Globalisation - Australia and Asia

Edward Said states, "No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are no more than starting points." Said's idea illustrates the evolution of relations between communities as a result of globalization, and the understanding and recognition of other cultures through the interpretation of cultural borders.

In this essay I will analyse to what extent globalisation is affecting identity formation, and also the roles of cultural borders in today's world. I will assess whether through globalisation of the media we are in fact overcoming cultural borders and traditional stereotypes and in turn forging a mutual respect between foreign communities, or as Said argues (Said cited in Crary & Mariani1990), whether globalisation and Western media dominance through peripheral and Third World societies is perpetuating Western superiority, "the ever rolling march of commodification, the old form of globalisation, fully in keeping with the west, which is simply able to absorb everybody else within its drive" (Hall 1991), and spreading hegemony, with little or selected