The Cognitive Dimension of Global Health

Abstract

While the spatial and temporal dimensions of globalization readily receive attention by scholars and policy makers, how globalization affects the way we think is equally relevant for understanding its consequent health impacts. Indeed, the old adage ‘you are what you eat’ could be prefaced with the phrase ‘you are what you think’ because so much of what we do, including our dietary habits, is shaped by our beliefs, values, cultural attitudes and other thought processes. What we think, and hence what we and others do to affect our health, is being continually shaped by the environment around us. As the nature of this environment becomes increasingly global, so too are the influences on our thought processes. It is this cognitive dimension of globalization that this chapter explores.

Humankind has finally bid farewell to that world which could with some credibility be seen as a cultural mosaic, of separate pieces with hard, well-defined edges. Because of the great increase in the traffic in culture, the large-scale transfer of meaning systems and symbolic forms, the world is increasingly becoming one not only in political and economic terms … but in terms of its cultural construction as well; a global ecumene of persistent cultural interaction and exchange. This, however, is no egalitarian global village.

Ulf Hannerz, “Scenarios for peripheral cultures” (1991)