Global issue: Culture study
Cultural Portrait of a New York City street
Culture is one of the things that keep own changing, especially with the introduction and growth of globalization. The world has now been reduced to a global village where with the introduction of Internet, people interact simply across several distances with ease. Culture can be viewed from different points each giving a varied view of the place and its occupants. The variations of items and objects range from infrastructure, land, and people, to type of language found in a place. Nevertheless, this paper will focus on a location of the east side Main Street 41st Avenue and 41st Road, which is positioned in Flushing New York (Bauman, 2000).
Currently, Flushing is referred to as a tiny Chinese town within Queens County. Most Chinese migrate here from and consider it their first stop over in America. Mainly, Flushing Main Street is the common area for the most usual activities. Just as Appadurai stated in his essay, this street, as well is of structured migration. Furthermore, the paper will also discuss on the ethnoscapes, the generic culture that the store depicts, and the store façade, and the outline of the stores will be a proof of the changes taking place. The modifications are being facilitated by migration as well as the social functions due to newcomers and fresh immigrants setting up their own associations (Appadurai, 2001).
The immigrants alter what were initial strategy, and the alterations to the social interactions and for the migrants to be marked from others, they create the alterations to what already is in existence to new things. This may be considered new skills developed by the newcomers. Which skill and strategy as what Hunt have indicated in his writing? As for the skill, which have been developed, the mixed stores besides the overcrowded framework of the stores, there is also a number of storefront, which only change to Chinese, and that is the only proof indicating the modifications of the initial indicated strategies. Although the migrants are mainly Chinese, the culture still contain marginally small difference, it is the blend of varied Chinese cultures (Bauman, 2000).
The Main Street 41st Avenue and 41st Road is well located and linked to the Main Street. The buildings around this place has a number of items and the way it has been arranged indicates different characteristics of individuals working and living within this place. The external view indicates a lot of Chinese ware and activities. It implies that the area is mostly occupied by the Chinese. Walking down along this street, one will be amazed by the number of Chinese and their activities. It appears that people working have one common thing, as most of them are seen selling fruits at front shop. This also means that the Chinese value fruits so much in their culture, therefore, the shopkeepers have capitalized on this culture and seize the niche market (Bauman, 2000).
The street has variety of stores ranging from a bank, coffee shop, bakery, pharmacy, make-up store, advanced photo or copy and fax shop, nail and hair salon, driving school, supermarket, restaurant, western union, travel incorporation, to an insurance incorporation. The accessibility of all these shops implies that the street is a one-stop-shop where everyone can get all they want under one roof. This also show some togetherness of the Chinese people, where they need to service their people within a given area and reduces their chances of being confused by other related American shops, which may be tempted to sale the goods and services at a higher price. The accumulation of different shops within a given location also show some kind of Chinese culture that they prefer purchasing all their requirements within a single location, unlike other communities who may prefer traversing the town in search of different items (Appadurai, 2001).
The buildings in this street area are not tall. In fact, the biggest building is just a hardly ten-storey block. Most of them range between two to four storeys. This building design might be because of the area location restriction by the government. Some government regulations usually restrict a region from exceeding a given number of floors due to some geographical effects or other measures within a region. All buildings within this street are all labeled in Chinese writings. This further, is a proof than not ordinary citizens can purchase goods or services within the region. Chinese are known to be highly selective and even their foods are so different from how the other citizens prepare and eat them. it was, therefore, not by chance that they gather themselves within this street but because of choice (Blauvelt, 2004).
The unbending uncertainty of the idea of culture is dishonorable. Much less, thus is the con concept that this uncertainty pursues not so vast from the manner in which individuals state culture, as from the mismatch of several lines of the mind that have emerge alongside historically within the equivalent term. Professionals are often advanced enough to understand that equivalence of terms is a poor lead when personality of diversity of an idea is to be determined. Still methodological self-realization is one thing; the mystic of words is the other (Kwame, 2006).
This side of the street has a number of stuffs in relation to the opposite side. In essence, it is a huge contrast from the street across that the whole block almost the size of the enclosed by Main Street 41st Avenue and 41st is occupied by a big Queens Library Flushing Branch. Despite the fact the shapes of these blocks are not the same, the one the western part seem to be less occupied with fewer activities. For instance, individuals on the street are having a number of stuffs that indicate that they are just done shopping their routine food alongside other items (Blauvelt, 2004).
