American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) also draws upon a new theory I am developing called Dominant Cultural Group Theory (DCGT). I situate this theory within the broader domain of what I call Dominant Group Studies (DGS).
I am not the first to have put forward a proposal for Dominant Group Theory, though, to the best of my knowledge, I am the first to call for a field of study called Dominant Group Studies. Within the fields of media and communication studies and theory, Razzante & Orbe (2018) have recently begun to develop a Dominant Group Theory (DGT). Razzante and Orbe (2018) focus on how “dominant group members communicate with co-cultural group members within oppressive structures,” and therefore zero in primarily on communication with not much focus on culture and language. In contrast, I am much more interested in, and DCGT is much more focused on, the dynamics of power vis-à-vis the production and consumption of popular culture and the specific role that language, e.g. English as a nationally and globally dominant language for particular dominant groups inside the United States, play in terms of the (lack of) empowerment and ability of non-dominant groups to alter dominant groups’ comparative stranglehold on (global) cultural production and consumption.
Razzante’s and Orbe’s (2018) “five premises” of DGT are useful in terms of articulating a critical version of Dominant Cultural Group Theory (DCGT), which at heart, is a normative critical theory. These five premises are:
- In each society, a hierarchy exists that privileges certain groups of people: in the United States these groups include cisgender men, European Americans, Christians, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, native English speakers (emphasis = my own), and those from the middle and upper classes;
- Others—trans persons, women, people of color, Muslims, LGBT persons, people with disabilities, non-native English speakers, and those from a lower class—are marginalized as co-cultural group members;
- Although representing a widely diverse array of lived experiences, dominant group members will share a similar societal position that provides them with societal advantages compared to their co-cultural group counterparts;
- While dominant group members share an advantaged position in society, their lived experiences—like their co-cultural counterparts—reflect a diversity of perspectives that resist essentialist understanding; and
- On the basis of varying levels of privilege, dominant group members occupy positions of power that are used in their negotiation of traditionally dominant communication systems.
In building DCGT, I add the following claim to Razzante’s and Orbe’s (2018) DGT list — while also clearly and demonstratively qualifying that this does not, and cannot, include all members of dominant cultural groups: The claim that the Dominant Cultural Group (DCG) tends to be primarily self-oriented and mostly ill-informed about the cultures and languages as well as about the experiences of people outside of the DCG. Additionally, there is a presumption by DCG members – heavily fueled by various social and educational structures which tend to valorize the history, culture and language of dominant fundamental group members – of the following:
b) The presumption of one-way (cultural and linguistic) flow, with dominant culture and language being what “should” flow outward and comparatively little room offered for, or allowed for, cultural and linguistic backflow from non-dominant cultures;
c) The presumption of the “necessity” for hierarchical cultural and linguistic rules. These “rules” are often, though not always, unwritten. They hold that certain forms of culture and language, most notably those that are understood as being the “home” culture and language of the dominant group, are “better” than others.
d) The presumption that those on the “outside” of the dominant culture and language must accommodate culturally, linguistically (and socially, educationally, politically, economically) etc. to the hegemonic systems of the dominant group; furthermore, this systematic upward/inward and also required and largely one-way or unidirectional accommodation is naturalized such that it is seen simply as the way things “are” and “ought to be” because those at the top/center possess an allegedly “superior” culture/language, etc.
e) The presumption those at the center/top cannot/will not/need not learn from those not at the top/outside of the center because other systems of knowledge – including culture and language but not reduceable to only these — outside of the center/not at the top are viewed as inherently less valuable and allegedly offer less meaningful/useful/sophisticated/modern, etc. knowledge than the hegemonic Western Anglo-American English-language dominated knowledge system.
Finally, DCGT holds that there is a comparative ignorance among Dominant Culture Group (DCG) members of the culture and language of non-dominant groups grounded within an air of superiority which leads to little cultural or linguistic reciprocity, or, differently put, which leads to little larger social effort invested on the part of the majority of dominant fundamental group members to, for instance, learn about “others” cultures, appreciate them, and learn, and use, “others’ ” languages to any meaningful degree of fluency or with any sort of regularity;
The end result of the deeply rooted, naturalized and widespread sense of cultural superiority of the DCG is multifaceted. To summarize, its primary manifestations include arrogance about one’s own hegemonic culture and language and their socially, politically, ideologically and economically encoded domination, a decided lack of knowledge – and even a lack of desire to gain more knowledge – about “other” cultures, languages, etc. outside of the hierarchically and centrally placed dominant culture and language, a sense that there is little of value to be gained, learned, or acquired from the culture, language and knowledges of non-dominant groups and, most centrally, vis-à-vis a theory ACIC, a deep, wide, long-running insularity or insular-ness which sees a majority – not all – but a majority of members of the DCG in the United States focus primarily, and sometimes even nearly exclusively, on the consumption of cultural media products produced in the United States and, very importantly, in English, the globally hegemonic language. This strong tendency cannot, and should not, be reduced only to arrogant/ignorant cultural insularity on the part of individual consumers. It is ALSO an outcome of the ways in which cultural producers and distributors create an American domestic cultural system AND a global cultural system that consistently pushes American consumers toward their own cultural and linguistic media products and away from cultural media products from non-American locations and/or produced in languages other than English.
