Modernity In Bhutan

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Modernity and its Impacts on Traditions and Culture Ever since planned development started in 1961, Bhutan has rapidly modernized providing people with basic needs and luxurious lifestyles. Globalization has enhanced the availability of goods from one part of the world to isolated countries like Bhutan encouraging consumerism. With Bhutan’s modernization and access to technological development, many traditional values and customs are being lost. This paper describes some reasons for loss of traditional values and culture in Bhutanese society. It discusses the impacts on traditions and customs through the transformation of family, technology, drug addiction and modern education. Changes in society impact on peoples values. For instance, people have gradually forsaken the practice of living in a traditional joint family and extended family system but live in nuclear families. Bhutanese families earlier subsisted on agriculture in rural areas. Manual work in the farmlands required division of labour with effective participation from all family members. This increased …show more content…

One of the main differences between traditional and modern values is the way people live due to changes triggered by technology leading to individualism. Cline (2011) mentions that science and technology changed the daily lives of people. Media is mostly used as a source of entertainment and promotes new ideas suggesting modernity of the urban kind (MOIC, 2013). The use of TV, internet and social media have diverted family members to the usage of these sources indiscriminately sacrificing quality time together. Younger generations spend more time on TV so the practice of oral transmission of folklore and mythology is disappearing even in rural areas rather than listening to stories from elders (Cline, 2011). Consequently, the tradition of oral transmission of values through tales and folklores has diminished

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