Cultural Integration

Explain the factors affecting cultural integration in countries around the world?

Cultural integration is quite complicated concept as it can be interpreted and understood differently by many people. Scholars having been researching cultural integration around the world in the last two centuries. Some scholars have explained this term satisfactorily. One of these scholars is Durkheim (1951), as he thinks that cultural integration is a process in which individuals or groups of social system can interconnect effectively. In other words, cultural integration concerns the evolution of behaviors, attitudes, daily life habits, beliefs, etc. (Wanner et al., 2002). Cultural integration processes happen in all communities, but minority groups bear the bulk of it. Despite the evidence gathered and analysis produced by social scientists regarding the benefits of cultural integration, there are serious implications of such process as a result of few factors such as homogenized landscapes, economic dominance, threat to cultural diversity and sovereignty, and shrinking of time and space. This essay will examine these factors and the way they the affect cultural integration in various countries around the world.

The first factor is homogenized landscapes, which is the process where various landscapes in a country have the resemblances of other landscapes in other countries. This process is extremely common where most cites seem to be alike in tourist destinations, the system of transportation and industrial landscapes. One of these cites is Sydney, where the process of homogenization has reached its fullest in almost all aspects of life. In Sydney, there is a China Town, a place that resembles the Republic of China. Another example is Dubai, a place that is homogenized with around 30% of its landscapes are just identical copies of landscapes in New York and Honk Kong. This process goes even beyond landscapes to include products, clothing, eating habits, and language in...