to the formation of communicative networks and social economics, and
even political structure. The fast production of technology creates a continuous cultural change across the
world, such as cellphones, tablets, and android television, data internet, which makes the information accessible.
The emergence of “new media” or the so-called digital media (Southern University Online Learning,
2020) social media has shrunk the world into a global community. International organizations like United
Nations use social media to inform the people about the development of COVID 19. In the Philippines,
television networks like PTV, GMA and ABS-CBN stream via social media.
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
Another online source of information is Twitter, President of the US Donald Trump is active in posting
the happenings in the US government. This is free speech online for global media where you can post your
personal, societal, and government sentiments.
YouTube and Instagram, where you can follow people from different parts of the world, enable to share
their lifestyle, societal events, government, and you can even tour places any time because social media makes
them available to you.
Have you seen the fistfight in Taiwan Parliament? Hong Kong riot? What about black Americans and
their sentiments? Or are you updated on the lives of the British Royal family? Beautiful places in New
Zealand, Ireland or even the Iceberg in the North Pole?
They make all these possible because of the “new media”. In the contemporary world, this is the major
force in the accelerating trend of globalization. This brought society to the top level of interconnectedness that
made the global societal transformation possible.

GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE

The media has an important impact on cultural globalization in two mutually interdependent
ways:
First, the media provides an extensive transnational transmission of cultural products, and,
second, they contribute to the formation of communicative networks and social structures. The rapidly growing
supply of media products from an international media culture presents a challenge to existing local and national
cultures. The sheer volume of the supply, as well as the vast technological infrastructure and financial capital
that pushes this supply forward, have a considerable impact on local patterns of cultural consumption and
possibilities for sustaining an independent cultural production. Global media cultures create a continuous
cultural exchange, in which crucial aspects such as identity, nationality, religion, behavioral norms and way of
life are continuously questioned and challenged. These cultural encounters often involve the meeting of cultures
with a different socio- economic base, typically a transnational and commercial cultural industry on one side
and a national, publicly regulated cultural industry on the other side.
Due to their very structure, global media promotes the restructuring of cultural and social communities.
Just as media such as the press, and later radio and tv have been very important institutions for the formation of
national communities, global media support the creation of new communities. The Internet, for example, not
only facilitates communication across the globe, but also supports the formation of new social communities in
which members can interact with each other. And satellite tv and radio allow immigrants to be in close contact
with their homeland’s language and culture while they gradually accommodate to a new cultural environment.

ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE ON MEDIA GLOBALIZATION

MODERNIZATION PARADIGM
One of the most influential theories that assigned a very important role to communication was proposed
by U.S. scholar Daniel Lerner. In The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) Lerner identified four critical
variables that he said summarized the development process: urbanization, leading to increased literacy, which in
turn affects mass media exposure, resulting in greater economic and political participation in society. This
simple, linear scheme was initially modified by Lerner himself to allow for reciprocal influences between
literacy and mass media exposure. Several other researchers tested many other models, using the same four
variables on different data sets and later including other variables to create more complex models. At the
individual level, Lerner's most important hypothesis has to do with the nature of the "modern individual,"
characterized by an ability to accommodate to change plus a high degree of empathy-the ability to imagine
oneself in the role or with the responsibilities of someone else. Lerner argued that the primary step toward
individual modernization was the acquisition of this capacity for empathy as well as the willingness to hold
opinions on a wide variety of issues and questions not usually familiar to "traditional" peoples (who may not
even have knowledge of those issues owing to lack of access to mass media sources of information).
Modernization theorists believed that when indigenous cultures finally adapted to the “modernity” of the
industrialized countries and left their cultural peculiarities and traditions behind, economic progress would be
sparked off (Waisbord 2008, unpaged). Such social change in developing countries was believed to be
intensified through transferring western knowledge and values via communication channels (Sparks 2007,
p.23). This idea was most prominently illustrated by Everett Rogers’ (1962) diffusion of innovations model.
Thus, Modernization in the eyes of western actors implied that people in poor countries had to adjust
their culture to western values, economic systems and political institutions in order to achieve an allegedly
desirable western way of life. In this context, Modernization theorists were also the influential Modernization
theorist Rostow (1960) believed that capitalism was the most desirable system for developing countries. In his
theory on stages of economic growth, he argues that developing countries need to go through different stages in
order to reach the age of high mass consumption – in other words, capitalism.
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
MODERNIZATION THEORISTS:
Lerner and Schramm were the first generations of researchers and policymakers who approached
development from the modernization theory perspective. Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm were the main
exponents, with Everett M. Rogers succeeding Schramm at Stanford University as director of the Institute for
Communication Research. Lerner and Schramm argued that mass media could multiply development efforts
and promote rapid economic growth and stable democracy . Schramm’s 1964’s Mass media and national
development analyzed the role of economic and social development and the ways in which the media can be of
assistance.

