Papers - Conference 2009 - Institute of Latin American Studies

1. Introduction„Globalization Social Club – Westernization 1 as a Status raising Tool in Brazilian Society‟ is anongoing project that was fomented by the urge to see the globalization phenomena throughdifferent perspectives other than the North American and western European viewpoint. It isknown that globalization process assumes unlike shapes under distinct scenarios and that,consequently, people have different ways to experience, see and even make use of such process.In wealthy countries with a strong economy and media production (i.e. United States, UK),people may see in the globalization process a good opportunity to travel abroad as their have agood exchange rate and their language and values are broadly disseminated, while in smallEuropean countries globalization may be seen as a ticket to the „outer world‟. But what is theimportance and use that people from countries under economic and social development give toglobalization? How do people from post-colonial and classist countries such as Brazil interactwith nowadays world order?Within this article, at first, I propose a new interdisciplinary concept that intertwines socialinequality, media exclusion, pop culture and fashion. The “Globalization Social Club(s)”- severalsilently and subconscious associations that sort and select their members through theirwesternization scale - is a social critique that move towards a possible feature on theglobalization process in classists underdevelopment countries, where the members of such1 As is rather questionable which countries can be considered Western in nowadays globalized society, it isimportant to clarify that along this paper we will use the concept in its cultural and socio-economical aspect.Although Brazilian, and Latin America, culture are considered western in several aspects (i.e. geographically, inreligion, colonization, settlers, political orientation), much of such aspects are not purely western (being affectedby Amerindian and African cultures). Therefore, ‘western’ will be used in this essay as ‘being’ purely WesternEuropean and/or North American, for their large influence in nowadays geographical western side of the globe.4