Choose either the concept of cultural diffusion (voluntary/consented change in culture) or cultural imperialism (enforced/pressured change in culture) and using specific examples explain how transnational corporations either intentionally or unintentionally spread consumerism through your chosen concept.
Cultural diffusion is a concept where a certain culture voluntarily accepts change in culture. Mostly, it results as transnational corporations spread consumerism and bring the culture of the originating country to other countries. Products that transnational corporations bring to other countries range from clothes to food and these are sometimes intentionally or unintentionally spread. Before transnational corporations spread consumerism, some people may also bring their country's products to foreign countries or bring foreign products to their own country as they travel which also result in cultural diffusion or trigger transnational corporations for their new approach.
Food is one of the factors that causes cultural diffusion in many of the countries around the world. With media and through travel, people learn a lot about other countries' food and get interested on other cultures. With the advent of fast food, transnational corporations started to aim people in foreign countries to sell their products. For example, McDonald's have been successful in South Korea when it first started as hamburgers and french fries were new to Koreans. Other example of foreign food in Korea which has been successful is pizza as it is different from traditional dishes of South Korea. As transnational corporations have brought food to different parts of the world which increased people's interest, many countries like Asia still keep their own culture with traditional food but are being greatly affected as the center of the culture is slightly changing without people noticing about it.
Hey Emily, I like your example on McDonald's on cultural diffusion, I think it's the perfect example of cultural diffusion because we see McDonald's everywhere we go. You can literally go to any (most) cities in the world knowing that their is a McDonald's in the area, that is how widespread and globally spread McDonald's is. But to play devils advocate, what are McDonald's negative connotations? I think it puts a bad image on Americans. Apart from being delicious, everyone with the right mind knows that McDonald's is very unhealthy. Especially considering the advertisements about McDonald's; Americans eating greasy fries with juicy dripping out of their burgers which gives off the image that us American's love fatty food. This is just a thought, to create a little conversation, if you or Mr. Barnes want to talk about it :)
ReplyDelete#give #me #the #hotsauce
ReplyDeleteI'll talk about it: get off my brothas for wantin' a burga. Somebody's got to do fast food reviews on youtube.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to your post Emily, I really do like it, especially the supporting images, but I truly believe you could get this to stick more if you brought in some data. Even just one percentage statistic would be helpful and supportive here.