Indigenous cultures in the era of globalisation

Abstract

Advocates of cultural imperialism theory have continued to argue that indigenous cultures,especially of African societies, are daily eroded in the age of globalisation. Their argument isbased on Schiller’s debatable notion that a society is brought into a modern world system when itsdominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, cajoled and sometimes bribed into acceptingits traditional system and values as inferior, outdated and mundane; and shaping such systemand values to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centreof the system. This paper submits that this argument is no longer tenable in the age of globalisation. This isbecause the major arguments of the cultural imperialism theory now strike a discordant note withglobal-village and media-convergence tunes. Second, the theory - as suggested - builds on masssocietyand magic-bullet perspectives that have long been discredited both in media practice andin scholarship because they do not acknowledge audiences’ ability to process information andinterpret cultural messages differently based on their cultural environment. The paper thereforeconcludes that cultural imperialism theory needs a re-examination in line with the contemporaryrealities of today’s world as a global village made possible by the advances in information andcommunication technologies (ICTs).