Editing Cultural Clusters

A group of countries which share the same culture, values and beliefs. Over the years, a lot of research has been conducted to identify “cluster societies” sharing intercultural similarities. Based on results collected by GLOBE in 2002, there are 10 a priori cultural clusters in the world today namely: South Asia, Anglo, Arab, Confucian Asia, Germanic Europe, Latin Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Nordic Europe.  Three factors are normally used to group countries in similar clusters: 1) geographic proximity 2) mass migrations and ethnic social capital 3) religious and linguistic commonality. Other factors that may be considered include socio- political development, economic development, and degree of modernity. Cultural Convergence:  Refers to the growing cultural unity in today’s world, or the idea that differences between national cultures become smaller over time and a single global culture is established. One could argue that cultural convergence is closely related to ‘Americanization’, since the US has had and continues to have a strong influence on the culture of other countries. We all watch the same movies, listen to the same songs, read the same books, and English remains the language of global business. In this sense, cultural convergence refers to the intermixing of local/ national and international cultures, and how our own culture is influenced by the changing trends of globalization.