East & West - Globalisation

I was initially interested in the impact globalisation has had on Amman in terms of the presence of western multinational companies and especially those that do not fit into the usual image and appearance of the city and culture. Additionally, I observed whether tourist influences had an impact on the Jordanians and how they confront us. While I was alone in Amman I did not experience much tourist-local interaction, I could blend in somehow due to physical appearance and they were rather slightly confused by me trying to express myself in English. Globalisation not only implies a more connected world but also a levelling out of idiosyncrasies of cities due to the emergence of a shared culture. As noted by Ritzer and Liska (1997), people increasingly look to experience what they experience in they day-to-day life instead of seeking novel and unknown situations. Needless to say, I can just reference to our own environment during the trip and therefore not generalise anything. Nonetheless, in contrast to other big cities I’ve visited Amman seemed different, the city appears to be globalising for the sake of modernity and progress instead of the sake of tourists and attractions. The contrast between East and West Amman illustrates my point; the city is not globalising to comfort incoming tourist but parts of the city, the western part, is globalising in conjunction with a process of secularisation. This is hypothetically of course, it is my idea of how I perceived the city to be evolving, how I experienced the people to be interacting with us, the representatives of western culture. In a future post I will elaborate more on those parts of the country that did globalise for the sake of tourism and developed areas known as tourist bubbles. But for now I finish this post by stating my impression: Amman does not appear to be overly affected by globalisation but seemed to have secularised partly.
LLM

Ritzer, G. and Liska, A. (1997) ‘“MacDisneyization” and “post-tourism”: complementary perspectives on contemporary tourism’, in Rojek, C. and Urry, J. (eds) (1997): 96–112.


McDonald's in Amman