Globalization and culture: four paradigmatic views

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how different philosophical schools of thought view the relation between globalization and culture differently. Design/methodology/approach – This paper places the existing philosophical schools of thought into four broad categories: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper then shows how each of these four broad categories view the relation between globalization and culture differently. Findings – This paper finds that the functionalist paradigm views globalization and culture as universal, the interpretive paradigm views globalization and culture as particular, the radical humanist paradigm views globalization and culture as a domination ideology, and the radical structuralist paradigm views globalization and culture as causing conflict between classes. Research limitations/implications – This paper assumes that each school of thought can be located in one of the four broad categories of philosophical schools of thought. However, this may not be applicable to each and every philosophical school of thought. Practical implications – This paper implies that one would benefit by becoming familiar with other ways of seeing the same phenomenon. This paper shows that the relation between globalization and culture can be viewed at least from four different vantage points and therefore one would have a better understanding of the relation between globalization and culture if one becomes familiar with all four different view points. Originality/value – The contribution of this paper is the advice that in the era of globalization it is better for people to become open‐minded because different people from different parts of the world have different perspectives and the best way to be able to live together is to learn about how others think.