essays on westernized culture

• Accessibility & Inclusivity
• Breaking News
• International
• Clubs & Orgs
• Humans of SB
• In Memoriam
• Santa Barbara
• Top Features
• Arts & Culture
• Film & TV
• Local Artists
• Local Musicians
• Student Art
• Theater & Dance
• Top A&E
• App Reviews
• Environment
• Nature of UCSB
• Nature of IV
• Top Science & Tech
• Campus Comment
• Letters to the Editor
• Meet Your Neighbor
• Top Opinions
• Illustrations
• Editorial Board

Earth Day Isla Vista – Celebrating Through Music, Nature, and Fun

In photos: men’s basketball: gauchos vs uc davis, art as a weapon against invasion – film reminds us of…, opportunity for all uc office of the president yet to make…, the top boba places in isla vista – a journey into…, getting kozy: isla vista’s newest coffee shop, a call for natural sustainability: the story and mission of the…, tasa night market 2023: fostering community and featuring budding clubs at…, in photos – daedalum luminarium, an art installation, creating characters we love: the screenwriting process in our flag means…, indigo de souza and the best-case anticlimax, a spectrum of songs: ucsb’s college of creative studies set to…, nature in i.v. – black mold, southern california is in super bloom, from love to likes: social media’s role in relationships, the gloom continues: a gray may, the rise of ai girlfriends: connecting with desires and discussing controversy,…, letter to the editor: dining hall laborers have had enough, do…, is studying abroad worth it for a ucsb student, workers at ucsb spotlight: being a writing tutor for clas, what exactly is “western culture”.

Sofia Lyon & Nathan Staff Writer & Contributing Writer

“Western culture” is a vague term often seen in academic environments. However, it is difficult even amongst scholars to identify which cultures and peoples are included within the distinction of “western.” 

While much of it is explainable via the rigid reality of academia, the distinction of “western” culture does speak to a greater understanding of world culture. What it ultimately speaks to are the origins of philosophies which dictate diverse ways of life across the planet.

Thousands of years ago, “the West” was born in Greece with all of its advancements in culture and science. Greek plays and myths, the architecture of the great temples, and even the basic schools of thought all survived long past the fall of the ancient Greek city-states. They moved westward with the next great civilization, the Romans, and, after Rome fell, continued to move even further west until they reached America.

“The West” is vague, but purposefully so. It’s impossible for a single word or term to prove description enough for content as broad as culture, architecture, basic thinking, storytelling practices, rules for law and governance, and so on and so forth. By being vague, “the West” is able to serve as the blanket term used for all of it, and provides easy distinction from the other main school of thought in the world, “the East.”

Both schools of thought have drastically different ideas on how the world and society should be governed. “The East” is far more communal, and far more reverent of the elderly. “The West,” on the other hand, is wildly individualistic, pushing for each person to carve out their own mark. Family names became less important in the west because of this. 

Thus, “western culture” seems to be a somewhat arbitrary distinction used across academics to describe ideological, cultural, and ethnic uniformity amongst European and derivative nations. 

Of course, this distinction does not account for the entire picture of typically “western” nations, namely the problem of Eastern European countries, who often can be seen as outliers. They are excluded from the engagements of Western Europe, and also have endured much cultural assimilation from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern states. 

So, we can acknowledge the shortcomings of the term pragmatically. What was also previously pointed out is its use in separating “the East” from “the West” — a separation almost solely based on historical development of technologies and differences in major philosophical schools which govern political and cultural mentalities. Eastern philosophies focus significantly on collective good, whereas Western philosophies are centered on good for the individual. 

These fundamental philosophies ultimately guided variant cultural development. For instance, it would seem that the advent of the American dream is a result of “the West’s” tendency towards individualism. Similarly, cultures of vanity, celebrity, and social media spun from the same self-interested nature of Western thought.

Western culture does not describe any specific group or belief, but instead it describes tendencies within cultural thought and practices, tendencies which favor the plight of the individual rather than the collective. It is a distinction which should not be given more depth than it is worth — an academic dichotomy. It speaks to greater separations in the development of world culture.

• Science & Tech

Western Culture – 10 Examples, Characteristics & Values

Western culture refers to the cultural traditions, societal norms, and values of the Western world, which generally encompasses Europe, the United States, and like-minded regions.

The term “Western” generally refers to Europe and parts of the world heavily shaped by its inhabitants through immigration, colonization, or influence. But it is not a clearly defined geographical area. Instead, a state’s ideology is what usually makes it Western. 

Western culture has roots in ancient Greece and Rome, and later medieval and modern Europe shaped it into its present form. Some of its central values include individualism, consumerism, democracy, etc. Due to colonialism and globalism, the values and practices of western culture have now spread to the entire world. 

The dominance of the Western culture has led to cultural hegemony, but it is now being increasingly challenged by non-European perspectives. Moreover, western values themselves are now questioned.

Western Culture Definition

In his book Culture and Society , David J. Smith defines western culture as:

“the culture of the modern West, which is characterized by a dominant set of values, beliefs, and practices that have their roots in the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of European imperialism.” (Smith, 2013)

As Smith’s definition highlights, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and European imperialism have played a key role in defining Western culture.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in Europe around the 17th and 18th centuries. It emphasized reason and individualism with a focus on scientific progress and a belief in the inherent goodness of humanity. By doing so, it challenged traditional values and had a significant impact on Western culture. 

The Industrial Revolution also happened in the 18th century. It was a period of rapid technological development (such as the steam engine & the power loom) that brought significant economic & social change . It led to the creation of capitalist economies, increased urbanization , and the growth of the middle class.

Finally, between the 15th and 20th centuries, European powers (especially Great Britain, France, and Spain) established colonies in many parts of the world, imposing their political system, religion, and culture on the natives. Imperialism had a massive influence on Western culture and shaped our contemporary world. 

Western Culture Examples

• Rationalism : Rationalism emphasizes the importance of reason and logic in understanding the world. Its roots go back to the Enlightenment period, during which it became a way to break from traditions and promote progress. It is a central value of Western culture and continues to guide decision-making in most fields today.
• Christianity: Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it has played a defining role in the moral & ethical values of Western culture. It also shaped the development of Western law, governance, and the way people live. Christianity also significantly impacted Western art, literature, and cultural practices.
• Individualism : Individualism emphasizes the importance of the individual and their freedoms. It also has its roots in the Enlightenment, during which it was seen as a way to promote human achievement & progress. Individualism is a central value of Western culture, although some criticize it for promoting a lack of social cohesion and inequality.
• Democracy : Democracy enables the public’s participation in decision-making and protects the rights of individuals. It originated in Ancient Greece, although the democracies of today are different since they’re representative. Democracy is built on the idea of political equality, and it is widely adopted throughout the world.
• Capitalism : Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and the pursuit of profit. It developed during the Industrial Revolution when competition between private enterprises played a key role. Despite being criticized for creating social inequality & its instability, capitalism remains a central value in Western culture.
• Natural Rights : Natural rights are the presumed rights people are born with. The concept intends to preserve the fundamental individual freedoms of individuals, irrespective of nationality, race, religion, etc. This idea also originated during the Enlightenment in the works of Jean-Jacques Rosseau and John Locke. They are vital to protecting the dignity & autonomy of individuals . 
• Consumerism: Consumerism encourages the acquisition of goods/services with an emphasis on consumer choice. Growing out of the Industrial Revolution, it developed in the context of 20th-century mass production. Many criticize it for environmental degradation and promoting excess, but it remains central to Western culture.
• Education: Education is a value that highlights the importance of acquiring knowledge for both personal & professional development. Western culture delivers education formally with a focus on structured institutions (such as schools & universities) based on an established & systematic body of knowledge.
• Mass Media : Mass Media disseminates information through media outlets like TV, radio, and the internet. It has its roots in the 20th century when technology revolutionized communication. By providing a platform to exchange ideas, it serves as a key pillar of democracy, and despite criticisms about its bias, it remains a central value.
• Syncretism : Syncretism is a value that encourages incorporating and blending diverse cultural influences . It is based on the idea that different traditions create a more vibrant cultural landscape and promote understanding between groups. Despite the history of imperialism, syncretism is a central value of Western culture.

What is Western Cultural Hegemony?

Western cultural hegemony refers to the dominance of the Western world’s values, beliefs, and practices over those of other societies. It can take various forms, such as political, economic, and cultural.

The West’s dominance gave rise to a western theory known as hegemonic stability theory that argues a single powerful hegemony leads to greater global stability and prosperity.

Between the 15th and 20th centuries, European nations like Great Britain, France, and Spain established colonies around the globe. They imposed their politics, religion, and culture on the people, which usually meant the suppression of indigenous culture and the promotion of Western practices & values. We call this cultural imperialism .

By the 19th century, due to the combined impact of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and imperialism, the Western world had become the wealthiest and most powerful civilization in a phenomenon known as the Great Divergence (Pomeranz, 2000). This economic dominance continues today, as many Western companies and products rule the global market.   

The Great Divergence also led Westerners to believe their society was superior to others. So, they felt justified not just in conquering other nations but also in stating that their culture (including its literature, music, arts, etc.) was the best in the world. 

So, political & economic power led to cultural authority, and even today, Western cultural products dominate the global art industry. It also led to Western values such as individualism and consumerism becoming synonymous with universal values .

This cultural hegemony is now being increasingly challenged through globalization, which has led to a greater cultural exchange and given a voice to non-Western societies. Many of these have also experienced economic & political growth in recent years, becoming more influential. Finally, activism & social movements have also promoted cultural diversity. 

Criticisms of Western Culture

The main criticisms of Western culture stem from its role in imperialism and the attitude of eurocentrism .

Between the 15th and 20th centuries, European powers established their colonies around the globe. Along with economic exploitation, colonialism also led to cultural imperialism: the Westerners imposed their civilizational values and destroyed indigenous cultures (Said, 1978). 

Colonialism was also linked to eurocentrism—the tendency to view the world from a narrow European perspective, even when that lens is inadequate. It often comes with a belief in the superiority of Western culture and its values, leading to a marginalization of non-Western perspectives.

This eurocentrism often leads Western culture to put forward its values as universally applicable. For example, individualism—the belief in the importance of an individual over society—is a central value of Western culture. However, it can lead to a lack of social cohesion and may not be applicable everywhere.

Consumerism, another significant value in the West, is often criticized for focusing solely on material possessions and ignoring other important things such as relationships, community, environment, etc. 

Any cultural value will have its positives and negatives. However, the problem arises when some of these are said to be universally applicable. So, the foundational problem with Western culture stems from eurocentrism, which is also related to the history of imperialism.

Western culture refers to societal norms, cultural traditions, and values of the Western world. We talked about the three significant events—the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and European imperialism—that defined Western culture and heavily influenced the whole world.

We discussed how the West’s immense political, economic, and cultural power led to global Western hegemony. As Appiah rightly argues, this dominance has caused an erosion of cultural diversity and promoted a monolithic worldview (2006). 

So, in today’s context of globalization and increasing interconnectedness, we must find ways to look beyond the dominant Western perspectives. Instead of suppressing non-European voices, we must listen to and provide a platform to them so we can learn from the rich diversity of human life. 

Finally, we also took into account some criticisms of Western culture, which mainly stem from the history of imperialism. While no cultural value can be perfect, their forceful imposition—often due to eurocentrism—deserves to be challenged. 

Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers . W. W. Norton & Company.

Pomeranz, K. (2000). The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy . Princeton University Press.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism . Vintage Books. Smith, D. J. (2013). Culture and Society: An Introduction to cultural geography . Routledge.

Sourabh Yadav (MA)

Sourabh Yadav is a freelance writer & filmmaker. He studied English literature at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. You can find his work on The Print, Live Wire, and YouTube.

• Sourabh Yadav (MA) #molongui-disabled-link Indirect Democracy: Definition and Examples
• Sourabh Yadav (MA) #molongui-disabled-link Pluralism (Sociology): Definition and Examples
• Sourabh Yadav (MA) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Equality Examples
• Sourabh Yadav (MA) #molongui-disabled-link Instrumental Learning: Definition and Examples

Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Positive Punishment Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Dissociation Examples (Psychology)
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 15 Zone of Proximal Development Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link Perception Checking: 15 Examples and Definition

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

SCDAI Groningen

Student Center for Diversity Advocacy and Inclusion Groningen

The Westernization of people, languages and culture

Westernization is a complex notion that we are introduced to either as part of our curriculum (if you happen to follow a social study), or in the media. Whether you are familiar with the term or not, Westernization impacts people, organizations and countries from all around the world. In this blog post, I want to first have a look at what Westernization entails; secondly, dive into how the language we use mirrors processes of Westernization when we speak about people, cultures, and simply use language; and finally try to create understanding of the big-picture-issues surrounding processes of Westernization. While all of these may also be a result of a subconscious bias, this post aims to encourage its audience to pay attention to some of the language and conditioning within our daily practice, in order to dismantle harmful biases.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not an extensive review of Westernization as there are many more aspects, perspectives and history behind it.   

What is Westernization?

By definition , the concept of Westernization refers to the adoption of the practices, and cultures of Western Europe, by societies and countries in other parts of the world, whether through compulsion or influence.

How did this come to be? Well, it only makes sense that the countries and nations that have been dominant throughout history by having colonized many lands and diminished plenty of cultures, become the prevalent culture of referral. Westernization can, to a large extent, be attributed to colonialism, imperialism, fascism and other vicious systems of oppression and annihilation. All of this, is consequently also amplified through the lens of globalization, and the digitalization and expansion of communication.

This can strongly be evidenced by looking at prevalent languages, for instance, the English language. While it is very useful to have a language that connects people across the world, English would not be so in-demand if the British were not such a colonizing “power”. Let’s not forget that this is the nation referred to their global destruction and theft of other cultures and lands as the Empire on which the sun never sets . Similarly, the Spanish language is the main language for most countries in Latin America, as is the French language - across many countries on the African continent, again namely due to colonization.

The Westernization of people, language, and culture.

If you’ve followed us, SCDAI, you know that our prime focus is on higher education. Many of us behind the scenes of the organization, as well as our audience, are students in an international and multicultural environment. From day one of stepping into classrooms of such rich cultural variety, we are challenged not only with familiarizing ourselves with our demanding curriculum but also with constantly acclimatizing to the new people and cultures around us. Therefore, learning about each other's cuisines, history, art, language, literature, and ways of expression becomes a must. However, since we've been conditioned to view the world through a westernized perspective, we seamlessly lose out on the richness of each other's cultures, all while instinctively standardizing one another’s identities to the Western norm.

Let’s look at several examples. While doing research for my thesis, I was roaming through some universities’ websites to look at the type of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives they have in place. On one of the websites I stumbled across a page titled Celebrating Differences which included many descriptions of diverse cultural holidays that the university embraces and celebrates. One of the mentioned holidays is referred to as the Jewish Easter, a.k.a Passover (Pesach). 

