Revival: Communication and Cultural Domination (1976)

Herbert I. Schiller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351715522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 1976. The attainment of political independence by more than ninety countries since the Second World War has directed attention to the conditions of economic helplessness and dependency that continue to frustrate the development of at least two-thirds of the world's nations. Two and sometimes three decades of disappointing efforts to extricate themselves from dependency have begun to provoke serious reappraisals in many lands about the entire concept of development. Accordingly, the time ahead will surely be a period of growing cultural-communications struggle ? intra- and inter - nationally ? between those seeking the end of domination and those striving to maintain it. The intention of this work is to assist, in a very modest way, in the outcome of this struggle.

1 Cultural Domination: Sources, Context and Current Styles

"...we are on the threshold of a new kind of cultural diplomacy."

— Report of Panel on International Information, Education, and Cultural Relations

In his comprehensive and illuminating study of the "modern world system," Immanuel Wallerstein (1) finds three basic elements. For him, the system consists of

— "(metaphorically).. .a single market within which calculations of maximum profitability are made and which therefore determine over some long run the amount of productive activity, the degree of specialization, the modes of payment for labor, goods and services, and utility of technological invention";

— "...a series ol state structures, of varying degrees of strength (both within their boundaries and vis-a-vis other entities in the world-system)..."

— "...appropriation of surplus labor [that] takes place in such a way that there are not two, but three tiers to the exploitative process."

Cultural imperialism today can begin to be understood, I believe, by reference to these key elements. It develops in a world system within which there is a single market, and the terms and character of production are determined in the core of that market and radiate outward. National states exist and impinge on the "pure" workings of the world system. Ordinarily their interventions benefit (or seek to benefit) the interests of the dominant classes in their own domains. And for the preservation of the system, internationally and within each constituent state in the system, the maintenance of an intermediary layer or layers is essential. Third forces, middle classes, and informational pluralism are the catchwords and necessities of system maintenance.

The cultural-communications sector of the world system necessarily develops in accordance with and facilitates the aims and objectives of the general system. A largely one-directional flow of information from core to periphery represents the reality of power. So, too, does the promotion of a single language — English. A rapid, all-encompassing communication technology (satellites and computers) is sought, discovered, and developed. Its utilization exhibits a close correspondence to the structure and the needs of the dominant elements in the core of the system.

We shall return to these matters. At this point it is enough to note that these instruments, which presently serve and enhance the system of domination, could, at a later time, provide a basis for the transformation that would replace the prevailing exploitative structure.

There is yet another complicating factor that especially affects the cultural-communications sphere of the world system. Cultural-informational outputs are largely, though not entirely, determined by the same market imperatives that govern the overall system's production of goods and services. Yet, as we are well aware, cultural-informational outputs represent much more than conventional units of personal-consumption goods: they are also embodiments of the ideological features of the world capitalist economy. They serve, extremely effectively, to promote and develop popular support for the values, or at least the artifacts, of the system. For example, David Ogilvy (2), founder of the powerful Ogilvy and Mather advertising agency, in a lavish endorsement of the Reader's Digest, commented: "The magazine exports the best in American life.... In my opinion, the Digest is doing as much as the United States Information Agency to win the battle for men's minds."

What, then, have been the dynamics of the cultural-informational processes within the context of the modern world capitalist economy, particularly since the end of the Second World War?

Elsewhere I have examined the objectives and operations of multinational corporations (MNCs)in communications. (3) Here it may suffice to repeat that the basic economic organizational unit in the modern world capitalist economy is the MNC". A few hundred of these giant agglomerations of capital, largely American owned, dominate the global market in the production and distribution of goods and services. Most significantly from our standpoint, this dominance extends to the production and dissemination of communications-cultural outputs as well.

These aggressive business empires organize the world market as best they can, subject, of course, to the uneven and partial constraints of national regulation, often minimal, and differential levels of economic development in the areas in which they are active. In furthering their goals of securing worldwide markets and unimpeded profitability, they are compelled to influence, and if possible dominate, every cultural and informational space that separates them from total control of their global/ national environment. This is not a short-run necessity: it is a permanent condition that arises out of a market system and the way that system establishes its priorities and consequently its rewards and sanctions.

