Efficiency; Economics and control of human beings through the application of material technology has increased the fusion of global and local cultures towards unification of lifestyles, cultural symbols and the modes of behavior. Globalisation fosters the creation of a true world community where people are highly interconnected, at least so in relation to the spread of news. Globalisation is not only the sharing of a high technology society but it also involves acceptance of certain values and ideas.

http://www.rep.org.br/PDF/92-5.PDF

Different people will have various opinions on this subject, but many believe (including myself) that maintaining native languages is the fundamental and essential key to preserving cultures and traditions. As languages disappear, the oral traditions that go along with them also fade away, which is an immense loss to the world as well as to the native population.

Modern English (or mutilated forms of modern English such as is spoken in parts of the USA) simply does not have words for many elements of native cultures, so keeping the original language active and alive is the only possible answer.

Dear Sribas,

first the languages must be conserved. Your answer matches the problem very well. But not only the languages, also the rituals, the customs and the religious habits. And a very important tool is commercial justice.

Very high priority has the acceptance of laws and the mutual tolerance.

In fact, minority groups try to protect their culture and identity in the old times. Nowadays, and in the increasing globalization attitudes, it is easier for minorities to protect their culture and identity.

"The increasing mobility of people, goods, and information has driven a powerful trend toward cultural uniformity and the extinction of local languages. But languages that have young people, business, and government on their side are alive and thriving.

Globalized economics and media are changing the face of culture around the globe, reducing the number of languages that humans speak. As the world economy becomes more integrated, a common tongue has become more important than ever to promote commerce, and that puts speakers of regional dialects and minority languages at a distinct disadvantage. In addition, telecommunications has pressured languages to become more standardized, further squeezing local variations of language".

For more details, you may consult the following link:

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/minority_languages.php

Education is important (e.g. extra local language classes for children, but also cooking & local handicraft classes, folk dancing & singing classes etc. for children & adults). Books & journals should be printed in local language; in addition, online media could be used. Also, people should meet more often: talk, cook, sing etc. together.

I completely agree with Hanno. In addition, globalisation is death to diversity. Homogenisation of the human race is evil in its conception and only serves the economic rationale of stronger countries.

So far some interesting views and comments; I thank you all for contributing and enrichig this debate.

Would it be exaggerating to say that throughout history we have seen cycles of concern of minorities that their culture may perish through assimilation into mainstream culture? This happened after World War I, again in the 1950s, and is happening today. The minority reaction to this fear has consisted of emphatic attempts to conserve the local culture through increased study, stress on the minority languages, and new display of its cultural wealth to the majority culture. The result is a strengthening of the minority culture and an enriching of the majority culture.

Thank you Nelson.

Your comment certainly bring to the forefront an important component as to the process of conservation of minority culture through a historical perspective.

A very impressive example are the aborigines in Australia. They nearly lost all their identity, got sick and underprivileged. But today big efforts are done to keep their traditions alive and working. They know such a lot of things, the white population doesn´t suspect at all.

Hanno, you are so right about the Australian aborigines.  To make a tour of that beautiful continent without going to an aborigine village to see its inhabitants dance to their exotic native instruments is unthinkable.  The aborigines that I have met are prosperous and well-fed, very kind to tourists and endowed with a lilting Australian-accented English. I wish that the U.S. would take an example from Australia in treating their indigenous peoples.  Here posted are Australian aborigine didgeridoos, or wind instruments, with a unique deep sound. Let´s see if I can find a youtube as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHSRv4Hsxn0

Note this aboriginal dance, with didgeridoo and drum. Not the melody, but the tempo is everything in this unique kind of music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rspN1MUcIOk

Dear Nelson,

many thanks for these wonderful examples. So far as I´m informed, the Australian premier stays each year together with the aboriginees for 1 week in the camp and resides from this place in order to intergrate this natives into the modern world. My deep respect!

Dear Hanno,

Another way that minority groups protect their own identities is to perform as representatives of their respective countries in World Fairs.  In the Paris World Fair of 1900, gypsies performed their folk dances as representatives of Spain.  The French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel happened to see the gypsies, and their music decisively influenced the Spanish-style music of Debussy and Ravel.  Hear Debussy´s Suite Ibéria and Ravel´s Rapsodie espagnole.

