One-world mentality and cultural diversity: challenges of globalization

The dominance of a globalized economy over political life and the globalization of lifestyles by means of the increasing presentation of experience as images in the new media help to bring about changes in the way we work. All this has been accompanied by a decline in the influence of the individual nation states, while cultures have become increasingly permeable and homogeneous, resulting in the development of new ways and spheres of life. The question arises as to what this scenario means for education and to what extent education takes these developments suitably into account. Whatever the case may be, there is now a strong need for discussion in education about the development of and changes associated with globalization. This discussion is leading to a partial re-organization of ways of education, with an associated reduction in the reliance on national culture as explanatory basis. The challenges of globalization have made it necessary to conduct a thorough investigation into the conditions of human life as they stand today. This is the task of a contemporary anthropology, which can no longer be reduced to ethnology, philosophical anthropology or anthropological issues in the historical sciences, but must be reformulated as historical and cultural anthropology. Thus defined, anthropology must set itself the task of elaborating a body of knowledge that makes a contribution to improving human beings’ understanding of themselves and the world and takes cultural diversity into account.