The Impact of Globalization: Changing of Place Identity upon Chinese and Indonesian Adolescent

Abstract

Globalization, caused by the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), is becoming an inevitable trend in the present world. Globalization offers clear opportunities and benefits for the world economies but comes with substantial social costs that often appear to affect people, especially the youth. The world’s researchers have paid most of their attention to adolescents, the special group of youth whose transition from being children to adulthood, has been most affected by the globalization period. The aim of this study is to study the future impacts of globalization towards perspectives in place identity, specifically, the hometown identity of mountain areas of adolescent students. In this perspective, adolescent students, of grade 9, in China and Indonesia form the basis for this research. This study uses primary data which was collected in Mount Jizu, China, and Mount Merapi in Indonesia. The research results indicated that the respondents from Mount Jizu were more willing to live in big cities and that traditional music styles are neither popular nor attractive anymore, among the respondents. Among the participating adolescents, place identity concerning Mount Jizu is weak when compared with the adolescents from Mount Merapi. Sustainable development in the mountain areas needs contributions from the locals. However, the loss of place identity might act against this participation.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p494