However, look keenly on the street, it is established that the Chinese are not the only ones shopping at the supermarket, in fact, there are a number of other non-Chinese as well as non-Asian individuals doing their shopping at the street. Usually, the region between the sheer ordinariness of each day and the dreadful of foreign lands makes people live with such behaviors. They coexist on disproportionate scale (Bauman, 2000). The Starbucks Coffee shop, the American Bank, supermarket, money gram, and Cantonese Style Restaurant, even if we can recoil to agree it, these landmarks are the routine for a number of people living within the street. They are jointly equivalent and adjacent to one another. Their approach sourced from the lowest-basic-denominator organization (Kwame, 2006). The numerous Chinese writings on the billboards, walls are strange, too polymorphous syllables place precariously, and parched into our unconscious by roof signs, grainy advertisements with sticky jingles. These might not signify the apotheosis of Western civilization, but are by their numbering ubiquity – the essence of our client community (Blauvelt, 2004).
The basic and the extraordinary intersect to create the matrix out of which the activities of model develop the built environment. The street design, unlike art, fixes itself within the basics that engage the model with individuals’ senses. Usually, the objects we see the things we use, as well as the places we occupy are enclosed by the fingerprints of product, model, and architectural modelers. Whereas these items do not encompass the universe, but they establish largely vast batches of it. The street’s environment is physical infrastructure, which allows actions, activity, schedules, and habits alongside rituals. To induced scholar Michael Foucault, this is model ad as punitive activity (Kwame, 2006).
In contrast, nevertheless, is that whereas the model usually equips this item aid of our daily lives and culture, modelers are unable of creating the daily community practices. Different forms of designs are visible in this selected street but as much as the designers work on a given skill or culture, new members to the street come with others from their place of origin. This leads to a mixtures designs, culture, and practices all existing in this tiny block (Appadurai, 2001).
Moving to the two restaurants present within this location, we realize that the two serves varied types of food. For example, the one referred to as Dong Hai Tang Bakery is a restaurant specializing in fast food operating on the second floor of the building. It serves hot to moderate Chinese and Taiwanese version food in a surely fast speed (Eagleton, 2000). On the other hand, Long Teng Shi Fang is an upcoming restaurant, which serves mainly Cantonese style food, and it take more time in relation to the other to cook and to serve since every item ordered is prepared in fresh by the chief. Both restaurants have taken-away alternatives that one may order and carry them home, but they not added the home delivery services (Bauman, 2000).
The people living and working here are all entrepreneurs who have set up various other businesses within the street location. For instance, there are those who specializes in pharmaceuticals and the Main Street 41st Avenue and 41st has five pharmacy stores of which all deals with eastern and western medicine. This implies that culturally the occupants of this town prefer such medications for their illness and supplies have identified that and supply such drugs only. The presence of many pharmacies within this small block is a clear indication that the people around this place most uses drugs a culture that is mostly likely to have been introduced by the new Chinese arriving at the city. However, all the stores within this point have varied designed licenses so to control the movement of drugs and other consumable items and prevent entrepreneurs from over flocking one form of business and neglecting others that are equally profitable (Blauvelt, 2004).
These businesses also vary in size and management. For instance, a building within the street that has a minimum of eight-varied incorporation. The supermarket and the bakery is opened very early in the morning to serve the people preparing their breakfast and early buyers who have other day’s roles and prefer to finish their shopping before embarking on other duties. These two shops also open early in the morning so that individuals on their way to work can grab some freshly prepared bread with hit drink from the bakery (Kwame, 2006).
In addition, individuals who operate at the supermarket place a number of fresh fruits outside for the clients pick them. these shops are the significant to the economic growth of the street as it provide essential resources to the individuals and community at large. It ensures equitable supply of resources within reach. This saves on time, distance travelled, accessibility of services for the desire of resources through extended area, cultural functions, among socially and spatially different teams. However, the cultural pressures appears usually to drift away from the development of large-scale penetrations, regardless of if the markets were developed for commercial, religious, or political toward short-term addition of intimacy and concern (Eagleton, 2000).
