Week 7: WHOSE REALITY IS IT ANYWAY? 9th Jan 2014

How do we relate to the world and how we position ourselves in it.

1. Context: we live in a post modern , post industrial society- communication and information technology has made everything more accessible resulting in 'shrinking' of the world, collapsing and condensing.
2. Fusion and Homogeneity: we are part of this 'Global village' which has its benefits of cultural fusion. But there is also a risk of homogeneity( uniformity) and 'cultural imperialism'( where two cultures meet and one dominates ,discarding the cultural significance and hammering in our own dominance)E.g. British Empire, Contemporary American cultural imperialism.
3. Reality? we can communicate , send and receive messages, images, film with people across the world. Risk- believing that we know and understand what's going on, when we stop seeing images we risk thinking that they are no longer important or an issue of concern. We are at risk of confusing what we 'see' with 'reality'.We see what is shown to us, hyper real,from another's view point
4. Conclusion: our understanding of the world is mediated i.e. interpreted and framed for us, the representation that we receive are selective, edited and sometimes created anew for specific consumers, seeing translational cultural form walk a fine line between cultural fusion and cultural imperialism, so how should we define what is real today.