Daniel Lerner (1958) believed that the mass media could break the hold of traditional cultures on
societies and make them aspire to a modern way of life. International communication had a role in the process
of modernizing and developing the Third World. This paradigm was founded on the notion that
international mass communication should become the vehicle for spreading the message of modernity. Mass
media were thus seen as being instrumental in spreading education, transferring educational skills, fostering
social unity and creating the desire to “modernize”.
“Lerner found a very high correlation between the measures of economic growth and the measures of
communication growth.” In the Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, Lerner discerned
a psychological pattern, pointing to the first element, the “mobile personality.”
 The second element is the “mobility multiplier: the mass media”.
 The mass media serve as the great multiplier in development, the “device that can spread the requisite
knowledge and attitudes more quickly and widely than even before.”
 “The media have disciplined Western man in those empathic skills which spell modernity. They also
portrayed for him the roles he might confront and elucidated the opinions he might need.”'

According to Everett M. Rogers (1974, 45) in Communication in Development, modernization is “the

process by which individuals change from a traditional way of life to a more complex, technologically advanced
and rapidly changing style of life.”

“Development is a type of social change in which new ideas are introduced into a social system in order
to produce higher per capita income and levels of living….The mass media….are especially able to raise the
level of aspirations of citizens in developing countries.”

Role for the mass media in development:

1) the mass media are coupled with group discussion in media forums;
2) the traditional mass media….are utilized along with the more modern electronic and print media.

Global Media Culture - Cultural Imperialism and Criticisms on

Modernization Theory

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

Cultural imperialism is defined as:

1. As stated by Tobin (2020) and (Tomlinson, 2012), they define cultural imperialism as an imposition by
one usually politically, economically, culturally dominant community to a nondominant community. In this
manner, there is enforced adaption of culture and habit resulting in homogeneity but this time, motivated by
western mass media and not of the use of military power. In the case of the Philippines, colonial mentality
strengthens this dominance of westerners.
2. Moreover, Sreberny (2001) mentioned in an article on Media Imperialism, cultural imperialism sees
culture as singular, cited example American television impacted on Iran. There is an
increase in the loosening of the hyphen in the nation-state and thus the “national culture”
is better seen as a site of contest. Sreberny (2001) pointed out that the issue of media imperialism is
also happening in different parts of the world and resulted in conflicts among nations.

Critiques on cultural imperialism resulted in the emergence of cultural pluralism.

 Singh (2006) describes cultural pluralism as equal legal status, enjoy the minimum status of equality in
educational, economic, and political opportunity, these will restrain the politically, and economically
dominant countries in intervening and giving the non-dominant countries to be heard and propose solutions
on global problems.

