My grandma Selga speaks 7 languages,
moved here as a child as a refugee, married an Australian and still
sings happy birthday in latvian at every single family birthday. So
when I heard about our topic I thought of her straight away. When asked what globalisation meant to her, she told me she
was “too old to profit from it”. She explained to me that her
understanding of globalisation was a worldwide union of countries
working together for the common good. She felt that it was something
where all countries worked together putting their nationalism behind
them and working together for the benefit of everyone. She was a
massive believer in globalisation and thinks that the idea behind
globalisation is great and ultimately that it will end war. I could
tell how passionate she was about it because about 10 minutes after
our phone call she came over with newspaper clippings all about
globalisation that she has saved.
Being a refugee, although my nan
doesn't think that globalisation affects her personally. I think that
she fits into Ranaten's concept of the Ethnoscope: “consists
of persons who are on the move: tourists, immigrants, refugees,
exiles and guest workers” (Rantanen
2005).
As a refugee she learnt a lot of
different languages and for her languages are an integral part of
globalisation. I asked her what she thought about a universal
language and she believed that although it would be helpful in some
situations, ultimately the negatives would outweigh the positives and it would create the
loss of some culture. This was another thing that she discussed as
she told me about the loss of culture in her country of Latvia where
it was occupied by Germans and still to this day a lot of Russians.
She talked to me about the european
union where people can move away from their own countries and work
without visas in other countries. This is a perfect example of
globalisation.
I
found it interesting that she doesn't believe that she has
been affected by globalisation personally, because I believe her culture and
traditions influence my life every day.
References:
Rantanen, T 2005, 'Theorizing media globalization'. The media and globalization, Sage, London, pp. 1-18.