Dear Nelson,

these are impressive examples too. But don´t forget, if you really want to integrate a minority, you must not convince the academics, you must demonstrate it to a broad population with very simple methods and a lot of public relation. For example "live in a tent camp".

True, Hanno, but people of all social classes visit world fairs. Those Australian Prime Ministers really  enjoy living in the thick of things!  One such prime minister decided to swim at the Great Barrier Reef (a year before I myself snorkeled there in 2012) and he was eaten by a shark.  I myself had better fortune as I was swimming with friendlier fish.

Wow Nelson , I just heard you gurgling.;-)

But by the way, barrier reef is an under priviledged land- resp. see scape no minority without privilegues. And no doubt, it must be saved against the humans.

One very effective and moving way for religious minorities to protect their culture and identity is to have interfaith services, programs, and charity projects with religious groups of the majority.  This is a good way to keep minorities informed about the majorities while they give new public exposure to their own outlook.

If these services are given without an missionary aim in order to convince the wrong believers.

Oh yes, Hanno, and there is a way to insure the absence of the missionary aim: make sure that the ministers or priests of all the participating religious groups attend the interfaith functions. Of course when I speak of "interfaith" activities, I refer to nations with multiple religious groups.

Indeed, there is a thesis that the world is converging or cross verging due to globalization. There is another related term i.e. MacDonaldization. This is said to be so because of  the rising American influence thanks in the new era.  More and more of Gen Y is getting attracted to it. It is believed that it would be difficult for religious and ethnic groups to resist this onslaught on their culture.. 

A globalized culture is not a bad one, and if not primarily driven by consumerist motivations, can help us look beyond our immediate identities and be more accepting of human diversity in general. 

However, it is also important to strike a balance, where homogeneity and heterogeneity coexist. Preserving one's culture starts at home, since that is the building block of one's foundation. Parents can ensure that the use of their native language is well preserved, at least at home. Proactive initiatives to organize cultural festivals that celebrate their unique appeal are good ways too.

An important thing to remember is that children of immigrant ethic communities should be able to perceive this as desired rather than forced. Often, mainstream culture in a different country can implicitly teach young and impressionable minds quick and easy ways to adapt to the new culture but at the cost of abandoning their own. This is a complex phenomenon, making the youth swiftly judgmental without having arrived at an adequate stage of mental maturity. So-- it is very important that the schools and public institutions that they attend, also help them recognize, accept, and celebrate their diverse cultural identities, and in turn allow people to develop habits of mind that are more open and accepting of cultural differences and diversity. 

Only through decentralisation in a multicultural society. 

Dear Mohamed,

Dear All,

The answer is simple. National minorities should maintain and cultivate their language, culture (literature, music, dance), history and traditions. In Eastern-Europe it is not always easy because governments (politicians and parties) of the ruling nations in some countries commit many injustice in order to hinder human rights of minorities as well as to assimilate minorities and destroy their communities.

It is true that some cultures as they are social behaviors from old times that continue to exist, might need modifications to become members of civilized cultures. These cultures include religious behaviors or rituals that may not be acceptable to modern societies and  they must be changed or modified or even abandoned. But other cultures such as languages, means of entertainments such as music or art, ways of describing their lives and their environment are things to be preserved and upgraded to contemporary level. There should not be any pressure or political domination to eliminate or humiliate cultures - that behavior by itself is uncivilized bad culture of looking down others who are different and should  be upgraded and corrected.   

"Efforts to protect local culture from the homogenizing effects of globalization are often intertwined with other, sometimes questionable, motives, including economic protectionism and the political suppression of ideas. Because the topic of culture can, almost by definition, encompass almost every human endeavour, it is often difficult to draw lines around what are legitimate cultural activities, worthy of special protective measures." Fine research from Levine Institute: Culture and Globalization!

The role of media in the era of Globalisation should not be neglected, regarding the preservation of language and culture of minorities! Minority Languages and Cultures in the Face of Globalisation treats this issue-second link!

http://www.globalization101.org/uploads/File/Culture/cultall.pdf

http://www.aber.ac.uk/~merwww/images/Klag.pdf

Dear Mohamed and Colleagues

I think that economic forces play an important role here; It becomes more difficult for ethnic communities to dedicate resources toward cultural preservation, and difficult for national governments to channel resources to help those groups in this regard, if these communities do not have a good level of economic independence or self sustenance. One of the interesting ideas in this regard is promoting cultural tourism, in order to help those ethnic groups. Some people are of course cynical about this, and there may also be disadvantages in using this strategy. See the following links, as an example of an expression of the idea of ethnic tourism. It is an abstract but if your school of university is subscribed to ScienceDirect or Safari Books or a similar service, you could also find the full text for free. They do have a valid point in that some ethnic groups around the world have really benefited from and been lifted as a result of cultural tourism. Anyhow, one possible idea is that improving their economic level (one way or another) may also help in terms of protecting their heritage and culture. 

