Bruno Latour Quotes

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

One thing that is not to be underestimated is American culture's influence on the rest of the world.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

We've had American TV shows in Britain for years and that hasn't affected our culture at all.

If there is cultural imperialism, it is definitely American.

The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.

One of the problems that we have as American journalists is that we bring the American cultural baggage with us and we plop it down and it follows us around and that's just a fact of life.

So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.

The French view globalization as synonymous with Americanization, the cultural imperialism that has filled France with bad food, bad films, and English words.

We express our condemnation, in no qualified terms of the introduction of what is considered to be a deplorable Welsh custom into America.

We should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanizing herself with disconcerting rapidity.

The issue of American world cultural dominance is moot. All the international debates on the issue seem to be held in English.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

The big French movie distributors are the Trojan horse of the American cinema.

Seriously, American pop culture must be the most predominant force on the planet, next to pollution and poverty.

A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.

..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.

The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.

Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.

What will remain of our cultural identity if audiovisual Europe consists of ... sitting in front of Japanese TV sets showing American programs.

We are the Romans of the modern world—the great assimilating people.

When you start exporting ideas, philosophy, behavior, products, ways of living, it becomes an assault on the culture. Americans have to understand that.