From
the previous blog post, we knew that Western and Korean culture brought
Malaysians a lot of changes, in either positive or negative ways. The term
cultural imperialism refers a powerful foreign culture has been practiced by
another country. For example, before the arrival of British, Islam still the
dominant in Malaysia. However, with the arrival of British, European took over
the power of dominant in Malaysia. With the influence from European, Malaysians
started to practice Western culture such as speaking English language, the
rises of Church, Western fashion and so on. It makes Malaysians started to
speak in English language, watching American drama, wearing jeans which is came
from Western, yet English language is the second language in Malaysia. Many
Malaysian Chinese, for example, have converted to Christianity, wear western
clothes, play tennis, football or go the gym, drink wine or beer when they go
out and speak, write and read in English (Coluzzi, 2011) . Yes, it might
showed that Malaysia can followed Western culture footsteps in term of we have the
same technologies to produce jeans to Malaysians but we are still imitating
other advanced countries and it is so called a copycat trend. Malaysia would
not be improved if we kept followed other countries’ culture or technology
developed. In this situation, Malaysia should has their own identity such as
develop some technology that never been developed or proposed by other powerful
countries. Malaysia cannot always followed other countries’ footsteps, it will
not only make Malaysia stopping from improve but also stopping Malaysia’s
development. Malaysia may not qualified to compete with other countries in
technology but we do have our own strengths but never get to promote. Why
everyone likes to travel to Japan, Korea, Taiwan or Australia but not to Sabah
or Sarawak? Malaysian has been too much affected by their culture, they could
not see the beautiful of Malaysia. Thus, it is the time to promote through news
media and also old media. Things only found in Malaysia such as world’s largest
blooming flower only in the remote jungles of Sabah; Proboscis monkey are the
world’s largest monkey as they can growing up to 70cm tall and weighing 23kg;
Sungai Lembing was one of the largest tin mine (Tourism
Malaysia, 2016) .
We have all these unique places and attractions but not everyone know about it.
Tourism Malaysia can make use of these unique selling points to attract
tourists and it might bring up the economy and the reputation of Malaysia.
Cultural
imperialism has many effects such as loss of culture, loss of language, preference
for western brands, cultural appropriation, cultural protectionism etc. (Naylor, 2016) . Celebrities, social
media, media (TV, magazines, movies), globalization, consumerism, peer pressure,
immigration, these are the major influences contributing to cultural
imperialism. Cultural imperialism had decreased the interest of Malaysian in
the existing local cultures as people are starting obsessed with the western
lifestyle (Naylor, 2016) . This might lead
existing culture to a risk level as there are low interest and participation to
existing culture compare to western culture. Although we knew that we should prioritize
our own culture but unfortunately everyone is favouring western lifestyle due
to the cultural imperialism. According to Coluzzi (2011), Brunei language
attitudes seem to favour English while Malaysians also considered English as
the most important language, Chinese language scores second and followed by Malay
language. More and more people affected by cultural imperialism and started to
forget their original culture and it led the affected countries become a
melting pot, different cultures started to disappear and change into one big
culture.
Video 1: Language is an important part of our culture
Language
is the heart of our culture. Back to the old time, when English was first
implement to your country, it sounds strange. According to the video (2014), Nora
Dauenhauer, Tlingit, grew up in Alaska speaking Klinken, her mother tongue and
she starts to learn English when she was 10 years old. “In just a few short
generations, many native American languages were lost because the elders were
punished for speaking their native tongues”, elders forced the younger
generations to speak English because they does not want them to experience what
they had experienced (Penn Museum, 2014) . There are still
peoples who want to maintain and pass their traditions and nation language to
the next generations. They put in efforts as they recording the recording on
the reel to reels the history, songs, teaching the language as detailing and copy
out audio tapes of Klinken speakers so the younger generations can beneficiary
from these efforts (Penn Museum, 2014) .
Diagram 1-7: Preferences of western brands
The
brands showed above is the brand that preferred by young generations nowadays. Why
these brands but not local brands? If you asked me, surely I will answer
because of peer pressure. I do not want to being left out by my friends so I
will followed what they have purchased. Other than peer pressure, product
placement is also a very important factor. Products that using your favourite artists
as spokesperson may also lead to peoples follow blindly without knowing what the
brand is about. Big brands such as Omega, Burberry, Louis Vuitton also finding local
social influencer to review their latest products. Do not look down on the
power of brand review as the social influencer may has many loyal followers and
they will follow blindly as they think what they wearing or using will become a
new trend or fashion in a short period of time. This action is wise, a good
marketing strategy, it will help the particular brand or company increase the
sales or explore their new products to new market segmentation.
In
order to stop the penetration of cultural imperialism in Malaysia, we might
want to practice cultural protectionism as what Canada practicing. The aim for
doing so is to protect their own cultures in order to prevent other powerful
culture dominate theirs. We can protect our culture by implementing certain
rules such as banning certain products or having higher taxes, prices for items
that is not related to the particular countries’ culture (Naylor, 2016) . The ways stated
above is practicing in Canada.
In
short, cultural imperialism is powerful and it did many negative effects,
damages to the world. We have to protect our traditions and decrease the
damages that did by cultural imperialism previously by starting educate younger
generations the effect of cultural imperialism.
References
Coluzzi, P.
(2011). Modernity and globalisation: Is the presence of the English and of
cultural products in English a sign of linguistic and cultural imperialism?
Results of a study conducted in Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 14.
Naylor, S. (2016,
December 20). How cultural imperialism effects the world. Retrieved
from Prezi:
https://prezi.com/gbrjabdvpqrg/how-cultural-imperialism-effects-the-world/
Penn Museum.
(2014, January 27). Language: The heart of our culture. Retrieved from
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnMS44xjbcw
Tourism Malaysia.
(2016, January 27). Things only found in Malaysia. Retrieved from
Malaysia Truly Asia: http://blog.tourism.gov.my/things-only-found-in-malaysia/
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