This made me think about the many ways in which Westernization and in this case, the normativity of Christianity, subconsciously has us create mental shortcuts when speaking on cultures and their respective holidays. Passover has nothing to do with Easter, except for the fact that it is celebrated in a similar time span throughout the year. And if you’re not familiar with the two holidays - Easter is about commemorating the resurrection of Jesus, while Passover refers to the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. Even though other similarities can be found in the two holidays’ etymologies, as well as in the two religions overall, it is important to be able to separate the holidays from one another. In referring to Passover as the Jewish Easter, we strip away the holiday’s cultural significance and its purpose, while dressing it up in familiar elements, essentially making it something that it is not at all. In this way, the audience learns nothing about the holiday, the Jewish culture, religion, people and history. 

Other examples of the Westernization of peoples and cultures can be observed in the way we even speak about our own cultures. We might find ourselves in a situation where we don’t know how to describe a certain significant person of our nation or culture, and resort to using references such as he is the Picasso of Bulgaria, for example. And while these mental shortcuts provide easy ways to translate culturally significant elements to a new audience, we continuously perpetuate Western cultures and norms, while erasing the uniqueness of our own cultures. There’s no shame in this, we’ve all been there, trying to make new friends cross-culturally, and these become most commonly the moments when we become victims of our own biases. And yes, we can have biases against our own cultures, too. 

I too, as a Bulgarian myself, spent many of our history classes learning about the benefits Western countries reaped from colonialist times. In fact, big chunks of our history books focus on the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods in Western Europe. We were conditioned to believe that if we hadn’t been subjugated by the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, we could also have had brilliant artists, poets and scientists of the same rank as the ones to the West; we could also have had the same ‘progress’. Yet, the problem with this idea of progress is that these periods of great prosperity and cultural awakening were a direct result of the resources that were taken from the colonized lands.

Why does using accurate and dignifying language matter?

While history is set in stone, we can still make a conscious shift in our internal biases, for example, through the way we use language. The power that language holds is very evident in the different connotations words such as “slaves” versus “enslaved people” hold. Nicole Hannah-Jones , a prominent journalist based in the US, gave this strong example of how making this small, yet significant change is extremely important in the way language can accurately and ethically depict such a power dynamic in her opening essay to the 1619 Project . By making this shift, where the first term is a heavily dehumanizing word, the second variation of it manages to retain the human identity and dignity of a person who was in bondage, and instead focus on describing the circumstances which were inflicted onto them, namely by colonizers. 

Westernization can also be witnessed as part of many of our languages. I will give an example once again with my own country - Bulgaria. As mentioned, we were under Ottoman rule for 500 years until 1878. Nowadays the Bulgarian language still uses many Turkish words and customs due to the attempted and somewhat successful cultural, religious and linguistic repression by the Ottoman Empire. However, upon obtaining freedom, Bulgaria quickly became under Western influence, and French vocabulary infiltrated the language in aims to replace Turkish words. Conversely, during Bulgaria’s years within the Soviet Union, Russian became the language most people learned as a second language in school. As you probably are catching on, the dominant nation or country also exerts its influence culturally. While cultural exchange is not a negative trait, in fact, quite the opposite, and we should all be open to learning new languages, art and cuisines; the learning process should be done willingly, consciously and ethically, and not as a result of (neo)colonialism or economic and geopolitical gain. 

Other examples include how countries typically opt for a “cultural assimilation” model, in which  minority and underrepresented foreigners, expats, refugees, and immigrants are forced to resemble society’s majority group or assume their values, behaviors, and beliefs either fully or partially. And as we can see often times when assimilation does not happen (as it shouldn’t have to), populist narratives and politicians use such minority groups as scapegoats. This can be observed with the the way Muslim people are treated across Europe and the US, for example.

Connecting the dots

Understanding that processes of Westernization have a deep root in White and Western supremacy and superiority is the key to understanding the problem and dismantling such biases. As aforementioned, history cannot be changed, however we can change the way we use our language to pay respect to non-Western cultures, events, people and thought, in creating a fuller and more colorful collective imaginary. 

Recommended Articles

‘all exclusive’.

Women in Academia, Sexism, & Internalized Bias

“What Has Internationalisation Ever Done for Us?”

If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser.

AP®︎/College Art History

Course: ap®︎/college art history   >   unit 1.

• Common questions about dates
• A brief history of the cultures of Asia

A brief history of Western culture

• What maps tell us

Prehistoric (before c. 3000 B.C.E.)

Ancient (c. 3000 b.c.e. to c. 400 c.e.), middle ages (c. 400 c.e. to c. 1400 c.e.), renaissance (c. 1400 to 1600), early modern (c. 1600 - 1800), modern (after c. 1800), where do we fit in, want to join the conversation.

• Upvote Button navigates to signup page
• Downvote Button navigates to signup page
• Flag Button navigates to signup page

Learn Anthropology

No products in the cart.

Username or Email Address

Remember Me Forgot Password?

A link to set a new password will be sent to your email address.

Your personal data will be used to support your experience throughout this website, to manage access to your account, and for other purposes described in our privacy policy .

Get New Password -->

Westernization

• Last Updated: Aug 8, 2023

Westernization refers to the adoption or imposition of Western culture and values in various societies around the world. In India, this phenomenon has been intensely studied, especially with respect to its impacts on traditional practices and social structures. The term itself was popularized by eminent Indian sociologist M.N. Srinivas [1] .

Definition of Westernization

In the global context.

Westernization describes the influence of Western values and norms on non-Western cultures. This influence can manifest in various domains, including politics, economy, social structures, and even daily lifestyles.

In the Indian Context

In India, Westernization signifies the adoption of Western technology, institutions, and lifestyle, often conflicting with traditional Indian culture [2] . This section will further explore the facets of Westernization in India.

M.N. Srinivas and Westernization

M.N. Srinivas, a prominent Indian sociologist, defined Westernization as the changes brought about in Indian society and culture due to over a century-long British rule [3] .

Westernization vs. Sanskritization

Srinivas made a distinction between Westernization and Sanskritization, where the latter is the process of emulating the rituals and values of the Sanskritic (upper caste) culture. Westernization, according to him, was independent of caste and had a more profound impact on secular aspects such as technology, lifestyle, and legal systems [4] .

Effects of Westernization

Positive impacts.

• Technological Advancements : Westernization has led to technological improvements in various sectors, like health, education, and infrastructure.
• Legal Reforms : Introduction of progressive laws that protect individual rights.

Negative Impacts

• Cultural Erosion : Loss of traditional values and practices.
• Social Disparity : Creation of social inequalities and tensions between Westernized urban elite and rural masses.

The Debate: Traditional Values vs. Modernization

The balance between preserving traditional values and embracing modernization remains a critical debate in Indian society. Srinivas himself recognized the complexity of this issue, emphasizing that Westernization did not always mean a decline in traditional values but could also lead to their reformation.

Case Studies

Education system.

The Indian education system has been greatly influenced by Western models. While this has brought significant improvements in scientific and technical education, it has also been criticized for undermining traditional Indian knowledge systems.

Urbanization and Lifestyle

Urban centers in India often reflect Western lifestyles, leading to a cultural shift and the creation of a new social class. This has both integrated and divided different sections of Indian society.

Westernization in India is a multifaceted phenomenon with both positive and negative impacts. The work of M.N. Srinivas provides valuable insights into understanding the complex relationship between Western influences and Indian society. The continuous negotiation between tradition and modernity remains a crucial aspect of India’s evolving socio-cultural landscape.

[1] Srinivas, M. N. (1966). Social Change in Modern India . University of California Press.

[2] Naik, J. (1982). Cultural Impact of Westernization in India . Historical Review.

[3] Srinivas, M. N. (1956). A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization . The Far Eastern Quarterly.

[4] Srinivas, M. N. (1952). Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India . Oxford Clarendon Press.

Vasundhra, an anthropologist, embarks on a captivating journey to decode the enigmatic tapestry of human society. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, she unravels the intricacies of social phenomena, immersing herself in the lived experiences of diverse cultures. Armed with an unwavering passion for understanding the very essence of our existence, Vasundhra fearlessly navigates the labyrinth of genetic and social complexities that shape our collective identity. Her recent publication unveils the story of the Ancient DNA field, illuminating the pervasive global North-South divide. With an irresistible blend of eloquence and scientific rigor, Vasundhra effortlessly captivates audiences, transporting them to the frontiers of anthropological exploration.

Newsletter Updates

Enter your email address below and subscribe to our newsletter

I accept the Privacy Policy

Related Posts

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• Search Menu
• Supplements
• Cohort Profiles
• Education Corner
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• About the International Journal of Epidemiology
• About the International Epidemiological Association
• Editorial Team
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Contact the IEA
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Epidemiology, health, and culture, materialism and individualism, culture's impacts on health, cultural fraud.

• < Previous

Is modern Western culture a health hazard?

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Richard Eckersley, Is modern Western culture a health hazard?, International Journal of Epidemiology , Volume 35, Issue 2, April 2006, Pages 252–258, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyi235

• Permissions Icon Permissions

The cultures of societies are underestimated determinants of their population health and well-being. This is as true of modern Western culture, including its defining qualities of materialism and individualism, as it is of other cultures. This paper draws on evidence from a range of disciplines to argue that materialism and individualism are detrimental to health and well-being through their impacts on psychosocial factors such as personal control and social support.

The focus of the resurgent scientific and political interest in the effects of the social environment on health has been on socioeconomic inequalities in health—especially those associated with income inequality. Two developments strengthen the case for paying more attention to the role of culture in health. The first is that, at the population level, the role of income inequality has become less clear, with recent research challenging the view that it is a major determinant of population health differences. 1 – 3 Instead it suggests that population health is the product of a complex interaction of history, culture, politics, economics, and the status of women and ethnic groups 4 ; and that we need, in particular, a better appreciation of how broad indicators of social and economic conditions are related to the levels and social distribution of major risk factors for particular health outcomes. 3

The second development is a general acceptance that psychosocial factors are a significant pathway by which inequality and other social determinants affect health and that perceptions and emotions are important to health outcomes. 2 , 4 This position is now common ground between those who believe that sources of health inequalities are primarily, or fundamentally, material—resulting from differences in material exposures and experiences—and those who argue that their sources are psychosocial—stemming from people's position in the social hierarchy and their perceptions of relative disadvantage. 2

Psychosocial processes involve interactions between social conditions and individual psychology and behaviour, 5 and are associated with (in their negative forms) stress, depression, anxiety, isolation, insecurity, hostility, and lack of control over one's life. 6 , 7 Whether psychosocial factors affect health only (or principally) through health-related behaviours or also act via direct effects on the neuroendocrine and immune systems remains contested, but this does not affect the case for taking culture into account. Once we allow a role in health for psychosocial factors and for perceptions, expectations and emotions, then cultural factors have to be considered because culture influences these things. 8

Epidemiology understands ‘culture’ mainly in terms of ‘subcultures’ or ‘difference’, especially ethnic and racial, and so, usually, as one dimension of socioeconomic status. 9 – 11 Culture in the broader sense of the dominant or defining culture of a society has been given scant attention in the recent social determinants literature. 12 Of the many books and reports on the subject published over the past two decades, only a few give cultural determinants more than a passing mention. (The exceptions include the works of Corin on culture in general, 10 , 11 and my own work on modern Western culture in particular. 12 , 13 )

Generally speaking, the influence of culture (in this broad sense) on health and well-being has been seen as distal and diffuse, pervasive but unspecified. 12 Yet it seems plausible, if not self-evident, that cultural characteristics such as materialism or individualism can have as important an impact on psychosocial factors such as social support and personal control as socioeconomic inequality—perhaps even more important.

Marmot and Wilkinson, 7 in noting the relationship between income inequality and social affiliation, suggest there is a ‘culture of inequality’ that is more aggressive, less connected, more violent and less trusting. Singh-Manoux and Marmot 14 take this cultural perspective further in suggesting that socialization provides a mechanism for integrating the cultural, behavioural, structural, and material explanations of social inequalities. Socialization is the process of transferring attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours between and within generations, the means by which societies shape patterns of behaviour and being that then affect health. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus’, they argue that social structures become embodied as schemes of perception that provide individuals with class-dependent and predisposed ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, which are then reproduced.

However, we can also think of such processes as going beyond matters of class; socialization reproduces lifestyles and identities, not just social differences in them. A culture of individualism and materialism could also produce those attributes of a culture of inequality. In other words, these developments in thinking about inequality in essentially cultural terms invite a broader consideration of cultural factors as determinants of health.

The neglect of culture is surprising in some respects, but not others. It is surprising given that some of the earlier social epidemiological research—for example, the work by Marmot and Syme 15 , 16 in the 1970s on the effects of exposure to Western influence on heart disease in ethnic Japanese—pointed to its significance. It is unsurprising in that cultures tend to be ‘transparent’ or ‘invisible’ to those living within them because they comprise deeply internalized assumptions and beliefs, making their effects hard to discern. As Corin says, cultural influences are always easier to identify in unfamiliar societies. 10 Our own cultures appear to constitute a natural order that is not itself an object of study. This impression, she says, is an ‘unsupported ethnocentric illusion’.

Another reason for underestimating the role of culture is the extent to which its impacts are ‘refracted’ through a host of other, more specific influences, including a person's personal circumstances and temperament (this is also true of other distal determinants of health). In other words, changes that affect everyone can, nevertheless, affect people differently and contribute to specific problems that only some experience.

A third explanation is that culture is a much debated and contested subject, defined and used in many different ways in different disciplines and even within the same discipline. Culture, as I use the term here, refers to the language and accumulated knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, and values that are passed between individuals, groups, and generations 17 ; a system of meanings and symbols that shape how people see the world and their place in it and give meaning to personal and collective experience 11 ; or, more simply, as the knowledge we must possess to function adequately in society. 18

In discussing the effects of modern Western culture on health, I do not mean to suggest that culture exerts a uniform effect on everyone, regardless of gender, class, and ethnicity; or that individuals passively absorb cultural influences, rather than interacting actively with them; or that there is not a variety of subcultures marked by sometimes very different values, meanings, and beliefs. To rephrase Ehrlich's comments about genes: cultures do not shout commands to us about our behaviour, they whisper suggestions (although, as I will show, the whispers are loud and persistent). 19

My arguments about culture and health draw mainly on the sociological, psychological, and epidemiological literatures. While this analysis differs in its scope and focus from anthropological perspectives, it is, I believe, conceptually consistent with those perspectives. For example, Dressler et al . 18 argue that individuals possess cultural models that derive both from their own biographies and from the collective or shared understandings that form the traditions of their society. These models reflect a ‘cultural consensus’ about the way the world works, but this consensus is not complete and can be contested, even bitterly so. ‘Cultural consonance’ is the extent to which individuals reveal in their own beliefs and behaviour the cultural consensus (with one focus of research being the association between cultural consonance and disease risk).

It follows that, just as inequality can be studied at both population and individual levels so too can culture. It can be measured as differences between societies (reflecting differences in cultural consensus), or as differences between individuals and groups within a society (reflecting degrees of cultural consonance). Some societies are more materialistic or individualistic than others (even among Western nations), and some individuals and groups within any one society will reveal these qualities more than others. Thus the evidence I draw on relates to both individual-level and population-level effects of culture.

