Cultural imperialism
Research on the topic occurs in scholarly disciplines, and is especially prevalent in communication and media studies,[1][2][3] education,[4] foreign policy,[5] history,[6] international relations,[7] linguistics,[8] literature,[9] post-colonialism,[10][11] science,[12] sociology,[13] social theory,[14] environmentalism,[15] and sports.
Although the Oxford English Dictionary has a 1921 reference to the "cultural imperialism of the Russians",[17] John Tomlinson, in his book on the subject, writes that the term emerged in the 1960s[18] and has been a focus of research since at least the 1970s.
The process is also present when powerful nations are able to flood the information and media space with their ideas, limiting countries and communities ability to compete and expose people to locally created content.
The partial and imperfect configuration of this ontology takes an implicit conceptualization of reality and attempts—and often fails—to elide other forms of collective existence.
"The broader intended outcome of these interventions might be described as a common recognition of possession of the land itself (on behalf of the organizations publishing and financing the images).
"[23] According to Schiller, cultural imperialism "pressured, forced and bribed" societies to integrate with the U.S.'s expansive capitalist model but also incorporated them with attraction and persuasion by winning "the mutual consent, even solicitation of the indigenous rulers."
[28] Downing and Sreberny-Mohammadi state: "Cultural imperialism signifies the dimensions of the process that go beyond economic exploitation or military force.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak critiques common representations in the West of the Sati, as being controlled by authors other than the participants (specifically English colonizers and Hindu leaders).
Spivak says that cultural imperialism has the power to disqualify or erase the knowledge and mode of education of certain populations that are low on the social and economic hierarchy.
[35] In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Spivak argues that Western philosophy has a history of not only exclusion of the subaltern from discourse, but also does not allow them to occupy the space of a fully human subject.
In the expansive "age of imperialism" of the nineteenth century, scholars have argued that European colonisation in Africa has led to the elimination of many various cultures, worldviews, and epistemologies, particularly through neocolonisation of public education.
[37] One scholar, Ali A. Abdi, claims that imperialism inherently "involve[s] extensively interactive regimes and heavy contexts of identity deformation, misrecognition, loss of self-esteem, and individual and social doubt in self-efficacy.
[41] In Elyachar's work, Markets of Dispossession, she focuses on ways in which, in Cairo, NGOs along with INGOs and the state promoted neoliberal governmentality through schemas of economic development that relied upon "youth microentrepreneurs".
For example, Chandra Mohanty has critiqued Western feminism, claiming that it has created a misrepresentation of the "third world woman" as being completely powerless, unable to resist male dominance.
Western media can distort images of foreign cultures and provoke personal and social conflicts to developing nations in some cases.
Rothkopf's definition almost exclusively involves allowing individuals in other nations to accept or reject foreign cultural influences.
During the Archaic Period, the burgeoning Greek city-states established settlements and colonies across the Mediterranean Sea, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, influencing the Etruscan and Roman peoples of the region.
The Greek influence prevailed even longer in science and literature, where medieval Muslim scholars in the Middle East studied the writings of Aristotle for scientific learning.
It is the 'cultural hegemony' of a country whose power to export the most fundamental ideas and concepts at the basis of its understanding of 'civilisation' knew practically no bounds."
"[65] After the First World War, Germans were worried about the extent of French influence in the occupied Rhineland, which under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was under Allied control from 1918 to 1930.
[66] An early use of the term appeared in an essay by Paul Ruhlmann (as "Peter Hartmann") at that date, entitled French Cultural Imperialism on the Rhine.
[67] Keeping in line with the trends of international imperialistic endeavours, the expansion of Canadian and American territory in the 19th century saw cultural imperialism employed as a means of control over indigenous populations.
This, when used in conjunction of more traditional forms of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the United States, saw devastating, lasting effects on indigenous communities.
A mere 9 years after the 1867 signing of confederation Canada passed "The Indian Act", a separate and not equal form of government especially for First Nations.
Most notable is the use of residential schools across Canada as a means to remove indigenous persons from their culture and instill in them the beliefs and values of the majorised colonial hegemony.
In a New York Times op-ed, Gabrielle Scrimshaw describes her grandparents being forced to send her mother to one of these schools or risk imprisonment.
Jason Edward Black, a professor and chair in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, describes how the use of Native Americans as mascots furthers the colonial attitudes of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Presumably a means of gathering authors from Germany, Italy, and the occupied countries to plan the literary life of the new Europe, the union soon emerged as a vehicle of German cultural imperialism.
"[75] For other parts of Europe, Robert Gerwarth, writing about cultural imperialism and Reinhard Heydrich, states that the "Nazis' Germanization project was based on a historically unprecedented programme of racial stock-taking, theft, expulsion and murder."
[78] The terms "McDonaldization",[79] "Disneyization" and "Cocacolonization"[80] have been coined to describe the spread of Western cultural influence, especially after the end of the Cold War.
