imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
where there is an unequal relation between academics, where one group dominates and the other is dominated or ignored. Early theories of academic imperialism date to the 1960s.
Definitions
Academic imperialism has been defined either in the context of certain disciplines or subdisciplines as oppressing others or (more often) as part of political imperialism that has resulted in inequality between academia in the
First World
The concept of First World originated during the Cold War and comprised countries that were under the influence of the United States and the rest of NATO and opposed the Soviet Union and/or communism during the Cold War. Since the collapse of ...
(the West) and
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
.
Within disciplines
In the intradisciplinary context, an example of imperialistic behavior was the dismissive attitude of the 1920s-1930s adherents of
behavioral psychology
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...
in the United States towards non-behavioral psychologists.
Internationally
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.C. K. Raju claims academic imperialism emerged thanks to racism among native colonial elites. 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." In the modern
postcolonial
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
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.
Syed Farid Alatas
Syed Farid Alatas ( ar, سيد فريد العطاس ) is a Malaysian author and educator, serving as a professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.
International academic imperialism generates academic dependency, or the dependency of non-Western scholars on Western academia. In non-Western countries, science is still dependent on institutions and ideas of Western science, which are often transplanted from Western countries.
Syed Farid Alatas lists the following six aspects of academic dependency:
* Dependence on ideas;
* Dependence on the media of ideas;
* Dependence on the technology of education;
* Dependence on aid for research as well as teaching;
* Dependence on investment in education;
* Dependence of Third World social scientists on demand in the West for their skills.
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. Another example is the dominance of
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
in the world of international academia.
References
Notes
Bibliography
* {{cite journal, author=Syed Farid Alatas , author-link=Syed Farid al-Attas , url=http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/courses/PoliticalScience/357B1/documents/AlatasAcademicDependencyandGlobalDivisionLabourSocSci.pdf , title=Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences , journal=Current Sociology , volume=51 , number=6 , year=2003 , pages=599–613 , doi=10.1177/00113921030516003 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201234147/http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/courses/PoliticalScience/357B1/documents/AlatasAcademicDependencyandGlobalDivisionLabourSocSci.pdf , archivedate=2014-02-01
Imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...