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Culture and Etiquette

Global Culture

• Culture has in the past exercised, and will continue to exercise, an important effect on the fates of nations and individuals.
• Culture will become a more important variable in international relations over the next decade or so, in part because of the alienating effects of the information age.
• Cultures can change, very slowly, "much more slowly than ideas," but nonetheless "we see evidence of cultural change all around us"
• The accelerating dynamics of globalism may produce a situation in which most people in the world hold their most "intense" affiliation with one culture -- a singular, if differentiated, global consumer culture of democracy and free markets in an information age.
• The transition to a more homogenous, global information age carries enormous risks that, if they are poorly managed, could interrupt the transition itself and forestall the advent of the new global era.
• Policymakers must be careful to take into consideration the context for that cultural awareness.
• The leading challenge for the world community over the next decades is not culture at all, but socioeconomic issues such as inequality -- the vast social disparities inherent in the information age -- and the energy requirements of growing Asian economies.
• One commentator has proposed that "the simple question 'does culture matter?' should be replaced by a more fruitful line of enquiry, 'under what special conditions and to what extent does culture matter?'"

• The "unification of mankind into one single society," which hundreds of years from now "will perhaps have come to seem one of the fundamental conditions of human life -- just part of the order of nature." This, rather than a clash of cultures, is the likely future for humanity.

Technology and culture

Technology has now created the possibility and even the likelihood of a global culture. The internet, fax machines, satellites, and cable TV have swept away the old national cultural boundaries. Global entertainment companies shape understandings and dreams of ordinary citizens, wherever they live. The impact of these on local cultures, languages and others are discussed in the following sections.

Current trends that fall under the broad definitional umbrella of "globalization" are accelerating the process of reducing cultural conflicts. Inevitably, the United States has taken the lead in this transformation; it is the "indispensable nation" in the management of global affairs and the leading producer of information products and services in these, the early years of the Information Age. Internet - an enabler of multi-culture

The globalization of information provides channels of communication and interaction between cultures. The latest such channel is the Internet, the global network of electronic communication which, by canceling distances of time and space, has contracted the planet and accelerated history, with all the implications this carries for culture.

The drivers of today's rapid globalization are improving methods and systems of international transportation, devising revolutionary and innovative information technologies and services, and dominating the international commerce in services and ideas. Today, 15 major U.S telecommunications companies, including giants like Motorola, Loral Space & Communications, and Teledesic (a joint project of Microsoft's Bill Gates and cellular pioneer Craig McCaw), offer competing plans that will encircle the globe with a constellation of satellites and will enable anyone anywhere to communicate instantly with anyone elsewhere. Technology is not only transforming the world; it is creating its own metaphors as well. Satellites carrying television signals now enable people on opposite sides of the globe to be exposed regularly to a wide range of cultural stimuli.

Cultural Pluralism

Research is underway to devise techniques of instant, automatic translation. So far, however, electronic translation has proved unable to capture the richness of language. However, digital programming limits the ability to reproduce the underlying nuances of language. By reducing the connotations of words to their apparent meaning, electronic translation has only superficially and artificially bridged the differences between cultures.

This globalization of culture has certain disadvantages. When a person is subjected to two different cultures, viz.his own and that of the host country, it is difficult to understand which one moulds him in the long run.

Technological superiority is a definite asset when it comes to endowing a specific culture with universal appeal.

Cultural problems due to globalization

While globalization has had many positive effects, it has allowed cultural differences, which often lay just below the surface, to come rushing to the top. Cultural differences that once were suppressed, or secondary to a government's geopolitical objectives, can now take a primary role in people's lives. The lessons for business and political leaders alike can be hard ones. In many ways, globalization has made the world a more complicated place.

For most of the 20th century, the government and business leaders of the world only had to deal with a few key capital cities such as Moscow, Beijing or Washington. In the 21st Century, we will have to deal with Kiev, Minsk, Zagreb, etc. The challenge for the 21st century will be for government and business to understand the new importance of world cultural differences and integrate them into their planning before they become an issue.

Some tips on business etiquette for the present day business world are provided in the chapter on Business Etiquette for the 21st Century.