Emre 

Dr. E 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517708001404

Article Ethnic tourism: A framework and an application. Tourism Mana...

Sribas, Hanno et al., I quite agree with your take , but this does not only affect 'minority' groups at all.

All major languages along with their underlying cultures have also become significantly lessened by globalization. French, German, and first and foremost English, have all become lowest-common denominator shadows of their former selves. Maybe out of all this churn a new and hopefully richer global culture will emerge ..... 

@H Chris,

You are right, we all are concerned. But I´m not sure that globalisation per se has diminished the quality and deepness of languages. The main reason will be the total disinterest and missing necessity in refined talking in our daily bussiness routine.

Sorry to disappoint but Australian aborigines are very much an underclass, much to our shame. Aborigines in Australia do not enjoy the health, education, nor life span, 17 years below, of most Australians.

Australian aborigine culture was almost wiped out through systematic government practices of 'assimilation.' Aborigines are still not acknowledged in the constitution.

Even as the tacit attack on cultures is quite difficult to stop, groups, societies and nations can take steps towards stopping the resultant attack on  own language and culture. Of course, it is a bit difficult in the era of freedom of liberty which the younger generation may not like to compromise on.  Making the own language to be read compulsorily by one and all till a fairly higher education level, celebration of national values, using stories upholding the national culture, etc. can be used as some tools. 

One of the fundamental bedrocks of human rights is the principle that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. All human beings have “the right of racial and ethnic groups to enjoy their own culture, practice their own religion and use their own language. This right appears in a several international human rights treaties and is an acknowledgement that racial and ethnic groups are free to act in accordance with their cultural heritage”.

For more information you look at the link here-under.

http://www.hrea.org/index.php?base_id=142

A considerable portion of India lives in its Tribes. These tribes are the living example of how life was in the earlier days. These show what were the difficulties man had to face before the advent of machine and technology. There is different perspective in these tribes and tribal villages, some of them are on the verge of extinction, still there are other tribal communities in India that fiercely protect their identity and culture.

http://www.famous-india.com/tribes/gond.html

Dear Hanno,

What is commercial justice?

Dear Hanno,

Dear All,

You are certainly right stressing the mother tongues as the most important opportunity in maintaining minorities. Unfortunately, in East-European countries it occurred often that Hungarian people even women were beaten because they dared to talk in their mother tongue. Certainly, the local police of the dominant nation did but practically ridicule measures. This also shows the state of human rights!

By indigenous peoples taking on more leadership roles, the greater their voices will be hurt and legacy in some ways greater.  I take the climate change movement leadership for example in this interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/23/vandana_shiva_winona_laduke_desmond_dsa

& this one:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/9/23/part_2_leading_environmentalists_decry_inaction

Globalization is a new fashion of colonization.  Besides economic and political colonization, cultural colonization is worse. It doesn´t take the primary matter away from the original people, it doesn´t take the political rights away. it destroys the identity. However, the ecological clash will stop it. But for a lot of minorities it will be to late 

Dear András,

the meaning of "commercial justice" is same wages for the same work, fees independant from ethnicity, right to profit from the natural resources of the owned country or landscape etc.

Dear Guido,

I agree with you: Cultural colonization is the worst. Rootless people without cultural backgrounds cannot survive but as clones of the dominant or mainstream direction. You seem to be quite pessimistic. The ecological clash will destroy even the mainstream power.

Dear Hanno,

Thanks for your answer. I feel each of us can prefer the commercial justice!

Dear András,

very matching but horrifying picture your  "clones of the dominant or mainstream direction".

Folklorists are taught--at least I was taught--the most stable aspect of any tradition is its ability to change.  If that were not so, we'd still be sacrificing animals on a Temple alter, as "service" to God.  Conquered and dispersed to a foreign land with no Temple, for example, ancient Temple musicians wept on the shores of Babylon (or so the psalm says) wondering how to sing songs to the national God of their own real estate, while in foreign land.  

