A lot of my current streams of thinking and researching talk about this notion of “globalization” and it is not a concept I have completely grasped. What factors have contributed to its development and what factors have been born as a product of it? Does it operate on a push or pull basis? Can the spread of ideas and the demand for them be organized into a linear cause and effect graph? Does globalization distribute its benefits and adversities equally across the globe? Is there really a homogenising of cultures occurring? The internet allows for easy dissemination of knowledge and forming of global social groups and networks and Wikipedia tells me that the Internet is “both a product of globalization and a catalyst of it”

I suppose what I’ve been thinking about is: is globalization good or bad and who for? I asked my housemates about it and one of them started talking about the global mélange. I looked it up on the Internet and it seems to be a book rather than a theory, but regardless the book discusses whether cultural life is possible after the “clash of civilizations” and “global McDonaldisation”. I’d never heard of McDonaldization before but turns out it’s a term coined by sociologist, George Ritzer, that describes a society mimicking the structure and ideals of a fast food restaurant, like systems based on efficiency and turning everything into small easily digestible portions repackaged in different way over and over again to make them appear new. The system is based on efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. This has leaked into sectors of society such as news and education.