Week 13: Globalization

Quiz Bitcoin Week 13

1. Bitcoin’s creators intended that Bitcoin would remove the need for (a) a trusted third party in financial transactions (b) government regulation (c) personal knowledge of the other party in the transaction (d) money

 2. Bitcoin’s security depends on a technology called (a) Bitgold (b) Sakamoto (c) Blockchain (d) internet

 3. Bitcoin became a hot issue (a) after the development of the internet (b) after the 2008 financial crisis (c) after the development of exchanges for bitcoin (d) after the emergence of other types of online money

 4. Bitcoin experienced which of the following problems in its early years? (a) too many people wanted it (b) it was being used to buy weapons and drugs (c) it had no system for securing transactions (d) the government did not regulate it

 5. In the Blockchain (a) all the transactions are invisible (b) the bitcoin situation is updated in a table and the real identities of Bitcoin owners are known (c) the number of bitcoins is updated in a table and the identities of owners are protected (d) the number of bitcoins can be safely increased as needed.

 6. The largest possible total number of Bitcoins in the world is (a) 64 million (b) 32 million (c) 21 million (d) 12 million

 7. The government regulated Bitcoin because (a) Wall Street wanted to control and invest in Bitcoin (b) the government didn’t want people to use it (c) the government was working for the public’s safety (d) Bitcoin was dangerous to society.

 8. In the movie, one key mystery was (a) who was Craig Wright? (b) Who was Satoshi Nakamoto? (c) How was Bitcoin invented? (d) How does Bitcoin work? 9. Now we begin two weeks on globalization.

9-10. Identify one particularly American thing about Bitcoin....


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READING:
http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jap/papers/Vol5-issue2/D0521924.pdf
Globalization as Americanization? Beyond the Conspiracy Theory Dr. Wassim Daghrir, the University of Sousse, Tunisia

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Anti-globalism activists often depict the McDonald's, Disney, and Coca-Cola corporations as agents of globalism or cultural imperialism. According to this view of world power the control of culture is seen as far more important than the control of political and geographic borders. Due to the perceived threat of Americanization and that of the transnational corporation, fears exist that a homogenization will wipe out national distinctiveness. Accordingly, Europeans, Latin Americans, and Arabs, left-wingers and right fear that local cultures and national identities are dissolving into an unsound American consumerism. These critics maintain that globalization is nothing more than the imposition of American culture on the entire world.

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It is France that provides the most revealing case of cultural protectionism. France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. For the French cultural and intellectual elite the issue is not just a matter of who watches which films, but rather it is that Hollywood is a Trojan horse bringing with it Disneyland Paris, fast-food chains and free advertising for American products from clothes to rock music. In Les cartes de la France à l'heure de la mondialisation (“France's Assets in the Era of Globalization”), former French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine denounced the United States as a “hyperpower” that promotes “uniformity” and “unilateralism.” Speaking for the French intelligentsia, he argued that France should take the lead in building a “multipolar world”.7 France's commitment to film protectionism became an international issue in the spring of 1994, during the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks, the world's leading trading nations negotiated widespread tariff reductions on goods and services. American negotiators promised to remove many trade barriers against European goods, but they asked in return that the Europeans -especially the French- extend impartial treatment to American movies and remove the special taxes and quotas. The French refused. Indeed, keeping out American films became one of the most important French national policies. The well-known French filmdirector Claude Berri reflected a popular attitude when he warned that "if the GATT deal goes through as proposed, European culture is finished".8 The French government even promised to veto any GATT agreement that did not preserve its protectionist policies toward the film industry. Despite the protestations of Hollywood, the Americans backed down and acceded to the wishes of the French government. After the French won the GATT battle, French director Jean Jacques Annaud claimed, "We removed the threat that European culture would be completely eliminated".

III. How “American” is American Culture? 
A. The Cosmopolitan nature of American culture 
The cosmopolitan nature of American culture explains its universal appeal. In fact, Globalization is not a one-way street. The cultural relationship between the United States and the rest of the world has not been onesided. On the contrary, the United States was, and continues to be, as much a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences as it has been a shaper of the world's entertainment and lifestyles. As a nation of immigrants, the United States has been a recipient as much as an exporter of global culture. Indeed, the influence of immigrants on the United States explains why its culture has been so popular for so long in so many places. American culture has spread throughout the world because it has incorporated foreign styles and ideas. What Americans have done brilliantly is repackaging the cultural products they receive from abroad and then retransmitting them to the rest of the planet. That is why a global mass culture has come to be identified, perhaps simplistically, with the United States.10

So, it is most likely a myth that globalization involves the imposition of Americanized uniformity, rather than an explosion of cultural exchange. Americans, after all, did not invent fast food, amusement parks, or cinema. Before the Big Mac, there were fish and chips. Before Disneyland, there was Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens (which Walt Disney used as a prototype for his first theme park in Anaheim, California). And in the first two decades of the 20th century, the two largest exporters of movies around the world were France and Italy.11 Many other representative "American" products are not as all-American as they seem. Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, invented jeans by combining denim cloth (or "serge de Nîmes," because it was traditionally woven in the French town) with Genes, a style of trousers worn by Genoese sailors. So Levi's jeans are in fact an American twist on a European hybrid.1

What‟s more, even quintessential American exports are often customized to local tastes and have thus conformed to local cultures. MTV in Asia promotes Thai pop stars and plays rock music sung in Mandarin. CNN en Español offers a Latin American take on world news. McDonalds also commonly alters its regional menus to conform to local tastes. McDonalds in Egypt, for example, serve a McFelafel. Indian McDonalds don‟t serve beef at all. And some French McDonalds serve rabbit.