Is there also imperialism in mass media? Yes! Domination of the US in global media markets, which
refers to television, film, news broadcasting like CNN, Reuters etc. resulted in the idea that the
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
largest mass media company are from America, hence, resulted in the idea of cultural homogeneity.
(encyclopedia.com, 2020)
Globalization challenges the concept of cultural imperialism in the context of digital media. Western
mass media have been viewed as biased in probating culture because they are in favor of industrialized
countries, hence influencing the politics, economics, society and culture of the developing and under developing
countries. (Kraidy, 2002)
Worlds culture impacted the world society, conflicts arises on the economic and cultural domination of
Western countries less developed countries in Africa and Asia. The formation of international organizations like
United Nations becomes the platform for less developed countries and called for the restructuring of the New
World Economic Order and New World Information Order. Former colonies pursued the principle of world
cultural equality. (J. Boli, F.J Lenchner, 2001)
Digital media changed the phase in acquiring information, the use of social media platforms, the access
to the internet, and the fast production of cellphones and alike, becoming the medium of enforcement that
affects the lives of people around the globe. In the first quarter of the year 2020, statistics reveal that there are
4.57 billion people were active internet users, encompassing 59 percent of the world’s population. China, India,
and United States ranked ahead of all other countries in terms of internet users. Among the media platforms,
Facebook ranked first, with 1 billion registered active accounts. This leading platform is available in multiple
languages and enables the users to connect across geographical, political and economic borders. (Clement,
2020)

CRITICISMS TO MODERNIZATION THEORY:

Criticisms came from the “dependency school of theories”. These argued that the underdeveloped world would
not be capable of developing in this model.
 The emphasis on the individual as responsible for the state of underdevelopment, and not on the political and
economic system.
 Modernization theory was seen as having neglected the political, social and cultural dimensions of
development.
 Developing countries saw the theory as too ethnocentric, holding a simple view of a linear development.
Inequalities were seen as not being narrowed, with the prosperity of the North contributing for the
“impoverishment” of the developing countries
 According to the critics, advanced economies like the US, Germany and Japan went through the early stages
of industrialization behind protective tariffs until they felt competitive enough to confront the global market
on equal terms.” (Kingsbury et al, 2004)
 Modernization theory failed to make distinctions between countries, regions, structural conditions or
specific historical experiences. Many countries that were classified as “underdeveloped” had in fact
“modern” industries.
 The term “modernization” was also seen as another word for “Americanization”, with the field being
labelled as “pro-capitalist.”
 By emphasizing the nations’ internal problems, modernization….seemed to blame the victims for their
poverty. • Some modernization ideas have come back into the mainstream from the 1980’s onwards, having
been mainly adopted by the Right, but many also argue that mainstream development thinking is still largely
influenced by modernization theory.

Globalization of Religion

RELIGION AND GLOBALISM

Globalization, as you know, refers to the interconnectedness among people across world time and space.
The fast-pacing production of technology made this interconnectedness possible. This resulted to the emergence
of the concept of cultural pluralism in which non dominant countries could share to the world their unique
culture and accepted by the dominant countries.
On the other hand, religion refers to the set of belief of people in the divine creator which considers as
holy and sacred (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020). People from early civilization, religious practices are already
visible. For example, in the ancient Sumerian religion who worships great god Marduk who defeated Tiamat
and the forces of chaos to create the world.
As defined by Haynes (2006), the concept of religion has two distinct meanings. There are three ways of
how social and individual of believers are organized in spiritual sense. First is that it involves the idea of
transcendence, referring to supernatural realities. For example, talking to God. Second, It relates with
sacredness or holiness and system of practice and language. An example of sacred is confession, baptism and
more. Third, it concerns ultimacy, on how it relates to people to the ultimate conditions of existence. In the
material sense, religious beliefs are capable of motivating
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
individuals and groups to collectively mobilize to achieve political goals and consequences, suppress mass
actions as tool of repression.
While religion takes advantage of communication and transportation technology, it is at the same time
the source of globalization’s greatest resistance by acting as a haven for those standing in opposition to its
power. On the other hand, because globalization allows for daily contact, religion enters a circle of conflict in
which religions become “more self-conscious of themselves as being world religions.

