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  3. When anti-globalization protesters took to the streets of Washington last we

When anti-globalization protesters took to the streets of Washington last we

游客2024-02-01  17
问题     When anti-globalization protesters took to the streets of Washington last weekend, they blamed globalization for everything from hunger to the destruction of home-grown cultures. And globalization meant the United States. The critics call it Coca-Colonization, and French sheep farmer Jose Bove has become a cult(狂热分子)figure since destroying a McDonald’s restaurant in 1999. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, globalization is neither homogenizing(使......同化)nor Americanizing the cultures of the world.
    To understand why not, we have to step back and put the current period in a larger historical perspective. Although they are related, the long-term historical trends of globalization and modernization are not the same. While modernization has produced some common traits, such as large cities, factories and mass communications, local cultures have by no means been erased. The appearance of similar institutions in response to similar problems is not surprising, but it does not lead to homogeneity. In the first half of the 20th century, for example, there were some similarities among the industrial societies of Britain, Germany, America and Japan, but there were even more important differences. When China, India and Brazil complete their current processes of industrialization and modernization, we should not expect them to be exact copies of Japan, Germany or the United States.
    Take the current information revolution as an example. The United States is at the forefront of this great movement of change, so the uniform social and cultural habits produced by television viewing or Internet use, for instance, are often attributed to Americanization. But correlation is not cause. Since the United States does exist and is at the leading edge of the information revolution, there is a degree of Americanization at present, but it is likely to decrease over the course of the 21st century as technology spreads and local cultures modernize in their own ways.
    Historical proof that globalization does not necessarily mean homogenization can be seen in the case of Japan. In the mid-19th century, it became the first Asian country to embrace globalization and to borrow successfully from the world without losing its uniqueness. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan searched broadly for tools and innovations that would allow it to become a major power rather than a victim of Western imperialism. The lesson that Japan has to teach the rest of the world is that even a century and a half of openness to global trends does not necessarily assure destruction of a country’s separate cultural identity. [br] The author’s main purpose in writing this passage is to______.
选项 A、report the progress of some new events
B、criticize extreme and violent actions
C、recall a certain period of American history
D、tell his readers not to be afraid of globalization
答案 D
解析 主旨大意题。一般情况下，议论文的论点在首段或末段，又因为第二段句首To understand why not…是对上文内容的阐述，因此将中心句定位到第一段段末可知，全球化既不能同化世界文化，也不能使世界文化美国化。全文都是在论述这一观点，其目的就是告诉人们不要惧怕全球化，因此D)正确。A)在文中未提及；B)与文意不符，因为作者只在第一段提到反对者的游行，但并没有对其进行批判；C)的内容是在第二段段末提到的例子，是为了说明全球化并不会导致同质。
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