They answered their own question: they modified their traditions to the needs of changing times, changing places and changing generations.  In Babylon, they substituted prayer for sacrifice, which may be why today's synagogue and church-goers are still said to gather for "services."  The point being, remarkable as it seems, Jews are still around, and cultural change--as inevitable as changing times, places, and the different needs of successive generations--should not automatically be interpreted as acculturation.

On the other hand, I have seen greed, and the power of agenda-driven research used to resurrect the specter of racism and terrorize the vulnerable in New Mexico; I have seen it overtake history, culture, and memory to erroneously redefine the ethnicity of a threatened population in no position to question, let alone refute, the authority of State (in the form of a State Historian), Church (in the form of a highly visible priest) and Academy (in the form of agenda-driven academic "discoveries" more valued than accuracy), all celebrated for more than 30 years by the media, in particular the TV news; the most powerful provider of information in our own or any other time.  

All peoples marshal symbols--generate, modify and maintain them--to create and hold cultural boundaries, and these traditions have great tenacity.  But I think it may be the immediate reality of where the people stand as stake-holders in their own future that will determine what they relinquish, and what they retain, at any point in time.

Judith Neulander

dear Hanno, thank you for your defence of minority's language. But it is amazing to realize that actual official national languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, were minority languages 150 years agoo.

Mohammed's question is important.  However, in the end we will need to think through what aspects of culture someone finds or believes to be important or essential to the culture--or to the world.  In short, what is essential?

As Judith notes, factors of change, resilience, adaptation and/or appropriation of culture are facets that need to be considered in this discussion.  

Language, in turn, plays the most important role in cultural change, adaptation, resilience and appropriation in and among cultures.  

Finally, globalization need not mean the death knell for a culture.

Dear all,

the more globalisation is experienced, the more important will be the individual features not to get totally uniformed. And one of the most important characteristics is the language, because it contains philosophy and ideology.

the term "ethnic minority" refers to persons belonging to those ethnic communities which do not make up the majority of the population in any state and also do not form their own nation state anywhere, such as the Raetoromanians in the Alps, the Celts or the Gaelic-speakers in North-western Europe, the Frisians at the North Sea, the Catalans in South-western Europe and a major number of peoples in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. Such smaller communities in official texts are sometimes referred to as "groups speaking lesser used languages" to downplay their self-perception as smaller peoples.

http://sznt.sic.hu/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=18%3Acikkek-tanulmanyok&id=194%3Alegal-instruments-of-minority-protection-in-europe-an-overview&Itemid=24&lang=en

What Ida says is true in many instances, but in the case of Israeli (modern Hebrew) culture and history there was much imposed from outside by intellectuals & later immigrants.

 Likewise, even though the Irish language (formerly spoken by a minority and known as Gaelic) is required of all students in Ireland today, it requires a set of leaders of national order to force it upon the masses--whether they desire to learn it or not.  

In short, power groups determine what the majority of a culture finds in practice or finds to be acceptable.  This can become internalized-- or as Ida says "intrinsic" but how it came to be that way may be from the top-down rather than bottom-up, which is often an implied wish of many.

I am raising the concern here again as to who determines essential and who defines what is "intrinsic".

Here is another article on the topic of our times.

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/minority_languages.pdf

Organize a radio station going to preserve the language. It has been tried in Ireland with success. This can turn into a TV channel like in Wales / Canada, etc

Such approach, as suggested by @Michael is very good. Such practice exist in Serbia, radio in minority languages, many of them. Full report about minorities in Serbia is given!

https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/minlang/Report/PeriodicalReports/SerbiaPR2_en.pdf

http://voiceofserbia.org/content/gojkovic-and-kukan-important-preservation-maternal-language

Obviously, the destruction of local and innocent traditions is serious consequence of globalization. 

In this regard the EU wants to prevent home brandy distilling and production of cured meat which is the tradition of small households in Serbia.

Globalization will always go along with impacts that are good or bad for a situation. I think the identity of the majority or minority groups equally has the potential of shifting cultural values due to globalization, therefore to respect the inherent identity of each community group (especially minority groups Which is very vulnerable) the concept of decentralization will support the realization of public policy construction at the local level. Thus local wisdom in each region can be preserved as a civilization that must be protected by local government.

