The cultural imperative: Global trends in the 21st century

The information age, the current phase of globalisation and the influence of the Internet are changing the way we think about cultures and communities and, as language and cultural trainers, potentially about what and how we teach. This paper explores how Western culture and economic power have grown to dominate the world, particularly through international business, international relations and social trends. Using the Lewis Model of three types of culture (linearactive, multi-active, and re-active) the author explains how traditional linear-active cultural dominance is declining in the 21st century and is being replaced by values of the new great powers. The paper identifies four key cultural influencers, China, India, Russia and the West and discusses the role of Japan and Canada in this era of change. The two key cultural values coming to the forefront are Asianisation and feminine values and the author discusses their implications for language teaching and learning and the development of cultural awareness.

continue to increase? Will considerations of gender, growing in importance, outweigh those of national characteristics? Will shifts and alliances among nations occur along civilizational fault lines, as Huntington (1996) prophesied, or will national traits continue to dominate? Did history really end in 1989, as Fukuyama (1992) suggested? Are cross-cultural universals, programmed into us by evolution, in danger of being eliminated by genetic engineering? These are the kinds of questions that educators need to address both in the selection and teaching of languages and the teaching of cultural understanding.

Genetic and economic determinism
When positivism took over the social sciences in American universities in the 1950s, cultural diversity was depicted as a 'soft' subject based on uncertain knowledge, itself culture-bound. It became fashionable in the closed world of academia to seek an explanation of human behaviour in two 'reliable' theories: genetic determinism and economic determinism. On February 12th, 2001, (Darwin's birthday, incidentally) genetic determinism received a deadly blow. Two groups of researchers released the formal report of data for the human genome, revealing that all humans, with all their evident diversity, were found to share 99.9% of their genes. According to this finding, all human beings should be extraordinarily alike, if genetic code determines behaviours. But, of course, we are not alike. A study of economic determinism proved it to be equally irrelevant.

Cultural determinism
This leads us to a third recourse: cultural determinism. Harrison and Huntington (2001) reiterate assertions made by Hall (1959), Hofstede (1980), and myself (Lewis, 2018), namely that culture counts most in economic development sharing cultural values in order to reduce the potential for cultural or regional conflicts.
Education systems transmit and reinforce national culture (Hammerich & Lewis, 2013); history is taught 'thoughtfully', often being 'remodelled' in a concern for the consolidation of commonly shared The merits of globalisation notwithstanding, there is some evidence to suggest that the driving forces guiding human destiny will be limited in number (four, five or six) and will be linked to size (population, land area, wealth of resources or military power). The 21st-century stage will have a cast of Big Actors, with leading or dominating roles. Smaller, stand-alone nations will have lessened influence and be swept along with the major players (in possible alignment). European nations. The West, though seemingly in decline, must not be underestimated. This is because of its belief in linear-active superiority.

The 'dark horses'
No description or assessment of the contours of political, economic or world cultural development in the 21st century would be complete without a mention of two countries alongside the major players of China, India, Russia and the West.
These are Japan and Canada. Japan's influence on world events has been underestimated in the past and her record of economic stagnation over the last 20 years has cast a shadow over her current profile. However, in 2018 she ranked an easy third in world GDP. Her world role in the future is likely to be linked to her manner of alignment.
Will she balance the scales, siding with East or West? Canada is more of a dark-horse. With a land area of 10 million square kilometres, her territory is second only to Russia. While much of this consists of frozen wastes, the rapid warming of the Arctic Ocean in the second half of the century will transform Canadian agriculture and resource exploitation, not least the vast reserves of Arctic oil Training, Language and Culture 11 The cultural imperative: Global trends in the 21st century by Richard D. Lewis fields, which she will share with Russia and Norway. Canada is already tenth in world GDP and with a rapidly-growing population aided by a wise immigration policy is poised to become more active in world affairs. Her easy access to the huge US market is a unique advantage.

Religion as a cultural influence
The four largest religious groups in the world, ranked in order of adherents (2015) suggest that the ratio of the West's contribution to world production will decline indefinitely.
Predictions indicate that the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States and that hungry India will become the world's biggest market (forecast population by 2030 is 1,500 million).
Other burgeoning populations will create demanding markets in Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Mexico and Ethiopia, in that order.

Whither the West?
The demographics cited above are somewhat gloomy seen from a western perspective and Robert Samuelson (1999)

Asianisation
The overwhelming victory of the Allies in 1945 led to main European (and other) nations accepting a  That is to say, Westerners can be influenced by and adopt aspects of Asian lifestyles that will have a lasting effect on their own behaviour.

