Globalization, Human Rights and Cultural Relativism.

Popularly encapsulating the world economic integration process, globalization has also served as a useful analytical tool to understand vital shifts and changes occurring in the political and cultural realms. In its political dimension, the contemporary notion of state sovereignty and the ascendance and global standardization of a universal principle as well as regime of human rights constitute the main strands of political globalization. Along with process of global standardization of markets and consumer items, cultural norms and ideas have the tendency to acquire universal character. Modernization, westernization, inter-nationalization and universalization have complex inter-connectedness. If there is universalization of cultural norms and ideas like human rights then to what extent the specific particular and localized spheres of cultures and ideas survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]