Session Six: Thursday, November 13, 2008
Confronting Global Diversity: Imagining a wide circle of inclusion
While economic barriers are coming down around the world in the 21st century, cultural barriers are going up. In other words, people vehemently hold on to what they know when pressured to change or another country’s culture is imposed on them. The forces exerted on cultural identities by the global economy often become sources of conflict and drive fundamentalist tendencies.
As we navigate the imposition of U.S. cultural values on others through our economic models, questions of global ethics arise. For example, in journalist Thomas Friedman’s "flat world," as he calls it, can business become a catalyst for cultural change and social justice as much as it forces economic gain? If so, what moral and ethical dilemmas does this new role pose for us? There is evidence that culture matters more, not less, in our global marketplace.
Does globalization require us to rethink our diversity paradigms?
If economic barriers are decreasing, while cultural barriers are increasing, we need to figure out why this is and begin to brainstorm solutions. While it makes sense that we may face challenges as a global community, if we can maneuver around them for economic gain, we should also prioritize our cultural goals as well. Money is a great incentive for global cooperation but we need to include more aspects of cultural change into the mix in order to successfully fuse economics and culture together. If economic incentives have been successful in the past, business as Thomas Friedman says, may be the catalyst for change. It may seem morally sticky to depend on business to create cultural change, but if we’re able to respect cultural differences while we improve our global marketplace, we’ve created a win-win situation.