Globalization and the Online Community

This week I found an article that builds on my post from last week about the benefits of online communities, while also tying in the assumptions and context created by globalization - - a topic of discussion for the week’s readings.
In the article, the author, Anne Hewling, argues that the online context for learning is a result of globalization and the movement of people and around the world resulting in crossing cultures. In her literature review, she mentions research that addresses the problem that arose from last week’s post about some cultures not feeling comfortable in online classes:

“Morse concludes that the cultural background of students influences both how they prioritize the benefits they have gained from their online study, and how they view the challenges it posed.” (2006, p. 338)

I like how Hewling responds to this idea in her article by labeling these generalized statements as an “essentialist” approach, and it equates nationality with an exact culture. I feel like Pennycook, in this week’s article “Other Engishes,” might agree with Hewling. Pennycook argues in his paper that assuming that globalization is only driven by American culture and economics is a nationalist response. Both Pennycook and Hewling argue for a new approach to viewing the fusion of cultures that doesn’t result in something destructive.

Hewling further argues that nationality-centered assumptions restrict the view of culture in the online classroom because it assumes that each student brings their own culture as an obstacle to others, not as something that is already there to stimulate cultural education among the students. In response to this view, Helwling proposes the idea of a new “third culture” that is able to emerge from the students as a collective whole…a culture that is unique to just their class. Culture becomes something you create, not some that is inherent.

Similarly, Pennycook argues in his article that global influences throughout history have not necessarily replaced eachother; they have coexisted. While Pennycook doesn’t directly say it, I believe he is speaking the same words as Hewling – just as in an online community culture can be created, so has the culture in the global community.
I think that the processes that Penncook focuses on in his paper to argue his position- - “transgression and resistance, translation and rearticulation, transformation and reconstitution, translocalization and appropriation, transculturation and hybridization” (2007, p.30) can be applied to the online classroom to create the third culture that Hewling argues for in internet distance learning discussions.

Hewling, A. (2006). Culture in the online class: Using message analysis to look beyond nationality-based frames of reference. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11, 337-356.

Pennycook, A. (2007). Chapter 2: Other Englishes. Global Englishes and transcultural flows (pp. 17-35). London: Routledge.