Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization

I really enjoyed Phillipe Legrain's article "Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization" because it made an assertion (if you could not figure out what it was, it is conveniently located in the article's title) and backed up that assertion with facts. Legrain also addressed a couple of counter arguments in his essay, just like we are trained to do in WR 122. He argues that despite the growing fear that American culture is taking over the entire world, cultural globalization still actually means that multiple world cultures are spreading across the globe, not just that McDonalds and Starbucks are appearing on every street corner. To do this, he shatters a lot of misconceptions about various aspects of American culture overtaking other cultures around the globe by showing statistics in his essay that disprove these notions. 

One reason I liked this article so much is that I am currently taking a comparative lit class with the theme of globalization as its topic. Legrain says, "New hybrid cultures are emerging, and regional ones reemerging. National identity is not disappearing, but the bonds of nationality are loosening." This is exactly the type of thing I am studying in my comparative lit class. This guy Stuart Hall, who basically invented cultural studies according to my professor, said that the old way cultural identity used to be perceived- fixed and exclusive, with a distinct tie to one's roots- just didn't work in the time of globalization, migration, and diaspora. The new way of thinking about cultural identity: hybrid, impure, multiple.  People's identities are not just tied to their origins, but also to everywhere else they travel, and to all the cultures they are a part of. I liked reading about that topic in  a different context.