Redner, a wide ranging Australian academic who spend most of his career at Monash University, considers the loss of traditional and local cultures under the juggernaut of global consumerism to be as devastating to humans as the loss of biological diversity is to the environment. He examines what global culture is, why it is so successful, and it differs from all other cultures, and what alternatives there are to it. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
In our technological civilization, the forces of globalization are a threat to both nature and culture. The many and varied cultures of the world are beset by the homogenizing impact of the global media, which represents the triumph of technics. Nature and culture must be protected to preserve a humanly habitable world. Conserving Cultures is the first book to link nature and culture conservation. The threat to nature is now well understood; how it relates to cultures is not. This book both describes and analyzes theoretically the danger to culture and proposes practical remedial measures.
