Globalization And The Domestic Group

Abstract

Similarities in social behavior, particularly in regard to the family, have long been present before the current vogue of discussions that pose globalization processes as creating cultural homogeneity. Globalization is not only a western process mediated by forms of modern communication and travel, but has long encompassed non-western trade, such as the Chinese export of silk and ceramics. Commerce itself was not an invention of the west but instead has its roots in the trade routes of the Phoenicians, Arabs and Jews. The author argues that although trade routes in the 14th century brought about convergences in consumption, similarities in artistic forms and in the organization of merchant communities, a kind of globalization has existed since the Stone Age where structural similarities are found in the sequences of artifacts such as stone axes. These parallel internal developments and diffusion are part of a unity of mankind that arises from common structural situations and some forms of common development. Using the example of family, marriage, and the globalization of the demographic transition, the author suggests that mobility and schooling are universal variables that can be used to analyze similarities among modern globalizing societies. Globalization is often considered to be the process by which the world became the same or similar in certain aspects through