Cultural imperialism

Cultural imperialism (also cultural colonialism) is the imposition by a dominant community of its own culture onto another community. Imperialists may use wealth, media power, and violence to establish cultural hegemony. Cultural imperialism may take various forms, such as an attitude, a formal policy, or military action—insofar as each of these reinforces the empire's cultural hegemony. Research on the topic occurs in scholarly disciplines, and is especially prevalent in communication and media studies, education, foreign policy, history, international relations, linguistics, literature, post-colonialism, science, sociology, social theory, environmentalism, and sports.

Cultural imperialism may be distinguished from the natural process of cultural diffusion. The spread of culture around the world is referred to as cultural globalization.