From Culture to Material Aspects

CA reality maintains a characteristic of high mobility in all senses, from a human and material point of view as well as from a cultural point of view: values, communication modes, habits, expectations, cults and religious rituals represent the basic elements of a society, but they also represent the more difficult variables that must be studied, possibly because they assume, by definition, an immaterial dimension. The basic characteristic of the current cultural pattern is characterized by two opposite tendencies, one of opening up (mainly induced by information and communications technology [ICT], international commerce and globalization) and the other is completely the opposite, of politically locking-in, prefiguring a kind of neo-national ideology—but not without its contradictions.