Culture may help to explain health differences within societies in several ways. As already noted, they could arise from variations in cultural characteristics between individuals and groups. Culture could also influence levels of inequality—for example, through the part individualism plays in market-oriented, or neo-liberal, political doctrines that are associated with greater inequality. It might also interact with socioeconomic status to moderate or amplify its health effects—for example, materialism and individualism might accentuate the costs of being poor or of low social status by making money more important to social position and weakening social bonds and group identity. However, culture's role is perhaps more important in explaining health differences among societies, or changes in a population's health (or, more accurately, health potential) over time. (As the novelist L. P. Hartley famously said in The Go-Between : ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’.)

This paper is an exercise in multidisciplinary synthesis. 13 Rather than improving our understanding of the world by creating new knowledge, as empirical research does, synthesis seeks to improve understanding by bringing together existing knowledge from different disciplines. I acknowledge that: there is a lack of research in many areas I discuss; much of the research remains in its infancy (many of the associations are correlational and do not prove causation); the interplay between social factors and individual behaviours is both subtle and complex; and cultural influences, with their intangible, subjective qualities, are difficult to measure. Given these limitations, the evidence is often indirect and circumstantial, and the arguments are to some extent theoretical and speculative, intended to stimulate greater research interest in the topic.

The psychological and sociological literatures suggest powerful effects of culture on psychological well-being. Take materialism, by which I mean attaching importance or priority to money and possessions (and so broadly equate here with consumerism), and which underpins consumption-based economies. Many psychological studies have shown that materialism is associated, not with happiness, but with dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, anger, isolation, and alienation. 13 , 20 Human needs for security and safety, competence and self-worth, connectedness to others, and autonomy and authenticity are relatively unsatisfied when materialistic values predominate.

People for whom ‘extrinsic goals’ such as fame, fortune, and glamour are a priority in life experience more anxiety and depression and lower overall well-being than people oriented towards ‘intrinsic goals’ of close relationships, self-knowledge and personal growth, and contributing to the community. 13 , 20 People with extrinsic goals tend to have shorter relationships with friends and lovers, and relationships characterized more by jealousy and less by trust and caring.

As materialism reaches increasingly beyond the acquisition of things to the enhancement of the person, the goal of marketing becomes not only to make us dissatisfied with what we have, but also with who we are. As it seeks evermore ways to colonize our consciousness, the market both fosters and exploits the restless, insatiable expectation that there must be more to life. In short, the more materialistic we are, the poorer our quality of life.

Individualism, by which I mean placing the individual at the centre of a framework of values, norms, and beliefs and celebrating personal freedom and choice, is another cultural quality with profound significance for well-being, but here the evidence is contradictory. Well-being is associated with several qualities that individualistic societies should encourage, notably personal control and self-esteem 12 , 13 ; individualism is, after all, supposed to be about freeing us to live the lives we want. Historically, individualization has been a progressive force, loosening the chains of religious dogma, class oppression, and gender and ethnic discrimination, and so associated with a liberation of human potential.

However, just as the reality of commitment differs from the ideal, so the reality of freedom differs from its ideal, especially when it is taken too far or is misinterpreted. Sociologists note that individualization has transformed identity from a ‘given’ into ‘task’; it has replaced determination of social standing with, in Bauman's 21 words, ‘compulsive and obligatory self-determination’. The individualized life is a fate, not a choice; we cannot choose not to play the game.

This process has had a range of consequences: a heightened sense of risk, uncertainty, and insecurity; a lack of clear frames of reference; a rise in personal expectations, coupled with a perception that the onus of success lies with the individual, despite the continuing importance of social disadvantage and privilege; and a surfeit or excess of freedom and choice, which is experienced as a threat or tyranny. 22 – 25 To cite Bauman 21 again, there is ‘a nasty fly of impotence in the ointment of freedom’, an impotence that is all the more upsetting in view of the empowerment that freedom was expected to deliver.

Psychology offers at least two mechanisms by which individualism not only reduces social connectedness and support, but also diminishes personal control. First, Twenge 26 has argued that a lack of control over one's life can be part of a defensive strategy to maintain self-esteem. The modern individual needs high self-esteem and one way to maintain that high self-esteem is to believe that the things that threaten it are beyond one's control.

Second, building on the work of Ryan and co-workers, 27 I have suggested that Western individualism confuses autonomy (the ability to act according to our internalized values and beliefs) with independence (not being reliant on or influenced by others). 13 Someone who holds collectivist values is behaving autonomously, but not independently, when acting in the interests of the group. (Or, to put it somewhat differently, ‘thinking for ourselves’ has been redefined as ‘thinking of ourselves’.)

The confusion of autonomy with independence encourages a perception by individuals that they are separate from others and the environment in which they live, and so from the very things that affect their lives. The more narrowly and separately the self is defined, the greater the likelihood that the personal influences and social forces acting on us are experienced as external and alien. The creation of a ‘separate self’ could be a major dynamic in modern life, impacting on everything from citizenship and social trust, cohesion and engagement, to the intimacy of friendships and the quality of family life. So the issue here is not just a matter of the changed relationship between the individual (as an entity) and society, but of the way in which the individual self is construed. In other words, the result is not only increased objective isolation, but also more subjective loneliness (even in company or within relationships); out of regard for privacy—our own and others'—we may fail to seek support when we need it, or hesitate to offer it to others when we should.

An important means by which individualism and materialism affect well-being is through their influence on values. 12 , 13 Values are a core component of culture, a property of societies and their people and institutions, as well as of individuals. Like culture more broadly, values have been underestimated in health research because their effects are hard to measure: they are abstract, generic, pervasive, flexible, and internalized (just the sort of ‘rules’ complex adaptive systems like human societies need). Values provide the framework for deciding what is important, true, right, and good, and have a central role in defining relationships and meanings, and so in determining well-being.

Most societies have tended to reinforce values that emphasize social obligations and self-restraint and discourage those that promote self-indulgence and anti-social behaviour. Virtues are concerned with building and maintaining strong, harmonious personal relationships and social attachments, and the strength to endure adversity. Vices, on the other hand, are about the unrestrained satisfaction of individual wants and desires, or the capitulation to human weaknesses. ‘We define virtue almost exclusively as pro-social behaviour, and vice as anti-social behaviour’, Ridley 28 observes in his analysis of human nature and society.

Christianity's seven deadly sins are: pride (vanity, self-centredness), envy, avarice (greed), wrath (anger, violence), gluttony, sloth (laziness, apathy), and lust. Its seven cardinal virtues are faith, hope, charity (compassion), prudence (good sense), temperance (moderation), fortitude (courage, perseverance), and religion (spirituality). Extending this list, Comte-Sponville 29 gives these as ‘the great virtues’: politeness, fidelity, prudence, temperance, courage, justice, generosity, compassion, mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness, good faith, humour, and, finally, love (which transcends virtue). He says that a virtuous life is not masochistic or puritanical, but a way of living well and finding love and peace.

Modern Western culture undermines, even reverses, universal values and time-tested wisdom. 12 , 13 The result is not so much a collapse of personal morality, but a loss of moral clarity: a heightened moral ambivalence and ambiguity, a tension or dissonance between our professed values and lifestyles, and a deepening cynicism about social institutions. Without appropriate cultural reinforcement, we find it harder to do what we believe to be ‘good’; it takes more effort. And, conversely, it becomes easier to justify or rationalize bad behaviour. There are positive (reinforcing) feedbacks in the process: anti-social values weaken personal and social ties, which, in turn, reduce the ‘hold’ of a moral code on individuals because these ties give the code its ‘leverage’; they are a source of ‘moral fibre’.

Social perspectives on population health must also take personality into account because new research shows that our personalities are changing in ways that may impact on the psychosocial pathways between social conditions and health. For example, in a series of studies drawing on psychological tests conducted with American children and college students over periods of up to 60 years, Twenge et al . 26 , 30 – 34 have found large shifts (up to 1 SD) in scores on a range of personality traits and other psychological qualities. Twenge 30 says her findings show that broad social trends—not just genes and the family environment, as psychologists have assumed—are important influences on personality development. She quotes an Arab proverb: ‘Men resemble their times more than they resemble their fathers’. 34

Twenge and her colleagues found increases in trait anxiety (or neuroticism), self-esteem, extraversion, and, in women, assertiveness, while sense of control over life had declined (that is, locus of control had become more external). To give two examples of the extent of these shifts, the average American child in the 1980s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s, 30 and the average college student in 2002 felt less control over their lives than 80–90% of college students in 1962. 26 Using a range of indicators (for the anxiety study these included divorce rate, birth rate, women's age at first marriage, proportion of people living alone, crime rate, and youth suicide rate), Twenge links most of these trends to rising individualism and freedom through declining social connectedness and increasing environmental threat. Economic factors such as unemployment and poverty seem not to be involved.

With respect to the negatives, trait anxiety has been associated with depression, suicide attempts, alcohol and drug abuse, and poorer physical health; 30 an external locus of control is associated with lower well-being, depression, anxiety, poor school achievement, helplessness, ineffective stress management, and decreased self-control. 26 The associations of anxiety and lack of control with depression, for example, can be stronger than those between depression and experiences such as parental divorce, domestic violence, relationship break-ups, unemployment, and financial hardship. 35

Turning to the positives, the benefits of high self-esteem to well-being are now being questioned and it might itself have costs, including aggression and risk-taking. 13 It may also work against personal control, as already mentioned. And while extraversion is associated with higher well-being, its combination with the other personality changes could lead to a more narcissistic or ‘contingent’ self-esteem, which requires constant external validation or affirmation to be sustained. 13 , 20 This development is consistent with an extrinsic goal orientation that is associated with diminished well-being, as noted above.

Most of the associations between culture and well-being are correlational, as I have said; they do not prove that materialism, for example, causes a deterioration in well-being; it could also work the other way, with unhappier people drawn to materialistic pursuits as a distraction or antidote—as ‘retail therapy’. However, the associations do suggest that the cultural promotion of materialism and individualism is not conducive to well-being. The causal relationships are likely to be complex and reciprocal, and to involve interactions with other, more specific influences, including genetic and socioeconomic factors.

Culture's impacts are most clearly observed in the study of psychological well-being, as the above discussion shows. Given this, and epidemiology's traditional focus on physical disease, it is worth noting the personal and social costs of mental illness. Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world. 36 In the global ranking of the burden of disease, measured in terms of both disability and death, major depression is projected to rise from fourth in 1990 to second in 2020. 36 In high-income countries, depression and other neuropsychiatric conditions account for more of the disease burden than heart disease or cancer. 37 Suicide, which has been called the mortality of depression, ranks in the 10 leading causes of death in these countries. 36

The extent to which we are falling short of maximizing human well-being, despite falling mortality and rising life expectancy and material wealth, has been demonstrated in a large study of Americans aged 25–74, which examined mental health not just as the absence of mental illness but as ‘a syndrome of symptoms of positive feelings and positive functioning in life’. 38 The study and found that 26% of people were either ‘languishing’, depressed, or both—that is, mentally unhealthy; 57% were moderately mentally healthy—neither mentally ill nor fully mentally healthy; and only 17% of people were ‘flourishing’—that is, they enjoyed good mental health. (Consistent with other research, older, well-educated, or married people were more likely to be flourishing and less likely to be languishing or depressed.)

When it comes to physical ill-health such as heart disease and cancer, cultural influences are likely to be hard to disentangle from the many other social and personal factors involved, as we have already learned with other distal determinants such as income inequality. 3 These factors include health care: in attempting to measure the health effects of social and cultural determinants, we must take into account the growing role of biomedical advances, which are extending life but, in doing so, may be masking the health effects of the changes in the social conditions in which we live.

Nevertheless, the combined evidence linking culture, via psychosocial pathways, to psychological well-being, and well-being, through behavioural and physiological pathways, to physical health is, I believe, persuasive. Health authorities now accept that there is strong and consistent evidence for a causal association between depression, social isolation and lack of social support, and heart disease; and that the increased risk posed by these factors is of a similar order to that of more conventional risk factors such smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. 39 Mortality among people who are socially isolated is two to five times higher than for those with strong ties to family, friends, and community. 40 Cultural factors, especially materialism or consumerism, are also implicated in adverse social trends such as growing obesity and inactivity, which, in turn, are linked to a wide range of physical health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. 41

The strength of the subjective—of perceptions, expectations, and emotions—in influencing health more broadly is highlighted in an American study (reported in the psychological, not health, literature) that found that older people who had more positive self-perceptions of ageing lived an average 7.5 years longer than those with less positive attitudes. 42 The advantage remained even after age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health were taken into account. The study says this effect on longevity is greater than the survival advantages associated in other studies with low blood pressure and cholesterol, not being overweight, not smoking, and exercising. The study notes one likely cause of poor self-perceptions of ageing: ‘socially sanctioned denigration of the aged’. This is a cultural characteristic of modern Western societies with their adulation of youthfulness (if not youth), a trait promoted by materialism and individualism.

Most of the evidence cited above concerns individual-level health effects of psychosocial and attitudinal factors that culture influences (so making these effects a valid means of assessing the health impacts of culture). Several recent studies have also found population or ecological effects that are attributable to culture. A cross-country study of crime found that tolerance for a set of ‘materially self-interested’ attitudes—such as keeping something you have found, lying in your own interest, or cheating at tax—was higher in men, younger people, larger cities, and had increased over time, mirroring patterns of criminal offending. 43 These values were also associated with national crime victimization rates, more strongly so than were social trust and inequality. The relationships of inequality and social trust with crime were conditional on the prevalent values of society; thus inequality per se was only modestly associated with higher crime, but when it occurred in societies that were characterized by high levels of self-interested values its effects became more pronounced.

In another cross-country analysis, a colleague and I found strong and positive correlations between national youth suicide rates, especially among men, and several different national indicators of individualism, including a measure of young people's perceived freedom of choice and control over their lives (but which is probably measuring independence, as argued above), but not between suicide and social and economic factors including per capita income, poverty, youth unemployment, inequality, and divorce. 44 A study of the association between suicide and deprivation and social fragmentation in British parliamentary constituencies found suicide was more strongly associated with fragmentation than with poverty (other causes of death were also related to fragmentation, but more strongly to deprivation). 45 Fragmentation was measured with indicators of renting, single-person households, unmarried people, and mobility, so suggesting at least some influence of individualism.

These findings are consistent with the conclusions of a major international review in 1995 of the evidence on trends in psychosocial problems such as depression, drug abuse, suicidal behaviour, and crime among young people in Western nations. 25 It concluded that social disadvantage and inequality were unlikely explanations for the increases in psychosocial disorders. Amongst its recommendations, the review called for further investigation of the theory that shifts in moral concepts and values were among the causes—in particular, ‘the shift towards individualistic values, the increasing emphasis on self-realization and fulfilment, and the consequent rise in expectations’. The review noted that far more effective use could be made of cross-national differences in testing possible explanations.

