Cross Cultural Competence

Running head: CROSS CULTURAL COMPETENCE
CROSS CULTURAL COMPETENCE
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CROSS CULTURAL COMPETENCE1
Imperialism is the highest stage of world capitalism, which too its shape in the
gradual changes in world politics and economics in the post WWI era. Americanization,
sometimes understood as parallel to internationalization, closely follows the logic of
imperialism to assert economic and cultural control over underdeveloped countries masked as
a project of development.
Imperialism is etymologically derived from empire. The empire asserts its power over
the settlements in non-European countries through remote operation or governance. This
governance can be in forms military, financial, political, and most importantly, cultural.
Driven by the need to acquire wealth as well as propagate finance capitalism, imperialism is a
project of systematic economic domination of the West. According to the classic study by V.
I. Lenin, imperialism, in order to function as an integral economic model and sustain
colonialism, requires monopolization of labour and extortion of natural resources, and the
exportation of finance capital. (Lenin, 1999)
In the post-Cold war era, imperialism was said to be a thing of the past, with
decreasing dominance of the European countries over their colonies. However, as Michael
Barrett-Brown argues, imperialism is still a powerful force that appropriates international
relations across boundaries. (Said, 2012, p.283) The evidence for that is the immense
economic gap which still exists between poor Southern hemisphere states and rich Northern
hemisphere states which is restated by the Brandt report of 1980. (Said, 2012, p.284)
In this juncture, we reflect upon the increasing socio-cultural dominance of the
America which has led to the worldwide phenomena of Americanization as such. In the late
19th and early 20th century, Americanization referred to a sociological process by which the
non-American immigrant demographic is assimilated into the American society. (Craig and
Douglas, 2009) But in the contemporary time, and in this paper, we understand