Sometime in history, the state of cultural formation in relation to trading activities had changed. Partially due to the spirit of the extension of Western culture, while on the other hand, because of autonomous growth of vast and vibrant social developments within the American soils. International migration and globalization has even hastened the alteration of cultures especially those found in towns or urban centers. An overlapping determination of penetration starts to emerge, by which congeries of commerce, money, invasion, and migration started to develop lasting cross-societal links. This step was powered by the technology transfers, inventions of the late eighteen and nineteen centuries that generated intricate colonial orders focused on European capitals and banquet across the non-European country (Bauman, 2000).
The demographic of the street set an average age of between 30 and 40. This is approximated by the way individuals behave and interact with one another. There are no children within the street implying that most of migrants traveled to move to the place either in search of jobs or business function hence, could not travelled with their families. Among all the Chinese stores, there is an outstanding Amerasia bank just adjacent to the Starbucks coffee (Bauman, 2000).
In addition to these, there are also other non-Chinese outlets and stalls camouflaged by the conspicuous Chinese shops. This indicates the mixed of different cultures and a cosmopolitan street. This mixed culture is a clear indication of the rural-urban migration. Currently, people are moving to towns because eras of effective and prosperous farming has elapse, in fact staying in rural areas one may not be able to feed and clothe their families. Thus cosmopolitan work and think human diversity issues since individuals have the alternatives they require to design their lives in association with others.
Scholar theorized that when we need to conserve an extended variety of human situations since it enables free individual the best opportunities to develop their own lives, there is no region for the infliction of variety through enclosing individuals in a form of variance they desire to escape. In such a town (street), there is no appropriate approach to sustain those individuals of variance, which will not live in the absence of free adherence of their partners. People, usually migrate to different areas to seek better lives. They prepare well and when in foreign place people always try to meet new friends but before then, one needs to be within a region where their language is at least spoken. Attempting to create larger communities may affect just some few individual lives. All these activities have taken place at Main Street 41st Avenue and 41st, but looking on the opposite of this street there stands a Flushing Queens Library, where most of the individuals are found seated on the hangouts and stares. This seems like a relaxing place for those who have nothing to do but individuals of different ages are moving in and out from the library (Kwame, 2006).
Since most of the cosmopolitan society have to struggle on their own and ensure they at least earn something for the day, people work and do business in any strategic point. For example, usually some activities outside the library, which include collecting of money to aid the less privilege, selling books and fast food for those who have been studied for long hours in the library. Along the main street, there is often large trucks backed on the side of the street, and some people occasionally come to unload or load some packages into these trucks (Kwame, 2006).
On the other hand, various types of promotions are taking place along the street; the individuals are handing out flyers throughout the street, a number of persons just took it and without reading to know what they were meant for, they threw them away. Nevertheless, some individuals requested for the flyers and demanded to be explained to them since they were interested in them. the promoters might have selected this point to issues their flyers because the street is one of the most congested, with thousands of people moving about in the street. It was even hard to identify or guess what type of economic activities some of them do. The main street is well spaced and accommodate several cars at the same time. in fact, there are also parking areas where customers can park their cars as they carry out their window-shopping or real shopping (Appadurai, 2001).
Generally, the integration of workers within and around the street are mainly, Cantonese, Chinese, Taiwanese, who have leant at least two or more languages, while the natives have been forced to derive approaches on how they can relate with the growing number of foreigners within the town. Since not all individuals in Flushing understand English, they are required to learn an additional language to communicate with these people. This is also to ensure they could be served better alongside assistance of other minor things. Apart from the street’s beehive of activities, nothing has been done about its cleanliness. The street appears somewhat dirty and a time there is no trashcan dumping trash leaving people to throw stuff carelessly along the street. This is the only negative aspect about the street as all other things are well organized (Eagleton, 2000).
References:
Appadurai, A. (2001). Modernity at large: Cultural dimension of globalization. Public works
vol. 1. London : University of Minnesota Press.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Culturaes concept. New York, NY: SAGE Publishers.
Blauvelt, A. (2004). Strangely familiar design and everyday life. Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Walker art center.
Eagleton, T. (2000). Version of culture. USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Kwame, A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New york, NY: W.W.
Norton Company press.
