Cultural Colonialism

AbstractThe term cultural colonialism refers to the extension of colonial state power through cultural knowledge, activities, and institutions (particularly education and media) or the systematic subordination of one conceptual framework or cultural identity over others. The understanding that culture is a medium for political and economic power, and for resistance, predates postcolonial theory in social and political thought. The specific concepts of “cultural colonialism” and “cultural imperialism” emerged later, as part of wider critiques of colonial and neocolonial power in post‐World WarIImovements for national independence from Anglo‐European rule. Although less popular in academic sociology now than in the 1970s and 1980s, discourses and theories of cultural colonialism have continued to appear in public debate. New critiques of cultural colonialism have emerged from within both the World Social Forum and the Occupy movements. While the political and economic systems that initially gave rise to the analytical concept of cultural colonialism have been transformed through decolonization, new knowledge is being produced to explain both global inequality and the cultural dimensions of contemporary struggles for power, autonomy, and resistance.