Academic imperialism is a term used to describe instances of unequal relations between groups or disciplines of academic study, such that one dominates others, consuming them or leaving them ignored. Early theories of academic imperialism date to the 1960s. [1]
Academic imperialism has been defined either in the context of certain disciplines or subdisciplines as oppressing others [2] or (more often) as part of political imperialism that has resulted in inequality between academia in the First World (the West) and Third World. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
In the intradisciplinary context, an example of imperialistic behavior was the dismissive attitude of the 1920s-1930s adherents of behavioral psychology in the United States towards non-behavioral psychologists. [2]
In the international context, academic imperialism began in the colonial period when the colonial powers designed and implemented a system of academia in their colonial territories. [6] [3] [4] C. K. Raju claims academic imperialism emerged thanks to racism among native colonial elites. [7] Academic imperialism is blamed for "tutelage, conformity, secondary role of dominated intellectuals and scholars, rationalization of the civilizing mission, and the inferior talent of scholars from the home country specializing in studies of the colony." [6] [3] In the modern postcolonial era, academic imperialism has transformed itself into a more indirect form of control, based on Western monopoly on the flow of information in the world of academia. [8] Syed Farid Alatas calls this "academic neo-colonialism". [8]
International academic imperialism generates academic dependency, or the dependency of non-Western scholars on Western academia. [9] In non-Western countries, science is still dependent on institutions and ideas of Western science, which are often transplanted from Western countries. [9]
Syed Farid Alatas lists the following six aspects of academic dependency: [10]
Specific examples of academic dependency include the fact that most major journals are based in the Western countries and carry works by scholars located at Western universities; and that scholars in the Western countries study the entire world, whereas scholars in the non-Western countries focus on their own societies. [11] Another example is the dominance of English language in the world of international academia. [4]
Cultural imperialism comprises the cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture to create and maintain unequal social and economic relationships among social groups. Cultural imperialism often uses wealth, media power and violence to implement the system of cultural hegemony that legitimizes imperialism.
Colonialism is the exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group. Colonizers monopolize political power and hold conquered societies and their people to be inferior to their conquerors in legal, administrative, social, cultural, or biological terms. While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations.
Imperialism is maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power and soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
Neocolonialism is the control by a state over another nominally independent state through indirect means. The term neocolonialism was first used after World War II to refer to the continuing dependence of former colonies on foreign countries, but its meaning soon broadened to apply, more generally, to places where the power of developed countries was used to produce a colonial-like exploitation.
Eurocentrism refers to viewing the West as the center of world events or superior to all other cultures. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world to just the continent of Europe or even more narrowly, to Western Europe. When the term is applied historically, it may be used in reference to the presentation of the European perspective on history as objective or absolute, or to an apologetic stance toward European colonialism and other forms of imperialism.
Global North and Global South are terms that denote a method of grouping countries based on their defining characteristics with regard to socioeconomics and politics. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Global South broadly comprises Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Oceania. Most of the Global South's countries are commonly identified as lacking in their standard of living, which includes having lower incomes, high levels of poverty, high population growth rates, inadequate housing, limited educational opportunities, and deficient health systems, among other issues. Additionally, these countries' cities are characterized by their poor infrastructure. Opposite to the Global South is the Global North, which the UNCTAD describes as broadly comprising Northern America and Europe, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. As such, the two terms do not refer to the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere, as many of the Global South's countries are geographically located in the former and, similarly, a number of the Global North's countries are geographically located in the latter.
Dependency theory is the idea that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and exploited states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "world system". This theory was officially developed in the late 1960s following World War II, as scholars searched for the root issue in the lack of development in Latin America.
Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.
In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, subalterns are the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire. Antonio Gramsci coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians who explored the political-actor role of the common people who constitute the mass population, rather than re-explore the political-actor roles of the social and economic elites in the history of India.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
Syed Hussein Alatas bin Syed Ali Alatas was a Malaysian academic, sociologist, politician, and founder of social science organisations. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in the 1980s and formed the Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan). Syed Hussein wrote several books on corruption, multi-racialism, imperialism, and intellectual captivity as part of the colonial, and postcolonial, project, the most famous being The Myth of the Lazy Native.
Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Ellis T. Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920. He defined imperialism as "the sense of arbitrary and capricious domination over the bodies and souls of men," he used the term "scientific imperialism" to mean "the subjection of all the developed and undeveloped powers of the earth to the mind of man."
Culture and Imperialism is a 1993 collection of thematically related essays by Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, tracing the connection between imperialism and culture throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The essays expand the arguments of Orientalism to describe general patterns of relation, between the modern metropolitan Western world and their overseas colonial territories.
Indigenous religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate the religious belief systems of communities described as being "indigenous". This category is often juxtaposed against others such as the "world religions" and "new religious movements". The term is commonly applied to a range of different belief systems across the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa, and Northern Europe, particularly to those practiced by communities living under the impact of colonialism.
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of imperial power.
Postcolonial international relations is a branch of scholarship that approaches the study of international relations (IR) using the critical lens of postcolonialism. This critique of IR theory suggests that mainstream IR scholarship does not adequately address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on current day world politics. Despite using the language of post-, scholars of postcolonial IR argue that the legacies of colonialism are ongoing, and that critiquing international relations with this lens allows scholars to contextualize global events. By bridging postcolonialism and international relations, scholars point to the process of globalization as a crucial point in both fields, due to the increases in global interactions and integration. Postcolonial IR focuses on the re-narrativization of global politics to create a balanced transnational understanding of colonial histories, and attempts to tie non-Western sources of thought into political praxis.
Syed Farid Alatas is a Malaysian author and educator, serving as a professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.
Maoism–Third Worldism (MTW) is a broad tendency which is mainly concerned with the infusion and synthesis of Marxism—particularly of the Marxist–Leninist–Maoist persuasion—with concepts of non-Marxist Third Worldism, namely dependency theory and world-systems theory.
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment typically manifests as a political principle in independence struggles against intervention or influence from a global superpower, as well as in opposition to colonial rule. Anti-imperialism can also arise from a specific economic theory, such as in the Leninist interpretation of imperialism, which is derived from Lenin's 1917 work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders.
Imperial feminism, also known as imperialist feminism, colonial feminism, or intersectional imperialism, refers to instances where critics argue that feminist rhetoric is used to justify empire-building or imperialism. The term has gained prominence in the 20th and 21st centuries, with one scholar asserting that it "privileges inequality through gender bending that masquerades as gendered equality... Imperial feminism privileges empire building through war." The related term intersectional imperialism refers to the foreign policy of Western nations that are perceived as engaging in or supporting imperialistic policies while promoting inclusive and progressive rhetoric at home.