Tuesday, May 8, 2012

How and why is the argument of cultural imperialism unanswerable?



1.    INTRODUCTION

Cultural imperialism is a term which has been around now for approximately four decades now. It has been debated upon by some of the most well known scholars like Arjun Appadurai, Oliver Boyd-Barrett Herbert Irving Schiller, John Tomlinson, Chin Chuan Lee, Jeremy Tunstall and many more. At the heart of their discussions has always been the concern to establish this concept and define it within the periphery of various disciplines. The discourse of cultural imperialism is one with great complexities with no satisfactory answers. There are as many theories about cultural imperialism as there are people studying it. The idea of ‘hegemony’ which was conceived by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) also took on a disguise of ‘cultural hegemony’ for scholars of culture studies. All these developments indicate that ‘cultural domination’ indeed, in its many forms, was a fascinating field of study. On empirical grounds, many theories were formulated which were largely taken as ‘axiomatic’ rather than ‘empirical’ and that is exactly what is going to be discussed in this essay. These theories were not tested, could not be applied even to specific geographical societies without considerable amount of debate but were still highly ‘believable in their nature’. India was colonised by the British Empire for 200 years and scholars of culture studies in India claim that a ‘legacy of colonialism’ still dominates the present day culture in the country. Although culture includes other aspects than media and its audiences but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall apply the theory of cultural imperialism to the media audiences in India, test it from an ‘audience’ point of view and see whether or not we are able to find any ‘answers’ for the concept of cultural imperialism.

        2. THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The theory of cultural imperialism is not very well defined by scholars but the closest definition to ‘believed precision’ was given by Herbert Irving Schiller. He defined it as ‘the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes even bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system’ (Schiller, 1976, p. 9).

There were many terms which further emerged from this term namely ‘media imperialism’, ‘cultural domination’, ‘electronic colonialism’ but more or less, all these terms were fundamentally describing cultural imperialism. John Tomlinson who in his seminal work ‘Cultural imperialism: a critical introduction’ talks about four ways to talk about cultural imperialism as a concept, says that ‘imperialism’ “grasps a specific form of domination, that associated with ‘empire’” (Tomlinson, 1991, p. 19). With such a strong word such as ‘imperialism’ being used in the context, let us look at the four perspectives mentioned above. The first one is where he talks about ‘cultural imperialism as Media Imperialism’. He asserts that although ‘media is very different from other parts of culture, but it is a part of people’s ‘lived experience’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 21) of television, newspaper, radio and cinema which act as ‘agents of cultural imperialism’. The second is the ‘cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality’. The original concern of coming up with the theory of cultural imperialism can safely be assumed to be the threat of cultural ‘invasion’ or attack on the ‘indigenous’ culture of any nation. Although Tomlinson argues that he has his doubts about the meaning of ‘indigenous culture’ but the apprehensions of an attack leads to a study of the aspects of culture and its transitions. Thirdly, he describes cultural imperialism as ‘a critique of global capitalism’ in two ways. First being the observation that capitalism by the virtue of its nature is ‘homogenising’; the perception being that ‘everywhere in the world it is beginning to look and feel the same’. Secondly, he says that global capitalism is being criticized as spreading a ‘consumerist culture’, especially in the developing countries, assuming the unfiltered bombardment of capitalist cultural products. The fourth standpoint is the one in which Tomlinson describes the ‘cultural imperialism as a critique of modernity’. This is a rather complex and multilevel discourse to understand. It is a kind of a general description of how ‘modernity’ entails cultural imperialism by virtue of it being linked to influence of capitalism, ‘development’ and the idea of the world existing as a whole rather than just nation-states; encompassing the thought all the aspects of the ‘modern world’ extend to the whole ‘global civil society’. Now we look at the reasons as to why this concept has never received any satisfying definition applicable to any part of the world, especially India.

3.   HOW AND WHY IS CULTURAL IMPERIALISM UNANSWERABLE? – THE INDIAN AUDIENCE

The audience in India is one of the largest in the world for any country and its cultural diversity makes for an interesting case for media-audience studies. It has the world’s second largest population and seventy percent of it lives in rural areas. A case study like this proves to be an intriguing ground to test the theory of cultural imperialism. Following are the reasons why and how the concept of cultural imperialism is unanswerable when applied to Indian media-audiences.

     3.1 Cultural imperialism is ill-defined and hard to measure

The foremost problem with the concept of cultural imperliasm has been that it has never been defined clearly so as to encompass any class of audience categorised according to any specification. Annabelle Sreberny in her article ‘The Many Cultural Faces of Imperialism’ argues that cultural-imperialism ‘became one of the staple catchphrases of the field of international communication. Yet, from the beginning, the concept was broad and ill-defined, operating as evocative metaphor rather than precise construct and has gradually lost much of its critical bite and historic validity’ (Sreberny, 1997: 49).  Moreover, treating this theory as ‘axiomatic’ and ‘solid’ more terms and concepts which have shaky foundations have emerged consequently. Terms such as ‘electronic-colonialism’, ‘media-imperialism’ lack clarity and cannot elucidate the theory in terms of media audiences. The assumption of these models ‘is that the media are so powerful that they can directly inject their ideas into the audience’s heads’ (McQuail, 1987 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 40). Gauntlett describes this phenomena in his literary piece ‘ten things wrong with the effects model’ in which one of the most relevant one to the Indian case would be the argument that the ‘effects model assumes superiority to the masses. Whilst a certain population of the public feels that the media may cause other people to engage in anti-social behaviour, almost no-one ever says that they have been affected in that way themselves…they ‘know’ that the effects will only be on the ‘other people’ and insofar others are defined as children or ‘unstable’ individuals. Who are these others? The uneducated? The working class?...this reveals the kind of elitism and snobbishness which often seem to underpin such research.’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 126). To say that cultural imperialism is hard to measure would be an under-statement.


3.2 Ignorance of audiences’ perspective

It might sound ironic but most of the studies done on cultural imperialism do not entail the study of audience. It is very crucial to research on the audiences as this concept is audience-oriented. This lack of perspective and basic foundation renders the whole study of culture and imperialism baseless but it is not possible to incorporate a ‘large audience’ in the formulation and testing of this theory because it would become too complex.  So, the validation of cultural imperialism if often taken for granted. Although there are many theories in audiences research such as the ‘uses and gratification model’ (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch), the ‘encoding-decoding model’ (Stuart Hall), ‘effects model’ , Tactical resistance (Michel de Certeau) and each of them can be a lens through which the landscape of ‘cultural imperialism’ might look entirely new, but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall look at the broader complexities involving some of these in understanding the concept of cultural imperialism in India. The theory of cultural imperialism is accused of having a ‘positivist bias’ of communication which has consistently taken a wrong approach to the mass-media (Gauntlett, 1998 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 38). Gauntlett goes on to explain that the media-audience scholars often regard the audiences in the ‘same way as a physicist might regard iron filings lying on a piece of paper waiting to be ionized by a magnet: playthings to be manipulated. Here again, we can see echoes of positivism, where the scientist regards him or herself as a dispassionate observer…this arrogance means that researchers can miss a good deal of the audiences’ experience’ (Gauntlett, 2001: 39). Lewis (1991) argues that ‘experiments are flawed because they assume that the world is driven by distinct forces that can be identified, separated and examined in isolation from one another. They also assume that people can be cleansed of their social backgrounds so that the effects that media have upon them can be clearly identified’ (cited in Ruddock, 2001: 39) which is not applicable in a country like India where the tradition and ideological backgrounds are still strongly attached to their everyday life and therefore, their culture.
         3.3 Classification of the audience?
As explained above, Indian audience is a hugely diversified audience in terms of culture. So, if at all there is any strong cultural influence on them, it is very difficult to assess the impact of it on the spectators. The perception of cultural domination cannot be studied without categorising audiences because it is improbable to assess the brunt of any ‘outside’ cultural pressure on a class-less audience. Now, the problem arises when we begin to classify the audience. Ruddock argues that ‘quantitative research methods are ill equipped to account for some of the ways in which audiences relate to media fare’ (Ruddock, 2001: 41). There are a few parameters like age, gender, income, lifestyle apart from long term or short term effects on audiences but more often than not, two or more of these parameters co-incide and make it extremely difficult to establish any fact with conviction.

           3.4 Problem of a specific time frame
India, in the current times, is in a phase of transition from a traditional to a more consumerist, capitalist society in terms of economy. Taking a typically neo-Marxist approach, it may be argued that this would mean that the consumption of media might also be affected by this trend towards a ‘modern’ lifestyle. Even then, majority of the population living in rural areas might have a different choice of media viewership, in fact, they do (we shall discuss it later in 3.5.1). Toffler (1980) and Naisbitt (1982) ‘have drawn on the understandable concern of individuals caught in the process of change…numerous scholarly studies have attempted to assess the impacts of individual trends but the collection if prophecies and assessments is inchoate, unwieldy, and full of contradictions’ (cited in Neuman, 1991: 5). The Western culture-industries are still not able to penetrate and conquer this audience torn between tradition and western influences due to this period of economic and social transition.
     
           3.5 Contra-flow from India
There are cases of immense resistance and ‘contra-flow’ (Thussu, 2010) to the Western media influence in India. We shall consider the main two.

          3.5.1 Vernacular news media against English newspapers and Western News Media

India has the largest number of vernacular languages- 18 being recognised by the constitution. Here is an excerpt from an Indian research aptly titled ‘Cultural imperialism or vernacular modernity?’-
“An overview of the literature on Indian news media shows that the English language media, which dominated national media market from independence till the late 1990s, is no longer the dominant market player (Jeffrey, 1993, 2000; Ninan, 2007; Rajagopal, 2001; Stahlberg, 2002). The booming Hindi news media industry testifies to the fact that vernacular media pose a serious challenge to the dominance and authority of English-language media in the public sphere. As many as 23 Hindi news channels have been launched since 2000. At the same time, according to the 2006 National Readership Survey (NRS), there is not a single English-language newspaper in the top ten in terms of readership.”(Neyazi, 2010: 909) He asserts that localisation became such an important factor in India that after the communications revolution in the country, these vernacular language-newspapers expanded their readerships manifold. It has become a serious challenge for English newspapers to penetrate the Indian media industry as the ‘discursive domain emanating from Hindi and vernacular language newspapers helps in formulating and shaping public opinion and acts as an important channel for the public to raise their grievances and hold the state more responsible’ (Neyazi, 2010: 912)

           3.5.2 The Curious Case of Bollywood

The second one is the case of Bollywood (Hindi film industry) in India, which refutes many classical Western theories of media audiences including cultural imperialism. In fact, Bollywood is an example of a contra-flow to the Western cultural influence and enjoys a huge foreign and diaspora audience. An interesting example here would be that of a Brazilian soap opera titled- India: a Love Story which is a telenovela ranking amongst the most viewed on Brazilian television. Comprising of Brazilian actors and originally in Portuguese, it is very Indian in terms of its content and the treatment of its screenplay. Back in the country, even ‘after the novelty of foreign channels wore off in the early 1990s, Indian channels consolidated their position, recorded the highest audience ratings and forced foreign channels to adopt local programming in a big way’ (Sonwalkar, 2001: 1)
The argument here is very simple, due to a contra flow of Indian media and cultural products, the concept of cultural imperialism seems shaky here because it would be an oxymoronic statement to say that a country facing cultural imperialism is the one exerting its ‘soft power’ on parts of the world and hence it is still not clear whether India is a victim of cultural imperialism or not.

4.   Ties to Neo-liberalism

Cultural imperialism can evidently be described to have ties with neo-Liberalism by virtue of being ‘imperialistic’. Capitalist or neo-liberal societies have a tendency to gain foothold and spread very fast through society to create its own authority because of its nature. This ‘authority’ or the ‘centre of governance’ then dictates terms for the ‘market space’. A similar argument can be put forth in case of culture industries and ‘cultural centers’ of the world in terms of production. This nature of cultural imperialism has been claimed to increase the inequalities among audiences as it ‘has created a new “information underclass” that cannot afford the high costs of information and new media: the computer based equipment needed to access it and the training necessary to operate the complex equipment’ and has instead ‘created a new powerful class of executives and technicians who control and have expertise in the utilization of the information technologies and the evolving network’ (Neuman, 1991: 6). A consumerist lifestyle entailing ideas of freedom, love, and democracy are the themes openly and proudly propagated by the Western media industries as a result of which neo-liberal claws have begun to dig into the cultural sphere too- an idea of consumerist ideology as perceived by Herman and McChesney (1997). How much is the audience affected by it at a personal level, remains to be verified. So, again, the audience perspective is not taken into account which renders the theory devoid of any evidence and therefore, unanswerable.

         5. Ties to development studies

The modernisation critique by John Tomlinson is closely linked to development studies. The modernisation theory in development, when extrapolated to media audience studies could be contextualised as ‘cultural imperialism as a path towards development’. There are conflicting theories when modernisation is linked with cultural imperialism. In the urban/metropolitan parts of India, the so-called cultural influence from outside has given the audiences new identities, meaning, they identify themselves not with the rural fellow Indians but start recognising themselves as a part of a ‘global civil societal construct’ (Keane, 2003) consuming the same media products across the globe. If such audiences increase in number considerably, it would be fascinating to observe the serious implications it would have on the cultural richness within India; whether or not India (or a part thereof) would become the ‘victim’ of cultural imperialism. But here we need to understand the differences between ‘media-related “behaviours” and “cultural practices”’ (Ruddock, 2001: 37). Again, I would argue, the long term effects might be different from the short term ones; there could be different implications for different kinds of audiences, an issue of classification which we have already dealt with above.

 

After analyzing all these arguments, I would argue that all the aforementioned reasons are subject to continual and simultaneous study of media audience in India as culture is a dynamic entity and the effects of outside culture on Indian media audience today could very well be refuted tomorrow. The theory of cultural imperialism still hangs in the air, waiting for a stronghold- that of verification of the effects on audiences. As Tomlinson wrote, ‘we must continually exercise judgment as to when a ‘real’ theoretical issue is likely to turn into a ‘brain-teaser’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 20).



6.   CONCLUSION
Having established that existence of cultural imperialism is indeed an impossible question to answer, at least till now, we should keep in mind the fresh audience research on a scale larger than ever before by multinational corporations for their own benefit and we can hope to use it to strengthen media audiences research on the multifarious, complex and controversial theory of cultural-imperialism.
We must keep in mind that the methodology entailing the study of cultural imperialism should be ‘different from the effects model even at the most obvious level, it should be about ‘influences’ and ‘perceptions’, rather than ‘effects’ and ‘behaviour’. However, whilst such studies may provide valuable reflections on the relationship between mass-media and audiences, they cannot- for the same reason- directly challenge claims made from within the ‘effects model’ paradigm’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 128). As for the future of this theory, the ‘grandeur of its conception’ and the ‘conception of its grandeur’ will always be celebrated in the cultural studies but it remains to be seen whether there would be sufficient audience studies so as to validate or refute the theory of cultural imperialism.
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REFERENCES on request

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