The apparent harm caused by materialism and individualism raises the question of why these qualities persist and even intensify. Both have conferred benefits to health and well-being in the past, but appear now to have passed a threshold where rising costs exceed diminishing benefits. 13 Various forms of institutional practice encourage this cultural ‘overshoot’. Government policy gives priority to sustained economic growth but leaves the content of growth largely to individuals, whose personal consumption makes the largest contribution to economic growth.

This ever-increasing consumption is not natural or inevitable, but culturally ‘manufactured’ by a massive and growing media-marketing complex. For example, big business in the United States spends over US$1000 billion a year on marketing—about twice what Americans spend annually on education, private and public, from kindergarten through graduate school. 46 This spending includes ‘macromarketing’, the management of the social environment, particularly public policy, to suit the interests of business.

Psychologists who have studied cults and mind control warn that even the brightest and best of us can be recruited or seduced by social situations and conditions to behave in ways that are contrary to our values and dispositions, to engage in actions that are immoral, illegal, irrational, and self-destructive. 47 As Zimbardo has said, many agents of mind control ‘ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts’; we need to learn how to resist them and to weaken their dominance. 48

There is evidence that resistance is growing, that increasing numbers of people in Western nations are rejecting this dominant ethic of individual and material self-interest, and are making a comprehensive shift in their worldview, values and way of life as they seek to closed the gap between what they believe and how they live. 13 Sociologists are writing of the emergence of a new moral autonomy and the opportunity to be truly moral beings, perhaps for the first time in history, 49 and the creation of new forms of social affiliation through a ‘cooperative or altruistic individualism’. 50 We may, then, be witnessing parallel processes of cultural decay and renewal, a titanic contest as old ways of thinking about ourselves fail, and new ways of being human struggle for definition and acceptance.

Cultures bring order and meaning to our lives. Of all species, we alone require a culture to make life worth living, to give us a sense of purpose, identity, and belonging—personally, socially, and spiritually—and a framework of values to guide our actions. There may be many cultural paths we can follow in meeting human needs. This is the source of our extraordinary diversity and versatility, but it is also a source of danger: we can lose the path altogether, run off the rails.

One of the most important and growing costs of our modern way of life is ‘cultural fraud’: the promotion of images and ideals of ‘the good life’ that serve the economy but do not meet psychological needs or reflect social realities. To the extent that these images and ideals hold sway over us, they encourage goals and aspirations that are in themselves unhealthy. To the extent that we resist them because they are contrary to our own ethical and social ideals, they are a powerful source of dissonance that is also harmful to health and well-being.

Cultural factors such as materialism and individualism are underestimated determinants of population health and well-being in Western societies.

Evidence links cultural factors, via psychosocial pathways, to psychological well-being, and well-being, through behavioural and physiological pathways, to physical health.

An important and growing cost of our modern way of life is ‘cultural fraud’: the promotion of images and ideals of ‘the good life’ that serve the economy but do not meet psychological needs or reflect social realities.

Subramanian SV, Kawachi I. Income inequality and health: what have we learned so far? Epidemiol Rev 2004 ; 26 : 78 –91.

Lynch J, Davey Smith G, Harper S et al . Is income inequality a determinant of population health? A systematic review. Milbank Q 2004 ; 82 : 5 –99.

Lynch J, Davey Smith G, Harper S, Hillemeier M. Is income inequality a determinant of population health? Part 2. US national and regional trends in income inequality and age- and cause-specific mortality. Milbank Q 2004 ; 82 : 355 –400.

Lynch J, Davey Smith G, Hillemeier M, Shaw M, Raghunathan T, Kaplan GA. Income inequality, the psychosocial environment, and health: comparisons of wealthy nations. Lancet 2001 ; 358 : 194 –200.

Martikainen P, Bartley M, Lahelma E. Psychosocial determinants of health in social epidemiology. Int J Epidemiol 2002 ; 31 : 1091 –93.

Lynch J, Davey Smith G, Kaplan GA, House JS. Income inequality and mortality: importance to health of individual income, psychosocial environment, or material conditions. BMJ 2000 ; 320 : 1200 –04.

Marmot M, Wilkinson RG. Psychosocial and material pathways in the relation between income and health: a response to Lynch et al . BMJ 2001 ; 322 : 1233 –36.

Lazarus RS. Emotion and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 .

DiGiacomo SM. Can there be a ‘cultural epidemiology’? Med Anthropol Q 1999 ; 13 : 436 –57.

Corin E. The social and cultural matrix of health and disease. In: Evans RG, Barer M, Marmor TR (eds). Why are Some People Healthy and Others Not? The Determinants of Health of Populations . New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994 , pp. 93–132.

Corin E. The cultural frame: context and meaning in the construction of health. In: Amick BC, Levine S, Tarlov AR, Chapman Walsh D (eds). Society and Health . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 , pp. 272–304.

Eckersley R. Culture, health and well-being. In: Eckersley R, Dixon J, Douglas B (eds). The Social Origins of Health and Well-being . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 , pp. 51–70.

Eckersley R. Well and Good: Morality, Meaning and Happiness . 2nd edn. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005 .

Singh-Manoux A, Marmot M. Role of socialisation in explaining social inequalities in health. Soc Sci Med 2005 ; 60 : 2129 –33.

Marmot MG, Syme SL, Kagan A et al . Epidemiologic studies of coronary heart disease and stroke in Japanese men living in Japan, Hawaii and California: prevalence of coronary and hypertensive heart disease and associated risk factors. Am J Epidemiol 1975 ; 102 : 514 –25.

Marmot MG, Syme SL. Acculturation and coronary heart disease in Japanese Americans. Am J Epidemiol 1976 ; 104 : 225 –47.

Boyden S. The Biology of Civilisation: Understanding Human Culture as a Force in Nature . Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004 .

Dressler WW. Culture and the risk of disease. Brit Med Bull 2004 ; 69 : 21 –31.

Ehrlich PR. Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect . Washington DC: Island Press, 2000 .

Kasser T. The High Price of Materialism . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002 .

Bauman Z. Individually, together. Foreword. In Beck, U, Beck-Gernsheim E, Individualization. London: Sage, 2002.

Furlong A, Cartmel F. Risk and uncertainty in the youth transition. Young 1997 ; 5 : 3 –20.

Furlong A, Cartmel F. Young People and Social Change: Individualisation and Risk in Late Modernity . Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997 .

Schwartz B. Self-determination: the tyranny of freedom, Am Psychol 2000 ; 55 : 79 –88.

Rutter M, Smith, DJ (eds). Psychosocial Disorders in Young People: Time Trends and Their Causes . Chichester: John Wiley and Sons for Academia Europaea, 1995 .

Twenge JM, Zhang L, Im C. It's beyond my control: a cross-temporal meta-analysis of increasing externality in locus of control, 1960–2002. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2004 ; 8 : 308 –19.

Chirkov V, Ryan RM, Kim Y, Kaplan U. Differentiating autonomy from individualism and independence: a self-determination theory perspective on internalization of cultural orientations and wellbeing. J Pers Soc Psychol 2003 ; 84 : 97 –110.

Ridley M. The Origins of Virtue . Viking, 1996 .

Comte-Sponville A. A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues . London: Vintage, 2003 .

Twenge JM. The age of anxiety? Birth cohort change in anxiety and neuroticism, 1952–1993. J Pers Soc Psychol 2000 ; 79 : 1007 –21.

Twenge JM. Birth cohort changes in extraversion: a cross-temporal meta-analysis, 1966–1993. Pers Indiv Differ 2001 ; 30 : 735 –48.

Twenge JM. Changes in women's assertiveness in response to status and roles: a cross-temporal meta-analysis, 1931–1993. J Pers Soc Psychol 2001 ; 81 : 133 –45.

Twenge JM, Campbell WK. Age and birth cohort differences in self-esteem: a cross-temporal meta-analysis. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2001 ; 5 : 321 –44.

Twenge JM. Birth cohort, social change, and personality: the interplay of dysphoria and individualism in the 20th century. In: Cervone D, Mischel W (eds). Advances in Personality Science . New York: Guilford, 2002 .

Donald M, Dower J, Lucke, J Raphael B. The Queensland Young People's Mental Health Survey Report . Centre for Primary Health Care, School of Population Health and Department of Psychiatry, University of Queensland, 2000 .

Murray CJL, Lopez AD (eds). The Global Burden of Disease—Summary . The Harvard School of Public Health on behalf of the World Health Organization and the World Bank, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1996 .

World Health Organization. The World Health Report 1999: Making a Difference . Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999 .

Keyes CLM. The mental health continuum: from languishing to flourishing in life. J Health Soc Res 2002 ; 43 : 207 –22.

Bunker SJ, Colquhoun DM, Esler, MD et al . ‘Stress’ and coronary heart disease: psychosocial risk factors. National Heart Foundation of Australia position statement update. Med J Aust 2003 ; 178 : 272 –76.

Berkman LF, Glass T. Social integration, social network, social support, and health. In: Berkman LF, Kawachi I (eds). Social Epidemiology . New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 , pp. 137–73.

Eckersley R. Losing the battle of the bulge: causes and consequences of increasing obesity. Med J Aust 2001 ; 174 : 590 –92.

Levy BR, Slade MD, Kunkel SR, Kasl SV. Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. J Pers Soc Psychol 2002 ; 83 : 261 –70.

Halpern DS. Morals, social trust and inequality: can values explain crime? Brit J Criminol 2001 ; 41 : 236 –51.

Eckersley R, Dear K. Cultural correlates of youth suicide. Soc Sci Med 2002 ; 55 : 1891 –904.

Whitely E, Gunnell D, Dorling D, Davey Smith G. Ecological study of social fragmentation, poverty, and suicide. BMJ 1999 ; 319 : 1034 –37.

Dawson M. The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life . Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Zimbardo P. What messages are behind today's cults? APA Monitor , 1997 ; 28(5) .

Zimbardo P. Mind control: psychological reality or mindless rhetoric? APA Monitor on Psychology 2002 ; 33 (10): 5 .

Bauman Z. Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality . Oxford: Blackwell, 1995 .

Beck U, Beck-Gernsheim E. Individualization . London: Sage, 2002 .

Email alerts

Citing articles via, looking for your next opportunity.

• About International Journal of Epidemiology
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1464-3685
• Copyright © 2024 International Epidemiological Association
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History

• Citation: Castañeda, Antonia I. "Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History." Pacific Historical Review 61, no. 4 (1992): 501-33. Accessed July 27, 2021. doi:10.2307/3641046.
• Great Power Conflict
• IR Theories
• women of color
• decolonization

Historians have long struggled with the need to rewrite western history and to articulate a new, inclusive synthesis that fully incorporates the history of women of color. In her concluding remarks at the Women’s West Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1983, Susan Shown Harjo (identifying herself culturally as Cheyenne and Creek and politically as Cheyenne and Arapaho) charged that women of the West are still possessed of inaccurate information about who we are collectively, who we are individually, and who we have been.We view each other through layers of racial, ethnic, and class biases, perpetuated by the white, male ruling institutions, such as the educational system that teaches in the early years and controls later research in the history of women in the West. This critique of the reigning historiography has changed little since then or since Joan Jensen and Darlis Miller first called for a multicultural, or intercultural, approach in their essay, “The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West.” A decade of “multicultural” historiography has still not come to terms with the historical, theoretical, political, and ideological issues raised by Harjo at Sun Valley. This essay discusses the historiography that was written during the 1980s about women in the nineteenth-century West. It examines the issues, politics, concepts, methodologies, and language of the “multicultural” or intercultural approach first articulated by Jensen and Miller and the ways in which the intersection of gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and culture are described, theorized, and interpreted in the recent historical literature.The first section places in context the historiography of women of color in the decade before “The Gentle Tamers Revisited” was published, while the second places in context “The Gentle Tamers Revisited” itself.

Related Resources

From ‘social evils’ to ‘human beings’: vietnam’s lgbt movement and the politics of recognition.

Phuong, Pham Quynh. 2022. “From ‘Social Evils’ to ‘Human Beings’: Vietnam’s LGBT Movement and the Politics of Recognition.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 41 (3): 422–39.

• Open Source Results
• Authors with Diverse Backgrounds

Silent Struggles: Women Education Leaders’ Agency for Peacebuilding in Islamic Schools in Post-Conflict Aceh

Lopes Cardozo, Mieke T.A., Rizki Amalia Affiat, Faryaal Zaman, Maida Irawani, and Eka Srimulyani. 2022. “Silent Struggles: Women Education Leaders’ Agency for Peacebuilding in Islamic Schools in Post-Conflict Aceh.” Journal of Peace Education 19 (2): 158–81.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychiatry

Does contemporary Western culture play a role in mental disorders?

Dimitri marques abramov.

1 Laboratory of Neurobiology and Clinical Neurophysiology, National Institute of Women, Children and Adolescents' Health Fernandes Figueira, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Paulo-de-Tarso de Castro Peixoto

2 Open College and Laboratory of Emotions, Affections, Society & Subjectivities, Office of Higher Education, Macaé City Hall, Macaé, Brazil

Introduction

Mental illnesses are entities with a multidimensional nature: aside from constitutional/endogenetic determinants, social and cultural dimensions also seem to be determinants of mental health ( 1 ). In the present study, we will focus on the sociocultural aspect of Mental Health, which might explain the existence of a heterogeneous prevalence of mental disorders among different countries, as shown by epidemiological evidence.

Cross-national surveys have broadly adopted similar diagnostic tools, based on either DSM or ICD. There is fair criticism concerning the indiscriminate applicability of these nosological systems in different cultures, as DSM-5 itself warns us ( 2 ). Moreover, the adoption of different methodologies in these surveys produces biases that also limit the validity of comparisons; the DSM or ICD criteria somehow map the symptoms of mental distress to a certain extent, regardless of the validity of the diagnostic categories and the universality of their application.

Here, we raise some aspects of contemporary Western culture as a putative correlate of mental distress by comparatively discussing cultural characteristics of countries that show discrepancies in the prevalence of mental disorders. Our interest lies in the large gray area of subjective suffering, regarded as depressive and anxiety disorders, where epidemiological data show the highest cross-cultural divergence.

From epidemiological evidence

Perhaps the most important epidemiological study on global prevalence of mental disorders is that by Kessler et al. ( 3 ), from the World Mental Health Survey Initiative. This study was expected to enable a comparative assessment of the prevalence of mental disorders among different countries with minimal bias.

If mental disorders, as defined by DSM, were equally significant across different cultures, and if they were primarily endogenous and genetically determined processes, similar prevalences of mental disorders could be expected among different countries in large samples. However, that is not what the study shows. While 47.4 and 39.3% of the populations from the USA and New Zealand, respectively, have a history of mental disorder, Nigeria shows the lowest prevalence (12.0%) among countries. Other epidemiological studies somehow confirm the low prevalence of mental disorders, e.g., depression and anxiety, in African countries compared to the Western world ( 4 – 6 ).

