Carolina Parra Blog Post #4

Carolina Parra

Blog Post #4

Soccer and McDonald’s

The process and growth of globalization is a widely disputed topic. Globalization takes on the process of integrating cultures and nations together through an assortment of essentials. These essentials are usually based on technology, environment and economy. We have seen globalization take off at a rapid pace, blending cultures like never before.

Although this revolution can seem beneficial, the growth of globalization is harmful to self-identity and nationalism. Maybe globalization is more favorable because to more dominant countries, where their culture is the one influencing others, but that shouldn’t take away from the serious impacts this revolution has on many other countries. I think as globalization grows, nationalism will fade away fully, even if we don’t want to fully see it.

In How Soccer Explains the World, Foer's proposal seems to be that throughout the world, people still cling to their relationship to their local football club no matter who is influencing them. However, I think this is completely false. In a world of globalization, for example, the original soccer team can threaten the identity of the new player, which results in that new member adapting to the ways of the whole team. Let’s say a Catholic player from Central America is imported to a Protestant team. The end result would be the Catholic player changing its form of identity, Catholicism, to conform to the team and, who knows, even lead the Protestants in anti-Catholic remarks. Additionally, even one of Foer’s statements included “Multinational capitalism strips local institutions of their localness, it homogenizes, destroys tradition, and deprives indigenous proletarians and peasant of the things they love the most,” proving that nationalism isn’t always stronger than the impact of globalization.

McDonald’s is another example to explain that statement made by Foer. McDonald’s is now a worldwide food chain, but, as it slowly takes over other countries, many of the cultural food places are being replaced. So many other foreign countries start seeing McDonald’s almost like a home, which only shows the lack of self-identity as these foreign countries see McDonald’s the same way Americans see it.

Altogether, it is senseless to believe that globalization wont knock out nationalism. Yes, maybe ones relationship to something may be strong, but who’s to say that some new global influence won’t change the mind of those natives for good? I think Foer shares insightful personal opinions through experience, but he fails to provide actual facts on the decline of nationalism because of the continued growth of globalization.