Changing urban culture: A study of the old city in Dhaka

Abstract

The historic root of Dhaka, usually called ‘Old Dhaka’, retains the traditional features it has inherited from a long history of urbanization influenced by various cultural phases. In order to understand the changing urban culture of old city in Dhaka, it is essential to understand the patterns of urban culture in the old city of Dhaka that makes it vibrant and impulsive even at present and the processes and context of its transformation. Therefore, The study tries to figure out how much it retains its traditional socio-cultural life and how much changes occurdue to modernization and globalization and the generational changes with regards to values and ideas within this area of old city of Dhaka. The theories of cultural globalization are explained to analyze the cultural changes in this old city. Also the modernization theories and urbanization theories have been used for analyzing the current situation of urban life in a traditional city. The research method is qualitative with interview and observation in the area of old city in Dhaka and quantitative with field survey. The number of interviews in this research was sixteen and also one hundred and four surveys have been conducted by the researcher during two months of fieldwork in the area of study. The result shows that the culture of old Dhaka is becoming Westernized or McDonaldized and glocalized, or in other word hybrid and the most important elements which has brought changes within the tradition and culture of old city is modernization, cultural globalization and particularly media and the people who are more affected are young generation. The study found that more than 91 percent of younger respondentsvisit Chinese and Western restaurant whereas more than 71 percent of the elderly respondents never visit these restaurants. It has also been found that the older areas of Dhaka city still retain much of its traditional cultural practices and life styles as all of the respondents in this study like to take their traditional old Dhaka’s food. Most of the cultural practices including social and religious rituals and festivals are still celebrated in traditional style. They still maintain strong kinship and neighborhood relationship as well as other social organizations. This study also shows that the ideas and values of elderly and younger generation differ mostly. In the study half of the younger respondents (50 percent) are influencing from watching Indian and Western films and TV programs whereas elderly group still bears traditions and cultures of old city of Dhaka.