Culture and Globalization http://www.globalization101.org 8 Cultural Impacts of Globalization The Spread of the American Political and Economic Model In addition to cataloging the influences of globalization on culture, students of this phenomenon should ask to what extent the effects on culture are negative or positive, and why they are happening. The mechanisms of cultural globalization are numerous and come from different sources. Thinking about globalization in the broadest possible terms, there are three principal ways that globalization can be seen to have an impact on global culture. These occur through: 1. the development of a new culture of the globally connected professionals and especially business elites; 2. the proliferation of pop culture—which many critics complain is primarily American; and 3. the diffusion of beliefs and values about broader issues such as human rights and other social mores. Debates over these cultural issues are not simply esoteric ones either. Cultural issues have in fact been prominent in the outcome of several trade negotiations and in other kinds of international disputes. Each of these three ways that culture is affected by globalization has implications for decisions made by government policymakers and political systems.