Cultural Imperialism Essay

Abstract

Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another culture promoting and imposing a culture usually that of a politically powerful nation over a less powerful society. The term was first coined by Herbert Schiller in 1976 in his book, ‘Communication and Cultural Dominator'. Cultural imperialism also called cultural colonialism comprises the cultural aspects of imperialism. Cultural Imperialism is the economic, technological, and cultural hegemony of the industrialized nations, which determines the direction of both economic and social progress, defines cultural values, and standardizes the civilization and cultural environment throughout the world. Cultural imperialism is an aspect of the hierarchical nature of imperialism, that is the increasing hegemony of particular central cultures, and the diffusion of American values, consumer goods, and lifestyles. (Friedman,1994:195). Cultural imperialism is the result of globalization. Globalization is primarily an economic progress of interaction and integration that’s associated with social and cultural aspects. It is cultural in that the customs, traditions, religion, language, social and moral norms, and other aspects of the imposing community are distinct from, though often closely related to the economic and political systems that shape the other community. For example, we follow the Western culture, maintain their food habit, wear their dresses, and also observe their cultural tradition. Maintaining economic relationships, we include Western culture in our own culture. As a result, it has created cultural colonialism or imperialism in almost all the country's western cultures.

Key Word

Culture, imperialism, globalization, colonialism, customs, economy, politics, traditions, community, hegemony, Americanization.

What is cultural imperialism?

Cultural imperialism, in anthropology, sociology, and ethics the imposition by one usually politically or economically dominant community of various aspects of its own culture onto another nondominant community. The whole world is becoming a cultural common market in which the same kind of technical product development, the same kind of knowledge, fashion, music, literature, and the same kind of manufacture is bought and sold. In a capitalist society, all countries are interrelated economically to each other. ‘Cultural imperialism is the use of political and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture. (Bullock and Stallybrass, 1977, p.303)

Edward Soja defined `cultural imperialism' as a multifarious cultural oppression used by a dominant culture to suppress and subjugate all manifestations of an oppressed culture: from high culture to folk traditions, from personal to social phenomena, from value systems to consumer preferences, from symbols and rituals to its pop-cultural imitations. It is a culture as a whole that creates imperial feelings and thoughts and engenders an imperial imagination.

The notion of cultural imperialism implies a process of colonialism and imperialism that poses a relationship of unequal power that connotes dominance by the West, thereby making the East appear subordinate. Central to many definitions of the term “cultural imperialism” is the idea of the culture of one powerful civilization, country, or establishment having a great unreciprocated influence on that of another, less powerful, entity to a degree that one may speak of a measure of cultural “domination.” Cultural imperialism has typically been described as a theory, particularly wherever students build a case that the cultural influence of the stronger entity has had a pervasive, pernicious impact on the weaker.

The debate on cultural imperialism has been around since the 1970s, in which the idea has been defined in a variety of ways. The idea of cultural imperialism resonates with the history of conquest and domination in the process of European colonialism and imperialism expansion.

Age of cultural imperialism

Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending the rule over peoples and other countries for extending political and economic access, power, and control, often through employing hard power, especially military force, soft work or technology, and culture. The Age of Imperialism was a period beginning around the 1760s when modern, relatively developed nations were taking over less developed areas, colonizing them, or influencing them to expand their power. Although imperialist practices have existed for thousands of years, the term 'Age of Imperialism' generally refers to the activities of nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States in the early 18th through the middle 20th centuries, 19th-century episodes included the 'Scramble for Africa.'

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The last decades of the 19th century are also known as the age of cultural imperialism. In the 1970s British historians John Gallagher (1919–1980) and Ronald Robinson (1920–1999) argued that “European leaders rejected the notion that 'imperialism' required formal, legal control by one government over a colonial region. Much more important was informal control of independent areas”. Looking at the main empires from 1875 to 1914, there was a mixed record in terms of profitability. At first, planners expected that colonies would provide an excellent captive market for manufactured items. The age, and domination power of the British in the Indian sub-continent emphasized cultural imperialism. The colonization of India in the mid-18th century offers an example of this focus: imperialists saw the economic benefit primarily in the production of inexpensive raw materials to feed the domestic manufacturing sector. Overall, Great Britain did very well in terms of profits from India, especially Mughal Bengal, but not from most of the rest of its empire. British exploited the political weakness of the Mughal state, and, while military activity was important at various times, the economic and administrative incorporation of local elites was also of crucial significance for the establishment of control over the subcontinent's resources, markets, and manpower but first, they controlled their own culture by destroying different traditional things such as our ‘muslin sari’, the good relationship among different religious nation specially hindu-muslim and emphasizing on English education. From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, Western Europe pursued a policy of imperialism that became known as New Imperialism which is also known as cultural imperialism or Americanization. Cultural elements such as dress code, education pattern, language, media, technology, and economy all are controlled by America, especially in developing or undeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. Today, cultural imperialism tends to describe the United States’ role as a cultural superpower throughout the world.