Feminine values and gender equality
The implication of such a shift in Western thinking

Cultural awareness in teaching materials
This topic demands a much longer and more detailed treatment than is possible here but certain trends are becoming clear.
First of all, is the danger that most international books on the teaching of European languages, especially English, are still far too western-based with an emphasis on 'international language use'.
As well as teaching language, our textbooks can do much more to include African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American subjects of interest in our reading passages, teaching dialogues and tasks. This becomes especially important since globalisation stresses international communication and the development of trust between people of very different backgrounds.
One of the keys to building good international relations is showing interest in the country or cultural background of the person or people you are dealing with. However, our teaching materials still focus on the culture of the country or region whose language we are teaching. Our textbooks need to show how to build relationships with people from other cultures, as well as focusing on the 'transactional' functional aspects of language use. The feeling that the teaching materials relate in some way to the learner's experience and interests is also a tremendous motivation in learning a new language, as was illustrated, for example, by Santaridou and Prodromou (2018).
We are doing better than we used to but we could do a lot more. Writers and editors take note.

Diversity and gender equality
In many countries throughout the world, gender equality and how it is understood is still a mystery.
For over forty years writers of language learning textbooks have been assiduous in avoiding possible accusations of gender bias but we can still do more on diversity management and showing how people can change their lives, the culture of the organisations they work in and even the culture of the communities and cultures of which they are a part. We are not just talking about gender differences. Other diversity areas such as race, religion, disability and sexual orientation are all relevant. We know that materials content and marketing are frequently dependent on the political culture of a community, which has an important role in determining whether a particular course or set of materials can be adopted for use in educational institutions. However, the question remains, in order to understand better the backgrounds and cultures of the people whose languages we are learning, can materials writers and publishers do more to cover these areas?

Feminine values
This paper mentioned the importance of 'feminine values' in understanding global cultures but particularly in 'multi-active' societies. However, there is a difference between feminine values and the feminist agenda, although the two overlap to some extent. In The Cultural Imperative (Lewis, 2007) (Lewis, 2007, p. 194-195 showed, has far more non-native speakers than native speakers (Kachru, 1992). This puts an emphasis on the markets that we are teaching in our materials and teaching activities, including China, India, Russia and the West. It does not nullify the importance of teaching US and British English, but it does suggest that we pay far more attention to the cultural context in which the language is taught.

Is Mandarin the new world language?
There is a strong possibility that China will be the world's leading economy in the next few years.  (Lewis, 2007, p. 193-194 (Lewis, 2007, p. 194). In brief, learn the language by all means, but the culture will come first.

Implications for teacher and trainer training
The UK and the US have pioneered new approaches to the way we teach the English language using the communicative approach and task-based learning as opposed to the traditional grammar and translation approach. This means in English teaching and the teaching of other languages that we have increasingly adopted an interactive classroom based significantly on group and pair work and focused practical usage rather than the traditional teacher-based 'cours magistral' or lecture-based approach, focused on theory and examinations. How will this style of teaching go down with more traditional 'teacher-talk-led' education styles? Evidence suggests that more and more education systems around the world are keen to adopt a more open and group-based approach to language teaching, due both to language policy changes and to teachers attending teacher training courses in the UK, the US and Australia. Patricia Williams-Boyd of East Michigan University showed how teachers in China were eager to adapt their teaching styles to a more interactive method as it dramatically improved students' motivation for language learning. Her work (Williams-Boyd, 2017) shows that student involvement in the learning process is a key motivational factor in successful education.

CONCLUSION
I am of the opinion that gender-liberation issues will be higher on women's agenda than lending continuing support to the supposed destruction of the West, whose way of life embodies the social qualities and advantages they ultimately seek.
However, as this paper argues, it is time for a rebalance. If we accept that the world is changing and that the dominance of the West will increasingly be balanced by the re-emergence of Asianisation and the increasing influence of feminine values (not just gender equality) on international business and culture, we can all work together towards a world not where cultures combine -our cultures are too long established and too rich for that -but where they harmonise to produce a better life for all and perhaps adopt a truly global approach to the greatest 21st century problem of all, our planet's biological culture.

References
Training, Language and Culture 19

'It is important that materials and teaching reflect the importance of feminine values in understanding other cultures'
The cultural imperative: Global trends in the 21st century by Richard D. Lewis