Abstract
There are numerous reasons for the recent racial and ethnic resurgence in almost all advanced industrialised countries. Amongst these, industrialisation, post-industrialisation, internationalisation and the advance of world-wide information and transportation networks are of significant contributors. Many scholars and researchers in the 1950 s and 1960 s assumed that these changes in societies would promote the homogenisation and convergence of societies and cultures in highly industrialised countries. However, they now tend to emphasise their opposite infulence on cultures, despite the modernisation effect and acculturation process as a result of the development of information technology.
It is true that post-industrialisation and internationalisation have transformed many countries into more culturally-tolerant societies. World-wide networks of information and transportation have brought together diverse cultures and culturally different people. Particularly, the progress of the mass and personal communication and information technology have produced the so-called “long-distance nationalists” within host societies. However, these phenomenon are likely to produce “national-populist” reactions and “new-racism” amongst the society of the advanced countries against other cultures. As a result, we will continue to face racial and ethnic problems well into the 21st century.
