ABSTRACT
Culture is obvious in some ways, invisible in others. Ideas, words, visual images, values, beliefs, art, architecture, music, literature, customs, rituals—all the things included by the term—are around people and within them in every moment of life. But at the same time, people seem to have a difficult time seeing culture, particularly their own, and comprehending what a great force it is in human existence. Global culture is best understood as a situation, an environment within which world finds itself at the beginning of twenty first century. Anybody who wants to can adopt any of the art forms or rituals or clothing styles that exist or ever existed in the past. And not only can they adopt them in their pure form, but they can combine them with pieces of other cultures, reinvent them in many ways. Like many other aspects of globalization, the binge of cultural borrowing, plagiarizing, mixing, and matching represents both something old and something new.
