Cultural Homogenization and Cultural Hybridity

I was born and raised in Brazil, and when I was around 6 years of age, I had the experience of talking to a foreigner for the first time in my life. He was a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints. At that time, my father was a big fan of north American culture so, but not as much of those men’s religion, but he decided to make a deal with them. My father would allow them to come into our house to preach about their religious beliefs as long as they did it in English. For my father that would be a chance to practice his English skills, for them, a chance for catechism, so they promptly agreed with the proposal. This short period of time in my life had a great impact in my life, because since then I became fascinated by these stories of life in the United States. That is just one of the ways that Americanization shaped my life. I have always had great influence of north American culture. Consuming American movies with subtitles (a big part of Brazilians watch dubbed movies), listening to American rock music, following fashion patterns originated in the U.S. and so on. I also remember when I was a little older (in my teens) there was a debate in my city where people wanted to cancel a traditional carnival festivity and replace it with American rock festival, since my hometown is famous for local concerts of American music performing cover songs of American and British artists. Part of the city was against it, since Carnival is part of national traditions, the other half would argue that our own culture only propagates erotic art and nudity, something that people should be ashamed of and not proud. “American culture is way more fancy or decent” some would affirm.

This debate and the event that originated after that is a clear example of cultural hybridity: The “Carnarock” is an event that mixes north American “rock and roll” music with traditional Brazilian Carnival and now it is a strong part of my hometown’s culture. As Steger explains: “The contemporary experience of living and acting across cultural borders often means both the loss of traditional meanings and the creation of new symbolic expressions.” (Steger, 2020, chapter 5).

A mix of hybridity and homogenization has happened in my life. So many things that I have lived in Brazil, or in Japan, are simply a “copy and paste” of culture (especially north American culture). These produce a sense of “sameness” independently of where you are. An example is the fact that you can have the exact same Burger with fries and Coke at a small town in the country part of Japan: a clear cultural homogenization effect.

I believe that homogenized cultures are extremely complex and sometimes do represent a threat to the local culture. For example, let us examine the fact that a McDonald’s restaurant chain established in Brazil. This restaurant brings north American culture to south America and creates a new culture of eating American fast food. The main profit of this company will benefit the United States and not Brazil, but on the other hand, this same restaurant will create job opportunities for many people. So, I believe that a homogenized is the price we pay for capitalism and globalization, in general. There is a good and a bad side. Maybe the big task here would be to analyze, does that benefit more than causes a threat to each place? That is something we need to understand further