Metacognitive Reading Report #2

Name: TARCENA, Charmane Lizette S. Date: November 29, 2019

The Contemporary World

Crossing Borders: development, learning and the North – South

divide and Globalization of Culture Through the Media
1. Difficult Concepts
i. conservative neo-Third Worldism
ii. ghettoization of theory
iii. differences between "media imperialism" and "cultural imperialism”
iv. concept of Hybridization and its relation to Globalization

2. Insights

i. Before reading the article, I thought that the countries are classified as First,
Second, or Third World countries. The first world countries are the capitalist and
the allied countries of United States after World War 2. While the second world
countries are the communist-socialist countries that has influence of the Soviet
Union. Lastly, the third world countries are the developing countries, often
referred as the poor countries.

However, reading the article and understanding the lesson, I now realize that
the classification has reduced to just two types, Global North and Global South.
Countries belong to Global North are the one richest, most advance, and
influential countries in terms of wealth, democracy and economic freedom.
While countries that belong to Global South are the poorest countries and
developing ones. This division was developed because most of the richest
countries belong to the northern part of the globe and most of the poorest
countries belong to the southern part of the globe.

ii. Before reading the article, I thought that western countries are the main
proponent of the flow of human knowledge throughout the world. Through
time, different discoveries in different fields of sciences have continue to rise in
our hopes to reach modernization. Most of these people came from Western
or powerful countries.

However, reading the article, I now realize that opportunity is the key of
learning. Most of these Western people have given opportunity to study,
opportunity to be heard, and opportunity to be known. While people from
other parts of the globe were not given that same right that’s why before, most
black people were treated as slaves. The flow of knowledge is from Western to
Eastern, Global North to Global South. Flow of knowledge should just be a flow
coming from different race since our main goal was to find the answer. But
now I’ve realized the huge implication of having division, imposing power,
these gave more opportunities to other privileged nation while the other
nations are being left alone.

iii. Before reading the article, I thought that through globalization, advancement
in technology continues to rise and experience by different nation. It gave us
more opportunity in terms of faster communication, more global reach, and
making our lives easier.

However, reading the article and understanding the lesson, I now realize
capitalist have used media as a platform to change our psychological
orientation with the things the we “need” and the things that we “want”. One
good example are cellphones. With the invention of cellphone, it made
communication easier and faster. It helps us to have faster transaction,
broader connection and a lot more. This was propagated through media. But
few companies have use this to capitalize their products. Nowadays, phones
became status symbol, instead of buying phones because of its function that
 gives us faster communication, now we buy phones for status only. And
somehow, the capitalist have changed our perspective and now we prioritize
buying these expensive phones with a kind of mindset that we really need it.

3. Questions
i. Why is there a need for a certain division like Global North and Global
South, to be applied in countries when the harsh environment, human rights
violation, and other forms of worldwide problems that exist in the countries
belong to the Global South, if these same problems also exist in the
countries belong in the Global North?

ii. Is it an advantage to be a member of Global North? Or it is just a huge

pressure for the country by increasing the difficulty in its competition?

iii. How did media changed the trend of value in peoples’ perspective? From
patrionizing our own products, now we prioritize buying products coming
from Western brands, and somehow our psychological thinking has
changed that the more expensive the product is, the better its quality will
be.

iv. Is the globalization of culture a natural thing that no one started or trigger?
Does it exist before even without the help of media? Or it started because
communication has widen and the transfer of information thru media helps
its propagation?