IV. How real is Americanization of Global Culture? (How American is cultural globalization?) Several crucial research questions arise when we focus our attention on the study of globalization and the entertainment dimension of contemporary culture. Chief among them is the need for a theoretical framework for the study of something we might call “cultural blending”: How do people respond to the layered levels of culture to which they are constantly confronted in entertainment media? Is the local level more powerfully felt than the regional, national or global? How do these different levels compete for attention (which is the modus operandi of entertainment)? What effects do they have on cultural identity? Does this American presence mean the insidiousness of cultural imperialism? Are we oppressed by Americanization? Does the American Theme Park become a carrier of ideology, history, myth and beliefs that roll-over the consumers and replace their own value systems? By going to McDonalds or buying a Dr Pepper or wearing a Nike jacket or visiting Euro Disney, is one embracing American values and being 'colonized' in mind and body by them?

Viewing the interrelationship of globalization and culture as ever-evolving toward a monolithic global culture has its limitations and is open to critique. Globalization is a far more complex set of phenomena than is suggested by the stereotype of American imperialism. While a global culture heavily influenced by US values is indeed emerging, it is not directed exclusively by the US; many non-US cultures are contributing to other subglobalization processes. Despite the belief that the United States dominates foreign countries, the practical effects of "Americanization" amount to less than one might suppose. American culture is not the only dominant culture; many other cultures export their products.

Furthermore, there are limitations to the ability of American culture to replace other cultures. Local cultures are inherently resilient and local languages, eating habits, education systems, and other social patterns determine the extent to which American culture is imported and adapted to native needs. People are not only consuming hamburgers and Coke. Britain's favorite takeaway is a curry, not a burger.15 Indian restaurants there outnumber McDonald's six to one.16 For all the concerns about American fast food trashing, France's gastronomic traditions, France imported a mere $620-million in food from the United States in 2000, while exporting to America three times that.17 Worldwide, pizzas are more popular than burgers, Chinese restaurants seem to sprout up everywhere, and sushi is spreading fast.18 Nor are Americans the only players in the global media industry. Of the seven market leaders that have their fingers in nearly every pie, four are American (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and News Corporation), one is German (Bertelsmann), one is French (Vivendi), and one Japanese (Sony). What they distribute comes from all quarters: Bertelsmann publishes books by American writers; News Corporation broadcasts Asian news; Sony sells Brazilian music.19

1. What are people who think globalization = Americanization worried about?
2. How did France stop "Americanization"?
3. How did France define Americanization?
4. How does this writer define "Americanization"?
5. What are two arguments the writer uses to say "globalization" does not equal "americanization"?

Week 10: Homosexuality and American Mass Culture

READING:

1. What is the main idea of this reading? Summarize in a sentence or two. 

2. What does Cole say is driving opposition to gay marriage in Taiwan

3. Cole compares these Christians to a terrorist organization. In what ways does he say are they like a terrorist organization? 

4. Why does Cole say the government listens to such individuals?

The extremist Christian infiltration of Taiwan (中文link)

J Michael Cole

 

Intensifying efforts to block same-sex marriage regulations and to promote chastity in Taiwan are led by a loose coalition of evangelical groups with worrying ties to extremist Christian organizations in the U.S.

One of the things we did when I was an intelligence officer was something called “link analysis,” which consisted of establishing a full picture of the ties that bound individuals, groups, organizations, and firms, to our targets. By doing this, we hoped to obtain a fuller understanding of where indoctrination, orders, and money were coming from, while enlarging the scope of our investigation if our targets met other suspect individuals. While we could never hope to have a complete picture of, say, a terrorist organization, it drove home the fact that contemporary terrorist groups tend to be complex and use many fronts to achieve their objectives.

Fast-forward more than a decade, and I find myself once again attempting to establish a picture of another entity that, in some but radically different ways, also threatens society. This time, my endeavors were prompted by the campaign against amendments to Article 972 of the Civil Code, which would legalize same-sex unions in Taiwan, and the disgraceful actions of many participants at the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance rally on Nov. 30 against same-sex marriage.

What drove me to pursue the matter was the fact that the most sustained and strident opponents of homosexual unions in Taiwan were individuals who were closely associated with Christian churches here. The deeper I dug, the clearer it became that ordinary Taiwanese either didn’t care one way or another, or in fact supported the amendment (about 53%). Those who were vocal in their opposition overwhelmingly belonged to Christian churches, and their ideology sounded oddly similar to that which one encounters in the most conservatives of U.S. (southern) states. In other words, despite claims by the Alliance that homosexuality and same-sex marriage were “Western imports,” it was becoming increasingly evident that the real foreign imports were in fact their intolerant views and the arguments they used to “warn” society about the ills that would befall it should 972 be amended.

