Cross-Cultural Blog

Before getting deeper into these issues, we need to understand the way students perceive the term “globalization”. This term is perceived in a number of ways: “the unity of capital”, “disappearing of borders between nations and increasing the international division of labor”, “the similarity of values among different cultures”, “everybody and everything together”. As it can be noticed from the results of our survey, which we held our academic group recently, the majority of students find globalization as the unity in economic, political and cultural aspects. Taking this into consideration, we can conclude that international communication plays a great role in the process of globalization.

And what is intercultural communication? “In its most general sense international communication occurs when a member of one culture produces a message for consumption by a member of another culture. More precisely, international communication is communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event” (O. Kovbasyuk). In spite of the fact that this phenomenon is being researched by scholars from the whole world for many years, it still remains timely and causes controversies and discussions. Under the circumstances we would like to answer the list of questions: what is the role of intercultural communication in context of globalization? How will the process of globalization influence the humankind? Do we take into account cultural difference while we are joining the process of globalization, or do we globalize only for the sake of globalizing?

The first aspect of our attention is that societies and communities have no choice of either to participate in process of globalization or not, but the character of their participation is shaped by specific social, cultural, economic and political conditions. This complex multi-level process of mediation between the global and local issues, being an inherent character of communication, promises to change not only the context, but likely the nature of intercultural communication. Thus, the question about the place of intercultural communication is ambiguous.

On the one hand, due to intercultural communication, nations can engage in a dialog and find understanding during the process of searching and making decisions in crisis, critical, nonstandard situations. Not to make unsubstantiated statements the recent summit G-20 in London can be given. Countries with diametrically opposite points of view on the economic crisis’s roots managed to find consensus and start working out a common approach to the solution of worldwide problems. Another example to illustrate the same point is the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the whole world was standing on the brink of the nuclear war. The two leaders from a communist and a capitalist great powers made an agreement, which prevented humankind from treat of death.

On the other hand, there are a lot of grievous examples when countries were unable to find understanding and to solve urgent problems and conflicts. This can be referred to the situations between Serbia and Kosovo, South Ossetia and Georgia, Moldova and Transnistria, Palestine and Israel. In each of these conflicts, opposing forces suppose they held the only right and appropriate opinions regarding the issues, and they did not want to compromise, therefore civilians suffered.

In retrospect to the previous experience of the world history, we can ask a question: “Is the idea of the “uniform” humankind feasible?” Can you imagine the situation when everyone has similar culture with similar values and similar beliefs? Maybe, in such world community, there will be no misunderstanding and obstacles in the process of communication. This would also mean the destruction of cultural diversity as a result of globalization. In such a case, the seemingly positive side of cultural destruction can be presented in the following way:

Destruction of cultural diversity →destruction of communication obstacles →easiness to find understanding and to solve problems. It seems to also provide a great impulse to the development of society in economic and political aspects

But, if we scrutinize this problem closer, we can find a big amount of disadvantages connected with this outcome. Our cultural heritage would turn into dust because “culture is communication, communication is culture” (Hall). Moreover, due to the fact that this process of globalization is done by the “upper” side (according to the will of the strongest) the opinion of individuals (national minorities) is not taken into consideration therefore resistance against globalization will increase. It casts doubt on the idea of a totally globalized world. If this problem is solved by radical measures, two worlds will be able to appear: the world of supporters and the world of opponents who will never have their place in such kind of a world.

The above given contemplation allows us to make a conclusion, that the process of globalization is permanent. Under the circumstances, the era of globalization has at least two tends regarding its cultural aspect development. On the one hand, globalization is changing the traditional lifestyles of people. But on the other hand, some adaptation and protecting functions of each culture are generated, so the process of globalization takes an extremely controversial format. Within the bounds of intercultural communication, some common values and ideals (tolerance, equality of traditions, ethics and politics of responsibility) are being formed. However, the process of creation of commonalities within communicational interaction is not always smooth. For example, such universal values as human rights, which were accepted by western scholars as basic values, turn out to be incompatible with the political and cultural customs of many eastern countries. In order to prevent such incompatibilities, countries must find points of contact in which the principles of globalization do not contradict customs and traditions of these countries. Then, as we view it, the points of mutual contact should be found. In cases when it seems impossible to find points of mutual contact, countries should demonstrate tolerance and respect to each other. In this connection we can declare that the future of humankind depends only on us and on our actions towards each other. And understanding this is one of many steps which mankind must take in order to prosper together in peace