What Anna H. said about globalization and its contribution to the scholarly conversation was interesting to me. Indeed, with globalization, it is easier for scholars of different culture backgrounds to communicate. These are also the people who may speak more than one language, and potentially have access to additional sources of knowledge and conversations from their cultural background. This would broaden the “pool of knowledge”.

I am reminded of content learnt in Anthropology about cultures often carry a wealth of knowledge in their language and traditions. Having developed along separate paths for centuries, different cultures may have become “specialized” in different ways. For example, only after interacting with the Polynesians did Captain James Cook realise their incredible knowledge about sea navigation, which far exceeded the Europeans. Or the medicinal knowledge of many indigenous tribes. Likewise, with globalization, I think that it would be beneficial and time-efficient for scholars from of different cultures to share and combine knowledge. Nevertheless, I think that it is still essential for cultures to continue progressing in their own ways to prevent their individual knowledge development from reaching a plateau.

However, I have some doubts. Since English is currently considered the leading language in academia and most academic articles are published in English, the pool of academic journals scholars search from may still be rather “closed”. Yet, it may be the case that the scholars do contribute knowledge from their different backgrounds, and the use of English is only the means to present and share the knowledge.