DGS and DCGT are critical in nature. That is, they have a clear, direct, and 100% openly normative goal: They aim to deconstruct domination from the inside and from the center. Challenging domination from the outside and the margins is important. However, it is equally, if not even more important, to identify, map, empirically quantify and also understand and explain and, finally, to challenge and deconstruct domination vis-à-vis the ways it is enacted through, by, and via dominant group members located in the inside, and at the top of a hierarchical and circularly nested system. This, in order to alter and to reconfigure a constricting hegemonic cultural system into a more multi-directional, less hierarchical and more freeing and liberating cultural and linguistic system for all social actors, regardless of whether they hail from the dominant group or a non-dominant group.
Indeed, while the cultural and linguistic emancipation and, importantly, also acknowledgement of the value of the culture and language of non-dominant groups is a core aim of DGS and, more specifically, DCGT, both also aim to emancipate and free those entrapped within, and by, the insular, hierarchically situated and ultimately constricting and limiting center and offer DCG members access to a more rewarding, liberating and freeing humanity that opens up cultural and linguistic and knowledge horizons that have for far too long been largely closed off to them.
In sum, the normative goal of DGS and DCGT is not only to create more space – MUCH more space – for the culture, language and stories of non-dominant groups to break out and be watched, listened to, heard, read, consumed and shared, it is also to create more space for those in the dominant group for whom cultural and linguistic insularity is in fact arguably a sort of personal prison that limits their capacities as human beings to achieve a full, broad, wide, open and much more cognitively engaging – there is much evidence that exposure to multiple ways of seeing, doing, and being, culturally, and, especially, linguistically has clear cognitive and biological benefits (Diamond, 2010; Marian & Shook, 2012; Perquin et al., 2013) – human being in the world. In this sense then, DGS and DCGT draw inspiration from the Marxist notion of full “species being” (Marx, 2019) whereby individuals – including those situated in the Dominant Group — are able to achieve a much fuller and rewarding individual and, ideally, collective social humanity as well.
DGS and DCGT and propose to, in particular, though not exclusively, focus on dominant group members and their cultural and linguistic consumption patterns, with these patterns often being embedded firmly in a clear cultural and linguistic insularity, for a variety of reasons. Without identifying how dominant group culture members operate in the world, in this case, specifically in relation to pop cultural consumption, it is nearly impossible to effect major change – within and/or outside of that dominant group. Dominant groups “set the stage” of global culture for others (Mirrlees, 2013; Phillipson, 2008; Schiller, 2000), determine through their often self-centered consumption patterns of popular culture, what is, and is not, popular, what is, and is not, cool, what is, and is even on the global pop culture menu or radar at all.
The dominant cultural group – typically, though not always, privileged, white, mostly monolingual middle/upper middle-class and upper class Americans — must be encouraged to reassess its consumption patterns or the hierarchical, center-dominated global cultural system which sees Anglo-American culture continue to predominate — especially within Anglo-American dominated cultures such as the United States — will continue disproportionately control the global cultural arena. That is, without critical attention aimed at both raising awareness and problematizing insular/arrogant/self-centered cultural and linguistic consumption and use patterns — this group will continue, for the most part, to NOT look beyond its own entrenched, and insular, cultural consumption patterns and will continue to consume mostly its “own” music, films, news, television, etc.
What the dominant fundamental group does, or does not do, has major ramifications for global cultural flows and, more broadly, in terms of the (in)ability of people and peoples from non-dominant cultures and national groupings to both influence the global cultural field and to get their own cultural stories out, and up, and to the center, or, really, beyond the bounds of their local languages, geographic spaces, local cultures, customs, narratives, etc. If the center, or the dominant group, is mostly, even totally, self-absorbed, those from outside the center will have little to no chance to break into the center and to get their “stories”, music, films, television programs, languages, knowledges heard, much less acknowledged by those in the center.
The dominant cultural group – typically, though not always, privileged, white, mostly monolingual middle/upper middle-class and upper class Americans — must be encouraged to reassess its consumption patterns or the hierarchical, center-dominated global cultural system which sees Anglo-American culture continue to predominate — especially within Anglo-American dominated cultures such as the United States — will continue disproportionately control the global cultural arena. That is, without critical attention aimed at both raising awareness and problematizing insular/arrogant/self-centered cultural and linguistic consumption and use patterns — this group will continue, for the most part, to NOT look beyond its own entrenched, and insular, cultural consumption patterns and will continue to consume mostly its “own” music, films, news, television, etc.
DGS, then, proposes to focus on those in the dominant center, and to do so very specifically, because it is this group, which is located both at the center AND at the top culturally as well as racially, economically, politically and, last but not least, linguistically, that determines options that are (not) on the (global) cultural playing field (Bourdieu, 1984) whose stories get heard and, equally important, perhaps even more important, whose do not, whose voices, languages, music, etc. get heard, and whose do not, and ultimately heavily influences whose cultural lives are viewed as valuable or not valuable.
