Cultural suppression

Cultural suppression

Cultural suppression occurs when a culture is suppressed, usually coinciding with the promotion of another culture. It is often related to cultural imperialism.

The person of the suppressed culture either seeks a foreign culture to adopt or creates a new one to replace it. The psychological effects of the former is a sense of alienation within the person of the suppress culture due to a constant internalization of the fact that he/she has leeched on to something, in this cause a culture, that is not truly theirs.

This leaves the person spinning in a state of precariousness and leads to self-loathing and intense hatred for the suppressor. The longer the person accepts the foreign culture without internalization, the more severe the alienation once (if) the person finally realizes he/she does not belong. Usually, cultural suppressions occurs when a nation wants to either discredit another nation's historical significance in order to perpetuate imperialist ideas and their own culture.

Methods

  • Raiding and burning national libraries of another culture.
  • Destroying significant artifacts of another culture.
  • Suppressing information about another culture's accomplishments.
  • Removing people from their native milieu and cutting off their ties to it.

Further reading

http://academics.keene.edu/tstavely/Resources/ccpsy-papers.html