My name is Michael Martello and I am a marketing major graduating next fall. I don’t particularly have a favorite book of all time but recently have read a few that have stood out to me: Defending Jacob and Gone Girl, so I guess you can say I like contemporary murder mysteries (and New York Times bestsellers). I like to go to the beach frequently (when it’s warm), longboard, write, and adventure to new places in the city, state, and around the country.
The one line in Jay’s text that confused me and had me rereading it a few times is the following:
As for homogenization and agency, there are no such things as pure, autonomous cultures that are not “contaminated,” as Kwame Appiah puts it, by productive contact with other cultures. Indeed, “homogenization” has emerged as something of a false villain in debates about globalization, in that similarity or uniformity is as much undone by contact with other cultures as it is enforced by it.
The reason this confused me is the wording. The last sentence in particular seems to be too wordy and I am still not exactly sure what he means by this sentence. I understand what he must mean by “false villain,” how homogenization is not the “culprit,” but I don’t understand how “uniformity is as much undone by contact with other cultures as it is enforced by it.” Does this mean each culture forces particular cultures to act, think, and abide by their rules and morals? The next few lines about how alien cultures shape other cultures does not necessarily suggest that because alien cultures are simply “shaping” other cultures almost naturally rather than “enforcing” rules or cultural doings. It’s not clear to me the connection he is making.