DGS specifically examines the cultural consumption patterns of white, English-language dominant, and often, though not always, socio-economically and educationally and politically and ideologically privileged people – while working class whites in the United States are clearly less privileged, generally speaking, vis-à-vis establishing that which occupies the “center” of the American cultural system, they are nonetheless positioned in a comparatively privileged position vis-à-vis those from outside the United States whose culture, language and stories have to break into the center from the outside in order to be read, listened to, watched and consumed in the form of popular culture. Working class whites in the United States are also, according to DCGT comparatively just as likely, perhaps even more likely, than some of their more educated American dominant cultural group compatriots to be very self-oriented toward American and English-language popular media cultural products.
While DGS holds that while it is important to acknowledge difference, play, polysemy, hybridity, etc. as these relate, for instance, to different racial, ethnic, socio-economic, gender groupings, it is equally if not more important to focus on comparative lack of difference in terms of how a particular group, in this case, the group with the most (cultural) power, orients itself toward (American/global) popular culture. DGS also holds that it is equally, if not more, important to identify, ascertain the nature of, document, and ultimately problematize a certain insularity in the way that members of the dominant fundamental group approach cultural consumption.
Dominant Group Studies vs. Critical Whiteness Studies
While there are, for instance, already strands of study and inquiry and socio-academic critique such as, for example, Whiteness Studies, and these similarly seek to identify, document, problematize, deconstruct and ultimately reconstruct white privilege in such a way as to disrupt (post)modern social and human hierarchies and transform these into greater social egalitarianism and equality and fairness, etc., these tend to focus almost wholly on race and ethnicity and socio-economic inequality. DGS proposes to expand the category boundaries beyond race and economics and politics to include culture and, importantly, language much more than they have been foregrounded in Whiteness Studies.
DGS draws considerable inspiration from Whiteness Studies, but it is not reducible to Whiteness Studies. Whereas Whiteness Studies importantly focuses on white privilege primarily via-a-vis the lens of race and ethnic studies, DGS, while concerned with racial inequalities, is broader: DGS zeroes in on not only racial inequalities but ALSO pushes us to interrogate, challenge, problematize and deconstruct the many other planes along which the privilege of dominant fundamental white American elites is built, constructed, reproduced and played out. Two of these planes are the plane of culture and language. Along these planes, the dominant fundamental group in the United States – primarily white, educated middle/upper middle class and upper-class individuals – focus on their “own” dominant culture and language and, for the most part, make little to no effort to broaden their cultural horizons beyond their “own” culture and language. This occurs both on an intra- and inter-national level. This is due to the fact that American culture, comparatively speaking – by this I mean that no other culture is as widespread and prevalent globally as American culture, though, clearly there are other cultures that have a significant, but also, compared to American culture, smaller/less powerful presence globally – continues to predominant globally.
Similarly, there is a presumption that indigenous knowledges of indigenous peoples in places such as the Amazon basin are less worthy, less worthwhile than knowledges of more “modern” Americans and Westerner/Northerners. A very different example involves so-called “in” social groups, for instance, in a high school setting. Members of the dominant fundamental group – “the popular group” – make little to no changes or accommodations for those outside of that group and, if one wants to gain entry into the DCG, one needs to make various social, cultural, linguistic, etc. changes in order to have a chance of gaining entry. Finally, one more example: DCGs control pretty much everything, including the domain of education. In order to gain entry into, for instance, an institution of higher education, one must pass standardized tests, written, and otherwise. These tests are grounded in so-called American Standardized (Written) English, a form of the English language that most closely approximates the form regularly and widely used by members of the DCG in the U.S. – white, (upper) middle class individuals – for whom the form of language that is codified into standardized testing is essentially “their” form of the language.
Fitting ACIC into DGS
ACIC is nested below DCGT in terms of levels of analysis with DCGT located at a more macro level and ACIC still located at a macro level but nested somewhat below DCGT. However, they are intricately and inexorably bound up together as Americans – especially college educated white middle/upper-middle and upper-class Americans with English as their dominant and frequently only language – constitute not only the DCG within the United States, but, due to historical reasons, currently stand as the DCG globally as well. This double-layering of dominant status makes it especially likely, according to DCGT, that Americans from the DCG will be largely insular in their consumption of cultural media products, pointing almost exclusively to American cultural media products produced originally in English.
DGS contends that this group – white socio-economically and educationally privileged Americans — has been, somewhat surprisingly, largely understudied in terms of its actual patterns of, and orientations toward, popular cultural consumption. Equally, if not more important, it has been understudied from a critical scholarly perspective. Such a perspective seeks to identify, document, understand, and ultimately problematize, and change, a cultural and linguistic insularity in this group’s cultural consumption that deeply affects this group – by limiting this group to seeing mostly ONLY its “own” culture. Finally, a central premise of DGS and DCGT is that cultural and linguistic and educational arrogance and ignorance are deeply embedded in the psyche of the DCG. It is a primary critical aim of DGS and applied DCGT to disabuse as many members of the DCG of this viewpoint as possible in order to free them from a cultural and linguistic and, ultimately, social cognitive prison of sorts that limits the capacity of DCG members to realize their full potential as global multi-cultural and multi-linguistic beings.
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