NAN

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.