Cultural Imperialism -June 19, 2007

Cultural Imperialism is well described by the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one nation into another. One nation which tends to be powerful pushes its culture into the latter which tends to be less affluent. Cultural globalization is similar through its process of domination in which the West draws all cultures into its boundary.
One reason to assimilate those two terms lies in the omnipresence of Western cultural goods. By west, the definition means west of the world such as America or Western Europe. There is a lot of evidence that Western cultural tastes and practices are becoming global ones, such as clothes, food, music, film and television. Cultural globalization can be seen as the 'Americanization' of the world.
Indeed in trip at Brazil I have seen examples of cultural imperialism. Take the shopping malls around Florianopolis for example. They are as large and elegant as most of the malls I know in California. To my great disappointment, they sell an abundant amount of American products ranging from clothes to bags to shoes. What's more, they are all more expensive than if I was to shop for them back at home. Stores pay to have American products shipped to Brazil and then sell them for high prices. American products that are rarely made in America. It's just the brand that sells and the fact that locals pay to purchase these overpriced products exemplifies cultural imperialism.
Through many outlets, American culture been pressed onto the local culture of this popular island. People are taught to think these brands are the best and as I personally saw, have few options to buy others. Our culture is being pushed upon people who shop in the malls and locals are embracing it.