Role-Play Debate for course EngC 1015

I think you make an excellent point...something I had yet to think about until you brought it up here. "Westernization" has truly been misdefined and misused by those who oppose it. It looks as if this latest article about McDonald's in Hong Kong shares a similar viewpoint. The inclusion of different cuisines, in this case McDonald's, has brought about a revolution of diversity to the inhabitants. Honestly, I was impressed with the author's claims, especially about how the children are some of the most food-weathered people in the world. Pretty neato.

Sadly, this single way of life has taken the face of a single, enormous western corperation, not the polite mom and pop stores of ages past. People resist becuase we are not neccessarily spreading our culture for the sake of spreading our culture, we are without a doubt doing it for pure profit and growth of buisness interests. I mean, it wouldnt be that cool if the Saudi Arabian flag was sewn on the back of Twins jerseys just becuase the Sauds decided to give the Twins 10 million bucks. I think that is about how personal some of these countires are taking it, and believe me, they in no way see Western dominance of "a blend of all cultures". They see it as a threat.

Great point, the US is always in the headlines for attempting to "dominate world culture" but i agree with you, we have a hybrid of all different sorts of cultures. Most people don't like change, so when our culture is seen in their country they don't like it. I don't feel our culture being there is necesarily a bad thing; i think that it just bothers those people more than anything to see the change.

It's not the mingling of the cultures in the US that scares people about westernization. It is the cut throat capitalism and ideals that people are opposed to.

Take for instance Starbucks, it is everywhere, but do some cultures want a expensive coffee, probably not. It is the pushing of different things onto cultures that upsets people.

It is that face of westernization that upsets people.

Westernization is not related to people's nature to be cut-throat capitalist. All that is, is a timeline because those in the "West" were some of the first directly effected by it. But the capitalistic nature of humans comes naturally, it's basic psychology. Look at the fall of the Soviet Union, immediately after the berlin wall fell in russia, thousands of entrepreneurs entered the streets with new unique (to them) business practices; whether they worked or not is irrelevant, the fact is that people set out on their own because they could, and because they felt it was the best choice. People are the deciders and if markets didn't work out on their own, westernization wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

The idea of the "melting pot" philosophy of westernization is a good one, but does not accurately represent the idea. While we are a mixture of races, cultures, and creeds, the whole point is that we stand together, united as one and all of those great patriotic phrases.

As to Mark's point about "cut-throat capitalism," yes, the west did pioneer that area and we will forever be blamed for it, whether we start it in a foreign country or not.

It can be both a bad and a good thing. It can be bad becasue when a new culture becomes more "westernazated" it loses parts of it's culture and the importance of the parts that society keeps are dimmed a lot in comparsion to the new western culture. This is bad for that culture and tends to be a problem for those who want to keep the cultrue that they had before. It is a good thing though becasue then these cultures gain the technology that we have adn are able to do hundreds of thousands of things that they weren't able to do before. Western culture is a combination of all kinds of cultures but they hate this mixing because they lose their own culture in the process.

Although the us is a collection of many different cultures, we still have one main culture, and that is what is being projected to other countries.

The face of westernization: McDonald's, KFC, Dairy Queen, etc.

To many countries, this is what we are and this is what we stand for. You'd think we could outsource something better with all that we have...

The effects of westernization from the US on the world have very little to do with the broad cultures we endorse. Our fast food chains, technilogical advances, and fast pace way of life are in fact the opposite of the lifestyles of many of the different cultures coming to the US. I think the US has a lot more of an effect on the people coming here than the people coming here have an effect on the US. The majority of the influencial people are still white men, and they basically shape the US culture.

Could it be that Westernization has spread because people crave the same lifestyles that the westerners enjoy? Could it be that people in Asia or East Europe wish that they too had the luxuries and freedoms closely associated with western society? I think that to some extent this could be true; that, although it may seem that the introduction of western values threatens traditional customs, in reality, I think that people just want to evolve their own traditions in ways that better suit their personal and communal needs, and some see the Western lifestyle of the pursuit of happiness as being very appealing and capable of fulfilling their needs. Thus societies around the world are allowing western influences to enter their homelands in hopes that a hybrid version of it will emerge in their societies.

eh, Zach. america didn't even exist when cut-throat capitalism was 'pioneered'. the romans used it and used it quite effectively. they also used it as offensive bargaining power because of how detrimental protectionist policy can be on adjacent ports and micro-economies thus proving a scaled idea of how free trade lets economies flourish as well as the opposite being an effective tool. most of their economies were able to be viewed on a micro lense rather than macro so things were much simpler mathematically back then due to less people, and less denarii with lower velocities in general. "cut-throat capitalism" is basic nature of greed of humans and has been around for thousands of years. you just have to look at it in relative terms, terms relative to technology, human population, general intellect, and how living standards have relatively increased as societies progress through time.