Young Tibetan Buddhist monks are seen at their school inside Thiksey Monastery in Ladakh, India. Their religion is in exile, a homeland reduced to a place on the map after China conquered Tibet. Many Tibetan families in India send at least one child to a monastery to learn about their own culture, language and religion. Image by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
Sociologists concur on the negative effect of globalisation on the world’s cultural diversity. Information and capital are transcending geographical boundaries with the development of technology and reshaping the relationships between the marketplace, states and citizens. With information being so easily distributed throughout the world, a homogenised ‘look’ or ‘taste’ or ‘value’ is swiftly announced as the benchmark to aspire to, globally. Take the example of increasing cultural preeminence of the United States through the widespread distribution of its products in film, television, music, clothing or its consumer products - say, a burger or a pizza - that is virtually standardised on the planet now. Image by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
For a real multicultural difference, head to the annual Voodoo festival at Ouidah, a small town and former slave port in the West African country of Benin. It commemorates the estimated 60 million people who lost their homelands and their freedom during the African slave trade. The central belief of voodoo is that everything is spirit, including humans. Devotees offer dances to the spirits and animal sacrifices at shrines, use fetishes and enter trance states with an energy and devotion that may unsettle some. The African countries around Benin rank high on any diversity index because of their multitude of tribal groups and languages. Image by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters
