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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