In an article HISTORY
by Preceden (2020), Judaism is an Abrahamic belief based on the teachings of Moses. The
OF MAJOR
holy book of Judaism is the Torah. It is the oldest religion of the group and starts around 4,000 years ago. A
main figure from Judaism isRELIGIONS
Moses who freed the Israelites from bondage. One particular scene from Judaism is
Moses with the Ten Commandments. It shows a older long bearded and long haired standing upon a big jagged
grey rock. He is holding 2 stone tablets with older Roman numeral on it carved deeply in the tablet.

Hinduism. According to Hornak (2019) most scholars believe Hinduism started somewhere between 2300
B.C. and 1500 B.C. in the Indus Valley, near modern-day Pakistan. But many Hindus argue that their faith is
timeless and has always existed. Unlike other religions, Hinduism has no one founder but is instead a fusion of
various beliefs. Around 1500 B.C., the Indo-Aryan people migrated to the Indus Valley, and their language and
culture blended with that of the indigenous people living in the region.

Confucianism. As stated by Clayton (2020), it was developed in China by Master Kong in 551-479 BC,
who was given the name Confucius by Jesuit missionaries who were visiting there. However, the fundamental
principles of Confucianism began before his birth, during the Zhou Dynasty. At that time, the ideas of respect
and the well-being of others were prevalent, but there was also an emphasis on spiritual matters - specifically,
the goodness of the divine and the mandate to rule given to those in power. These ideas were meant to unite the
people, create stability and prevent rebellion.
Confucius believed his philosophy was also a route toward a civil society. However, he shifted attention away
from ruling authorities, the divine or one's future after death, focusing instead on the importance of daily life
and human interactions. This new, refined version of the philosophy did not completely take root until the next
dynasty, the Han (140-87 BC). It is the Confucianism that many people are familiar with today.

Buddhism. As identified by Chu (2019) it is a faith founded by Siddhartha Gautama (“the Buddha”) more
than 2,500 years ago in India. With about 470 million followers, scholars consider Buddhism one of the
major world religions. When Gautama passed away around 483 B.C., his followers began to organize a
religious movement. Buddha’s teachings became the foundation for what would develop into Buddhism.
In the 3rd century B.C., Ashoka the Great, the Mauryan Indian emperor, made Buddhism the state religion of
India. Buddhist monasteries were built, and missionary work was encouraged. Over the next few centuries,
Buddhism began to spread beyond India. The thoughts and philosophies of Buddhists became diverse, with
some followers interpreting ideas differently than others.
In the sixth century, the Huns invaded India and destroyed hundreds of Buddhist monasteries, but the intruders
were eventually driven out of the country. Islam began to spread quickly in the region during the Middle Ages,
forcing Buddhism into the background.

Christianity. This religion is based on the teaching of Jesus Christ. The religion was started 2,000 years
ago, when Jesus Christ was born. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith by both Jewish and Roman
leaders.
In 64 A.D., Emperor Nero blamed Christians for a fire that broke out in Rome. Many were brutally
tortured and killed during this time. Under Emperor Domitian, Christianity was illegal. If a person confessed to
being a Christian, he or she was executed. Starting in 303 A.D., Christians faced the most severe persecutions to
date under the co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius. This became known as the Great Persecution. When
Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, religious tolerance shifted in the Roman Empire. During
this time, there were several groups of Christians with different ideas about how to interpret scripture and the
role of the church.
In 313 A.D., Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity with the Edict of Milan. He later tried to unify
Christianity and resolve issues that divided the church by establishing the Nicene Creed. Many scholars believe
Constantine’s conversion was a turning point in Christian history.
In 380 A.D., Emperor Theodosius I declared Catholicism the state religion of the Roman Empire. The Pope, or
Bishop of Rome, operated as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics expressed
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
a deep devotion for the Virgin Mary, recognized the seven sacraments, and honored relics and sacred
sites. When the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 A.D., differences emerged among Eastern and Western
Christians.
In 1054 A.D., the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox church split into two groups.
Between about 1095 A.D. and 1230 A.D., the Crusades, a series of holy wars, took place. In these battles,
Christians fought against Islamic rulers and their Muslim soldiers to reclaim holy land in the city of Jerusalem.
The Christians were successful in occupying Jerusalem during some of the Crusades, but they were ultimately
defeated.
After the Crusades, the Catholic Church’s power and wealth increased. In 1517, a German monk named
Martin Luther published 95 Theses which is a text that criticized certain acts of the Pope and protested some
of the practices and priorities of the Roman Catholic church. Later, Luther publicly said that the Bible
didn’t give the Pope the sole right to read and interpret scripture.
Luther’s ideas triggered the Reformation which is a movement that aimed to reform the Catholic church. As a
result, Protestantism was created, and different denominations of Christianity eventually formed.

