Ban nightclubs! Force people back to square dancing!

This week's Chronicle of Higher Education features an interesting article entitled "Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization". The writer, British economist Philippe Legrain, makes a good case for the positive aspects of globalization -- an issue that I believe goes straight to the heart of travel.

"Globalization not only increases individual freedom," Legrain argues, "but it also revitalizes cultures and cultural artifacts through foreign influences, technologies, and markets. Thriving cultures are not set in stone. They are forever changing from within and without. Each generation challenges the previous one; science and technology alter the way we see ourselves and the world; fashions come and go; experience and events influence our beliefs; outsiders affect us for good and ill."

As travelers, we might occasionally question the benefit of such cross-cultural changes, especially in isolated areas. But of course travel itself is a symptom of globalization -- which is ironic, since so many travelers are politically opposed to it. Legrain takes a swipe at anti-globalization vogue in his essay:

"It is odd, to put it mildly, that many on the left support multiculturalism in the West but advocate cultural purity in the developing world -- an attitude they would be quick to tar as fascist if...

...proposed for the United States or Britain. [Certain anti-globalization activists] appear to want people outside the industrialized West preserved in unchanging but supposedly pure poverty. Yet the Westerners who want this supposed paradise preserved in aspic rarely feel like settling there. Nor do most people in developing countries want to lead an "authentic" unspoiled life of isolated poverty.