The ideological profile of cultural imperialism

It is possible to draw an ideological profile of those decades of faith in scientific and technical development and to suggest the cognitive and ideological factors that also go some way towards explaining the hegemony of Western culture and the process that is leading to be establishment of a common world culture. Cultural homogenization refers to the reduction in cultural diversity through the popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols – customs, ideas, values, and physical objects. The process of cultural homogenization in the context of the domination of the Western capitalist culture is known as colonization or Westernization and criticized as a form of cultural imperialism which also refers to the hegemony of Western culture. The term is usually used in the context of Western culture dominating and destroying other cultures. The post-war decades, particularly the sixties, will go down in cultural history as a period of industrialization, urbanization, and far-reaching changes in the structure of communities. During this period the industrial world order has triumphantly established itself over much of the globe and the high material standard of living that Western progressives have always dreamed of has finally been achieved. Culture encompasses the totality of social practices of a given community. Social practices area units manifest among social establishments like family, education, healthcare, worship, labor, recreation, language, communication, and decision-making, as well as their corresponding domains. Any of those will endure modification following a society’s encounter with exogenous influences most dramatically once stronger powers impose changes through top-down methods of command and influence.

The ideology of technological imperialist: Western man, culture is the antithesis of nature; it implies the subjugation of nature to create a technological, artificial world, to ascertain civilization, the acme of which is the metropolis. The ideology of the subjugation of nature has reached its climax within the conquest of location, but it's conjointly provided the ethical justification for the white man's voyages of discovery, for exploitation, the slave traffic, the unscrupulous exploitation of natural resources, and also the overseas aid plans of today: the aim of those being to yoke all nations to the globe trade network of the industrial countries. We use American technology, google, Facebook, Microsoft, soft-network, etc. All are the results of cultural imperialism.

The maximization of culture; the ideology of total efficiency: The best of the competitive, mass-producing society is to attain total potency. It strives to maximize production, structure potency, and human performance in science, art, and sport. It creates cultural hybridity; which is a cross or mixture between two or more than two cultures. The process by which a cultural element such as food, language, customs music, etc. blends into another culture by modifying the elements to fit cultural norms.

The ideology of productivities: Both on the cluster and individual level cultural selections and choices are created within the first instance on the idea of materialist economics coming up with, accounting, of a 'scientific' assessment of the relations between input and output. Industrial culture is if truth be told being remodeled into a company in gear completely to the planning of productivity, an applied math curve, index, and trend mechanism, from which human, historical, and ancient elements should be eliminated as riotous factors. Increasing the specialization in production demanded by the international division of labor. The ideology of productivity is also controlled by the West, now they are occupying other labor markets and Western countries interpenetrate their products, especially their technology.

International requirements; the ideology of the supernational: In industrial production, science, art, and each alternative human activity, Western civilization acknowledges no higher goal than internationalism: the standards of the metropolis hold sway. The amendment within the structure of Western societies has taken the shape of adaptation to plug economy, to international trade; and the response of the scheme to international standards. The techno-structures are the foremost bolt standardized of all, a part of a sterile, skilled culture using standardized values, to succeed in standardized ‘scientific’ and ‘artistic’ selections, a culture during which personal and individual solutions are a lot of unreal than real. Social planning and design that return up to the skilled international mark have created standardized trendy environments, the fruit of the latest analysis into metropolitan style, during which life is contended out with identical cultural props, and identical basic services. An example may be the celebration of the 31st night or Happy New Year; the celebration of the new year has an international standard. Bank interest-based world economy has also a supernational power or multinational identity.

Group centricity; the ideology of organization: Organizational ideology consists of the beliefs regarding organization that build it distinct from different organizations. In the opinion of Henry Mintzberg, organizational ideology develops in three stages. At first, the ideology is created from a sense of mission and later develops as traditions and stories, sagas are created. Finally, the new members of the organization are affected by the ideology, and start to identify with it. Western society is one-sidedly supported by March Plenty, which become socialized into one powerful IP machine; it's supported by cluster centricity and religion in the organization. The mechanistic or atomistic structure of society has a crystal rectifier to the formation of progressively specialized and economical organizations however additionally to an exasperating struggle between them for material development, power, and growth. Their policy of growth demands that the individual become altogether enthusiastic about them thus strengthening mass identity and commonness. The manipulation of those plenty needs additional authoritarian temperament cults, the dogmatization of ideals, a strict demarcation of interest areas, and an intense info war. within the Western body politic has become a concern- traded within the hands of organizations, that use discontent, gain, progress, and social amendment as instruments of unscrupulous manipulation.

The opinion industry; the ideology of the control of knowledge: Scientific and technical progress has conjointly minimalized information and knowledge. On the other hand, it's created communications, the mass media, manipulation, information shocks, industrial opinion-molding, info, and advertising its most vital instruments of power and influence. Western society permits any kind of manipulation, even though it's consistently one-sided, as long as its aims are unit economically helpful, commercially self-made, or otherwise progressive. Scientific and technological knowledge; the best example may be the hard disk of a computer with a large memory or RAM that can keep much information safely.