I like to use the "seat at the table" metaphor. It's been a rectangular table. As diversity and inclusion join, the table should become oval as it progresses towards round. As for a seat at the table? If there's diversity and inclusion some take a chair, some stand, other might sit on the floor. That is, everyone gets a place at the table, but seat isn't forced upon them.
On the other hand, with assimilation nothing really changes. The rectangular table just gets longer and longer, and adds more seats.
All in all, assimilation is the means to the ends of monoculture.
To riff off your analogy: the table will remain rectangular and will grow in length for a simple reason: round tables suck. They're good as a metaphor, but are inconvenient and a waste of space in reality. As reflected by their relative rarity.
To riff on your riff. There the Groucho Marx’s quote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” While perhaps he meant it differently, we have people/groups lining up to get a seat at a rectangular table with a history of: bigotry, genocide, misogyny, prejudice, war, greed, cronyism, materialistic, etc, etc, etc.
The new members are so proud of themselves for getting a seat at that table, conveniently ignoring all the unnecessary death, suffering, injustice, etc deeply notched into that table.
That's not diversity.
That's not inclusion.
That's assimilation.
To think otherwise is naive.
I don’t think this kind of metric is useful for most people though. You can go anywhere in the world and for example the highest rated TripAdvisor lunch place is likely to have eggs benedict (with a sprinkle of local spices!), and most people find that a feature not a bug.
Some people are disagreeing because there's "more" choice now because all the differences are non-localized.
Walmart and then Amazon squeezed out local anything stores. I think it's five large media conglomerates squeezed out any local broadcast station with actual local content other than weather and sports. Etc.
And what we have for diversity is largely non-local and often living inside huge corporate walled gardens - look at all the content I can get on YouTube while they decide it's ok to do that, so better not get a "strike!"
This is still an increase in homogeneity. Not to mention a ridiculous consolidation of authoritarian power.
Truck stops, ubiquitous on the interstates, always have the same stuff, usually a Subway or similar fast-food chain, food and beverages on the aisles just like any city. Some but not much regional variation, usually manifest by something like the variety of Doritos flavors available. Inside the only way you can tell where you are is to look for the always-present postcard and souvenir racks.
Yes. I could see and experience it myself.
> In past there was much less options what to consume, do, read, watch.
We all have the same diverse options. "Same" being the key point here. Sure, now we have avocados, bananas, strawberries, etc to choose from. But so does everyone else around the world. The all have the same options. The options may be superficially diverse, but they are similarly diverse around the world. Monoculture and homogeneity doesn't exclude diversity options, it just means the diversity of options are the same everywhere.
Yeah, that isn't really happening. The era of the US exporting food preferences was short lived, mostly at the 90's.
> Living in the same cities with the same stores?
And well, stores are dying, so that's off too.
Everyone is in a different bubble inside the same social media; clothes haven't actually homogenized any more in centuries (I'm not sure if there's room for it); and yes, the internet runs on English and the shows/movies one is spot on.
Overall, 20th and 21th century globalization has been a huge force for enabling local diversity at the expense of global one, but you seem to widely overestimate it.
That one famous all over the world for insisting on having exclusively the same stores you find everywhere so that tourists would feel safe?
When you got to the Mc Donald's, did it only have the same kind of food you can find on the US too?
If you insist on staying inside the tourist sandbox, you will only see the tourist attractions.
I've traveled a bit since the 90s ended and I can say your statement is simply false. The proliferation of mcdonald's, burger king, starbucks, dunkin donuts has grown exponentially since the 90s. These companies' financial statements backs this up.
> And well, stores are dying, so that's off too.
Local stores are dying and being replaced by multinationals.
> clothes haven't actually homogenized any more in centuries (I'm not sure if there's room for it)
Here is just an image of an ASEAN meeting ( south east asian leaders meeting ).
https://media.philstar.com/images/articles/duts-asean-leader...
Looks very "globally" homogenized to me. Not local, nor diverse.
> Overall, 20th and 21th century globalization has been a huge force for enabling local diversity at the expense of global one
Just like the growth of amazon led to the diversity of local bookstores? A pillar of globalization is scale/size and its derivative efficiency. Globalization, by definition, cannot lead to local diversity. It destroys local diversity in the name of scale, size and efficiency.
And I couldn't be more happy about it, as McD and KFC are two isles of stability and sanity amongst the sea of culinary randomness. No matter where I am, if the local inventions don't sit well with me, I know the nearest global fast food franchise provides me with a line of retreat, a safe baseline.
For instance, the McAloo Tikki Burger in India, and the McSpicy Paneer I hear good things about. Perhaps I'll try them next time, though I tend to prefer real Indian food when I'm there.
And "These companies' financial statements backs this up." is just confusing large total numbers with market share. Those are two completely different things.
> Local stores are dying and being replaced by multinationals.
You mean grocery stores? Those died a while ago. Retail stores are being replaced by e-commerce.
> Just like the growth of amazon led to the diversity of local bookstores?
No. Just like the growth of Amazon led to the diversity of books, from whatever locality.
Before Coca-Cola entered India, tea and coffee were the predominant beverages. However, Coca-Cola's aggressive marketing strategies aimed at the younger demographic positioned their carbonated drinks as trendy and fashionable to shift cultural norms away from traditional Indian drinks.
De Beers, a multinational diamond corporation, is credited with the creation of the diamond engagement ring tradition in Japan. Prior to the 1960s, the concept of diamond engagement rings was virtually unknown in Japanese culture. However, De Beers launched a powerful marketing campaign that successfully associated diamonds with Western ideas of romance and status, thus changing the cultural norm.
Global Corporations are trying to achieve economies of scale. So they benefit from global cultural homogenization, you can see that with many Japanese Gaming Companies likes Capcom promising to include western ESG principles in their games.
The only real backlash in recent history that's been effective has been the Bud Lite fiasco.
That is limited to the US, in Europe even Duff is more known.
People shop at the same Walmarts because Walmart drove the other retailers out. People shop at Amazon for whatever. Coca-Cola has influenced our view of Christmas with its imagery, and post-WWII influenced the perception of America and its culture overseas.