Islam. Islam, based on an article by Ifansasti (2019), Islam is the second largest religion in the world after
Christianity, with about 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Although its roots go back further, scholars typically
date the creation of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major world religions. Islam started
in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, during the time of the prophet Muhammad’s life.
Today, the faith is spreading rapidly throughout the world. Islam is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion; they
believe that Muhammad was the last prophet of god. Muslims has many beliefs for example they believe that
god is one and incomparable and that the purpose of existence is to love and serve god.

Sikhism. According to Mcleod (2020), Sikhism religion and philosophy was founded in the Punjab region of
the Indian subcontinent in the late 15th century. Its members are known as Sikhs. The Sikhs call their faith
Gurmat (Punjabi: “the Way of the Guru”).
According to Sikh tradition, Sikhism was established by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and subsequently led by a
succession of nine other Gurus. All 10 human Gurus, Sikhs believe, were inhabited by a single spirit. Upon the
death of the 10th, Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the spirit of the eternal Guru transferred itself to the sacred
scripture of Sikhism, Guru Granth Sahib (“The Granth as the Guru”), also known as the Adi Granth (“First
Volume”), which thereafter was regarded as the sole Guru. In the early 21st century there were nearly 25
million Sikhs worldwide, the great majority of them living in the Indian state of Punjab.

Religion and globalization persistently engage in a flexible relationship in which the former relies on the latter
in order to thrive and flourish while at the same time challenging its globalization’s hybridizing effects.
Undoubtedly, religion is not immune from these changes and their burgeoning effects brought about by
globalization. However, religions still have their respective homes in specific territorial spaces where they
originally appeared and where their respective shrines exist.

At the most abstract level of analysis, modernization leads to what Max Weber called “the
Secularization: The Consequences of
disenchantment of the world.” It calls into question all the superhuman and supernatural forces, the gods
Modernization
and spirits, with which nonindustrial cultures populate (TOCQUEVILLE,
the universe and to which they attribute responsibility for
the phenomena of the natural 2020) and social worlds. In their place it introduces as a competing cosmology the
modern scientific interpretation of nature by which only the laws and regularities discovered by the scientific
method are admitted as valid explanations of phenomena. If it rains, or does not rain, it is not because the gods
are angry but because of atmospheric conditions, as measured by the barometer and photographed by satellites.
In short, modernization involves a process of secularization that is, it systematically challenges
religious institutions, beliefs, and practices, substituting for them those of reason and science. This process was
first observable in Christian Europe toward the end of the 17th century. (It is possible that there is something
inherently secularizing about Christianity, for no other religion seems to give rise spontaneously to secular
beliefs.) At any rate, once invented in Europe, especially Protestant Europe, secularization was carried as part of
the “package” of industrialism that was exported to the non-European world. Wherever modern European
cultures have impinged, they have diffused secularizing currents into traditional religions and non-rational
ideologies.
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
Although secularization is a general tendency or principle of development in modern societies, this does
not imply that religion is driven out altogether from society. In fact, as one of the most modernized
countries in the world, the United States is also among the world’s most religious. Against a deep
background of tradition, modernization inevitably leaves many religious practices in place and may
even stimulate new ones. Religious rituals, such as Christian baptism and church weddings, persist
in all industrial societies; the church may, as in England and Italy, continue to play an important moral
and social role. The majority of the population may hold traditional religious beliefs alongside more
scientific ones. There may even be, as in the United States and in industrializing societies such as India,
waves of religious revivalism that involve large sections of the population.