Read (4), analyzing the activities of what he terms "America's mass media mercantilists" (why not imperialists?), insists that economics, and economics alone, accounts for the worldwide dissemination and penetration of U.S.-made cultural-communications outputs:

Every commercial organization, whether it manufactures cars or produces films, has a so-called bottom line, that is, the last line on its financial ledger showing either profit or loss.... It is the "bottom" line that motivates American mass media organizations to seek access to foreign markets and it is the predominant perspective from which they analyze the conditions of entry. ... [And, again] access sought is profits sought.

Having demonstrated this beyond a doubt, Read believes that he has refuted the existence of cultural imperialism because, indisputably, the process of penetration has an economic basis. But such purely economic determinism overlooks many consequences of the process it seeks to analyze. Though the economic imperative initiates the cultural envelopment, the impact extends far beyond the profit-seeking objectives of some huge media monopolies and cultural conglomerates, important and powerful as these combines are. The cultural penetration that has occurred in recent decades embraces all the socializing institutions of the affected host area. And though this, too, occurs mostly for economic reasons, the impact inevitably is felt throughout the realm of individual and social consciousness in the penetrated provinces.

Consider, for example, the business practices of the (statistically) typical multinational corporation. The enterprise operates facilities in a couple of dozen countries. Decisions, whether highly centralized in the home country (ordinarily the United States) or left to relatively autonomous plant managers and executives in the various branches scattered over three or four continents, must be coordinated. More importantly, they must follow assumptions and common understandings agreed on by the top-level management, wherever it is situated. How is this uniformity of perspective assured? Largely, as one writer puts it, through the "transmission of business culture."

Several elements are at work in this process. There are: the implantation of expatriate executive staff; business education within both the firm and the schools in the host country that are established to provide indigenous managers and workers for international companies; the adoption of English as the lingua franca of international business (for example, Philips, the giant Dutch electrical equipment multinational corporation, now uses English as the language for all internal correspondence [5]); and the utilization of the talents and energies of (mostly) U. S.-owned international advertising agencies and market research and polling firms.

The result of these diverse but interconnected activities and relationships is a cultural take-over of the penetrated society. The impulse that produces cultural domination originates with commercial imperatives, but this in no way diminishes the impact on the cultural landscape of the penetrated society. In fact, even if the latter begins to develop its own variety of cultural outputs, the initiating force of corporate capitalism's drive for profitability cannot be escaped.

Once the take-over process has begun, it is extended to all the institutional networks of the receiving society. The infrastructure of socialization is closely inter knit, and a current in one channel quickly flows into or seeks support in another. Besides, the modern world system is unrelenting in its demands and necessities. From the time a region/nation is absorbed fully into the system, it is compelled — given some latitude in the national circumstances of developmental level and degree of political independence — to adapt its production, its working force, its rewards, its concept of efficiency, its degree of specialization, its investments, and its resource priorities to the world capitalist economy.

To be sure, an international structure of domination, i.e., colonialism, existed for hundreds of years. What is being considered here is the transformation of that system — in its realignments of power centers, its changed sources of exploitation, and its modern mode of organization and control.

In this sense, the concept of cultural imperialism today best describes the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of the system,

The public media* are the foremost example of operating enterprises that are used in the penetrative process. For penetration on a significant scale the media themselves must be captured by the dominating/penetrating power. This occurs largely through the commercialization of broadcasting. (The press invariably is commercial at the outset.)

* Public media is the term used here to describe what are generally referred to as the mass media. I find myself in agreement with Cees Hamelink that public media better explain, or at least permit the possibility of understanding, the processes by which messages are made public. (Cees Hamelink, Perspectives for Public Communication, Ten Have, Baarn, The Netherlands, 1975. See especially footnote 1, p. 92.)

