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Individual Liberty Globalization

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Individual Liberty, Globalization and global Transformations
Globalization has increased the interconnection between countries in a way that made national borders disappear. This interconnection caused many nation-states to try to impose a collective identity in their nations as a method to preserve the national identity ( Vargas Llosa 2001). In his article, “The Culture of Liberty”, Vargas Llosa (2001) argues that globalization or, in his own words “modernization”, gives people individual liberty, which is essential for the proliferation of the culture contrary to collective identity imposed by some nation-states. In the other hand, Giddens (1999) argues that globalization is making many transformations around the world, cultural, economical …show more content…

Many eastern countries seem to view globalization as a tool of the west to “westernize” the world and, thus, the eastern countries try to protect their unique culture by imposing a collective culture in the country; thereby preventing the freedom of choice to create oneself identity which will result into an imposed identity by the state. The problem with those types of identities is that they never show the real picture of the country’s culture and identity. In Spain, the instance is considerably vivid during and after the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, in which individuals’ liberty to create their identities were suppressed, and after the end of the dictatorship the rich cultural diversity of Spain was unleashed (Vargas Llosa 2001), like the emergence of Catalonia in Barcelona ( Giddens 1999) . This bloom of cultures cannot possibly be created by one collective identity imposed by the state, because of the coercion to embrace one, collective, identity, thus, individual liberty is needed, which is offered by globalization. Long after Spain gained it individual liberty, the impact is still continuing, and with the help of globalization to globalize the Spanish culture, there are millions of Spanish speakers in the five continents, 25 to 30 million in the United States alone which explains the fact that, Texas Governor, George W. Bush, and Vice President Al Gore, campaigned not only in English but also in Spanish in a U.S. presidential election (Vargas Llosa 2001). Globalization is, also, not Americanization in fact; it is not in the control of any nation. The notion of “ reverse colonization” shows that non-western countries are also contributing to globalization; some evident examples are the Latinizing of Los Angeles, the emergence of the globally oriented high tech sector in India and the selling of Brazilian TV programs to Portugal (Giddens 1999).

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