Economic success fuels perceived cultural superiority

Evidence

While Chinese and Japanese found new value in their own cultures, they also shared in a broader reassertion of the value of Asian culture generally compared to that of the West. Industrialization and the growth that accompanied it produced in the 1980s and 1990s articulation by East Asians of what may be appropriately termed the Asian affirmation. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 291 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

I believe it’s worth returning to Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry” with specific attention to the political economic context of its publication. Adorno and Horkheimer came of age during a time of deep economic inequality, monopoly capitalism, and global war. Having fled the Nazis for the United States, they arrived to Fordist assembly lines and vertically integrated film studios in Hollywood, a different kind of domination. Their vision of capitalist culture and power befitted their time. In subsequent years, postwar prosperity led to waves of innovative, occasionally radical popular culture and a field of cultural studies less haunted by the base constraints Adorno and Horkheimer saw all around them. Plotted along the U-shaped chart of the past century’s economic inequality, the Culture Industry was born in the first peak, cultural studies was born in the fertile valley, and we find ourselves on the second peak, again perched atop a daunting level of inequality and cultural power held in the hands of the few. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 36 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Economic success generates cultural self-assertion and resistance to Western pressure — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 281; Cultural superiority toward foreigners predated and transcended Western Orientalism — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 625; East Asian economic success generated a cultural self-assertion movement — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 291 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• East Asian economic success generated a cultural self-assertion movement #exemplifies (0.95) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 291
• Eras of economic inequality produce pessimistic theories of cultural domination #complicates (0.75) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 36