How do we explain that Nigeria, which has one of the worst HDI's in the world, had the best mental health status in the study samples? African communities, especially Nigeria, consider mental suffering a taboo and they are opposed to understanding this experience as a health disorder, which can negatively affect the verification of these statistics ( 7 , 8 ). Kessler et al. ( 3 ) are also cautious in their explanations, assuming that there could have been potential errors in countries “with no strong tradition of independent public opinion survey”, where under-reporting might have occurred. However, these limitations do not apply to countries such as Japan or Israel, which have a long tradition of individual freedoms and consolidated scientific culture, which have also shown lower prevalence values than western countries ( 3 ).

Supporting the validity of these studies, a similar prevalence of bipolar disorder, a condition with important genetic determination, has been reported between Africa and Western countries ( 4 ). Indeed, the understanding of subjective experiences as well as the particularities of social organization across different cultures can be confounding factors in the diagnosis of depressive and anxiety disorders, which would explain the discrepancy in prevalence found in this study ( 3 – 6 ). This can be observed in social anxiety disorder ( 9 ). In fact, the influence of the subjective experience or social organization on the construction of diagnoses is natural evidence in itself of the determining role played by culture in mental suffering.

The WMH survey ( 3 ) specifically explored substance use disorders and showed that the lifetime prevalence in Nigeria was 3.7%, while it was 14.6% in the USA ( 3 ). Despite the complex determinants of substance use disorders, their diagnosis is mostly based on behavioral phenomena rather than subjective experiences ( 10 ). The diagnosis should thus be more objective and less sensitive to bias caused by the cultural understanding of subjective experiences. Thus, discrepancies in the prevalence of addictions corroborate the association between mental suffering and Western culture.

Another objective marker of mental suffering is suicide, a serious outcome of many mental disorders. Its incidences are higher in Western societies ( 11 ), which somewhat corroborates the findings of Kessler et al. ( 3 ): while USA reports 14.40 to 21.27 suicides per 100,000 people between 15 and 65 years old (crude rates), Israel and Nigeria have shown rates of 3.22–9.38 and 1.83–14.65, respectively, in the same age group ( 12 ). Under-notification should not be a plausible explanation for Nigerian data, since their crude suicide rates among the elderly are much higher than in the USA ( 12 ).

Therefore, the DSM classification could be universally valid for cross-cultural evaluation, since the understanding of subjective experiences, important in many diagnostic criteria, only confirms the prominent role played by culture in comprising many types of mental suffering. We need to know which cultural differences could be correlated with each suffering.

A universal paradigm shared by cultures throughout the African continent is the “Ubuntu,” which is not present in Western cultures, and could explain the unexpected epidemiological findings mentioned above. For all peoples in Africa, despite their dialectic peculiarities, the idea of a “self” does not lie within the scope of individuality ( 13 – 15 ). Unfortunately, there are very few empirical studies on Ubuntu.

Kpanake ( 13 ) reported that Ubuntu, which is one fundamental value system promoted by many African cultures, “refers to African values of collective relatedness, interdependence, communality, group solidarity, and conformity” (...) “the self is perceived in relation to the group; that is, individuals are perceived not as entities that are independent from one another, but as part of an interdependent communal system”; the problems and demands of one person are problems and demands of everyone. According to Ubuntu, persons depend on other persons to be persons; this means that life only makes sense through relationships, not only between living people, but also with the gods, the ancestors, and Nature itself ( 13 – 15 ). Thus, the human being is never alone.

The Bantu society has a life-force epistemology, which is a thread of life that connects, binds, and intertwines beings, thus comprising one single body ( 16 ). The expression “Ubuntu” follows this perspective. The life force of each being is the thread of life that binds each individual in the formation of the peoples, societies, and nature. Thus, Ubuntu is the experience of one joining others in a community.

Despite cultural westernization, it is possible that Ubuntu still survives at the core of African people. Akiwowo ( 17 ), informed us that many Nigerian tribes have assimilated foreign cultures, yet have not lost their own cultural identity, and when their individuals move to large urban centers, they take the tribe with them.

Perhaps the social and spiritual collectivism could be a paradigm of any tribal culture far beyond the African continent, which has emerged spontaneously from the biopsychosocial nature of the Homo sapiens in their evolution, and has survived in other civilizations. In Eastern societies, the prevalence of mental disorders was almost one third of those in USA ( 3 ). Eastern culture is regarded as essentially collectivistic ( 11 , 18 ). Somehow, this collectivism might also be present in the Israeli kibbutz ( 19 ).

The contemporary Western culture

Enlightenment has provided contemporary Western culture with the ideals of “individual” rights and freedom, scientific knowledge (which is reductionist), and the material universe ( 19 ). As opposed to the natural emergency of a self-organizing tribal culture over thousands of years, contemporary society results from the institution of philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and political projects that determine our most fundamental values ( 20 , 21 ). This Enlightenment project appears to have resulted in individuals who have collapsed into scientific objectivism and materialism, with strict boundaries around themselves and their properties, which would lead to a real health hazard ( 22 ). The Republican spirit has brought an important and indisputable evolution for civilization, which is the dawn of modern democracy and constitutional states. However, the sense of community in Western culture seems to be essentially different from Ubuntu: historically, “the identity of a collective in American culture is not associated to a united whole (Ubuntu), but to the idea of an ‘aligned' many” ( 23 ).

What has resulted from this Western project? Unfortunately, we see the devitalisation of the subjectivity encapsulated in individualism, directly or indirectly related to mental illness. People have lost their ancestors, their territories, their gods, and assume a private life where they find themselves helplessly entangled in their problems. This feeling of disconnection with the social world, of not belonging to yourself, of not belonging to coexistence bonds, of not belonging to a broader community, would engender the experience of a non-existence ( 24 ). Loneliness rises as a phenomenon of a society focused on performance, results, profit, competitiveness, and individualism. On the other hand, the primordial experience of Ubuntu seems to comprise a system of affective and psychosocial references with protective roles for mental health in face of life's obstacles ( 25 ).

Clinical evidence supports this viewpoint: loneliness is regarded as a public mental health issue ( 26 ). Remarkably, it also appears to be a risk factor for suicidal behavior, which indicates its role in mental distress ( 27 – 29 ). Regardless of its nature or classification, relief and resolution of mental suffering have been correlated with social support ( 30 ).

Mental health is a complex field, where several factors are inextricably integrated to determine mental wellbeing, and the reductionist biomedical paradigm fails to grasp the human complexity that should be fully considered in clinical psychiatric practice ( 31 ). Instead, clinical practice is focused on psychopharmacology, which probably mitigates the biological response to the stress produced by subjective suffering ( 32 ). Mental disorders can be related to the stress caused by our social relationships, cultural values, and collective beliefs, which could affect both typical and neurodiverse subjects ( 33 – 38 ).

Regarding endogenetic predispositions [which might only determine neurodiversity ( 39 ) rather than primary mental disorders], cultures manifest values specific to each population and might integrate common characteristics and behaviors dimensionally. This could lead to the high diversity of collective manifestations of mental suffering. Thus, according to the epidemiological, sociological, and clinical evidence shown here, the cultural dimension seems to play a determining role in mental health.

Therefore, the high incidence of many mental problems in Western countries might be centered on some contemporary values of their culture, which might be foreign to human nature and human neurodiversity. At the core of this problem would lie individualism and materialism, which might even admit a collective alignment, yet the experience of a collective existence has been lost. On the other hand, Italy and Spain have shown low prevalence of mental disorders compared to other Western countries, which suggests the existence of other cultural factors that might protect mental health ( 3 ). A recent systematic review indicates an increase in incidence of mental suffering among African adolescents ( 40 ), thus indicating a potentially changing setting.

We here hypothesize that collective experience still lives on through Ubuntu in Africa (and putative similar cultural complexes that are organic to other cultures), and that would be one of the reasons for the epidemiological evidence shown here. However, this hypothesis needs to be empirically checked through cross-cultural observation and by assessing methodologies that might bring back the collective experience of Ubuntu. One example would be Urban Heterogenesis ( 24 , 41 ). It represents a practical epistemology that constitutes mental healthcare at public places around the city. It combines social diversity, building “healthcare communities” to replicate the spirit of tribes. The perspective of “vital force” in the Bantu philosophy is combined to Spinoza's life force, through his concept of “conatus” (the desire to persevere in existence). In Urban Heterogenesis, a “collective conatus,” which manifests as mental health, autopoietically emerges from the community of diverse people.

We believe it is paramount and urgent to invest in the understanding of mental suffering from these social and cultural perspectives. We should invest much more in the promotion of mental health that goes beyond psychopharmacology, which perhaps should have only a supportive role.

Humankind surely needs to discover its true nature and live according to it. Furthermore, this nature seems to be living in an organically indissociable collective, which is far from Western individualism and materialism. Perhaps we should place some of our deepest values into question.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• UPSC IAS Exam Pattern
• UPSC IAS Prelims
• UPSC IAS Mains
• UPSC IAS Interview
• UPSC IAS Optionals
• UPSC Notification
• UPSC Eligibility Criteria
• UPSC Online
• UPSC Admit Card
• UPSC Results
• UPSC Cut-Off
• UPSC Calendar
• Documents Required for UPSC IAS Exam
• UPSC IAS Prelims Syllabus
• General Studies 1
• General Studies 2
• General Studies 3
• General Studies 4
• UPSC IAS Interview Syllabus
• UPSC IAS Optional Syllabus

Westernization – Features and Impact on Indian Society – UPSC Modern History Notes

• Westernization is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in areas such as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, clothing, language, alphabet, religion, philosophy, and values. Westernization has been an accelerating influence across the world in the last few centuries, with some thinkers assuming Westernization to be the equivalent of modernization, a way of thought that is often debated. The overall process of Westernization is often two-sided in that Western influences and interests themselves are joined with parts of the affected society, at minimum, to change towards a more Westernized society, in the hope of attaining a Western life or some aspects of it, while Western societies are themselves affected by this process and interaction with non-Western groups.
• The concept was also constructed by M.N. Srinivas to describe the process of social and cultural mobility in the traditional social structure of India. It has also emerged, in Srinivas’ study of the Coorgs of south India. The author has defined westernization as “the change brought about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British rule, the term subsuming changes occurring at different levels in technology, institutions, ideology, and values”. M.N. Srinivas refers Westernisation to as ‘the changes brought about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British rule and the term subsumes changes occurring at different levels – technology, institutions, ideology, values.’
• He traces westernization from the period of the British Raj. Surely, colonial rule brought with it the exploitation and suppression of the masses of people both at the rural and urban levels. At the same time, it also brought certain radical changes in Indian society and culture. The land was surveyed, revenue was settled, a new bureaucracy emerged, and an army, police, and law courts were established. The British rule also developed communications, railways, and post and telegraph and also started schools and colleges.
• Yet another force released by British rule was the working of Christian missionaries. The Christian missionaries worked in different parts of the country, particularly in those that were backward and inhabited by tribals and untouchables. This brought the weaker sections closer to Westernisation.
• In contemporary India, when we talk about westernization, a tremendous change has come in rural India. The impact of the five-year plans has brought the village people into the wider network of communication and modernization. The democratic institutions such as the Panchayati Raj and the massive spread of education have brought the villagers closer to Westernization.

Table of Contents

Impact of Westernization on Indian Society:

• The encounter between the Indian tradition and Western culture was of immense sociological significance. The Western tradition had a meaningful impact on the cultural, political, and social systems of India to such an enormous extent that it has been told that such contact initiated a new era of change in the Indian cultural tradition. The mode of the Western cultural impact on the Indian tradition had distinctive features. Historically, various Western traditions came to India with differing political and cultural orientations and exerted variegated influences upon Indian society and culture. The following are some of the areas in which the Western impact was visibly noticed.

Growth of a Universalistic Legal System:

• The process of Westernization brought in its wake new legal norms which contributed to the growth of a universalistic positive form of law in India. Formerly the legal system was founded on the principles of hierarchy and holism. Accordingly, justice was meted out based on the status of various castes and classes in the local hierarchy. Thus, following the prescription of Manu, a Brahmin slandering a Kshatriya had to pay a fine of fifty Panas, but for slandering a Vaishya or Shudra he had to pay twenty-five and twelve Panas respectively. If the lower castes slandered the high castes, the penalties were more severe. The principle of hierarchy was strictly followed in matters of dispensing justice.
• Our traditional legal system continued to be group-oriented and non-equalitarian. With the establishment of the British power in India, there came a new turning point in the legal system of the country. Various forms of legal innovation based on the principles of universalism, rationalism, and individualism were introduced thereby making the new judicial system individual-oriented and universalistic. It enacted legislation introducing social reforms in many sensitive areas such as marriage customs the age of marriage, and the age of consent for marriage. It established the principle of equality and generated a consciousness of positive rights among the downtrodden castes.

Impact of Westernization on Education:

• Contemporary education is of Western origin. Traditionally, the content of education was metaphysical. It was confined to the upper classes or the twice-born castes. Its structure was hereditary and closed. The roles of both the teachers and the teachers were qualitative-ascriptive. But Modern education has a fundamentally different orientation and organization. Its content is liberal and it preaches a scientific worldview. Freedom equality, humanism, and denial of faith in dogmatism are the major themes of modern education. Its professional structure is not ascriptive. It can be achieved by merit by anyone in the society.

Impact on the Communication network:

• The media of communication have been introduced in India through Western contact. Printed newspapers came into existence only after India’s contact with the West. The Britishers introduced the telegraph, railways, and modern postal system in India. Similar improvements have also been made in the other media of communication and transport. The expansion in transport by the railways, roadways, airways, and waterways has contributed to the intensification of the volume of interaction and contact between one region with another. The concept of purity and pollution has been given a discount since people of all castes are traveling in the same railway coach or bus.

Growth of Nationalism:

• Both Nationalism and democracy in the contemporary form are the gifts of Westernization. Nationalism implies consciousness of one’s nationhood. Its sociological manifestation is the idea of the nation-state. Democracy is a special form of political organization and system of values on which a nation-state can be founded. The feeling of nationality and respect for democratic norms is a consequence of Westernization.
• It was the fervent patriotic zeal of the Western people that made our leaders think of developing India as a united country. Most of the nationalist leaders of the freedom struggle in India got inspiration from Western literature and thought. Indian nationalism, however, was not modeled completely on the Western pattern.

Impact on Food Habits and Mode of Eating: 

• Westernization has reached the level of food habits and ways of eating. Traditionally, Indians ate their meals sitting on the floor. Food was served either on the leaves or on brass, bronze or silver plates. Among the upper castes, and especially among Brahmin, eating was a religious act. The food had to be cooled while the women in charge of cooking and serving it must be in a ritually purer state. Food was being served to children and adults in order of seniority. At the end of the meal, the dining leaves became impure and were thrown out and the places where the leaves rested were purified with a solution of cow dung.
• But now the Westernized groups increasingly prefer to eat at tables with stainless steel utensils, spoons etc. Thus the new mode of eating has contributed to an increase in secularization as the table is not likely to be purified with cow dung after meals and the ritual acts traditionally performed before and after meals almost dropped. Changing food habits has brought people nearer to modern food technologies. The use of ghee has increasingly been replaced by vegetable oil both in rural and urban areas. Tea shops are now common in most roadside villages and persons of all castes take tea in china cups, glasses or earthen cups, even if tea might be drawn by a lower caste person. Eating meat and eggs by higher caste members is on the increase. Poultry farms which were previously considered polluting are opened in large numbers.

