CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
What is Cultural Imperialism?
Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, and artificially injecting the culture or language of one nation in another. It is usually the case that the former is a large, economically or militarily powerful nation and the latter is a smaller, less affluent nation. Cultural imperialism can take the form of an active, formal policy or a general attitude. Cultural imperialism is a form of cultural influence distinguished from other forms by the use of force, such as military or economic force. Cultural influence is a process that goes on at all times between all cultures that have contact with each other. Cultural Imperialism is also very different from other imperialistic ways, in the sense that no military or economic intervention is needed to be able to influence countries. What one also needs to take into consideration is that culture is not static. Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines culture as the "total pattern of human behavior and its products embodied in speech, action, and artifacts and dependent upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations."1This is just a brief Overview of American imperialism and what will be discussed.
The American Empire
When discussing cultural imperialism involving the United States, one often refers to the U.S. as the "American Empire". The American Empire is a term sometimes used to describe the historical expansionism and the current political, economic, and cultural influence of the United States on a global scale. Many argue that U.S. imperialism, traces its beginning not to the Spanish-American War, but to Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory, or even to the re-location of Native Americans prior to the American Revolution, and arguably, still continues to this day. Some even argue that Imperialism didn't really start until the immigration boom in