Cultural Imperialism

Cultural Imperialism is the practice of one hegemonic country/state aggrandizing their culture, language, traditions etc in a yielding, less powerful country. Cultural refers to the customs, traditions, religion, language, social andmoralnorms of one a community and Imperialism refers to the system of a powerful company exercising control over a non dominant country.

Cultural Imperialism can either be done in a way that it completely takes over or in a way which enmeshes the influences of the dominating culture inextricably with those of its own. Such a cultural invasion can likewise be either active or passive. In its active form, the authoritative culture compels its cultural influences upon the weaker culture. This is a dynamic phenomenon where the subordinate culture is compelled to adopt the ways of the ‘superiors’. The passive form is found when one culture (not necessarily the subordinate) voluntarily welcomes the influences and traditions of another culture. Here, the dominant culture makes little efforts in imposing its cultural ideals upon the other but the latter gets influenced as a consequence of its receptivity to the former's cultural impacts.

Aside from the political invasion, cultural imperialism can also arise due the consequential commercial relations between two countries. A country heavily importing products and services of another country may get consequentially influenced by the exporting country's lifestyle attributes and social values. We can see this phenomenon in the form of Westernization of a number of Eastern countries. This is a kind of passive cultural imperialism, as the encountering culture adopts the foreign values without actually understanding the fact that they are, in fact, becoming slaves of a foreign culture.

History holds testimony that cultural imperialism was an instrument of colonization. Even though colonization was established through military involvement, colonization was most successful when the colonizers could colonize not just the land of the local people but also the minds of the local people. Cultural Imperialism creates a sense of inferiority in the non dominant country, where they view the colonizers as superior. Also, the dominant country believe that they are actually superior, and fueled by that belief, the colonizers used law, education, and/or military force to impose various aspects of their own culture onto the target population.

During the Viking age, the Scandinavian population was considered pagans and non believers because of their belief in their Gods. Christians considered their way to be barbaric and their traditions bestial. By mid 12^th century most of Norway, Sweden and Denmark was converted to Christianity.

Another example of cultural imperialism would be of cricket. Cricket was not a sport of India, but now, cricket is considered a religion in our country. It is the most popular sport in India, getting most of the funds reserved for sports. Cricket originated in England and now it has over 3 billion fans all over countries like New Zealand, Australia, West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, a few African countries and other Caribbean countries.

Also if we see how we enjoy western food outlets like KFC and McDonalds more than Indian outlets like Haldirams and Bikanerwala, speaking in English is considered a status symbol and people who can’t converse in English are automatically considered illiterate as if English is a benchmark for education in India which historically has never been an English speaking state. USA has now become the hegemon in 21^st century and it has been exercising cultural imperialism. We know everything that happens in America, we know when the president got elected, we know the top 10 singles of the year, all the actors and singers and all their movies and songs that come out.