Impact on the Dress Pattern:

• Under the influence of westernization even people living in villages have opted for factory-made clothes like nylon, Terylene, tricot etc. in place of home-spun clothes, readymade garments have become popular. The mode of dress has also undergone a drastic change. The old style of shirt has been replaced by the modern style shirts. It marked a gradual weakening of ideas of ritual purity. Western clothes became more popular even Brahmins sat at dinner with their shirts on.

Change in Language:

• Many terms from the English language have entered the dialects of the rural folk. The expansion of civil administration popularized terms like court, collector, judge, barristers, etc. Similarly, the expansion of transport facilities has rendered terms like rail, station, signals, etc. matter in daily usage. The politicization of villages since Independence has introduced villages to terms like party, socialism, communism, ministry, etc. and similarly, the spread of medical facilities now makes expressions like injections, mixture, penicillin, etc also household words.

Weakening of Traditional Culture:

• Modern education and increased utilitarian and rational values of the Indian elite led them to make sharp criticisms of their own culture. They began casting aspersion on the evils of our traditional culture which used to make us submissive. The loathing of and longing for a new culture, and the rising aspirations of the population for a better future made them sort out what was desirable and vice versa. Indians today are more individualistic, and free-thinking and lead a relatively more free life. Modernization of the tradition is taking place in India today under the impact of the process of Westernization.

Impact on Marriage:

• Westernization has also brought about noticeable changes in matrimonial relationships. Marriage today is no longer seen as a relationship between two families rather it has transformed into the relationship of two individuals i.e. husband and wife. Husband and wife do not treat each other as superior or inferior but as friends and companions. Love and marriage have sidelined religion. Even the marriage ceremony itself has changed.

Impact on Family:

• Western culture preaches the individualistic ideology of family which is opposed to the collective ethos on which the joint family system is founded, imbibing the individualistic philosophy people give importance to the individual over the group thereby encouraging self-men. This has cut the joint family from its very root for which it has started crippling down. Members of a family today prefer freedom to enjoy marital life. Today’s brides do not like to remain under the control of laws. New democratic conventions find their place in household affairs too.

Impact on the Status of Women:

• The strong influence of the West is tangible in the status of women today. The medieval period in Indian history is witness to the status of women sinking to the nadir and if we find today women getting their due in almost all fields, a major part of the credit goes to Westernization. Education on the one hand generated and encouraged liberal ideas among men while on the other hand, it prepared women to strive for the natural status of equality.

Impact on Religion:

• The impact of science and Western education did bring about a significant change in our perception of religion. Uncritical acceptance of religious ideas is being replaced by logical interpretation and acceptance. The social value of religion has gone down. From a collective activity religion has become an individualistic activity. The activity pace of religion is gradually decreasing. There was a time when social, economic, and political scenes were all dominated by religion but now it is evolving more or less as an independent institution.

Impact on Customs:

• Indian masses which were a bit reluctant initially to accept the ways of the West are now jumping to their ways. From clothes to houses we live in, all bear the stamp of Western style and it has become a status symbol. Cosmetics, decoration of pieces, crockery, and even the methods of greetings have all become Westernized. In fact, in every activity of life, the impact of the West is easily seen as far as customs are concerned.

Impact on Art and Literature:

• The literal sub-culture of India was too influenced by the English literary tradition. ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Psychiatrist’ of the West can be found in almost every kind of literary expression of today. Experimentalism, Hedonism, and Romanticism have found a place in Indian poetry. Equality, environment, freedom, social movement, and other related topics have also got a place in Indian art and literature. Modern art is a by-product of Westernization which could not be easily adopted because of its radically different concepts.

Eradication of Social Evils:

• Social evils that had plagued the society and in a way were responsible for making Indian society so vulnerable to foreign annexation, could only be given a determined fight after the process of westernization took its root. No doubt, a few social workers had raised their fingers against these social evils before but it was the process of Westernization that prepared a broad base through which efforts against these evils could bear fruit.
• The practice of widow burning, infanticides, stealing of children for slavery, child marriage, ban on widow marriage, and untouchability are some of those social evils which are still being fought. Science and technology from the West have had some demystifying effects on these types of practices.

Features of Westernization:

• The process of Westernization subsumes changes occurring at different levels of technology, institutions, ideology and values. Broadly, it includes all changes that any non-western country like India or any other colonial country undergoes as a result of prolonged contact with Western culture.

The most important area of change was the value preferences of the non-western societies:

• A most important value which in turn subsumes several other values is what may broadly be characterized as humanitarianism which means active concern for the welfare of all human beings irrespective of social inequalities based on caste, economic position, religion, age or sex. Equalitarianism and secularization also form part of the value of humanitarianism. Humanitarianism refers to many of the reforms introduced by the British in the first half of the 19th century such as civil, penal, and procedural laws which put an end to certain inequalities that were part of the Hindu and Islamic jurisprudence.
• The principle of equality found expression in the abolition of slavery, and in the opening of new schools and colleges- which were, in theory at least, opened to all irrespective of religion, race, and caste. The new economic opportunities were also open to all, although in practice caste and other elite groups who traditionally lived in the big towns, enjoyed considerable advantages over others.

The introduction of reforms and new laws by the British led to several changes in the Indian customs which were earlier enforced as part of one’s religious duty:

• A religious custom had to satisfy the test of reason and humanitarianism if it was to be allowed to survive. As British rule gained roots in India, the values of rationality and humanitarianism also became firmly entrenched in the caste-ridden society. The formal system of education introduced by the British played an effective role in perpetuating these values.

Westernization is an all-inclusive term:

• It covers a wide range of changes from Western technology at one end to the experimental method of modern science and modern historiography at the other. In the field of technology, it has revolutionized the process of mass communication, transportation, industrialization, and improved health care facilities and has made available new comfortable gadgets for better living conditions. These changes are intimately linked with the life of the common man and have proved consequential.

The process of Westernization in India was uneven :

• Only a tiny fraction of the Indian population came into direct, face-to-face contact with the British. And those who came in contact with the British officers did not always become a force for change. Indian servants of the British, for instance, probably wielded some influence among their kin groups and local caste groups but not among others. They often came from the low castes as well. Their westernization was of a superficial kind as the upper castes made fun of them.

The process of Westernization has neatly intensified in many ways since 1947:

• The first and most critical step in Westernization was the establishment of Pax Britannica and the revolutions in communications that followed. Extension of the administrative and trading frontiers broke the centuries-old isolation of the different groups inhabiting the remote parts of the country. Similarly, the means of transportation and communication opened up avenues for new contacts.
• Thus, the development of communications and the removal of internal customs barriers integrated the economics of various regions in the country. In a word the political and administrative integration of India as well as the development of communication and the beginning of industrialization and agricultural development, increased spatial and social mobility of both the elite and the rural poor which laid the foundation of subsequent nationwide westernization.

The form and pace of Westernization of India varied from region to region and from one section of the population to another:

• For instance, one group of people became Westernized in their dress, diet, manners, speech, sports and in the gadgets they used while another absorbed Western science, knowledge and literature, remaining free from external attributes of Westernization. For example, Brahmins accepted the Western style of dressing and appearance and sent their children to Westernized schools using gadgets like the radio, cars, etc. but they did not accept the British diet, dancing, hunting, and the casual attitude of the British about population.

Another feature of Westernization is that it creates many intercontradictory forces that, instead of consolidating, contradict each other:

• In the political and cultural fields, westernization has given birth not only to nationalism but also to revivalism, communalism, casteism, linguism, regionalism, etc.

Q1. How has Western culture impacted Indian society, particularly in terms of lifestyle, values, and traditions?

The impact of Western culture on Indian society has resulted in a complex interplay of cultural exchange, leading to changes in lifestyle, values, and traditions. This influence is evident in various aspects, including clothing, cuisine, language, education, and entertainment. Westernization has also contributed to the evolution of social norms, family structures, and gender roles within the Indian context.

Q2. What does ‘Westernization’ signify in the field of sociology?

In sociology, ‘Westernization’ refers to the process by which societies adopt Western cultural, social, political, and economic practices. This often involves the adoption of Western values, ideologies, institutions, and technologies, which can lead to significant shifts in the cultural and social fabric of the adopting society. Westernization is a multidimensional concept that can impact various aspects of a society’s structure and functioning.

Q3. Where can I find reliable information about Westernization in sociology, particularly in a PDF format?

There are several reputable academic sources and research papers available online that delve into the topic of Westernization in sociology. To find PDFs specifically, consider searching academic databases, online repositories, or university websites that provide access to scholarly articles, journals, and research papers related to the sociological aspects of Westernization.

Q4. How does the concept of Westernization relate to the syllabus of the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) examination in India?

In the context of the UPSC examination in India, the concept of Westernization is often relevant in understanding the sociocultural dynamics of modern Indian society and its historical development. Candidates must grasp the sociological dimensions of Westernization, including its impact on Indian society, culture, and governance. Aspiring candidates can refer to relevant books, journals, and scholarly articles that provide insights into the dynamics of Westernization in India for their preparation.

In case you still have your doubts, contact us on 9811333901.  

For UPSC Prelims Resources, Click here

For Daily Updates and Study Material:

Join our Telegram Channel – Edukemy for IAS

• 1. Learn through Videos – here
• 2. Be Exam Ready by Practicing Daily MCQs – here
• 3. Daily Newsletter – Get all your Current Affairs Covered – here
• 4. Mains Answer Writing Practice – here

Visit our YouTube Channel – here

• Conquest of Punjab – UPSC Modern History Notes
• The Drain of Wealth Theory – Modern History Notes
• Tebhaga Movement – UPSC Modern History Notes
• Revolutionary Activities post 1922 – UPSC Modern History Notes

Edukemy Team

Moplah rebellion (1921) – upsc modern history notes, the dandi march (salt satyagraha) and satyagraha at different places..., socio-religious reform movements – upsc modern history notes, gandhi’s eleven demands – modern history notes, the decline of the mughal empire – upsc modern history..., some important peasant movements in india – upsc modern history..., popular resistance to the british rule – modern history notes, administrative and economic unification of india – upsc modern history..., communal holocaust and the interim government – upsc modern history..., rowlatt satyagraha (1919) – upsc modern history notes, leave a comment cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Our website uses cookies to improve your experience. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies Got it

Keep me signed in until I sign out

Forgot your password?

A new password will be emailed to you.

Have received a new password? Login here

GS Foundation

UPSC All India Mock Test – Edukemy Open Mock

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood — A Comparison of Western Culture in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

A Comparison of Western Culture in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

• Categories: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Western Culture

About this sample

Words: 388 |

Published: Oct 16, 2018

Words: 388 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

Marji’s Versus Western Culture

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature Arts & Culture

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1940 words

2 pages / 931 words

3 pages / 1477 words

2 pages / 887 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

What is religion? What does it mean to be religious? These are questions that have been asked by both believers and nonbelievers for ages. Each individual has their own way of interpreting religion as well as their faith. The [...]

In the novel, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, there are many different themes that you could look at and decide to analyze. I decided to look at four different themes that are brought up throughout the [...]

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a captivating graphic novel that delves into the life of a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Through the lens of her personal experiences, Satrapi explores themes such [...]

In Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis, the character of Marjane's mother plays a significant role in shaping Marjane's identity and influencing her worldview. Through her actions, beliefs, and interactions with [...]

Oppression expresses an authority over another group, disengaging that specific group from the rest of society. This concept is particularly apparent in Marjane Satrapi’s childhood graphic memoir “Persepolis,” a story set in [...]

The autobiographical novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, depicts the life altering experiences she encounters from growing up during the Iranian revolution and war. Satrapi’s naive and minimalistic perception of war drastically [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Internet

The Growth In Internet Use Has Affected Cultures Around The World, Leading To A Westernized, Homogenous World Culture Argumentative Essays Example

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Internet , Culture , World , The Internet , People , Global , The World , Western

Words: 1700

Published: 03/08/2023

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

The Growth in Internet Use Has Affected Cultures Around the World, Leading to a Westernized, Homogenous World Culture