Latin America, for example, represents a peripheral region in which (with the exception of Cuba) broadcasting is thoroughly commercialized and serves fully the requirements of the multinational corporations and their indigenous counterparts and supporters. Two researchers report, for example, that Venezuelan commercial television content "is, for the most part, advertising, violence and imported films." (6)

Western Europe, itself part of the core of the world capitalist economy, has also moved toward the commercialization of its broadcast media, reflecting the insatiable market needs of its own business system, to say nothing of its substantial American component. Once commercial, a series of economic pressures thereafter ensure that the broadcast media everywhere will carry the cultural material produced in the core areas (the United States, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, and a few other centers). Imitations of that material may appear when and if the indigenous broadcast/film/print industries demand a share in their home market. Directly or indirectly, the outcome is the same. The content and style of the programming, however adapted to local conditions, bear the ideological imprint of the main centers of the capitalist world economy.

Disney products are prototypic:

Disney, like the missionary Peace Corpsman or "goodwill ambassador" of his Public Relations men, has learned the native lingoes — he is fluent in eighteen of them at the moment. In Latin America he speaks Spanish and Portuguese; and he speaks it from magazines which are slightly different, in other ways,from those produced elsewhere and at home. There are, indeed, at least four different Spanish language editions of the Disney comic. The differences between them do not affect the basic content. .. . (7)

Similarly, the character and organization of education and scientific research in core and peripheral countries alike are compelled to adapt to and serve the requirements of the multinational corporate economy. Education in the advanced, capitalist states is arranged to produce managers, administrators, and skilled workers for the multinational corporations and the state bureaucracy. Similar, if less efficient, educational structures are established outside the core region.

One of the priority tasks of the Agency for International Development has been to organize schools and institutes, patterned after the North American model, in Third World countries. Sometimes, major American universities, in what appears as educational philanthropy, assist in establishing centers outside the United States. Journalism schools, for example, have proliferated throughout Latin America, many of them helped into existence and subsidized on a continuing basis by funds from the United States (8), flowing through sometimes obscure channels.

At the highest level of training — for corporate managers and executives — the most prestigious business schools in U.S. universities have taken an active part in internationalizing their instruction. The Harvard Business School has an affiliate management school in Lausanne, Switzerland; and another management school in Lausanne also has intellectual links to Harvard. New York University has organized a cooperative venture with the London Business School, affiliated with the University of London, and with the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes Commerciales at Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris. "Graduates of the Program in the first two years," it is reported, "have found jobs easily. They have been hired by such concerns as First National City Bank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Irving Trust, First Philadelphia Bank, Booz, Allen and Hamilton, ICI, and the French Industrial Development Agency." (9)

In other institutes in Europe, the "staff and alumni from Harvard and Wharton are an influential if not dominant group within the faculty, and, in most cases, teaching and reading reflect a decidedly American business ethos." All of this leads inescapably to the conclusion that "The coming generation of top managers in Europe, all more or less similarly trained to put the commercial interests of their enterprises above other considerations, are increasingly divorced from their particular national framework, and reflect, if anything, the business philosophy of the ruling United States schools." (10)

By no means is this influence restricted to Europe. For example, the Financial Times (October 3, 1973) describes the Department of Business Administration of the American University in Beirut as "the Middle East's Harvard... [It] provides the local intellectual cream for the area."

More than the education of future business leaders and government administrators in the capitalist world economy is being shaped by the MNCs' needs. The organization of work in general and the perspectives and outlooks related thereto are also focal points for supervision and intrusion. One researcher, Rita Cruise O'Brien (11), has been examining the transfer of institutional forms and organizational structures from the metropolitan (core) countries to the less-developed societies (periphery) in the crucial field of broadcasting. She observes, "Organizations like the BBC and RTF, NBC and CBS exported not only their structures but their philosophies of operation, the traces of which remain in varying degrees in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These traces are reinforced through continued transfers of personnel, training forms and imported programmes or programme types."

Along with these arrangements come the highly developed techniques and perspectives of professionalization. Profession alization as it is known and practiced in the United States and Western Europe is one of the strongest means of segmenting the working force. It introduces differentiation and competitiveness and promotes a (false) notion of objective and apolitical job activity and decision-making. As O'Brien (11) notes, "The process of professionalization in broadcasting [as elsewhere] may itself have introduced a new constraint resistant to changes in the organizational structure.... There seems no better way of protecting broadcast training as i...