I have now spent weeks “link analyzing” the Alliance, and have made some of my findings public in previous articles on the subject. The more I delve into this, the more I am reminded of loose organizations like al-Qaeda (disclaimer: I do not intend to imply that the Alliance is a terrorist organization; the analogy refers strictly to structure). Those who have taken the lead in Taiwan opposing same-sex unions — and interestingly, in spearheading True Love efforts to promote chastity in high-schools — are all part of a loose network whose epicenter can be traced back to ultra-rightist evangelical Christian organizations in the U.S. Many of the leading religious individuals here received training in divinity with groups like the round-the-clock prayer International House of Prayer (IHOP) and the Wagner Institute — two recurrent standouts in my research — before returning to Taiwan to spread a rigidly theistic and zero-sum version of Christianity that involves a blend of magic, cultism, and let’s be frank, homophobia.* Theirs is a spiritual battle to Christianize the world by spreading the gospel in every corner of society, from schools to the workplace, our bedrooms to government (IHOP University’s mission statement is to “equip and send out believers who love Jesus and others wholeheartedly to preach the Word, heal the sick, serve the poor, plant churches, lead worship, start houses of prayer, and proclaim the return of Jesus [my italics]”). The Kingdom Revival Times, a rather useful resource, is full of news articles about IHOP members, including Jerry Chow (周吉仁), being invited to address congregations in Taiwan.

This is where the al-Qaeda analogy becomes useful. It would be invidious to accuse, say, IHOP of directly involving itself in legislative decisions in Taiwan. It doesn’t need to, as it has indoctrinated foot soldiers to do so on behalf of its doctrinaire view of the world. This is very similar to many of the terrorist organizations that sprang up all over the world following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Although most of those offshoots subscribed to al-Qaeda ideology, and many of their leaders and foot soldiers had at some point received training in al-Qaeda camps, al-Qaeda central had little direct say over what those organizations did. Most of the time, their actions served al-Qaeda’s grand purpose, though admittedly they sometimes undermined the cause. Regardless, the loose structure of the “alliance” made establishing a full picture of the constellation a near impossibility.

On a smaller scale, the same can be said of the overlapping evangelical Christian organizations across the U.S. that advocate hardline views on homosexuality, abortion, and “intelligent design” (creationism), which extend tentacles in government, courthouses, universities, and the media.

This structure is now being replicated in Taiwan, and I suspect, across Asia. And as in the U.S., they have been recruiting wealthy individuals and government officials in positions of influence to push policies that ill reflect the wishes of the moderate majority. There is now in Taiwan a cross-pollinating (no pun intended) constellation of Christian churches and bible study centers that recruit, train, and indoctrinate Taiwanese, who are then encouraged to spread the gospel. Conduct Google searches on almost any of them or their leaders — the Bread of Life Christian Church, Agape Christian Church, Top Church, New Life (yes, Ted Haggard), Impact Bible School, Asia for Jesus, “Workplace House of Prayer” — and you will eventually unearth connections to IHOP, Wagner, and other religious organizations that all share the characteristics of cults.

Despite the relatively small number of its members, this loose alliance tends to punch above its weight, perhaps because of the tendency of society and governments to bend over backwards to make sure we show no disrespect to religion (in fact I suspect that this may be one of the reasons why police officers stood by on Nov. 30 as Alliance members blocked and surrounded proponents of same-sex marriage in a public space). Those groups have infiltrated the halls of government and our schools, encouraging high-school children to sign a pledge to chastity until marriage (science demonstrates that such efforts have failed miserably) or forcing upon them literature on the alleged dangers of homosexual unions. Such efforts will only intensify as the groups further consolidate their presence in Taiwan.

Scary stuff.

* I doubt that organizations like IHOP would be able to indoctrinate Taiwanese minds to the same extent as, say, in Uganda, where their rhetoric has reached levels of encouraging people to kill homosexuals. Among other things, their reach in Taiwan is hampered by socio-economic conditions, not to mention education levels, that differ markedly from those seen in countries like Uganda, where missionary and humanitarian work serve as the entry point to proselytizing. It is difficult to imagine Taiwanese, even those who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds, being receptive to calls to kill homosexuals or imprison them for life. Limitations notwithstanding, cultish groups like IHOP can do severe harm to modern societies like Taiwan by spreading intolerance and irrationalism.

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http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/04/19/2003691592


1990 version
https://books.google.com.tw/books?id=1LmEC1b1bncC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+passions+of+the+cut+sleeve&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwinls_I2-jaAhXBGZQKHeheB9QQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=the%20passions%20of%20the%20cut%20sleeve&f=false

1992 version
https://books.google.com.tw/books?id=2a0wDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+passions+of+the+cut+sleeve&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwinls_I2-jaAhXBGZQKHeheB9QQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=the%20passions%20of%20the%20cut%20sleeve&f=false