Secularization is but one manifestation of a larger cultural process that affects all modern societies, the
process of rationalization. While this process is epitomized by the rise of the scientific worldview, it
encompasses many more areas than are usually associated with science. It applies, for instance, to the
capitalist economy, with its rational organization of labour and its rational calculation of profit and loss.
It applies also to artistic developments, such as the rational application of the geometry of perspective in
painting and the development of a rational system of notation and rational harmonic principles in music.

For Max Weber, the most careful student of the process, it referred above all to the establishment of a
rational system of laws and administration in modern society. It was in the system of bureaucracy, seen
as the impersonal and impartial rule of rationally constituted laws and formal procedures, that Weber
saw the highest development of the rational principle. Bureaucracy meant a principled hostility to all
traditional and “irrational” considerations of person or place, kinship or culture. It expressed the triumph
of the scientific method and scientific expertise in social life. The trained official, said Weber, is “the
pillar both of the modern state and of the economic life of the West.”

Rationalization is a process that operates at the highest, most general level of social development. It would
be surprising if its effects were to be found in every nook and cranny of modern society. Everywhere one
should expect to find the persistence of non-rational and even antirational attitudes and behavior. Superstition
is one example; the occasional rise of personal, charismatic leadership breaking through the rationalized
routines of bureaucracy is another. These should not be thought of simply as vestiges of traditional society.
They are also the expressions of essential needs, emotional and cultural, that are in danger of being stifled in a
scientific and unillusioned environment.
Weber stressed another significant point. Rationalization does not connote that the populations of
modern societies are, as individuals, any more reasonable or knowledgeable than those of nonindustrial
societies. What it means is that there is, in principle, scientifically validated knowledge available to
modern populations, by which they may, if they choose, enlighten themselves about their world and
govern their behaviour. In practice, as Weber knew, such knowledge tends to be restricted to
scientifically trained elites. The mass of the population of a modern society might in their daily lives be
relatively more ignorant than the most uneducated peasants, for peasants usually have a comprehensive
and working knowledge of the tools they use and the food they consume, whereas modern people may
well use an elevator without the slightest idea of its working principle or eat food manufactured in ways
and with materials of which they are totally unaware.

Peter Beyer (1994), identified three key impacts of globalization on religion:

IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION TO RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
Particularism. Religion has increasingly
AND BELIEFS used as an avenue for anti-globalization activity. While one
feature of globalization is a sort of cultural homogenization (the creation of a single, global popular culture)
religion is often seen as the opposite of that: a symbol of how people are culturally different from one another,
rather than the same. This has contributed to a rise in fundamentalism and is a feature of political conflict in
many areas of the world.

Universalism. There are also some evidences of the opposite trend. While small fundamentalist groups
might emphasize their difference from other people, the major religions have increasingly focused on what
unites them. Far from the feared clash of civilizations, religious leaders emphasize
TCW MODULE 4 ONLY
shared values and common concerns. Indeed, inter-faith dialogue through global communication has helped to
diffuse conflict between religions.

Marginalization. Beyer also notes that religion is increasingly marginalized in contemporary society,
playing less part in public life, although this may well be a rather Eurocentric view and may be caused by other
social changes rather than globalization.
Another way in which globalization has impacted on religion is the way religions have made use of global
communications. Religious groups are able to take advantage of modern technology to recruit new members,
spread the word and keep in contact with other members of the religion. While with some of the more
fundamentalist, anti-modern, anti-global religious organizations this can hold a certain irony, it is one of the
ways in which religion is much less linked to nationality than it once was. Furthermore, the media plays the
same important role in the dissemination of religious ideas. In this respect, a lot of TV channels, radio stations
and print media are founded solely for advocating religions. Taking Islam as an example, we find such T.V
channels as Iqrae, Ennass, Majd, El Houda, Erahma, etc. as purely religious channels created for the
strengthening and the fortification of Islam.