The concept of globalization is sometimes discussed as an undesirable feature of the current geopolitical realities of the world. However, in reality, globalization is an immutable feature of the current human race. Human beings have been striving to travel and to stretch their legs since their earliest days. Some might ascribe some early form of imperialism to this behavior, while others might suggest that human beings, as a species, have a distinct curiosity that compels them forward. One of the impacts of going out to explore the world is that cultural interactions take place. These cultural interactions have been happening at a much greater frequency now that technology has improved; these changes make some people extremely nervous. The growth of the Internet has undoubtedly affected cultures around the world—there are no countries that are entirely untouched by Internet technologies, except perhaps North Korea. However, while there are certain features of the western world that are pervasive, the new culture that has been created on the Internet is much more of a global culture; while an argument can be made that the western culture is dominant, it would be an oversimplification to state that the western culture is destroying other cultures and driving the creation of a homogenous world culture. There is no doubt that there are more people on the Internet than ever before, and that the use of the Internet is largely governed by accessibility (Badie 2000). There are huge swaths of information available to an individual if he or she is able to access the Internet, but there are still many places in the world where internet access is minimal at best and nonexistent at worst (Badie 2000). The wealthier an individual is, regardless of country, the more likely that person is to be able to access the Internet and take advantage of all the various benefits of being connected (Badie 2000; Nakamura 2013). While this does not preclude people from all countries, there is definitely a technology access gap between western nations and some of the smaller, more economically disadvantaged nations (Nakamura 2013). As such, Internet users are much more likely to be individuals from western nations, where access is much more prevalent. However, this does not mean that there are not huge numbers of people who are connecting from the developing world; both India and China have masses of people who are just now beginning to have easier and better access to Internet technologies (Nakamura 2013; Pearce and Rice 2013). Western culture has indeed been spread through the Internet: it is easy to see the impact of the spread of western culture in political activities like the Arab Spring and other pro-democracy movements around the world (Nakamura 2013). There have been a number of political movements that have been modeled on the western political philosophies; while these political philosophies have always been discussed in academics, there is some truth to the reality that today, technologies allow people to organize and act based on these political beliefs which would have previously been kept underground. The Internet has, effectively, an anonymizing effect: when people are able to be anonymous, they are also able to discuss ideas and thoughts that would have been problematic or dangerous for them in their home country (Nakamura 2013; Badie 2000; Barfield et al. 2012). Social media is the other part of this equation. The introduction of social media technologies is something that cannot be overstated: social media allows people to connect and organize in real time, something that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible. Countries and governments around the world have recognized the power of social media, as have governments; many of these governments have modeled their emergency response notifications on the use of social media and mobile technologies (Brenner and Smith 2013; Tomlinson 2000). Social media allows people to connect on a global scale—and the language that they communicate in most frequently is English (Brenner and Smith 2013; Ferdinand 2000; Goggin and McLelland 2010). English has indeed become the global language of both business and the Internet; to be highly successful in the international business world, a businessperson needs to be able to functionally communicate in English or he or she will likely need an interpreter (Nunan 2001). On the Internet, the Latin alphabet has become the predominant way to type in URLs and other important features, which also points to the domination of western culture on the Internet (Goggin and McLelland 2010). While there are some ways that the global internet culture has become homogenous, it is a mistake to see the entire internet culture as homogenous. Homogeneity suggests that everything is the same culturally, and this is factually untrue. There are pockets, trends, and folds within the Internet that cater to everyone and everything; for instance, one can easily sign on to Facebook or YouTube and access the site for the American Civil Liberties Union. However, one can also sign onto the Internet and access sites run by the Islamic State, ISIL. In a virtual world where these two sites are equally easy to access, it is really difficult to suggest that “homogeneity” has been achieved (Goggin and McLelland 2010). In fact, the Internet is massive; it is so huge that it is difficult to appropriately quantify. While there are certain sites that seem to tend towards a certain dominant culture—YouTube, Facebook, Google—there are billions of sites available to the average user that cater to different cultures and different tastes. Even though there is not a dominant culture on the Internet, it is easy to see that the Internet is made up of users. Without the users, there would be no internet. Shim (2007) suggests that many of these users are young people, and that these young people are indeed drawn to pop culture. However, there has been more exploration than ever before because there is so much to explore; one needs only to see the growth of stars like Psy in the United States to see that while there is an exportation of culture happening, there is also an importation of culture happening via the Internet (Ronen et al., 2014). Both China and India have massive populations, which obviously contributes directly to the culture of the Internet. While China has its own versions of Facebook and YouTube, there are many users who interact with both types of social media. The overall effect is a kind of cross-fertilization of culture, rather than the development of a single homogenized culture as some of the literature purports (Goggin and McLelland 2010; Yu 2015). The growing numbers of Indian and Chinese users on the Internet will undoubtedly have an interesting overall effect on the culture of the Internet. While some users will undoubtedly choose to stay within their own cultural group and perform their daily Internet activities, some will also undoubtedly stray into different groups and different subsections of culture. The overall effect of this will not be to form a westernized dominant culture on the Internet, but instead to form a global culture that is a hodgepodge of different types of people talking about many different kinds of things on one of the only truly open forums that exist in the world. This should be seen as a potentially positive development for the world as a whole, rather than a catastrophe: the development of global culture could produce better business partnerships, reduce geopolitical tensions, and so on (Tomilson 2003). There is no global culture on the Internet. Although an argument can be made that there is a dominant culture on the Internet, to say that there is one culture that is dominating all others is to ignore many of the realities of the Internet and many of the things that make the Internet such a powerful tool in the hands of so many. It provides people with the ability to learn nearly anything at the tips of their fingers, which is incredibly important for people in developing nations in particular. To close the technology access gap would be very beneficial to people around the world, regardless of their ethnicity, current location or country of origin. The world has yet to see all the benefits—and the potential pitfalls—of global communications and technology.

Badie, B., 2000. The imported state: the westernization of the political order. LIT Verlag Münster. Barfield, C.E., Heiduk, G.S. and Welfens, P.J. eds., 2012. Internet, Economic Growth and Globalization: Perspectives on the New Economy in Europe, Japan and the USA. Springer Science & Business Media. Brenner, J. and Smith, A., 2013. 72% of online adults are social networking site users. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Ferdinand, P., 2000. The Internet, democracy and democratization. Democratization, 7(1), pp.1-17. Goggin, G. and McLelland, M. eds., 2010.Internationalizing internet studies: beyond anglophone paradigms. Routledge. Nakamura, L., 2013. Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. Routledge. Nunan, D., 2001. English as a global language.TESOL quarterly, 35(4), pp.605-606. Pearce, K.E. and Rice, R.E., 2013. Digital divides from access to activities: Comparing mobile and personal computer Internet users. Journal of Communication, 63(4), pp.721-744. Ronen, S., Gonçalves, B., Hu, K.Z., Vespignani, A., Pinker, S. and Hidalgo, C.A., 2014. Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(52), pp.E5616-E5622. Shim, Y.S., 2007. The Impact of the Internet on Teenagers’ Face-to-Face Communication. Global Media Journal, 6(10), pp.1-22. Tomlinson, J., 2003. Globalization and cultural identity. The global transformations reader, 2, pp.269-277. Yu, A.Z., Ronen, S., Hu, K., Lu, T. and Hidalgo, C.A., 2015. Pantheon: A for the Study of Global Cultural Production. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.07310.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2169

This paper is created by writer with

ID 258266429

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Research paper on conflict between turkish and greek cypriots, smaller is better essay examples, physician assisted suicide and euthanasia essays example, draw topic writing ideas from this report on lab section, demographics of peru essay template for faster writing, q3 how many years have you been in this company yrs question answer template for faster writing, good essay on the danish girl film review, justice depends entirely on social utility essay, good example of mid east refugees in europe research paper, learn to craft research papers on order 240034229 nutrition with this example, free order 240061311 ethics research paper example, purpose exemplar report to follow, good essay on some companies having different maturity debt, write by example of this ethics in accounting professions essay, good example of report on occupational health safety plan, free essay on defense acquisition process, comparative history of love and sexuality essay to use for practical writing help, free case study on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, perfect model essay on evidence based project paper on diabetes, good essay about al capone, write by example of this a comparison of the idea of utopia as described by plato and more essay, learn to craft essays on chris wordsmith with this example, good essay on leadership and management in nursing, labor relations a top quality essay for your inspiration, good music marketing plan business plan example, comparative history of love and sex type to use as a writing model, healthcare system united states versus japan essay you might want to emulate, free essay on lewins 3 step model to introduce accounting system, effectiveness of the death penalty a top quality essay for your inspiration, juvenile crime statistics paper example essay by an expert writer to follow, falcon inc case analysis case study sample, good how was it radically different than previous wars essay example, free uber essay sample, good example of essay on america at the crossroads, abdominal pains example essay by an expert writer to follow, scrap iron essays, femme fatale essays, american fast food essays, halmstad essays, radical reconstruction essays, slave ships essays, export prices essays, acock essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Day Ram Dass Died

By Christopher Fiorello

I woke up every thirty minutes the night before Ram Dass died. Stretching my perception through the big divider that separated his study—where I lay on a narrow couch—from his bedroom, I’d count the seconds between the short, ragged breaths churning through his sleep-apnea machine.

Four years later, I still have no idea why I was chosen to watch over him that night. I was at the bottom of the caregiver pecking order when it came to things directly related to Ram Dass’s body. I lacked the size and strength to transfer him from bed to wheelchair, or wheelchair to recliner, on my own; was too much of a novice to help organize his schedule or coördinate with his doctors; and was too unfamiliar to offer intellectual comfort in the rare moments that he wanted to talk. I’d met him ten months earlier, had his voice in my head for just three years. There were people in the house, on Maui, who had known him for more than three decades.

Before arriving, I had no formal medical training, but I had done three weeks of volunteering at a hospice facility in anticipation of coming to the island. Most of it involved moving Kleenex and changing the amount of light in empty rooms. Several times I sat with the dying. It was overwhelming to look at their closed eyes, feeling the heaviness in the room, the sense of something happening or about to happen. I scanned their faces for signs of pain, of fear or bliss, of transcendence. Through the palliative haze of opioids, they were impossible to read. No one was thrashing in pain; no one was smiling, either.

But it somehow buoyed me, being so close to death. The heaviness seemed critically important to my spiritual growth. I imagined myself giving peace to the dying through my presence, and in the process conquering my own fear of leaving life behind.

During my time with Ram Dass, I flitted constantly between self-righteousness and self-pity, one day indulging in grandiose fantasies that I was the heir to his legacy, charged with scattering his ashes, and the next imagining that everyone in the house hated me. The caregivers called it the classroom or the fire—a site of purifying work, a pathway to enlightenment.

My own work, purifying or otherwise, consisted mostly of handling various chores needed to keep a six-bedroom cliffside home with a pool, guesthouse, and two-acre yard going. For the bits that mattered—the scrubbing and the laundry and the cooking—there was a team of cleaners and a rotating cast of chefs. I ended up doing a lot of the rest: separating recycling, washing dishes, and replacing cat-scratched screens. There were three other caregivers in the house, and I was given a modest salary, plus my own room, meals, and shared access to a truck. I was an employee, but most days the house felt like a family, for better or worse.

Still, this was only the second time I’d been asked to spend the night in the study. It was generally perceived as an act of intense devotion: accepting a horrible night’s sleep, on a couch that reeked of cat pee, while facing the prospect of Ram Dass dying on your watch. I hated it, but I was there to care for the guy however it was decided that he needed care.

Most of the deciding was done by a woman affectionately dubbed Dassi Ma, a seventysomething lapsed-Catholic firecracker from Philadelphia. Dassi Ma was Ram Dass’s primary caretaker, and, though she no longer did the more strenuous physical tasks, she was still in command of what he got and when, often more so than Ram Dass himself. He was eighty-eight, and his health had been steadily deteriorating owing to a host of issues, including chronic infections. When I moved to Maui to be near him, in February, 2019, he had almost died the night I arrived. He bounced back, to everyone’s surprise but his own. “It wasn’t time,” I remember him saying in his stoic way, neither relieved nor disappointed. Now he had another spreading infection, and what appeared to be a cracked rib from being transferred to and from his wheelchair.

Ram Dass’s life is the subject of multiple documentaries, an autobiography, and a docuseries in development starring “ High Maintenance ” ’s Ben Sinclair. He was born Richard Alpert in 1931 to a wealthy Boston family. His pedigree was sterling: a Stanford psychology Ph.D., tenure track at Harvard, visiting professorship at Berkeley. In 1963, after five years at Harvard—much of it spent studying psychedelics with his fellow-psychologist Timothy Leary —he was fired for giving psilocybin mushrooms to an undergraduate.

He bopped around for a few years, often taking obscene amounts of mind-altering substances with Leary at the Hudson Valley estate of his friend Peggy Hitchcock. In 1967, like so many other Westerners of the time, he travelled to India in pursuit of exotic answers to life’s biggest questions. He’d grown disenchanted with the psychedelic world, which had come to seem rotely defined by highs and comedowns. In India, he met a Californian hippie named Kermit Riggs and followed him to a village called Kainchi, in the Himalayan foothills, to meet Riggs’s guru.

The guru was an old, squat man named Neem Karoli Baba. Before long, an enthralled Alpert was reborn as Ram Dass, or roughly “servant of God.” He returned to America later that year, arriving at the airport dressed in white robes and with a long, scraggly beard, and began his career as a spiritual teacher. Most of what he talked about, from 1967 to his death, were the experiences he had with Neem Karoli Baba, whom he called Maharaj-ji (“great king”), and the spiritual beliefs that emerged from those experiences.

One of his main ports of call became death and dying. In 1981, he co-founded the Dying Center, in Santa Fe, an organization that described itself as “the first place specifically created to support and guide its residents to a conscious death.” The center sought, in effect, dying people who wanted to use their death to become spiritually enlightened, and staff members who wanted to use other people’s deaths to achieve the same. Even before the Dying Center took shape, Ram Dass was lecturing on the spirituality of death, its place in the natural order, and the starkly contrasting way that he believed it was perceived in the East. His teachings were rooted in a specific vision of metaphysical reality, as informed by his guru and by the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text. Roughly, he believed in nondualism, that there existed an unchanging and absolute entity—the Hindu Brahman, which Ram Dass more frequently called God, the divine, or oneness—from which all material reality came. Included in that reality were souls (something like the Hindu atman ), which by their nature were caught in the illusion of their separateness from God, repeating a cycle of birth, suffering, death, and reincarnation until they remembered their true nature as part of the oneness—that is, until they became enlightened.

Death could be a crucial moment for remembering this nonduality, as it was when the “veil of separateness” was thinnest. In his 1971 book, “ Be Here Now ,” which has sold more than two million copies worldwide, Ram Dass summarizes his views: “You are eternal . . . There is no fear of death because / there is no death / it’s just a transformation / an illusion.”

He often spoke to crowds afraid of dying, repeating that he had “no fear of death.” He sat with people on their deathbeds and talked routinely about the power of “leaving the body,” his efforts to “quiet himself” so that the dying could see where they were in the reincarnation process and do what they could to escape it. His stories were sometimes graphic—people dying prematurely, or dying in tremendous pain—but always tinged with a lightness and humor.

Perhaps Ram Dass’s most memorable remarks about death came not from his own mind but from a woman named Pat Rodegast, who claimed she had channelled a spirit named Emmanuel from 1969 to her death, in 2012. Rodegast was working as a secretary, raising children, and practicing Transcendental Meditation when she began to see a light, which evolved into what she called telepathic auditory guidance. Some of that guidance was captured in three books published in the eighties and nineties, two of which came with forewords from Ram Dass. According to Ram Dass, when he asked Emmanuel what to tell people about death, Emmanuel replied that it was “absolutely safe,” “like taking off a tight shoe.”

I first encountered the voice of Ram Dass in 2016. I was twenty-seven and living in New York, in a Chinatown building that rattled every time an empty box truck drove down First Avenue. Each morning, I tumbled down five flights of sticky stairs and placed one of his talks deep into my ears, letting his distinct blend of scientific erudition and spiritual mysticism carry me across town.

He had a habit of segueing from psychological concepts, like attachment theory and childhood trauma, to cryptic ones, like Emmanuel’s messages and the astral plane, pausing briefly to ask listeners if they could really, truly “hear this.” He seemed to build on the insights of others who had revolutionized end-of-life care in America—thinkers such as the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross —but also spoke in the New Age argot of Alan Watts. I gobbled it all up, feeling my spiritual life deepen exponentially by the day. His lectures made me more prosocial, more anti-capitalist, more curious, and decidedly more self-loving.

This was my second rodeo with spirituality; growing up, a rigid strain of Protestantism had been foisted on me like a chore. In Kansas City, Missouri, I was enveloped by an atmosphere of creationism, tent revivals, and anti-abortion screeds. I still recall standing on a busy street as a six-year-old and holding a sign that read “Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You—God.”

The teachings of Ram Dass were nothing like that. They were straight out of the hippie movement, and seemed to license a more liberal, self-directed search for meaning. As the grind and filth of Manhattan wore me down, Ram Dass’s voice became a salve, a way to “wake up to the illusion of our separateness.” I turned to his work again and again—to ease my loneliness when, walking down the street, droves of people moved around me like I was a light post, or to arrogantly tell my ex-girlfriend that we would always be “together,” even though I’d already dumped her.