We tend to think of minority cultures as traditional, never innovative, and conversely, we tend to think of hegemonic cultures as innovative, never traditional.  Therein we see a conflict.  Moreover, we imagine tradition to be something static and unchanging unless threatened or undone by hegemonic forces (e.g., globalization, among others).  

From a folkloristic point of view there can indeed be conflict, and if those who wield hegemonic power stand to benefit, history has consistently proven that they have no bigger fish to fry than to re-define minority populations in their own hegemonic best interest, and/or oppress their traditions, to the point of their extinction.  But . . .

Hegemonic cultures and minority cultures all have traditions, and  the most stable aspect of any tradition is probably its ability to change, the better to accommodate changing times, places and generations.  If this were not true, we would all still be doing service to our gods by sacrificing animals (and/or people), instead of participating in worship services through prayer.  

In western civilization, this didn't happen until the Jews were expelled into Babylonia in 587 BCE, where they were held as oppressed captives without a Temple--a deliberate effort to terminate their traditions--including doing service to their Lord by seasonal sacrifice. Unable to do that anymore, they began meeting on hilltops, the better to reach the ears of their God, in groups the Greeks would call "synagogos," or congregations.  In this way, they substituted prayer for sacrifice, and changed the nature of worship service in western religion, forever.  Only if their tradition had been too rigid for change, would Judaism have come to an end.

On the other hand, as Mary Louise Pratt writes, there can be times of such urgency that colonized, or oppressed subjects will engage with the colonizer's own terms; hardly an unusual circumstance, but rather "a widespread phenomenon . . . important in unravelling imperial subjugation and resistance as seen from the site of their occurence" (1992: 7,9).  It happens.  But this isn't the same as abandoning the time-consuming, back-breaking butter churn for a quick stick of butter from the supermarket.

Deliberate attempts to manipulate or otherwise terminate a peoples' heritage--even or perhaps especially when it forces them to engage in the destructive process themselves (typified in modernity by powerful academic attempts to distort local Hispanic tradition into a demonstrably unfounded "crypto-Jewish" survival in New Mexico), should be identified and called out by those qualified and empowered to do so.  As we may anticipate in every case, however, there will be something to gain by all who create and subscribe to the destruction, and the consequences of speaking truth to hegemonic power (or to communal ignorance for that matter), can be hurtful to anyone who tries. 

To explore these dynamics, I suggest reading:

Mary Louise Pratt. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge.

James C. Scott. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press.

Judith S. Neulander. 2016. "Conjuring Crypto-Jews in New Mexico: violating ethnic, scholarly and ethical boundaries" in Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern Judaism, eds. Maria Diemling and Larry Ray. Routledge (pp. 208-225).

Hopefully, this will contribute to better understanding.

None of us have just one identity. The concept of intersectionality highlights how multiple, overlapping identities and identity markers—such as race, class, age, gender, sexuality, and religion—contribute to how marginalized groups experience discrimination...

Identity is like a tapestry: if you remove one thread, you challenge the integrity of the whole. It’s easy to compartmentalize identity markers such as ‘woman’ and ‘black’, and to prioritize one to tell the narrative of a person, a community, a country, or a region. It’s also easy to exclude a person or community by focusing on just one marker. The power of intersectionality is the acknowledgement that identity markers do not exist independently of one another, but rather they shape and inform each other. We are each complex individuals with multiple layers of identity. That is why, to be truly inclusive in designing best-in-class business policies, practices, and processes, we need to consider not only a broad spectrum of identities, but also how they interlock...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/07/15/guest-post-intersectionality-considering-identity-when-working-towards-a-more-diverse-equitable-and-inclusive-future/?informz=1

Mohamed Benmerikhi Ph.D I do agree with other contributors that language maintenance is one of the most essential components in preserving one's culture so that it could be passed on to future generations. When one talks about language as an emblem of a certain culture, it becomes crystal clear that language and culture go hand-in-hand with each other. Therefore, both verbal and non-verbal communication patterns are intertwined in cultural mores and traditions. Culture can be thus maintained and preserved by means of native language even if it is only spoken within a community (excluding access to written one). One example is Greek Romaeika in Ukraine. Whilst most ethnic Greeks have spoken Greek as their mother tongue for the past 225 years (in Ukraine/Donbass), this minority group did not have access to written language. Despite this fact, the language and its traditions, cultural norms have been passed on for generations.