Question

What does it mean when culture is commodified? What is the impact on intercultural communication? Explain and provide an example.

Answer 1

Commodification of culture is the way cultural experiences like festivals, art and rituals are produced and consumed for the market. This misrepresents cultures and perpetuates stereotypes, limits images, is superficial and creates more barriers for intercultural communication. The culture of capitalism provide an ever-present backdrop of intercultural communication. From the basics of food, clothing, and shelter,to the construction of identities, pleasure and desire; to the ways we show love, celebrate holidays, engage in conflict, and fight wars: commodities are central to all cultures and intercultural interactions in the context of global capitalism. Trade of commodities has brought people and things from different cultures into contact and collision. Commodification of culture means the practice in which cultural experiences are produced and consumed for the market. Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them. Many people in intercultural business communication argue that culture determines how individuals encode messages, what medium they choose for transmitting them, and the way messages are interpreted. Identity and culture are also studied within the discipline of communication to analyze how globalization influences ways of thinking, beliefs, values, and identity, within and between cultural environments. Intercultural communication scholars approach theory with a dynamic outlook and do not believe culture can be measured nor that cultures share universal attributes. Scholars acknowledge that culture and communication shift along with societal changes and theories should consider the constant shifting and nuances of society.