Cultural Colonialism

Colonialism may have ended, but it is fair to say that cultural colonialism still lives on.
It is a new, more powerful type of colonialism, in terms of control and domination. Probably one of the main reasons behind this emergence is because of the highly developed technological tools and means that the dominating countries use nowadays. In other words,in sociology, this new type of colonialism can be described as the desire of the first- world countries to mentally and emotionally invade the third-world countries’ values and perceptions through soft and concealed weapons, mainly for economic purposes. In this case, these weapons are the cultural means, such as media, language, education, and religion; that is what the term ‘cultural colonialism’ is all about.



Cultural colonialism has emerged in the 1960s and it has become a threat for the receiving culture, but an enrichment of the colonizers’ cultural identity. The public mass media are the foremost example of this phenomenon. Trough global commercialization of broadcasting, countries can control other counties’ cultural values. The media uses its hegemonic power to increase its country’s economic power. For example, American culture is the most successful at this; by allowing its companies to advertise, it’s like hitting two birds with one stone. The media company is getting money and as an added bonus, the country’s economy is increasing in wealth because people are subconsciously told to purchase new products that they may not even need.






Cultural colonialism also creates cultural dependency on the receiving cultures. For example, the current foreign aid is mainly not targeted towards human development, but rather increases aid dependency in poor countries. Africans in particular, receive rice as food aid from American farmers, therefore Africans farmers become more dependent on food aid and unable to use their own natural resources to compete with other countries or contribute to local food production. The Pakistani population has also been dependent on the U.S. for its economic and military aid. Thus, Pakistan will always need this foreign assistance for its survival and security.






Language can be used to control cultures as well. For example, French is the dominating language in Morocco and this make them completely depended on French, rather than their native language to communicate with each other.