After a couple of years, I learned that I could actually meet Ram Dass, for free, by signing up for one of his “Heart-to-Hearts”—a one-on-one, hour-long Skype call he offered as a sort of public service. When my time came, and the man appeared onscreen, I was stunned into silence. I had thought of him as a spry, ethereal figure who existed only in decades-old recordings. This Ram Dass was very old and lived with fairly advanced aphasia, a side effect of a major stroke he’d had in 1997. His speech was slow—in our full hour, he said roughly sixty words—but not at all ponderous. I thought it gave him a mystical quality.

There was no format to the session; Ram Dass just smiled his winning smile and listened. At one point, after I’d nervously overshared, he told me, “You take yourself pretty seriously.” That struck me as profound, at least at the time, but what endured was more feeling than words. It seemed he had arrived at a place from which he could find genuine love for strangers like me. It didn’t strike me as brand positioning, or as a form of ego; I didn’t think he loved me in the sense that he wanted to be close, or even that he cared whether we got to know each other. I just believed he saw me as another soul, and that, in his view, made me worthy of kindness.

By then, I was walking around New York, trying desperately to feel connected to anything. I wanted what Ram Dass had. So I left the city, intending, among other things, to get him to show me how to have it.

The friend I’d discovered Ram Dass with had already moved to Neem Karoli Baba’s temple, in Taos, New Mexico. I visited him for a fortnight of cooking group meals, wandering through the snowy high desert, and hobnobbing with Maharaj-ji zealots, including one white teen-ager who insisted that he was the reincarnation of Krishna, one of Hinduism’s most revered avatars. Like the young Krishna of lore, he would steal away to the temple pantry to eat pure butter until caught.

Some of this evoked my childhood church, where kids compared how quickly they could transition into speaking in tongues, or flexed the depth of their personal relationship with Jesus while leading a collective prayer. But this was my first encounter with Neem Karoli Baba devotees; I figured followers would be a bit more mellow the farther I got from his temple. Toward the end of my stay, I met a longtime friend of Ram Dass. He saw that I was eager to do volunteer work—known as seva , Sanskrit for “service”—so, when he learned of my intent to find Ram Dass on Maui, he offered to put in a good word to Dassi Ma.

That recommendation made the seemingly impossible possible. People of all ages came to the island to be near Ram Dass. Some found their way into the group texts for arranging kirtan —living-room chanting sessions at Ram Dass’s house—or beach excursions. A few found opportunities to be useful around the house, or made friends with one of the live-in caregivers, enabling them to drop by every week or so. But to be offered to help care for Ram Dass, for pay, as a virtual nobody, was exceptionally rare.

Upon arriving at the house, I found it shot through with the same quasi-religious fervor I had seen at the temple. I was quickly intercepted by another caregiver and taken to a lean-to, in a nearby pasture, so that I could silently meditate with prayer beads. It was incredibly humid, and I got annihilated by mosquitoes. I returned to the house to find a living room packed with people chanting—mostly the Hanuman Chalisa, a devotional hymn that features verses like “With the lustre of your vast sway, you are propitiated all over the universe.” A collective effervescence filled the room, and I joined along, staring at hundreds of statuettes of religious figures while fighting back the sense that I was in church.

After more than an hour of chanting, we milled about, greeting one another over chai and snacks. Attendees swapped stories of Maharaj-ji’s miracles, told me that my presence must be part of his plan, sat smiling at Ram Dass’s feet, their hands over their hearts. During my year on Maui, Ram Dass’s foundation led retreats at a local resort, where hundreds of people would gather for spiritual talks and chanting. Inevitably, someone at these events would look at me with confusion or pity when I told them my name was Christopher. “He hasn’t given you a name yet?” the person would ask. Ram Dass often bestowed a Hindu name on people: Lakshman, Govinda, Hari, Devi. I was fine with Christopher.

But there were other moments, informal and fleeting, when I witnessed the mixture of play and profundity that first drew me to Ram Dass. One autumn morning, two other caregivers and I were helping him get through his daily routine—brushing teeth and hair, putting on clothes and hearing aids, making the bed—when I turned on Doja Cat’s “Go to Town,” a song I later learned was about cunnilingus. I cranked the volume, and the four of us started dancing with illicit glee. One caregiver jumped on the bed, another swung from the divider between the bedroom and the study, and Ram Dass waved his one mobile hand with bright eyes and a rascally smile.

Another day, I was alone with Ram Dass, helping him pick out a shirt. Though I spent nearly all my time in the house, I could count the hours we had been alone together on two hands, and most of them had involved food and drink, or foot massages, ostensibly to relieve the pain that he felt from diabetic neuropathy. On this day, the house was recovering from Ram Dass having been denied psilocybin owing to his health. I felt sorrow for him; the drug was, after all, the beginning of his spiritual journey more than five decades prior. I asked him if the house ever felt like a prison. A full minute of silence passed, with me standing over him in his walk-in closet. Eventually, he tapped his temple and said, “This is the prison.”

When morning broke on December 22, 2019, and Ram Dass was still alive, I allowed myself a moment of relief. Dassi Ma came up, looking short on sleep, and took his vitals. They were horrible. We snapped into action, trying to comfort Ram Dass until one of his doctors arrived.

The infection had pooled fluid in his lungs, which made every breath a burden. Wet, rattling half-breaths were punctuated by coughs of bloody mucus. He looked wrecked, but still managed a weak smile when his Chinese-medicine doctor told a joke at his bedside.

At some point, Dassi Ma and the doctor began talking in the study; other caregivers were on an oxygen-tank-and-essentials supply run. I was on one side of Ram Dass’s bed; on the other was his longtime co-author Rameshwar Das, a friend since Kainchi. Then Ram Dass started choking.

It wasn’t that different from any of the other horrible breaths he’d taken that morning, except that he just couldn’t breathe it. When he realized this, he turned to me with a look that haunts me even now: light eyes wide as quarters, mouth open, lips a bit rounded. I immediately panicked, calling for Dassi Ma and trying to get his adjustable bed as upright as possible so that he could clear his throat. Then, when that didn’t seem upright enough, I frantically tried to lug his torso up so that his head could hang over his waist; perhaps he could vomit his throat clear.

Thirty seconds had passed since he first lost his breath. Somewhere from near his feet, the doctor snapped at me: “You have to calm down!” It jolted me into an awareness that Ram Dass was dying, right there. Perhaps it did the same for Dassi Ma, because she sprang for the study, returned with a large framed photo of Neem Karoli Baba, and commanded him to focus. “Ram Dass! Maharaj-ji! Maharaj-ji!” she said, placing the photo at the foot of the bed. She told him that she loved him, that he could go. I told him that I loved him. And then Ram Dass stopped trying to breathe.

I was the only person to leave the room. Stumbling into the study, I picked up my phone, hands quivering, and sent word to the other caregivers: “RD’s dying imminently. Like within the next couple of minutes.”

The wind was screaming outside. On Maui’s North Shore, it wasn’t unusual for it to reach thirty, forty knots, rattling the windows and throwing palm fronds across the lawn. That day, it had blown from early in the morning, under a tightly woven blanket of gray clouds. Sitting in the study, I watched it bend the trees, felt the violence of it, indiscriminate.

Ram Dass believed that fear kept us from recognizing our interconnection to all things. “Change generates fear; fear generates contraction; contraction generates prejudice, bigotry, and ultimately violence,” he said. In his teachings, he often placed fear and love on opposing sides of the human experience. Fear was the by-product of the ego; love was the by-product of the soul that remained pure, in the moment, especially at the time of death. “When we are fully present,” Ram Dass wrote, “there is no anticipatory fear or anxiety because we are just here and now, not in the future.”

And yet this binary is precisely what made watching him die so disorienting. I’ve no idea what Ram Dass felt in those final moments, what he could see or hear. I don’t even really know if that was fear I saw in his eyes, though it certainly looked like it. Perhaps it was surprise or another sensation entirely, the rush of emptiness before a huge plunge into something tremendous.

Whatever it was, its existence seemed largely absent from his teachings. There were times when he acknowledged the pain and coarse brutality of death. In his book “ Still Here ” (2000), he writes:

Dying is often not easy . . . the stoppage of circulation and starving of the heart muscle . . . the inadequate transport of oxygen to tissues, the failure of organs . . . Where can we hope to stand in our own consciousness during such traumatic conditions, in order to die with clarity and grace?

Yet the emphasis he placed, over decades of lectures, on the importance of grace during death made so little space for terror—for how fear could coexist with presence, and even with love. In the minutes after his passing, the chasm between how he died and how I thought he was supposed to die reminded me of the betrayal I’d felt when, at sixteen, I flouted my mother’s and pastor’s admonitions and stopped asking God for protection, only to discover that a similar slew of terrible and wonderful things still happened to me.

In the house, too, marching through three days of death rituals before Ram Dass’s body was removed, I felt my spirituality slip its moorings. Late on the second night, his body lay on ice in his study—a rite he’d specifically requested, hoping that it would help those around him transcend their fear. I sat on the floor and peered up at his face through candlelight, his skin whitish blue and gaunt, his mouth slightly agape. I waited for grace, for him to speak reassuringly from some other plane of reality. Instead, I was taken back to our final moments together, where fear sutured me to each passing second. Not fear of the past or some uncertain future, but fear of the vast, strange intensity of what is. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash .

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool .

Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier .

Where the Amish go on vacation .

How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune .

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves ?

Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Julia Cho

By James Carroll

By Zaina Arafat

By Katy Waldman

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Ethan Crumbley’s Parents Were Just Part of a Much Bigger Problem

By Elizabeth Spiers

Ms. Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and digital media strategist.

James and Jennifer Crumbley never anticipated that their then-15-year-old son, Ethan, would use the 9-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun Mr. Crumbley had bought — ostensibly as an early Christmas present — to kill four students at a Michigan high school. At least that’s the argument their lawyers made in court before Ms. Crumbley, last month, and Mr. Crumbley, almost two weeks ago, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials. Prosecutors argued that the Crumbleys did not do enough to secure the gun and ignored warning signs that Ethan was planning to use it.

After every mass shooting by a teenager at a school, there is an instinct to look to the shooter’s parents to understand what went wrong. In the case of the Crumbleys, this seems obvious: Ethan left disturbing journal entries fantasizing about shooting up the school, and stating that he had asked his parents for help with his mental health issues but didn’t get it. His father said the family had a gun safe but the safe’s combination was the default factory setting, 0-0-0.

One factor that’s gotten less attention, however, is how the Crumbleys’ attitudes and actions reflect an increasingly insidious gun culture that treats guns as instruments of defiance and rebellion rather than as a means of last resort.

I’ve been thinking about this case a lot because I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s in a rural part of the Deep South where almost everyone I knew had guns in the house, unsecured, and mental illness was stigmatized and often went untreated. Church was considered a superior venue for counseling, and only “crazy” people sought professional help. If the evidence for criminal negligence is a failure to lock up a gun and ignoring signs of mental illness, many of the adults I grew up around would have been (and still would be) vulnerable to the same charges as the Crumbleys.

It’s convenient and comforting for many people to believe that if it had been their child, they’d have prevented this tragedy. But prison visiting rooms are full of good, diligent parents who never thought their kid would be capable of landing there.

My parents didn’t own a gun safe, but kept guns hidden away from us, which, like many gun owners at the time, they thought of as “secured.” The men in my family were all hunters and the guns they kept were hunting rifles, not AR-15s. (You can’t feed a family with deer meat that’s been blown to bits.) I knew my parents kept a handgun, too, but it was never shown to us, or treated as a shiny new toy.

Gun culture was different then. It would have never occurred to my parents to acquire an entire arsenal of guns and display them prominently around the house, as some people now do, or ludicrously suggest that Jesus Christ would have carried one . They did not, as more than a few Republican politicians have done, send out Christmas photos of their children posing with weapons designed explicitly to kill people at an age when those children likely still believed Santa existed. Open carry was legal, but if you were to walk into the local barbecue joint with a semiautomatic rifle on your back emblazoned with fake military insignia, people would think you were creepy and potentially dangerous, not an exemplar of masculinity and patriotism.

All of these things happen now with regularity, and they’re considered normal by gun owners who believe that any kind of control infringes on their Second Amendment rights. Children are introduced at a young age to guns like the Sig Sauer that Ethan Crumbley used. They’re taught to view guns as emblematic of freedom and the right to self-defense — two concepts that have been expanded to include whatever might justify unlimited accumulation of weapons.

“Freedom” is short for not being told what to do, even though the law very much dictates how and when guns should be used. “Self-defense” is often talked about as a justifiable precaution in the event of home invasion, though home invasions are as rare as four-leaf clovers and do not require an arsenal unless the invader is a small army. (It’s also worth noting that basic home security systems are far less expensive than many popular guns, which suggests that at the very least, some gun owners may be intentionally opting for the most violent potential scenario.) Most important, too many children are taught that guns confer power and can and should be used to intimidate other people. (Relatedly, any time I write about gun control, at least one gun owner emails to say he’d love to shoot me, which is not exactly evidence of responsible gun ownership.)

Mass shooters often begin with a grievance — toward certain populations, individuals they feel wronged by, society at large — and escalate their behavior from fantasizing about violence to planning actual attacks. A study from 2019 suggests that feeling inadequate may make gun owners more inclined toward violence. In the study, gun owners were given a task to perform and then told that they failed it. Later they were asked a number of questions, including whether they would be willing to kill someone who broke into their home, even if the intruder was leaving. “We found that the experience of failure increased participants’ view of guns as a means of empowerment,” wrote one researcher , “and enhanced their readiness to shoot and kill a home intruder.”

The study hypothesized that these gun owners “may be seeking a compensatory means to interact more effectively with their environment.”

Good parents model healthy interactions all the time. If their kids are struggling with a sense of inferiority or are having trouble dealing with failure, we teach them self-confidence and resilience. Parents who treat guns as a mechanism for feeling more significant and powerful are modeling an extremely dangerous way to interact with their environment.

What’s particularly hypocritical here is that the most strident defenders of this culture skew conservative and talk a lot about what isn’t appropriate for children and teenagers. What they think is inappropriate often includes educating kids about sex, about the fact that some people are gay or transsexual and about racism. It’s a perverse state of affairs: Exposing children to simple facts is dangerous, but exposing them to machines designed to kill is not. You can’t get your driver’s license until you’re a teenager, or buy cigarettes and alcohol until you’re 21, but much earlier than that, kids can, with adult supervision, legally learn how to end someone’s life.

Parents can’t ensure that their child won’t ever feel inferior or disempowered, or even in some cases become delusional or filled with rage. Teenagers do things that their parents would never anticipate every day, even if they’re close and communicative. Some develop serious drug habits or become radicalized into extremism or take their own lives.

One thing parents can ensure is that their children cannot get access to a gun in their house. The only foolproof way to do that is to ensure that there’s no gun in the house to begin with. Barring that, parents can make sure they are not reinforcing a toxic gun culture that says that displaying and threatening to use lethal machines is a reasonable way to deal with anger or adversity. That message makes the idea of killing someone seem almost ordinary.

That doesn’t prevent school shooters; it primes them.

Elizabeth Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and digital media strategist.

Source photographs by CSA-Printstock and John Storey, via Getty Images.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .